LAW AND LAWYERS OF DICKENS

Note the touches of the master's hand — the simile of the grave clothes, Barsad's resemblance to Judas, the resentment of the judge at counsel's allusions to the dis graceful testimony introduced in state trials. Contrast the foregoing with Doe ex dem Tit mouse v. Jolter, in Ten Thousand a Year. Observe how lifeless the latter appears by comparison though the work of an experi enced lawyer, who took pains to explain every technicality as he went along. Oliver Twist also contains a trial scene, this time written from the standpoint of the prisoner. ' ' From the rail before the dock away into the sharpest angle of the smallest corner in the galleries, all eyes were fixed upon one man —- the Jew. Be fore him and behind; above, below, on the right and on the left; he seemed tp stand surrounded by a firmament, all bright with gleaming eyes." It is worth noting the similarity to the paragraph which tells how the breath of the crowd rolled in waves towards Darnay. Dicken's experience as a clerk with the Solicitor, Mr. Edward Blackmore of Gray's Inn was so brief, extending as it did only from May, 1827, to November 1828, that it seems almost incredible that his intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the courts could have been acquired during that time. He was then but fifteen years of age, yet Mr. Blackmore has said "several inci dents took place in the office of which he must have been a keen observer as I recog nize some of them in his Pickwick and Nickelby; and I am much mistaken if some of his characters had not their originals in persons I well remember." His modest salary of thirteen shilling and sixpence, afterwards increased to fifteen shillings per week, indicates the position which he held and (to borrow the language of his biographer, Forster) "we have but to turn to the passage in Pickwick which de scribes the several grades of attorney's clerk to understand it more clearly. He was very far below the articled clerk, who had

397

paid a premium and is attorney in perspec tive. He was not so high as the salaried clerk, with nearly the whole of his weekly thirty shillings spent on his personal pleas ures. He was not even on the level with his middle-aged copying clerk, always needy and uniformly shabby. He was simply among, however his own nature may have lifted him above, the "office lads in their first surtouts, who feel a befitting contempt for boys at day-schools, club as they go home at night for saveloys and porter and think there's nothing like life." Nevertheless, and so far as I can recollect, with the exception of Nicholas Nickelby, Dombey and Son and Hard Times there is not a single one of his novels which lacks •what might might be termed legal atmos phere or in which at least one lawyer is not numbered among the characters. The role may be a very minor one as in Martin Clntzzlcwit where we have the mysterious Mr. Fipps of Austin Friars who it will be remem bered "turned out to be the jolliest old dog that ever did violence to his convivial sen timents by shutting himself up in a dark office." On the other hand the lawyer may play as important a part as does Mr. Tulkinghorn. In Oliver Twist and Pickwick Papers, the magistrate is satirized, in Bleak House the Lord Chancellor. In David Coppcrfield, Pickwick Papers and Little Dorrit the debtor's prison is portrayed, in Great Expectations and Barnaby Rndgc New gate, in The Tale of Two Cities The Old Bailey, in Pickwick Papers the Common Pleas, in David Coppcrfield Doctors Com mons and in Bleak House (the lawyer's novel par excellance) the Court of Chancery. The latter contains in almost every chapter some reference to that august tribunal, and constitutes one of the most terrific indict ments of abuses to be found in the English language. What reader, be he lawyer or lay man can forget that magnificent peroration? "This is the Court of Chancery; which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn