Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885

THE LADY LAWYER'S FIRST CLIENT

Mrs. Tarbell sat in her office, pretending to read a law-journal, but really looking at her name on the office door; and she was not without justification, perhaps, seeing that it had taken her six years to get it there. Furthermore, though it was six weeks since it had been lettered upon the glass panel, she had as yet found nothing to do but look at it. She was at last a lawyer; she had triumphed over prejudice and ridicule; and a young lawyer has three privileges,—he may write Esquire after his name, he is exempt from jury duty, and he can wait for clients. Mrs. Tarbell had always been exempt from jury duty, and her brother told her that, historically speaking, she ought to be called equestrienne, if she was to have any title: so it seemed that it was only left to her to wait for clients and contemplate her sign. The sign read,—

Ellen G. Tarbell,

Alex. H. Juddson,

Attorneys-at-Law.

Commissioner for Colorado.

Mrs. Tarbell had been a Miss Juddson before her marriage with – Tarbell, Esq. (of Hinson & Tarbell, mourning goods), and Mr. Alexander H. Juddson was her brother. When Mr. Tarbell died, his widow told her family and friends that she was going to read law.

Mrs. Tarbell had always been a woman of progressive notions, but this was going too far. Her family and some of her friends were short-sighted enough to attempt to argue the general question,—namely, ought women to have Rights? When Mrs. Tarbell proved to them that they were both unfair and illogical, they then said that, though they had no objection to other women making lawyers of themselves, they did not see the necessity in her case.

Mrs. Tarbell replied that she must get a living; and it was quite true that the late Tarbell had failed a few months before his death, leaving his widow rather poorly off; for he had not put his property in her name before making an assignment. And Mrs. Tarbell went on to say that, as she could not be a nurse, and would not be a governess or keep a boarding-house, she would read law. It was reported at the time that Mr. Juddson said he hoped his sister would go and read law, if anywhere, in Colorado, for which State it was he, of course, who was the commissioner; but, whether this report were true or not, Mrs. Tarbell stayed at home and pursued her studies under his direction.

After going through all sorts of examinations, at which she flung herself determinedly, and which she kept on passing with the greatest credit, after meeting with innumerable disappointments and delays, after being politely told by one judge after another that she was a woman, and therefore could not be a man,—hence, a fortiori, she could not be a lawyer,—after six years, I say, Mrs. Tarbell succeeded. Her name went on the list of attorneys. The court-clerk gave her a certificate, and received two dollars and sixty cents. The newspapers chronicled the circumstance. Her friends were triumphant. Judge Measy, who admitted her to the bar, was compared to Lord Mansfield and to Mr. Lincoln.

But marriage is not the only lofty undertaking attended by petty miseries. Mrs. Tarbell could bear her great misfortunes with courage and resolution: as she had great hopes, so she expected great disasters. Not Lars Porsenna of Clusium himself was more clapped on the back, and huzzahed after, and backed up by the augurs, nor more frequently told that he was the beloved of heaven, than Mrs. Tarbell had been by her soothsayers and partisans. At first this was all very well, but afterward it grew tiresome. If Mrs. Tarbell, emerging from widowhood and placing herself in the van of feminine progress, was really a pioneer in a heaven sent mission (as perhaps she was), there was no need to repeat the phrase so often. When two or three years had gone by, and it began to be apparent that Mrs. Tarbell had a long and up-hill struggle before her, she became very impatient of enthusiasm. She had never liked it, even when the female welkin (if there be such a thing) had first rung with applause for her, and now it was painfully uncomfortable. Mrs. Lucretia Pegley (authoress of "Woman's Wrongs," "The Weaker Sex?" "Eve v. Adam," etc., etc., editor of "Woman's Sphere," and chief contributor to the "Coming Era;" her friends called her a Boadicea, and denied that she had withdrawn from the study of medicine because she had fainted at her first operation),—Mrs. Pegley observed her friend's shortness of temper, and took her to task about it. "Ellen Tarbell," she said, "you surprise me very much. Do you wish to give the impression that your motives are purely personal and—forgive me, but the word is necessary—selfish? that you have no interest in the movement in which you are a pioneer? that your heart is not with the cause which after so many years of weary waiting looks to you for advancement? Mr. Botts is a most worthy and indefatigable man; perhaps a trifle too much addicted to repetition for the sake of rhetorical effect,—a thing, I admit, very trying; but it is of the highest importance (I say this between ourselves, of course, and you may imagine that I would not give publicity to such a statement),—it is of the highest importance that the feelings of our—hem—masculine colleagues should not be—"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Mrs. Tarbell hastily, "I appreciate that fully,

I assure you. But yesterday evening I was rather tired, and I—"

"Tired!" said Mrs. Pegley, in the voice of acute anguish which caused her to be known as a woman of the most extraordinary intensity of convictions. "It is a wonder we are not all in our graves," she added, in tones whose sombre depth was brightened by a little colloquial levity, for she felt that she had been too severe with Mrs. Tarbell. "Still," she continued, "after Mr. Bott's very flattering remarks you might have spoken with a little more—er—earnestness and—er—vigor yourself, you know. And for such an audience as we had last night, three minutes is really—"

After this, Mrs. Tarbell resolved that her next effort at public speaking should be made before an American jury, or not at all. Indeed, she went so far as to think it a great mistake to suppose that woman's cause could not be advanced without calling meetings and haranguing them till eleven o'clock at night. Very likely her ideals were still of the highest order, and certainly she still hoped that when women were allowed to practise law the law would be so changed that you would hardly recognize it; but she wanted to carry on her part of the work occultly and quietly. She had got over a good many of her own illusions, and she was taking a more practical view of life. She smiled when she thought of the prophecies which had been made about her, and she no longer read the paragraphs about herself in the newspapers. She kept her brother's dockets and drew his papers. Alexander frowned a good deal, and said it wasn't necessary, but she insisted that she must pay him in some way for her education. She put his desk in order and gave him new papers every other day, which practices he never could get her to forego. In short, she settled down into a routine of study, office-work, and regularly recurring attempts to get in. And when she finally did get in, she had become a cynic. Everybody remembers, of course, how at the end of his last term Judge Oldwigg announced his intention to retire into private life and decline a reelection, and how the managers of the party in power chose Judge Measy as their candidate for the vacant place. The prospective judge was waited on privately by a deputation of Mrs. Tarbell's friends, headed by Mrs. Pegley, and asked to define his position on the Tarbell question. The deputation did not contain many voters, and no bargain which Mr. Measy, as he then was, could have made with it would have increased his majority very largely: as he was pretty sure of a majority, he must be cleared of all suspicion of making a bargain. But he did deliver to Mrs. Pegley an oracular answer, which was in course of time interpreted in Mrs. Tarbell's favor. She came up before him; Mr. Juddson made the motion which he had so often made before, and made it, I regret to say, in rather hurried tones, when, to everybody's surprise, Judge Measy produced a manuscript and read it out, and proved that a lawyer was a person who practiced law, and that therefore, as a woman was a person, she could be a lawyer, interspersing his remarks with graceful historical allusions and several profound reflections upon the design of Nature in creating the female sex. Then, acting as man, not judge, he descended to the side-bar, beckoned to Mrs. Tarbell, grasped her by the hand, and made her a speech. "Madam," said the courtly judge, "Mrs. Tarbell, I congratulate you,"—which was one for himself as well,—"and let me add that it gives me the sincerest satisfaction to be able to testify in this manner to the veneration which I have always entertained for woman; and I am quite sure that in no long space of time you will have proved to us that the law cannot say it has nothing to gain from her refining influence. For I remember my own mother, Mrs. Tarbell," said Judge Measy. The bar listened in awed admiration. Mrs. Tarbell bit her lips, bowed, and thanked his honor as best she could. The idea of suggesting that she was anybody's mother, or that even if she had a family that was any reason for permitting her to be a barrister! But from the other side of the court-room was heard an expressive rustling, and audible whispers of satisfaction were wafted across the lawyers on their chairs. Mrs. Pegley and her train were sitting by, radiant, triumphant, majestic. The dignity of motherhood was vindicated.

And now that Juddson and Tarbell were moving to their new offices, who should also at the very same time become a tenant of the Land and Water Insurance Company but the Honorable Franklin Blood Pope? The Land and Water Company's new building was in a very desirable locality, and several lawyers deserted their old nooks and corners to occupy its spacious and well-calcimined apartments. Juddson and Tarbell took the rooms on the back of the third floor, Mr. Pope those on the front ditto: they were very near neighbors. In former days Mrs. Tarbell had often complained to her husband of Mr. Pope's success. It was an argument that men had not as much common sense as they pretended to have, she said, or else they would see through Franklin B–'s absurd pretensions. "Even I can perceive that the man is a humbug," she continued. "In fact, any woman could. Why is he successful, then? Why has he an enormous practice? Why has he been sent to Congress? If it is because he has a majestic appearance and can talk a great deal, women certainly can fulfill these conditions, and that by your own account of them."

To which Mr. Tarbell would answer, "Exactly, my love, by all means; and so is your friend Mrs. Pegley a great talker, and a fine-looking woman."

"Then give her all the rights you give to Mr. Pope," cried Mrs. Tarbell.

"She shall have 'em, and welcome," said Tarbell; but he did not tell his wife that he had voted for Mr. Pope on the opposition ticket, and had even consulted him on matters of business,—once going so far as to suggest to him that a certain proposed alteration in the tariff would seriously affect the mourning-goods industry,—from which it may be gathered that it was not from any lack of prudence that Mr. Tarbell died a bankrupt and left his widow to become a lady-lawyer.

Mr. Pope himself it was who betrayed Mr. Tarbell's confidence and opened Mrs. Tarbell's eyes. "Your husband was my very good friend, my dear madam," said the Honorable Franklin, "and I was proud to call him my client. Yes, I had the honor of advising him in several matters and of carrying through some rather delicate negotiations for him. A man of the strictest integrity, ever genial and urbane, of sound judgment and independent views, endowed with strong common sense and quick perceptions. You see, I had the highest opinion of Mr. Tarbell, and have often wished to tell his widow—alas that I should have to call her so!—how certain I am that she will succeed in the career she has chosen, and how deeply I grieve that her husband could not have lived to find in her a better adviser than I ever could have been to him."

Messrs.—I mean Mrs. and Mr.—Tarbell and Juddson were just moving into their new offices when Mr. Pope uttered these kind wishes. He met Mrs. Tarbell on the door-step: he was standing there, indeed, when she came in. He was always standing on the door-step: he carried on most of his business, especially with the politicians, in public. "I beg that you will use my library on all occasions," he continued, raising his voice a little. "If I may say so myself, it is rather comprehensive; in fact, I am very proud of it. And any assistance which I can give you in any way, my dear madam, will, I need hardly say, be given most heartily."

Use his library, indeed! Mrs. Tarbell would have been as likely to go to the Vatican and ask Pope Leo for the loan of a few works contra hæreticos. Why had she and her brother ever come to the Land and Water Company's building? The idea of meeting the Honorable Pope every day, of every day beholding his portly figure, statesman-like features, and lion mane, and acknowledging his bland bows and salutations, was inexpressibly odious. And, what was worse, Mr. Pope continued to flourish like a green bay-tree, or like the proprietors of a patent medicine or a blackguard newspaper, or any other comparison you please. Feet tramped along the hall, hands knocked at his door, lips innumerable whispered into his ears, and Mrs. Tarbell sat and looked at her sign, wondering what had become of all the women who were to have employed her. She had not said, "Walk in, madam," to one of them; and Mr. Juddson's clients all regarded her as if she were a curiosity.

Mrs. Tarbell looked, in fact, like the president of a Dorcas society or a visitor of a church hospital. She had pleasing features, dark hair, slightly touched with gray, as became a lawyer of thirty-five, and dignified manners. She dressed very plainly in a black dress with just one row of broad trimming down the front, and, though she felt that it was an abuse of authority, she drew her hair straight back from her forehead. This question of her hair had given her some little anxiety, and it had cost her some time to decide what kind of hat or bonnet she should wear. Alexander said she might use her riding-hat for the sake of economy, but she had decided on a tweed walking-hat, which could be taken off very quickly in the court-room. For, whatever she might do in church, it was now impossible for her to remain covered before the bench of judges.

Mrs. Tarbell's desk was in the middle of the back room,—she could just see the outer door obliquely through that of her partition,—and Mr. Juddson's was in a similar position in the front room. This was not a very good arrangement. Mrs. Tarbell could not very well be put in the front room with the office-boy, and yet the proximity of the office-boy was not agreeable to Mr. Juddson either. Then, too, most of the books were in the back room, and so was the sofa: altogether it looked as if Mrs. Tarbell were the senior. Mr. Juddson was thinking seriously of having another partition built, and that would at any rate save him from being asked "if Mr. Juddson were in," for, as every one knows, there is a vast difference between being asked "if Mr. Juddson be in," and "is this Mr. Juddson?" But Mr. Juddson had the picture of Chief-Justice Marshall and the map of the battle-field of Gettysburg, so he was not so badly off; and Mrs. Tarbell was very comfortable.

She was just musing over her future, and saying to herself, "When I die, I know that they will call a bar-meeting, and that Mr. Pope will make a eulogy on my character," when the door opened, and Mr. Juddson came in. Mrs. Tarbell returned to business-life immediately.

"Did you find Mullany?" she said.

Mr. Juddson, a tall, black-whiskered man of about fifty, rubbed his hands for a moment over the fire, and then answered shortly that he had found Mullany.

"What did he say?"

"Oh,—what I expected," said Mr. Juddson, turning over the papers on his table. He disliked unnecessary questions. Mrs. Tarbell had no interest in Mullany, and the most she ought to do was to ask about him in an off-hand way in the street-car on the way home. Mr. Juddson discovered the paper for which he was searching, and turned toward the door.

"Are you going out?" said Mrs. Tarbell.

The door was already half open.

"Reference before Murray. Back at one," was all Mr. Juddson deigned to say.

"Alexander!" cried Mrs. Tarbell,—when the office-boy was in, she called her brother Mr. Juddson,—"Alexander!"

"Well?" said Mr. Juddson. He was late as it was.

"You will make the office very cold if you leave the door—but never mind. Don't let me keep you. I only wanted to tell you that I should like to talk to you about something some time to-d—" The rest of the sentence was lost upon Mr. Juddson, who had already shut the door behind him, and Mrs. Tarbell felt aggrieved.

So much aggrieved, in fact, that she found it impossible to return to the law-journal.

"I suppose I need a sedative," she said to herself. "If I were a man, I would put my feet up on the table and light a cigar, or—no! I would never practise that vilest form of the vice." (What she meant by this last phrase I cannot imagine, unless she referred to something which Mr. Juddson had been driven to do because he could not very well smoke while his sister was in the office.) "What," continued Mrs. Tarbell, "what can there be to recommend the position?" She looked at the desk.

"Is it an easy position?" she said. She looked down at her feet.

"Is it even a graceful position?" She swung herself to and fro on her revolving-chair.

She looked about her. The office was empty; the office-boy had gone on a very long errand. "I will try it," she said, with determination.

She removed all the books and papers on the right side of the table to the left side. Then she tilted back her chair, elevated her left foot cautiously, put it down, and elevated her right, placed it determinedly on the table, crossed the other foot over it, leaned forward with some difficulty to arrange her skirts, leaned back again.

"My book seems to lie very easily in my lap," she said to herself. "And the leaves turn over quite willingly."

One page, two pages, three pages. "After all," said she,—"after all—if one were quite alone—and had been sitting for a long time in another attitude—"

Tap-tap! came a timid knock at the door.

"Come in!" cried Mrs. Tarbell, resuming her former position in a great hurry, and dropping the law-journal.

Tap-tap!

"Come in!" said Mrs. Tarbell, picking up the law-journal. "Come in!" she said.

And the door opened slowly.

"Well?" said Mrs. Tarbell.

"Is Mrs. Tarbell in?" said the party of the knocks.

"I am Mrs. Tarbell. Come in, please. What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to see you, ma'am."

"Take a chair. Well?"

"I suppose it's April weather," said the new-comer; "but the rain is right chilly, so it is; like it was a November rain, somehow. Will I put my umbreller right down here? The spring is dreadful late, and the farmers is all complainin', they tell me."

Mrs. Tarbell shuddered.

The new-comer was tall and gaunt and thin; her shoulders sloped, she stooped, her chin was up in the air, and she peered through spectacles. Her hat was rusty, her india-rubber gossamer was rusty, the crape on her dress was so very rusty that it seemed to be made of iron-filings. Her cheeks were the color of unburned coffee-grains or of underdone gingerbread; her nose was long; her eyes, were small and bleary; her protruding lips wrinkled up as she spoke, and displayed her poor yellow old tusks; her scant hair was dirty gray, her forehead was bald, her neck was scraggy: she was particularly and pathetically ugly. Her dress bagged about over her long waist and spidery arms. No wonder Mrs. Tarbell shuddered.

"If I ain't disturbing you, Mrs. Tarbell," the visitor continued, "and if you could just spare the time to listen to me for a minnit, I wanted just to ask you for a little advice. My name is Stiles, ma'am,—Mrs. Annette Gorsley Stiles. Gorsley was my given name before I was married—But I feel as if I was taking up your time, Mrs. Tarbell."

"Not at all," said Mrs. Tarbell hastily.

"Well, ma'am, my husband he's dead, been dead this six years now, and left me with four to feed, and—well, I don't know just how to begin, rightly. You see, it's this way. Celandine, my eldest,—that was his name for her; he had a right pretty knack at names, and was always for names that ran easy,—Celandine she's eighteen now, 'n' she wants to be doing something for herself. It drives me real hard to pay for all four of them out of a sewing-machine and the little I make selling candies over a counter,—five cents' worth of chocolate drops and penny's-worths of yellow taffy; never more than fifty cents a day, living where we do, in Pulaski Street,—and Celandine she's bound to help me some way. The next oldest to Celandine is on'y ten; and if I was to starve I wouldn't have him to sell papers or black boots, and his father a foreman; and the' ain't no call for office-boys nowadays, 'r else it's because Augustus is so small for his age—"

"We have an office-boy," murmured Mrs. Tarbell.

"I know, ma'am," said Mrs. Stiles. "Leastways, I guessed as much. I was thinking of asking you about Celandine." Mrs. Tarbell stirred uneasily, and Mrs. Stiles hurried on: "Celandine and me we were talking things over the other day,—we've been reading about you in the newspapers, Mrs. Tarbell, nigh on to four years now; Celandine has always been a comprehending child, precocious, as they say, and quick-witted, and she's been watching your career, ma'am, just as clost as you could yourself. And the day you was admitted she come home,—a friend of hers gave her the afternoon paper,—and she says, 'Mother,' she says, 'Mrs. Tarbell is admitted!'—just like it was a personal friend of yours, Mrs. Tarbell; and reely, ma'am, I suppose I oughtn't to say it, but there's been a good many women all over this country felt themselves personal friends of yours, ma'am, knowing how much there was meant by your success and feeling how near the question come to themselves; and if good wishes brings good luck, that's what you have to thank for succeeding. But Celandine she's an ambitious girl, Mrs, Tarbell, and the long and the short of it is just this, that she's set her heart on being a lawyer, and she's either too shy or too proud, mebbe, to come here with me to speak to you, ma'am: so I just put on my bunnit the first day I could, rain or shine, and rain it's turned out to be, to say a word to you about her and just ask you what you thought."

"A lawyer?" gasped Mrs. Tarbell.

"Yes, ma'am; a lady lawyer."

Mrs. Tarbell had never a word to say. In spite of having triumphed over all the arguments, both those epicene and those particularly masculine, which had been used against herself, she had not now the strength of mind to use them in her turn. In spite of being a lawyer, she had a conscience. She had looked forward to taking students, but they were all to have been Portias, every woman Jane of them; and before her own learning was fairly dry (which I think an eminently proper adjective to describe legal learning) there appeared to her an obviously crack-brained old party in an india-rubber cloak, who kept a candy-store and wanted her daughter to become a lawyer. No wonder Mrs. Tarbell was embarrassed. Was she to say to the crack-brained one, "Madam, pay me one hundred dollars per annum and I will take your daughter as a student"? On the other hand, how in the name of that Orloff, that Pitt, that Kohinoor diamond among precious virtues, consistency, was she to go so far as even to hint to Mrs. Stiles that any woman couldn't be a lawyer? As Mrs. Tarbell hesitated, she began to fear she was lost.