Bardell v. Pickwick

Here Mr. Jackson smiled once more upon the company, and, applying his left thumb to the tip of his nose, worked a visionary coffee-mill with his right hand: thereby performing a very graceful piece of pantomime (then much in vogue, but now, unhappily, almost obsolete) which was familiarly denominated ‘taking a grinder.’ (Imagine a modern solicitor’s clerk “Taking a grinder!”)

‘No, no, Mr. Pickwick,’ said Jackson, in conclusion; ‘Perker’s people must guess what we served these subpœnas for. If they can’t, they must wait till the action comes on, and then they’ll find out.’

Mr. Pickwick bestowed a look of excessive disgust on his unwelcome visitor, and would probably have hurled some tremendous anathema at the heads of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, had not Sam’s entrance at the instant interrupted him.

‘Samuel Weller?’ said Mr. Jackson, inquiringly.

‘Vun o’ the truest things as you’ve said for many a long year,’ replied Sam, in a most composed manner.

‘Here’s a subpœna for you, Mr. Weller,’ said Jackson.

‘What’s that in English?’ inquired Sam.

‘Here’s the original,’ said Jackson, declining the required explanation.

‘Which?’ said Sam.

‘This,’ replied Jackson, shaking the parchment.

‘Oh, that’s the ’rig’nal, is it?’ said Sam. ‘Well, I’m wery glad I’ve seen the ’rig’nal, ’cos it’s a gratifyin’ sort o’ thing, and eases vun’s mind so much.’

‘And here’s the shilling,’ said Jackson. ‘It’s from Dodson and Fogg’s.’

‘And it’s uncommon handsome o’ Dodson and Fogg, as knows so little of me, to come down vith a present,’ said Sam. ‘I feel it as a wery high compliment, sir; it’s a wery hon’rable thing to them, as they knows how to reward merit werever they meets it. Besides wich, it’s affectin to one’s feelin’s.’

As Mr. Weller said this, he inflicted a little friction on his right eye-lid, with the sleeve of his coat, after the most approved manner of actors when they are in domestic pathetics.

Mr. Jackson seemed rather puzzled by Sam’s proceedings; but, as he had served the subpœnas, and had nothing more to say, he made a feint of putting on the one glove which he usually carried in his hand, for the sake of appearances; and returned to the office to report progress.

Another of Mr. Pickwick’s foolish and self-willed proceedings was the interview with Serjeant Snubbin, which he so positively insisted upon. We may wonder now-a-days would any K.C. of position have condescended to allow such a proceeding? I fancy it would be thought “irregular:” though perhaps ex gratia, and from the oddity of the proposal, it might be conceded.

When Mr. Pickwick called upon him, it turned out that the Serjeant knew nothing whatever of his case; probably cared nothing about it. It was not in his line. He perhaps wondered why the old-fashioned lawyer had “retained” him. We learn Parker’s reason:

‘Well, we’ve done everything that’s necessary. I have engaged Serjeant Snubbin.’

‘Is he a good man?’ inquired Mr. Pickwick.

‘Good man!’ replied Perker; ‘bless your heart and soul, my dear sir, Serjeant Snubbin is at the very top of his profession. Gets treble the business of any man in court – engaged in every case. You needn’t mention it abroad; but we say – we of the profession – that Serjeant Snubbin leads the court by the nose.’

How foolish was this reasoning can be seen on an instant’s reflection. To “lead the court by the nose” is well enough in an argument before a judge: but here it was more important to lead a jury by the nose, which Buzfuz knew how to do. Moreover when a counsel has this power, it usually operates on a special judge and his colleagues; but who could guarantee that Snubbin’s special judge would try the case. As it turned out, the Chief Justice fell sick before the day, and Mr. Justice Stareleigh unexpectedly took the case. He as it proved was anything but “led by the nose.” Perker indeed, summed up the whole weakness of the case in a single sentence:

‘They have subpœna’d my three friends,’ said Mr. Pickwick.

‘Ah! of course they would,’ replied Perker. ‘Important witnesses; saw you in a delicate situation.’

‘But she fainted of her own accord,’ said Mr. Pickwick. ‘She threw herself into my arms.’

‘Very likely, my dear sir,’ replied Perker; ‘very likely and very natural. Nothing more so, my dear sir, nothing. But who’s to prove it?’

A suggestion, we are told, that rather “staggered” Mr. Pickwick.

Within ten minutes after he had received the assurance that the thing was impossible, he was conducted by his solicitors into the outer office of the great Serjeant Snubbin himself.

It was an uncarpeted room of tolerable dimensions, with a large writing table drawn up near the fire, the baize top of which had long since lost all claim to its original hue of green, and had gradually grown grey with dust and age, except where all traces of its natural colour were obliterated by ink-stains. Upon the table were numerous little bundles of papers tied with red tape; and behind it, sat an elderly clerk, whose sleek appearance and heavy gold watch-chain presented imposing indications of the extensive and lucrative practice of Mr. Serjeant Snubbin.

‘Is the Serjeant in his room, Mr. Mallard?’ inquired Perker, offering his box with all imaginable courtesy.

‘Yes, he is,’ was the reply, ‘but he’s very busy. Look here; not an opinion given yet, on any one of these cases; and an expedition fee paid with all of them.’ The clerk smiled as he said this, and inhaled the pinch of snuff with a zest which seemed to be compounded of a fondness for snuff and a relish for fees.

‘Something like practice that,’ said Perker.

‘Yes,’ said the barrister’s clerk, producing his own box, and offering it with the greatest cordiality; ‘and the best of it is, that as nobody alive except myself can read the Serjeant’s writing, they are obliged to wait for the opinions, when he has given them, till I have copied ’em, ha – ha – ha!’

‘Which makes good for we know who, besides the Serjeant, and draws a little more out of his clients, eh?’ said Perker; ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ At this the Serjeant’s clerk laughed again – not a noisy boisterous laugh, but a silent, internal chuckle, which Mr. Pickwick disliked to hear. When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

‘You haven’t made me out that little list of the fees that I’m in your debt, have you?’ said Perker.

‘No, I have not,’ replied the clerk.

‘I wish you would,’ said Perker. ‘Let me have them, and I’ll send you a cheque. But I suppose you’re too busy pocketing the ready money, to think of the debtors, eh? ha, ha, ha!’ This sally seemed to tickle the clerk, amazingly, and he once more enjoyed a little quiet laugh to himself.

‘But, Mr. Mallard, my dear friend,’ said Perker, suddenly recovering his gravity, and drawing the great man’s great man into a corner, by the lappel of his coat, ‘you must persuade the Serjeant to see me, and my client here.’

‘Come, come,’ said the clerk, ‘that’s not bad either. See the Serjeant! come, that’s too absurd.’ Notwithstanding the absurdity of the proposal, however, the clerk allowed himself to be gently drawn beyond the hearing of Mr. Pickwick; and after a short conversation conducted in whispers, walked softly down a little dark passage and disappeared into the legal luminary’s sanctum, from whence he shortly returned on tiptoe, and informed Mr. Perker and Mr. Pickwick that the Serjeant had been prevailed upon, in violation of all his established rules and customs, to admit them at once.

The Serjeant was writing when his clients entered; he bowed abstractedly when Mr. Pickwick was introduced by his solicitor; and then, motioning them to a seat, put his pen carefully in the inkstand, nursed his left leg, and waited to be spoken to.

‘Mr. Pickwick is the defendant in Bardell and Pickwick, Serjeant Snubbin,’ said Perker.

‘I am retained in that, am I?’ said the Serjeant.

‘You are, Sir,’ replied Perker.

The Serjeant nodded his head, and waited for something else.

‘Mr. Pickwick was anxious to call upon you, Serjeant Snubbin,’ said Perker, ‘to state to you, before you entered upon the case, that he denies there being any ground or pretence whatever for the action against him; and that unless he came into court with clean hands, and without the most conscientious conviction that he was right in resisting the plaintiff’s demand, he would not be there at all. I believe I state your views correctly; do I not, my dear Sir?’ said the little man, turning to Mr. Pickwick.

‘Quite so,’ replied that gentleman.

Mr. Serjeant Snubbin unfolded his glasses, raised them to his eyes; and, after looking at Mr. Pickwick for a few seconds with great curiosity, turned to Mr. Perker, and said, smiling slightly as he spoke —

‘Has Mr. Pickwick a strong case?’

The attorney shrugged his shoulders.

‘Do you purpose calling witnesses?’

‘No.’

The smile on the Serjeant’s countenance became more defined; he rocked his leg with increased violence, and, throwing himself back in his easy-chair, coughed dubiously.

These tokens of the Serjeant’s presentiments on the subject, slight as they were, were not lost on Mr. Pickwick. He settled the spectacles, through which he had attentively regarded such demonstrations of the barrister’s feeling as he had permitted himself to exhibit, more firmly on his nose; and said with great energy, and in utter disregard of all Mr. Perker’s admonitory winkings and frownings —

‘My wishing to wait upon you for such a purpose as this, Sir, appears, I have no doubt, to a gentleman who sees so much of these matters as you must necessarily do, a very extraordinary circumstance.’

The Serjeant tried to look gravely at the fire, but the smile came back again.

‘Gentlemen of your profession, Sir,’ continued Mr. Pickwick, ‘see the worst side of human nature – all its disputes, all its ill-will and bad blood, rise up before you. You know from your experience of juries (I mean no disparagement to you or them) how much depends upon effect; and you are apt to attribute to others, a desire to use, for purposes of deception and self-interest, the very instruments which you, in pure honesty and honour of purpose, and with a laudable desire to do your utmost for your client, know the temper and worth of so well, from constantly employing them yourselves. I really believe that to this circumstance may be attributed the vulgar but very general notion of your being, as a body, suspicious, distrustful, and over-cautious. Conscious as I am, Sir, of the disadvantage of making such a declaration to you, under such circumstances, I have come here, because I wish you distinctly to understand, as my friend Mr. Perker has said, that I am innocent of the falsehood laid to my charge; and although I am very well aware of the inestimable value of your assistance, Sir, I must beg to add, that unless you sincerely believe this, I would rather be deprived of the aid of your talents than have the advantage of them.’

Long before the close of this address, which we are bound to say was of a very prosy character for Mr. Pickwick, the Serjeant had relapsed into a state of abstraction.

Now the Serjeant might at once have replied to all this, that the innocence or guilt of a client had nothing to do with him, that his use was merely to secure a client such benefit and advantage as the law entitled him to: that a judge and jury would decide the point of innocence. Boz himself evidently shared this popular delusion, and seems to be speaking by Mr. Pickwick’s mouth. The sagacious Serjeant, however, took no notice whatever of the appeal, but simply asked “who was with him” in the case. Mr. Phunky was sent for, and asked by his leader “to take Mr. Pickwick away” and “hear anything he may wish to communicate.” The party was then bowed out.

The truth was, Mr. Pickwick’s attorney was too much of a social character and of the “old family solicitor” pattern for so critical a case. The counsel he “instructed” were unsuitable. Serjeant Snubbin was an overworked “Chamber lawyer,” whose whole time and experience was given to furnishing “opinions” on tangled cases; so pressed was he that he took “expedition fees” to give certain cases priority: an illegitimate practice that now the Bar Committee would scarcely tolerate. What could such a man know of nisi prius trials, of cross-examining or handling witnesses? It is enough to give his portrait, as supplied by the author:

Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was a lantern-faced, sallow-complexioned man, of about five-and-forty, or – as the novels say – he might be fifty. He had that dull-looking boiled eye which is often to be seen in the heads of people who have applied themselves during many years to a weary and laborious course of study; and which would have been sufficient, without the additional eye-glass which dangled from a broad black riband round his neck, to warn a stranger that he was very near-sighted. His hair was thin and weak, which was partly attributable to his having never devoted much time to its arrangement, and partly to his having worn for five-and-twenty years the forsenic wig which hung on a block beside him. The marks of hair powder on his coat collar, and the ill-washed and worse tied white neckerchief round his throat, showed that he had not found leisure since he left the court to make any alteration in his dress: while the slovenly style of the remainder of his costume warranted the inference that his personal appearance would not have been very much improved if he had. Books of practice, heaps of papers, and opened letters, were scattered over the table, without any attempt at order or arrangement; the furniture of the room was old and ricketty; the doors of the bookcase were rotting in their hinges; the dust flew out from the carpet in little clouds at every step; the blinds were yellow with age and dirt; the state of everything in the room showed, with a clearness not to be mistaken, that Mr. Serjeant Snubbin was far too much occupied with his professional pursuits to take any great heed or regard of his personal comforts.

It was a characteristic feature of the slowness of legal process in those days that though the notice of action was sent on August the 28th, 1827, the case was not ripe for trial until February 14th of the next year – nearly six months having elapsed. It is difficult to speculate as to what this long delay was owing. There were only two witnesses whose evidence had to be briefed – Mrs. Cluppins and Mrs. Sanders – and they were at hand. It is odd, by the way, that they did not think of examining little Tommy Bardell, the only one who actually witnessed the proceeding. True, he was of tender years – about eight or ten – and the son of the Plaintiff, but he must have “known the nature of an oath.”