Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 05.pdf/333

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The Green Bag.

settling all accounts with stewards and others, selves, and came into court on a perfect and above all, the education of his children, footing of equality. Now all this is at an had been wholly her department and concern, end, and the assizes are becoming a drudgery without any interposition of his, further than and a bore." implicit acquiescence and entire approbation. Lord Campbell had a poor opinion of law If marriage, too, brings responsibility, it yers' matrimonial choice. " Generally speak furnishes a new incentive. John Scott would ing," he says, " the wives and daughters of never have become Lord Eldon, unless he lawyers are nothing by any means to boast had run away with " his Newcastle beauty," of. Barristers do not marry their mistresses Miss Surtees. " I have married rashly," he so frequently as they used to do, but they writes; " but it is my determination to work seldom can produce a woman that a man hard for the woman I love." This was the can take under his arm with any credit." right spirit; and work hard he did, getting This is certainly a monstrous libel. Lord up at four o'clock to read law, and wrapping Campbell might have remembered that the his head in wet towels. Yet these laborious wife of the judge whose decisions he reported, days in Cursitor Street, when he slipped out Lord Ellenborough, had been a reigning at night to Fleet Market to get sixpenny beauty and a toast; that the wife of his great worth of sprats for supper, were among the rival, Lord Lyndhurst, was one of the chief happiest in his life. His labors were light ornaments of London society; that the wife ened by the constant companionship of his of his friend, Lord Tenterden, was all that amiable and beautiful wife, who accustomed a wife could or should be; that it was despair herself to his hours, and would sit up with for the death of an amiable and accomplished him silently watching his studies. " There and too well-beloved wife which had caused is nothing," he afterwards said, " does a Sir Samuel Romilly, in a " horrible dismay young lawyer so much good as to be half- of soul," to take his own valuable life; to starved." When Erskine made his brilliant say nothing of Lady Abinger, Lady Dendébut in Rex v. Baillie, he was asked how he man, and Lady Hatherley. One of the most had the courage to stand up so boldly against pleasing incidents in the life of the late Lord Lord Mansfield. He answered that he Hatherley is that which illustrates his at thought his little children were plucking his tachment to his wife : — robe, and that he heard them saying, " Now, "Some years before his death Lord Hath father, is the time to get us bread." Mar erley, having to attend the Queen as Lord riage, too, had a good deal to do with the Chancellor, was bidden to stay as her Maj success of Lord Truro, not to speak of im esty's guest after the business for which he proving the then over-convivial habits of the had come was finished. He betrayed some circuit bar. When Wilde (Lord Truro) hesitation at this command, and, being joined the Western Circuit, he was an invalid, pressed to explain, told her Majesty that it and travelled with his wife. He rarely dined was the first occasion in his married life on at the circuit mess, and devoted the entire which he had passed twenty-four hours away evening to his briefs. This compelled a from Lady Hatherley. The Queen allowed corresponding alteration of habits in others; him to depart, and graciously commanded and a popular leader, afterwards a distin that the next time the Lord Chancellor guished judge, is reported to have said to visited her he should be accompanied by him, " I 'll tell you what it is, Wilde, you Lady Hatherley." have spoiled the circuit. Before you joined "Hatherley," said Lord Westbury, " is a us we lived like gentlemen, sat late at our mere bundle of virtues without one redeem wine, left our briefs to take care of them ing vice." — Law Gazette.