Charles Dickens

Dickens and his Briefs!!

“If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers”.

This year marks the two hundredth anniversary of  the birth of Charles Dickens,  the creator of  epic villain lawyers such as Mr Jaggers in Great Expectations and Tulkington in that legal blockbuster Bleak House.

Who can ever forget the reptilian Vholes also of that parish?

The Dickens lawyer lies centre stage of many of his plots, an intriguing sinister figure existing in the shadows, the mysterious agents of unknown benefactors, the keeper of the family secrets that will turn ill fortune to a bounty’s harvest.

Throughout all his fiction the Dickens lawyer is a master of the Victorian universe, a puppeteer of  intrigue at the hub of many of his stories unknown and unknowable.

In a lifetime of writing Dickens created  stories and timeless characters that turn on legal situations or are brought to legal fruition by the application of the law.

Dickens knew of what he wrote training as he did in a Solicitor’s office as a law clerk before he turned his hand to parliamentary reporting, journalism and then fiction with “Sketches by Boz”.

He made the law real and his lawyers and lawyers clerks of flesh and blood.

Wimmick is forever on hand to do Jagger’s bidding, not least in the collection of fees  “have they paid yet”?

We all need them and to be reassured of that!

We meet the law stationer Mr Snagsby and the shilling a page world of the legal scribe Nemo.

Mr Guppy, ambitious and aspiring to climb the legal heights of his profession and an opportunist of the main chance.

The law appeals to many character types as evidenced by the two very different legal players in “Our Mutual Friend”.lawyer (solicitor) Mortimer Lightwood honourable and voice of conscience and barrister (born gentleman) Eugene Wayburn entitled and insolent .

There are still a few of those about!

Dickens knew his villains and select amongst his most memorable are his lawyers and let’s not forget their clients.

Two halves from the same coin.

In Dickensworld only pretty young females are ever totally innocent!

Uriah Heap as the “most humble” of legal clerks is immortal.

Chilling and all too believable in his aspirations and cunning manner of execution and ascent.

I for one have met such a character in all the areas of law that I have moved in !

We are taken into the courts of his day, The Lord High Chancellor of England presiding over the never ending litigation that is Jarndyce and Jarndyce in a fog bound Court of Chancery.

He takes us to the Magistrates Courts.

From Oliver Twist we see two contrasting legal types, the kindly magistrate who refuses to sanction the orphan’s indentures to the disreputable chimney sweep and the ghastly Mr Fang  in his Court who having discovered in that morning’s paper that he has been “once again” been successfully appealed is in no mood to listen to anyone in his Court be they defendant or complainant!

Alun Armstrong played the character with deadly accuracy in Roman Polanski’s recent Oliver Twist and it proved the highlight of the film.

Mr Fang and his like are still not strangers to the current Bench despite the best efforts of the latest version of ‘customer care’ practise of The Ministry of Justice.

Truth be told however you have not “arrived” as a practitioner until one has been bloodied by your local Mr Fang.

I know of no one of any substance who has suffered any long term trauma or career setback as a result of such an exchange.

Such antics are the currency of every advocate’s retiring room in the country.

If Dickens had not existed our culture would be all the poorer and we as lawyers would “enjoy” a considerably lower profile.

Dickens and the legal world that he portrays have never gone out of fashion nor if mankind remains married to conflict is it ever likely to.

In  every passing decade the subjects and stories that he told remain as fresh and timely as ever.

Why do  lawyers feature so negatively ?

Lawyers  then as now are show business.

An easy target  and available. Courts are public places and journalists always want a handy story.

The Courts as theatre have it all ….  Crime, punishment, passion and revenge.

A venue let us not forget that is slander consequence free.

The lawyer is feared and resented, operating to the outsider as if in a closed shop.

Elitist.

Complicate in intrigue.

Mysterious in the workings of mankind.

Volves the chancery solicitor of vampirish countenance is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of the self serving corrupt, but oh so respectable Victorian lawyer.

“Sir, rejoined Mr Vholes, self -contained as usual ,voice and all, it is a part of my professional duty to know the best. It is part of my professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who confides his interests to me .In my professional duty I shall not be wanting sir, if I know it I may with best intentions be wanting it without knowing it; but not if I know it sir.”

All true but in any system of living lawyers find their own place in the food chain.

“The one great principle of the English Law is to make business for itself”.

A case could be made that he received his education from them. As a law clerk (which was the career ceiling of his legal career) he was schooled in the collation of facts (evidence) and the presentation of a point of view (submissions) the writer’s stock in trade.

He was clearly a good pupil and retained the lessons of his “hands on training” that lasted all of his professional life.

Instructions concise and discrete are the key to many novels his plot lines.

“Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else”.

“Take nothing on its looks, take everything on evidence. There’s no better rule”.

Lawyers get things done and know how to get them done.

Lawyers are  needed when needed.

Through the ages “necessary” as the undertaker in plying his plaintiff trade.

Let’s face it colleagues lawyers are but  messengers and facilitators.

Seldom welcome always necessary.

There has never been a number one hit record celebrating a lawyer’s bill  even when he lands his client on  the winning side!

Dickens I feel needed our profession as much as we need him and he like the best of us had a lawyer’s instincts.

“We lawyers are always curious, always inquisitive,always picking up odds and ends for our patchwork minds,since there is no knowing when and where they might fit into some corner”.

Personally and professionally Dickens the man and Dickens the writer had a hunter’s instincts.

Dickens was always quick to use lawyers and to go to law when his interests were challenged in copyright issues and in his personal life.

Zealous in the  protection  of his copyright, (and why not ) his frustration at the slow pace of justice in chancery inspired Bleak House and energised its reform.The absence of any copyright protection of his work in America appalled him and instigated initial steps to extend copyright across the pond. He found it ironic and maddening that the Americans queued up to see him but felt no inclination to pay him for his work.

A getter out of contracts when it suited him, it was a typical ruse used by him to encourage publishers into bidding wars for his work. He was frequently sued for doing so and lost on more occasions than might be expected from a figure of such eminence and moral rectitude.

When he tired of his loyal wife Georgiana (and acquired a young female muse) he went to legal war against her in a most unedifying way.

Dickens extracted every inch of legal advantage in insisting upon a carefully worded separation deed that put the mother of his children beyond the pale that makes one’s eyes water to read even today.

To top it all he used his will (that last hurrah of legal bullying) to humiliate her and announce to the world in its opening sentence that he was making substantial financial provision for his young “‘friend’ Miss Ellen Ternan.

Maybe we expect too much in our heroes.

He was a good client of the law and for all that he may have snapped at the hand that fed he knew when to pat it on the head when the stakes were high and cold application of law to facts were required.

He served it well in the reforms he instigated and supported.

His writing on the law made law and changed it for the better.

In  every passing decade the subjects and stories that he told remain as fresh and timely as ever.

He was a one man industry with novels, plays, acting, newspapers and public performance.

He even wrote and had produced an opera! Not regrettably on the law but the mind boggles at what he might have produced in the light of ‘contingency fees’.

He regularly went on fifteen mile midnight  walks and was known to duck his head into ice water when he literally became overheated with inspiration !

Called “inimitable “in his own day one can only guess what he would have made of the internet and our social media.

He wrote his books in monthly serials and his readers hung on his every word.

His death was sudden and led to public grieving on a Princess Diana scale.

He is buried in Westminster Abbey and is a cornerstone with Shakespeare of English literature.

Dickens and his lawyers remain a guilty pleasure for practitioners and clients alike. No one comes near to making the law so theatrical and entertaining.

So lift a glass of Dickens punch, a generous hearty mixture of gin and sherry  and reflect.

No other writer has ever done as much for us than he.

The legal profession shall never see his like again.