B-Berry and I Look Back

by Dornford Yates

  “In the spring or early summer of 1909, a well-known peer of the realm came down the steps of the Carlton Club and asked the Commissionaire to call a taxi. The Commissionaire signalled to the cab-rank and a taxi drew up at once to the foot of the steps. This meant, of course, that the taxi was facing West, for the Canton Club used to stand on the South side of Pall Mall. The Commissionaire opened the door: as the peer was about to enter the cab, he hung on his heel, as usual, and gave the driver the address.

  “‘Fifteen Berkeley Square.’

  “Well, that was easy enough. Straight on along Pall Mall, up St James’s Street, in and out of Piccadilly and up Berkeley Street. But, instead of taking this direct and obvious way, the driver turned his cab round and began to drive East instead of West.

  “For a moment the peer didn’t notice what the driver had done: but when he saw Regent Street on his left and Waterloo Place on his right, he leapt to his feet and put his head out of the window.

  “‘Where are you going?’ he cried. ‘I said Berkeley Square.’

  “‘What if you did?’ said the driver. ‘I know my way.’

  “‘Damn it, man,’ cried the peer. ‘You’re driving East!”

  “The driver brought his cab to the kerb and pulled down his flag.

  “‘You can get out,’ he said. ‘If you think you can swear at me, you’re – well wrong.’

  “In a silence big with emotion, the peer got out. Then he slammed the door and looked round for another cab.

  “As he signalled to one to stop, he found his late driver by his side.

  “‘What about my fare?’

  “‘I’m not paying you any fare,’ said the peer.

  “‘I’ll see about that,’ said the driver. ‘What’s your name?’

  “The peer handed him his card. As he entered the second taxi –

  “‘I’ll summons you,’ shouted the other.

  “He was as good as his word. He applied for a summons at Marlborough Street. This was duly served at the Carlton Club. The peer instructed Wontner and Sons and they briefed Bodkin for the defence. The magistrate who heard the case was Denman, a very nice man.

  “Well, the result may be imagined.

  “The taxi-driver said his piece, and Bodkin rose to cross-examine. The driver was truculent. When asked why, when he was told to drive to Berkeley Square, he drove in the opposite direction, he replied, ‘That’s my business.’ When asked whether, in such circumstances, he was surprised that his fare should emphatically protest, he replied that if a man, just because he was a lord, thought he had a right to swear at everyone else, he was mistaken. The peer gave evidence. The driver, in cross-examination, asked him whether he thought it right to refuse to pay his fare. The peer replied that, when a fare, who was being driven the wrong way, was ordered out of a cab, he thought only a fool would pay the fare on the clock. It was proved that no streets were up and that the way from the Carlton Club to Berkeley Square was as I have said.

  “In the circumstances, it is not surprising that the summons was dismissed with costs. These, the peer did not demand. But Bodkin’s fee, I remember, was twenty guineas.”

  “What a monstrous show!” said Berry.

  “The taxi-driver,” said Jonah, “was before his time. If this affair had taken place forty years later, he would probably have won his case.”

  “I give,” said Daphne, “full marks to the peer for going through with it.”

  “I agree,” said I. “It was most unpleasant for him and very expensive. That little flurry cost him the best part of thirty pounds. But he felt that to submit to such abominable behaviour was all wrong.”

  “What,” said Berry, “were your impressions?”

  “Myself,” said I, “I think that the taxi-driver was a communist. I think he decided to offend a member of the Carlton Club. For that reason he went on that rank. For that reason he drove in the opposite direction to Berkeley Square. For that reason he applied for his summons. Indeed, I can see no other explanation. Denman, who was very gentle with everyone, dressed him down properly.”

  “He should,” said Berry, “have lost his licence.”

  “I daresay he did. The police were very particular in those days. And taxi-drivers were almost invariably very civil. Which reminds me of the case of a fellow in the Grenadier Guards. When war broke out in 1914, he was afraid that he might be killed and his widow left badly off. So he bought a couple of taxis and gave them to her. I was told that they brought her in twelve hundred pounds a year. Of course by no means all drivers had their own cabs: but they got a good percentage and people were generous with their tips. And if a driver was obliging, it paid him hand over fist.”

  “To return to what we were saying – I take it the biggest money was made at the Common Law Bar?”

  “Curiously enough,” said I, “it wasn’t. I don’t say that Rufus Isaacs and F E Smith, who were both Common Lawyers, didn’t head the list in their time; but, on the whole, the biggest fortunes were made at the Parliamentary Bar. This was a very close borough, and its citizens, being jealous, were very few. Their names were seldom heard and they argued before Committees of the House of Lords. Their work was devastatingly dull, which is, perhaps, why they were so well paid. They never appeared for individuals but only for ‘bodies’, so that their clients were not paying them out of their own pockets. Let me give you an instance. If some Town Council wanted to scrap its trams and use trolley buses instead, some other body of standing might oppose this idea and prefer to stick to the trams. Then counsel of the Parliamentary Bar were instructed and they had it out before a Committee of the House of Lords. For some reason or other, on one occasion, Harker was given a junior brief in one such case, and, as it went on for ages, more than once I devilled for him. I had nothing to do but listen, and I found it terribly hard to stay awake. I don’t think witnesses were ever called: all the evidence was by affidavit. I may be wrong there. I can’t remember the name of the leader of the Parliamentary Bar in my time, but he was briefed in this particular case and I heard him speak. I didn’t think he was particularly brilliant, but his tongue was that of a ready talker and it was obvious that he was persona grata in their lordships’ eyes. He was certainly very convincing and occasionally humorous. It was clear that he and the Chairman – I think, Lord Newton – got on very well. Well, it’s a great thing to be liked by the Bench before which you are appearing. I don’t suggest for one moment that any favouritism was shown, but if I could see that he was popular, so could solicitors. So far as I can remember, there were only two or three other ‘silks’ at the Parliamentary Bar and as time never seemed to be an object, there was plenty of work for all. And I always understood that the fees were very high.

  “At the Common Law bar, the really big money came from commercial cases – two companies, or very big firms, at variance, and money no object at all. Those were the cases in which the inimitable Rufus Isaacs, with his magnificent brain and memory and his astounding flair for figures, came into his own. Some of those cases used to go on for three weeks – and Isaacs would be in two or three at the same time. And that was the way to make ten thousand a month.”

  “Terrific,” said Jonah.

  “But, mark you, Rufus Isaacs earned his money. Think of passing from court to court, each time leaving behind you all the figures and dates and intricate circumstances of one case and immediately assimilating a precisely similar mass of particulars relating to another. Only a giant’s brain could do a thing like that.”

  “It makes my brain reel,” said Daphne.

  “At least,” said Jonah, “no machine could do that.”

  “Am I right in saying,” said Berry, “that counsel would sometimes undertake never to leave a case?”

  “Yes. The fee had to be substantially increased in the case of a busy man, for it might well mean that he had to refuse other briefs. And it would never happen if the case was to last for some time. I don’t suppose that Isaacs ever did it; but lesser men would. I
mean, if you wanted Rufus Isaacs, you had to take him on his own terms. And people thought themselves lucky to get him on those. And so they were. I’m proud to have seen him at work. He was a very great barrister.”

  “You spoke of cases that lasted for three weeks. How long did The Tichborne Case last?”

  “That was phenomenal. The civil case lasted more than a hundred days and the criminal case about a hundred and fifty. The plaintiff was in the box for twenty-two days and the Lord Chief Justice took nearly a month to sum up.”

  “Good God,” said Jonah.

  “Sorry,” said Jill. “What was The Tichborne Case?”

  “There you are,” said Berry. “The most famous case that has ever come to be tried, and the younger generation doesn’t even know its name.”

  I smiled.

  “My darling,” I said, “Berry does you an injustice. The Tichborne Case took place thirty years before you were born. Its story has been told very often and books have been written about it, so I’ll only summarize it here. But it was a most sensational case and the British public ate it from beginning to end. Coles Willing told me that people talked of nothing else. Sides were taken and heated arguments were conducted in Clubs, at dinner parties and in the public house. It was headline news for years – and when I say ‘years’, I mean it, for civil proceedings began in 1871 and the criminal proceedings, which followed straight on, finished in 1874.”

  “Refresh our memories,” said Berry.

  “Well, it was a most romantic and sensational affair. A young man, whose Christian name was Roger, who was the eldest son and heir of a baronet, Sir James Tichborne, was on the way from South America to Australia, when his ship foundered and was never seen again. He had been in the Army, but had retired. Had he succeeded his father, his income would have been some twenty thousand a year. The ship foundered in 1854 when he was twenty-five years old. His mother refused to accept the fact that he was dead. His father presently died and his second son succeeded to the title and the estates. This drove the poor mother frantic, for Roger was her favourite son, and in 1865, although eleven years had passed since his ship had foundered, she began to advertise for him. Her advertisements bore fruit. A firm of solicitors wrote saying that they were happy to inform her that they had found her son: that he had escaped with some members of the crew from the sinking ship, had reached Australia and had been living there ever since under the name of Castro. Poor Lady Tichborne was overjoyed, sent the money necessary for him to come home and went to Paris to meet him. There she fell upon his neck, but, when he reached England, the rest of the family refused to believe that he was Roger Tichborne indeed. Some of his brother officers said he was: some said he wasn’t. After all thirteen years had gone by, since his ship went down.

  “Well, he set up his claim to the baronetcy and the income. This was resisted by his ‘nephew’, for his ‘brother,’ the baronet, had died, and his son was reigning in his stead. After long Chancery proceedings, the case came to be tried by a Judge and jury.

  “As I have said, it lasted for more than one hundred days. In the middle of it came the long vacation, when of course, it was adjourned. While it was on, the defendant and his advisers kept seeking and finding fresh evidence to prove the plaintiff’s claim false; and at last they discovered the truth, which, of course, the plaintiff denied. But the jury believed it and, after listening to a speech by Coleridge, who led for the defence, which lasted for twenty-six days, they found in favour of the defendant.

  “As he left the court, the plaintiff was arrested on charges of perjury and forgery and cast into Newgate jail. Shortly afterwards he was tried before the Lord Chief Justice and two other Judges, when it was proved that he was, in fact, one Arthur Orton, a butcher, who had plied his trade in Wapping, had later emigrated to Australia and had there been groomed to impersonate the dead Roger Titchborne. After a trial, which began in April and ended in the following February, he was found guilty and sentenced to fourteen years’ hard labour. Ten years later he was released on ticket-of-leave and ten years after that he confessed his guilt.

  “And that was the end of a business which had been head-line news for nearly three years, the cost of which to the Tichborne family and the British public must have approached one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. It was probably the boldest and most determined attempt to steal away another man’s birthright that ever was made, and but for the tireless efforts made by Sir Henry Tichborne’s advisers it would undoubtedly have succeeded. It made the name of Henry Hawkins, the famous Judge, for he led for the Crown in the criminal proceedings, and it was the end of Dr Kenealy, who led for the defence, for he afterwards attacked the Judges with such violence that he was disbarred.”

  “Astounding,” said Jonah.

  “That,” I said, “is the word. That a Wapping butcher could have put up such a show is amazing. But he had been wonderfully coached. Sir Roger Tichborne, whom he pretended to be, had been, I think, at Eton and had had a classical education: the claimant, Arthur Orton, was accordingly cross-examined on what he had learned at school. And he got a lot of it right. The names of masters and boys, and things like that. Of course he made mistakes: but always then he blamed his memory. Coles Willing told me that he heard him asked to translate Laus Dei, when he at once replied, ‘The laws of God’. Well, that was forgivable, but it made an educated man think. Mercifully, his poor, deluded ‘mother’, who started the ball rolling by her advertisement, died before the criminal proceedings began: she was therefore spared the anguish of seeing her ‘son’ go down.”

  “Well, I’m much obliged,” said Berry. “Your summary has interested me no end – and told me quite a lot that I didn’t know. I suppose you couldn’t do the same with the loss of the Titanic?”

  I hesitated. Then –

  “How you jump about,” said Daphne. “Why should Boy be able to give you the low-down on the Titanic?”

  “You never know,” said her husband. He got up and filled my glass. “He has a knack of picking up bits and pieces, which never appear in print.”

  “As a matter of fact,” I said, “I do know one or two things about that dreadful occurrence. For I happened to meet one of the officers who had served under Captain Smith, who was in command of the Titanic, shortly after the disaster. He was not on the ill-fated ship. He had served regularly under Smith on the Olympic, but, just before the Titanic had completed her trials, he had had a difference with Smith and it had been amicably arranged that he should leave Smith’s command for two or three months. So he stayed with the Olympic, instead of going with Smith to the Titanic.

  “Not long before the Titanic’s first and last voyage, I saw Captain Smith in court, in the witness-box. So I was able to size him up.

  “He was a bluff sailor – rough, downright, with no party manners at all. He looked about fifty-five. His hair was grey, going white.”

  “How,” said Jonah, “did he happen to be there?”

  “You’ll remember when I remind you. Not very long before the loss of the Titanic, HMS Hawke, a cruiser, collided with the Olympic at Southampton or just outside. As a result, The White Star Line claimed damages from the Admiralty and the Admiralty counterclaimed. Smith gave evidence for his Company. The Admiralty won the case. They maintained that, such was the size of the Olympic, she sucked the Hawke into her side and that the Commander of the Hawke was powerless to avoid the collision. This theory, the jury accepted. Their finding was widely discussed and criticized: but never was a verdict so handsomely vindicated. A few months later, as the Titanic was leaving Southampton on her maiden voyage, she passed an American ship which was tied up to the quay: as she drew level with this, the American ship snapped her cables as if they were threads and began to move towards the Titanic as though drawn by invisible cords: a collision was only just averted.”

  “I remember now,” said Jonah. “A most remarkable thing. Sorry. Please go on.”

  “Well, we all know what happened. At a quarter to twelve on a Su
nday night in April 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg in mid-Atlantic and presently sank with a loss of nearly two thousand lives. That Sunday afternoon her Captain had been warned by wireless that if he held on his course he would encounter icebergs. The ship’s course was not altered.

  “When I met the officer to whom I have referred, I asked him to what he attributed the disaster. Without hesitation he replied, ‘To the speed the Titanic was going.’ I said, ‘When the iceberg was sighted, it was some way off. How was it that they couldn’t avoid it or pull the Titanic up?’ He smiled. ‘When the iceberg was seen it was almost certainly less than a hundred yards away. An iceberg is black at night, and as the sea was dead calm, there was no line of surf. And when a ship of sixty thousand tons is doing twenty-three knots or more you can stop her engines and put them into reverse, but you won’t stop that ship in less than three miles.’”

  “God bless my soul,” said Berry.

  “Three miles,” I repeated. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure he didn’t say four. But I don’t want to exaggerate. I believe the order was given to put the helm hard over, but it was, of course, too late.”

  “Smith went down with his ship?”

  “Yes.” I hesitated. “But here is a curious thing. On Sunday at luncheon, ten or eleven hours before she struck, the Titanic had a definite list to port. To this, passengers at his table called the purser’s attention. He replied, ‘Probably coal has been taken mostly from the starboard side.’ I make no comment, but that is what he said. When she struck, she was holed on the starboard side. She did not sink for two and a half hours. During this time she listed heavily to port. Finally, she went down by the head. These facts may mean nothing at all. But there they are.”

  “They seem strange to me,” said Jonah: “but, as a landsman, I have nothing to say.”