by R S Surtees
Cross-examined. — Many gentlemen canter their ‘osses round and round the Regent’s Park, but not many round the inner circle. Never thought there was any thing odd in Mr. Jorrocks doing so. When witness told Mr. Jorrocks the nursery-governess had complained of his winking at her, he said he did it to clear the circle of her, for she was so hugly she frightened his ‘oss. The nursery-maids are all fond of Mr. Jorrocks, — he generally carries barley-sugar in his pockets for the children. Does not know whether it is in the shape of kisses or not. Many old gentlemen wink at the maids — some pinch them in passing. Does not know that pinching is altogether right, but should not interfere without a complaint. Witness thinks it was a reddish-coloured ‘oss that Mr. Jorrocks said had the tic-douloureux. Grooms are not allowed to exercise ‘osses in clothing in the Regent’s Park. Thinks it probable an ‘oss would sweat sooner with a blanket about it than without one. Does not know the object of sweating an ‘oss. Mr. Jorrocks never talked to witness about dahlias, — has heard him inquire after the potato-tops, — asked whether they were black or not. Seemed always very anxious for winter — has heard him say, if he had his own way, he would strike summer out of the almanack. Once proposed to witness that they should publish an almanack between them, and omit summer altogether, — said, in a general way, summer was merely inserted as a sort of compliment, — three ‘ot days and a thunder-storm being the general amount of an English summer. Never considered Mr. Jorrocks mad — mad gentlemen generally walk in cloaks, — some ride, and have their keepers on ‘oss-back in livery after them, — those are of the richer class. Does not suppose every gentleman he sees with a groom insane, but considers it suspicious. Sets every man he sees in the Regent’s Park in a cloak, down for mad, and no mistake. Sees a good many mad gentlemen in the course of the year — they chiefly live in the Alpha Cottages on the west side of the Park. Considers Mr. Jorrocks quite the reverse of insane.
John Strong. — Is constable, and one of the churchwardens of the parish of St. James, Handley Cross. Remembers the 3rd of October, — . Michael Brown, one of the churchwardens, called upon him, and told him that Mr. Jorrocks of London was down, and employing carts to collect all the dead horses, and that they were leading them to Grant’s paddock, just at the back of the Methodist chapel. Went together to inspect the premises — found carts coming in from all quarters with dead horses, and three or four men skinning them. Mr. Jorrocks was not present. Witness returned to his house, and after a consultation with the other churchwardens, wrote Mr. J. the following note: —
“The churchwardens of the parish of St. James, Handley Cross, present their respectful compliments to Mr. Jorrocks, and having heard that you have bought all the dead horses in Handley Cross, desire to be informed what purpose you intend putting them to.
“Your humble Servant,
“To J. Jorrocks, Esq.”
“John Strong.
Sent the beadle in his gold-laced coat, cocked hat, and staff, with it. He found Mr. Jorrocks in the paddock, superintending the stacking of the carcasses, which were placed one upon another like a stack. Mr. Jorrocks having read the note, took a pencil out of his pocket-book, and wrote at the bottom: —
“Soup! soup!
“Yours, &c.,
“J. J.”
and re-directed the note to the churchwardens. Witness and the other churchwardens made a second visit of inspection, about three o’clock, and finding the stack was getting very high, wrote a second note, headed: —
“Victoria Rex.
“The churchwardens and overseer of the parish of St. James, Handley Cross, hereby require you to desist and abate the nuisance you are now creating in Grant’s paddock, by stacking sundry dead horses, or he will proceed against you according to the form of the statute in that case made and provided, and against the peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her crown and dignity.
(Signed) “John Strong,
“M. Brown,
“T. Hoggins,
“To Mr. J. Jorrocks.”
“Churchwardens.
Witness sent this note per beadle, in state, as before, who found the stack nearly finished, and a man and a boy dressing off the top with horses’ heads. Mr. J. took the note as before, and wrote at the bottom: —
“You be —
“Yours, &c.,
“J. J.”
saying, as he handed it back, “Peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, indeed! Wictoria must have a werry good nose if she can wind this at Windsor.”
The special constables were then called out, and after a desperate conflict, succeeded in capturing Mr. Jorrocks, James Pigg, and Benjamin.
Cross-examined. — There had been a sharp frost at Handley Cross for two or three days before Mr. Jorrocks’s arrival, — seemed as if we were going to have an early winter. The mortality among the horses was very sudden, they all died within a short time of each other. Had an idea that Mr. Jorrocks was buying the horses up to feed his hounds upon. Don’t understand about hounds. Does not know how many hounds he keeps, or whether they could eat a horse for breakfast, another for dinner, and another for supper. Will not swear that Mr. Jorrocks bought the whole fifty-three horses that died — knows that there were a great many by the size of the stack. It was in the usual form of a corn-stack, and the slope of the top was formed of horses’ heads put lengthways, so that the rain might run off down their noses. Was very cleverly made. Had a novel appearance. Many people came to see it. Flesh may keep a month or six weeks, but witness does not know that it will. Supposing the hounds to consume three horses a-day, and the flesh to keep for a month, does not know that Mr. Jorrocks’s act was otherwise than prudent.
Sebastian Mello, whose name had been called, and bellowed, and vociferated up-stairs and down, and along the passages after the examination of each witness, having announced his arrival by sending his card up-stairs by a powdered footman, vacated his brougham, and, proceeding up-stairs, tendered himself for examination on behalf of the promoters of the inquiry. Sebastian was got up with uncommon care, and the most scrupulous nicety. His yellow silken locks flowed over his coat-collar, exhibiting the boldness of his forehead and the regularity of his features. He was dressed in studied black, with a snow-white cravat, whose tie entwined among the four lace-frills of a curiously-wrought shirt-front. He wore lace ruffles at his wrists, and a massive diamond ring on his right-hand little finger, and a beautiful pearl one on his left, while the corner of a richly embroidered cambric handkerchief peeped from the breast-pocket of his coat.
Mutual salutations being exchanged between Mr. Moonface and Mr. Mello, the former began his examination with the following inquiry, —
“You are, I believe, Mr. Sebastian Mello, a physician in very extensive practice at Handley Cross Spa?”
“I am,” replied Mr. Mello, with a slight inclination of the head.
“And you have, I believe, resided there for a considerable length of time?” continued Mr. Moonface.
“I have,” answered Mr. Mello.
“In short, you are the principal resident, or head of the place, I believe?”
“I am,” said Mr. Mello.
“Now, then, sir, would you have the kindness to tell the jury what you know respecting the unfortunate gentleman, Mr. Jorrocks, whose case we are met here to inquire into?”
“Excuse me, sir, if before I answer your inquiry I take the liberty of correcting your description of the person referred to. If the individual you allude to is John Jorrocks, whom I see sitting there,” looking at Mr. J. with great disdain, “I should say, a person conducting himself as he has done is unworthy the flattering appellation with which you have honoured him.”
“True,” observed Mr. Moonface; “but, for the sake of brevity, perhaps you would condescend to waive that point, and inform us what you know about him.”
“Know about him!” replied Mr. Mello, with a toss of his flowing head and a curl of his lip; “I really know nothing about him, further than that he is a great nuisance. He came t
o Handley Cross the beginning of last winter, ever since when the place has been in a state of tumult, and the religious portion of the community sadly scandalised and terribly annoyed. For my own part, I have suffered all sorts of indignities at his hands. Besides his ravenous hounds, he keeps a pugnacious peacock that kills all the poultry in the place.
“He took it into his head to stroll every day with his flock of dogs and servants into the open immediately below the front of my house, where he would stay for hours, surrounded by all the riff-raff and irreligious people of the place. Because I stated that my piety was outraged, he got a wild beast-show established there, and paid the band five shillings for every hour they played after nine o’clock at night. The anonymous letters I received were extraordinarily numerous, and full of the most insulting expressions; and when I refused to take them in, baskets and boxes began pouring in by the railway and coaches, containing dead-cats, donkey-haunches, broken dishes, and other rubbish. I never saw John Jorrocks out hunting, but I understand his general conduct is of the most extraordinary and extravagant description, and his proceedings subversive of morality and true religion — only to be palliated on the score of downright insanity. I consider him a mischievous maniac.”
“You’re a warmint!” growled Mr. Jorrocks, stuffing a ham sandwich into his mouth.
“Go it, Ned!” continued he in the same strain, as Mr. Moonface, having extracted as much as he wanted out of the doctor, sat down, in order to let his “learned friend” endeavour to counteract what he had said, by cross-examination.
“And so you are a physician in a great way of practice, are you?” drawled Mr. Coltman, through his nose, in a careless, colloquial sort of style, as if he meant to have a good deal of conversation with Mello before he was done.
“I am,” replied Sebastian Mello, with a slight tinge of red on his countenance.
“You are sure of that?” asked Mr. Coltman, carelessly turning over the pages of his brief, as if he were thinking of something else.
“I am,” replied Mr. Mello.
“You are!” rejoined Mr. Coltman, looking him full in the face. “Now, sir,” said he, very slowly, “do you mean to assert that? Do you mean to say you have ever taken a degree?”
“I mean to assert, sir, that I am a physician in full practice.”
“Will you, on your oath, sir, say that you are a regularly qualified and admitted physician? On your oath, sir, will you say it?”
Mr. Sebastian Mello was silent.
“Will you, sir, swear?” continued the inexorable Mr. Coltman, “that you have any diploma, save what your own assurance and the credulity of your patients has conferred upon you?”
Mr. Mello was silent.
Mr. Coltman, throwing out his hands, made a pantomimic appeal to the jury with his eyes, and then, with a waive of his head, motioned Mr. Mello to retire.
“Werry good,” growled Mr. Jorrocks, thrusting the last ham sandwich into his mouth.
This was the case of the promoters; and a waiter, with a napkin twisted round his thumb, having whispered something in the ear of the chief commissioner, the learned gentleman looked at his watch, and immediately adjourned the court.
CHAPTER LXVII. THE COMMISSION RESUMED.
THE COURT RESUMED its sittings next morning at nine o’clock precisely, and as soon as the doors were open such a rush of people forced their way in, that every seat and place was occupied, and some time elapsed ere room was obtained for the counsel and professional gentlemen engaged in the inquiry. Mr. Jorrocks was accommodated with a seat in the reporters’ place, immediately behind his counsel. The jury having all answered to their names, and silence being at length obtained, Serjeant Horsefield rose to address the jury. He spoke in so low a tone of voice at the commencement, that it was with difficulty the reporters could catch what he said: but, with his usual urbanity, he obligingly supplied the deficiency by revising their reports.
“Gentlemen of the jury,” said he, “if my learned friend, Mr. Martin Moonface, with his splendid talents and vast acquirements, rose under circumstances of difficulty and embarrassment, how much greater must be my perplexity, in introducing myself to your notice, to attempt to grapple with and rebut the grave and voluminous charges with which his speech has loaded the inquiry, standing as I do without the manifold advantages of which my learned friend is so pre-eminently possessed? The learned gentleman well observed, that nothing but that high sustaining power — a moral consciousness of right — could induce any member of our profession to undertake the conduct of a case, and I claim for myself the same degree of credit for a similar assertion that my learned friend bespoke for himself. I ask — I implore you, gentlemen of the jury — I beseech you, as enlightened — as able — as conscientious citizens, to regard my assertions and my protestations of sincerity in the same light — and give them the same weight that you have given to the assertions and asseverations of my learned friend.” Here the learned gentleman made a long pause.
At length he resumed. “In opening this great and important case — great, I may call it, for it involves the liberty of many of the aristocracy of this country, and important it most certainly is, as regards the position of my most respectable client — my learned friend, Mr. Martin Moonface, introduced Mr. Jorrocks with an exordium upon the singularity of his name. I will not imitate the example of my learned friend, or speculate on the difference a change of name might have produced, but I will endeavour closely and sedulously to apply myself, and the best energies of which I am possessed, to the real merits and peculiarities of the case. As mercantile men, you are doubtless, many of you, acquainted with the exalted position occupied by my client in the commercial world; and if I can show — as show I believe I undoubtedly can — that the amusement which he now follows is not incompatible with the honest, industrious habits and occupations of a British merchant, I feel confident I shall receive a verdict at your hands. My client, as you may see,” pointing to Mr. Jorrocks in the reporters’ place, “is one, whose hey-day of youth has been succeeded by the autumn of maturer years; and shall I surmise for one moment in the presence of a jury, drawn from the very heart of this, the first city of the world — that a man entering trade binds himself irrevocably to the counter — with no bright prospect of affluence and ease to gild the evening of his days, flitting in the vision of his mental horizon? Is a ‘youth of labour’ no longer to be crowned ‘with an age of ease?’ Are the toils, the cares, the speculations, the enterprises of a British merchant to end but with his death? Is trade, in short, to be regarded as but another name for perpetual slavery? That, gentlemen, is the real question in its pure, unadulterated form, divested of the technicalities — freed from the mystifications and jargon — with which my learned friend’s logic and eloquence have attempted to envelope it. How stands the matter?
“Five-and-thirty years ago, my client, John Jorrocks, entered the firm of Grubbins, Muggins, Potts, Crow, and Tims, wholesale grocers in St. Botolph’s Lane. Mr. Jorrocks was then, gentlemen, just out of his apprenticeship, which he had served with such credit to himself and satisfaction to the firm, that they took him into partnership the moment they were able, and the firm then became Grubbins, Muggins, Potts, Crow, Tims, and Jorrocks. Gentlemen, Grubbins and Muggins shortly after paid the debt of nature; but so great was the attention and ability of my client, that, instead of adding the number these deplorable events deprived the firm of, by fresh partners, Crow and Jorrocks divided the duties of one partner between them, and took in Mr. Simpkins, who had long filled the office of western traveller, and the partnership deed was then drawn out in the names of Potts, Crow, Tims, Jorrocks, and Simpkins. I need not follow my respectable client through the long labyrinth of years that followed, or through the weary mazes of commercial transactions and speculations which throve under his auspices; — suffice it to say, that revolving years found Mr. Jorrocks constant and sedulous at his warehouse, until the man who entered as the junior partner of the house stood at the head of a firm so
long and so extensive, that it became necessary to condense its name under the title of Jorrocks &Co. I will give my learned friend the benefit of the admission, that for many years my client was in the habit of devoting his Saturdays to what Mr. Moonface calls hunt-festivals, and I will also give him the benefit of the admission that the county of Surrey was the arena of his operations. So far back as during the management of Mr. Maberly, my client’s name appears as a subscriber to the Surrey hunt, and the same punctuality of payment characterises this matter that characterises all his other transactions. My learned friend commenced with a broad general rule, that any man following a pursuit at variance with trade must necessarily follow it to the detriment of the former, forgetting all the while, that though in trade, Mr. Jorrocks is so far independent of it as to be able to recreate himself, how and when he pleases, just as though he never had anything to do with it. But, gentlemen of the jury, though you, and I, and Mr. Martin Moonface, may not be aware of it, I am instructed to state that hunting is not only compatible with trade, but may even be followed with advantageous results.”
“So it may!” exclaimed Mr. Jorrocks; “so it may! werry good! say it’s the sport of kings; the image of war, without—” “Order, order, order!” cried all three commissioners at once. “Really, Mr. Jorrocks,” observed the chief, “we shall have to order you out of court if you persist in interrupting counsel.” “Now do, Mr. Jorrocks,” interposed the learned Sergeant, very mildly, “let me argue your case for you, or else take it in hand entirely yourself; for between us we shall make nothing of it.”
“True,” replied Mr. Jorrocks, “true; too many cooks always spoil the broth; but just say now that ‘unting is the sport of kings, the image of war without its guilt, and only five-and-twenty per cent of its danger.”
“But though I make this statement broadly and unequivocally,” continued the learned Serjeant, without noticing Mr. Jorrocks’s suggestion, “I take a still higher ground, and say that my client’s means entitle him to follow what pursuit he pleases, regardless of all pecuniary considerations. He is a wealthy man; and unless the promoters of this inquiry can show that he is spending such a sum upon the maintenance of his dogs as involves a probability of injury — injury of such an extent, mind you, as to amount almost to utter ruin — unless they can do this, I say, the success of their case is absolutely hopeless. This, gentlemen, I defy the promoters of this inquiry to do. I hold in my hand a number of an able work, by Mr. Blaine, who says, ‘that the practice of field-sporting is both convenient and useful we presume may be made evident, and it is only when these rural amusements are followed so unceasingly as to rob us of that time, wealth, and energy, which were given us for other purposes, that the pursuit of them can be censured.’ Censured, gentlemen, you observe, is the term; so that even if Mr. Jorrocks had devoted both day and night, and the whole of his income and energy, to the amusement of hunting, censure, and not a commission of lunacy to deprive him of the management of his affairs, would be all that he merited.