by Roy Lewis
I sat almost gasping, waiting for the words that I hardly dared were now to come.
He sighed, almost theatrically. ‘I consider myself a man of perception where character is concerned. Adah Menken was the light of my life, and that light still burns in my Irish soul. I cannot believe that the man who went to Paris, the man who wrote this pamphlet,’ here he touched his breast, ‘is the kind of man we’ve been looking to exact revenge upon.’
He paused, affected, but then some of the previous glint returned to his eyes. ‘And even if that man is someone we’ve been looking for, it is my considered opinion that the time for revenge is over. Forgiveness should take its place. Forgiveness, and absolution.’
Suddenly, he lurched to his feet. I guessed he was overcome by the emotion of the moment. He held out his gnarled hand. I rose, took it, carefully. His grip was firm and determined.
‘Next week I return to Ireland. I’m glad your sight has returned, Mr James, and the affliction has gone. You’ll be hearing no more from us . . . even though Mr James Sadleir must still cast a glance over his swindling shoulder. And should you return to England – or even into our own jurisdiction in Ireland – you’ll not be bothered by us.’
He stared at me for several seconds, still gripping my hand fervently and then, releasing me, he turned abruptly, and left the office. I could hear his heavy feet clumping down the stairs. I sat down, shaken but mightily relieved. I could hardly believe it, but the danger and the threat, after almost a decade, had been finally lifted. The Cork Revengers were no longer seeking to question me regarding my relationship with the swindling banker John Sadleir.
I never saw O’Gonagle again: he was as good as his word. Naturally, I never disabused him or any of his followers – or anyone else – of his mistaken belief. But I privately blessed the half-blind pugilistic writer, my namesake, who had kept the flame of Mazeppa burning in his little biographical pamphlet. Last time I heard, Ned James had retired, completely blind, from his editorial work with the New York Clipper, and spent his time writing accounts of famous pugilists like Heenan, and Morrissey and Hyer.
So there you are. A cloud had lifted. A year or so later, chance put me in the way of a lucrative brief. I received quite a windfall from that representation, I can tell you. What? No, no, the details won’t interest you, but enough to say that when the money came in, with the threat of the Revengers lifted, Eliza and I packed up swiftly to make the unhindered crossing back to London.
I was finished with America. And now I was clear of hindrance or threat from mad Irishmen I was determined to storm the portals of the English legal establishment all over again.
4
Of course, I failed.
The hoped-for success eluded me, as you will already realize, as you cast your eyes about this grim little tenement that houses your mother, me and the single, simple little servant girl, Sarah Lewis.
I had high hopes when I reached London. I returned to a certain acclamation, to be sure. My brother Henry assured me I still had friends in England. Much had changed in London of course, since Eliza and I had separately left for America. The Metropolitan Underground railway had been constructed, the Albert Memorial unveiled, the Albert Hall founded and a new bridge erected at Blackfriars.
Many of the old faces had gone: I remember going to see the gun-carriage procession for the funeral of the Duke of Wellington in 1852, but I didn’t manage to turn out for the funeral of the pugilist Tom Sayers: he died when I was in America. I would have liked to see that turnout: they say 100,000 members of the Fancy had lined the roadside on the route from Camden Town to Highgate. The hearse was drawn by four horses and followed by Tom’s phaeton with his dog sitting in the driving seat. The mongrel was followed by cabs, farm wagons, costers’ carts, a brewer’s dray and a donkey cart. I’d like to have seen that! But apart from Tom Sayers others had gone: Lord Palmerston and Tom Duncombe were dead, as was Dr Thomas Wakley; my Marylebone stablemate Lord Llanover had shot himself; several of the judges I had faced, like Cresswell Cresswell and Pollock, had passed on and so too had Joseph Tallents, the solicitor who had given evidence against me at the Bencher’s Inquiry. Dickens and Thackeray were no longer with us, of course. Even Simon Bernard, whose cause had helped me to a seat in the Commons, had breathed his last: he was made a fool of by a woman, lost his reason and died in an asylum. As for my old friend Alexander Cockburn, he was still active, now Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench. We did not meet. We now moved in different circles. My enemy Inspector Redfern had retired to grow roses in Kent. As for Ben Gully . . . well, I made enquiries, but it seems he had simply disappeared. I learned by discreet inquiry that he hadn’t been seen in his old haunts since shortly after the killing of Patrick O’Neill. I wondered whether the Cork Revengers had found him but I doubted it: Ben was a resourceful man with many friends – and many enemies, to be sure – and I was convinced he would have found a new haven for himself. I never found out, of course, but I didn’t expect to.
One thing had not changed much: the entertainments were much the same. Leicester Square was still the hub of the nightlife, whores still prowled around the Haymarket, though Cremorne Gardens had been closed. Highbury Barn, Kate Hamilton’s Night House, the Alhambra and Mott’s were all still in business. As was the brothel reserved for parliamentarians in Lupus Street. That old hypocrite, Gladstone, night-street wanderer and self-abusing collector of whores, gathered a deal of criticism when he later closed down that establishment in Lupus Street. It was such a convenient berth for parliamentarians after a late-night sitting: indeed I had introduced young Lord Worsley to it, years ago. . . . Not that the establishment was available to me now, of course; not that I went back to my old ways: I was now a respectable – if impoverished – married man! But I was aware that the brothels at the Prussian Eagle and the White Swan in the Ratcliffe Highway were still booming as were the Stepney opium houses; the homosexual brothel in Oxford Street remained popular with its particular clients and Madame Rachel’s Arabian Baths in Bond Street were still offering beauty treatments as a cover for discreet liaisons and blackmail. The police reckoned there were still four hundred whores working between Piccadilly Circus and Waterloo Place, parading from 4 p.m. till 3 a.m. And the dance floors, galleries and curtained alcoves of the Argyll Rooms still provided a thriving marketplace for amateur dollymops. Soldiers’ whores continued to frequent Wapping and Whitechapel, and Knightsbridge and Birdcage Walk were still thronged with ladies of pleasure. As for Swinburne, he was still getting his personal pleasure from erotic flagellation at 7 Circus Road while others of his ilk were known to get their stimulation at Mrs Potter’s in Chelsea and Soho.
Yes, the shops, cafés, Turkish cigar divans, assembly rooms and concert halls were still much the same as when I had left England ten years earlier, but in my wanderings around the West End – merely curiosity-driven, I may add – I came across only two familiar faces: Lascar Lily and Swindling Sal. Lily had specialized in erotically imaginative hair-plucking in the intimate regions, but advised me she had now become an establishment madame. Sal was a tall, muscular whore, stoutly built with a fist like a hammer, who was well known for cracking the occasional rib during sexual byplay. She had always been popular with the pugilistic fraternity. She recognized me in the street, offered me the welcome of her open arms, but I backed off, concerned for the welfare of my now well-fleshed ribcage.
I soon got up to date with the current legal appointments. It was with some chagrin I learned how lesser men had taken the posts I had coveted and almost won: that idiot Gillory Pigott was now a Baron of the Exchequer; my old adversary Bovill was now Chief Justice of the Common P1eas. The incompetent Roundell Palmer had climbed the heights and was now on the Woolsack as Lord Chancellor Selborne. I had bested them all in my day, in forensic debate; and there they were now, high and mighty while I was struggling to make a successful return to practice.
I could have been one of those five ex-Lord Chancellors receiving £5,000 a year pens
ions. As I complained to Eliza, if only my luck had held, if only Lord Yarborough had died earlier in 1861, if only Fryer could have been persuaded to hold off, if only the malice and jealousy of my rivals at the Bar had been less virulent, I could have been with Thesiger and Wood and Bethell and the others, and perhaps still a force in Parliament.
But, I also told Eliza I was convinced I could do it yet. I started by writing a book: it was published in 1872 as The Political Institutions of England and America. There’s a copy of it over there, on that shelf. . . . And I announced my arrival back on the London scene with a public lecture at St George’s Hall in Langham Place.
A good crowd turned out to welcome me that night; there was a huge burst of applause when I appeared, and my speech was punctuated by cheers as I spoke warmly of the relationship between England and America. It was just like the old days! I still had my adherents in Marylebone, and I made some criticisms of the corrupt American legal and political system, but I also scattered my talk with amusing anecdotes, as usual. And as I did in my speech in Dr Bernard’s case, I ended on a rabble-rousing, jingoistic note by castigating the current movement for the introduction of republican institutions. I sat down, flushed and hoarse, among wild cheering, and I knew I was back and in contention!
But somehow, that was really the high point. Thereafter my support seemed just to ebb away. I managed to place a few short stories in Temple Bar Magazine, including Reminiscences of the American Bar, and Eliza and I, we kept our heads above water for the time being with my savings from my last success in America. But I was now sixty, disbarred, and still unable to follow the only profession in which I could make a good living. I needed to make my appeal to the judges for reinstatement and so I turned to George Lewis of Ely Place to prepare my case. Since the days when he had brought me briefs, he had gone up in the world: a friend of royalty now and recognized as the leading solicitor in London, slippery rogue though he was. Still, what attorney was not? I thought using him would be to my benefit, but in the event I still decided to speak in my own cause on the day: there was no barrister in whom I had greater confidence! Moreover, I still had many enemies among the Inns of Court and I did not know whom I could trust to speak on my behalf. So, I made my application. Then I waited.
As the weary days passed by, there were echoes of my past all around me: Lord Huntingtower, whose bankruptcy had helped launch me on the legal scene, was dying, and W.J. Ingram, Herbert’s son, was standing for the Boston seat. I didn’t pay too much attention to such events for I eagerly awaited the hearing of my appeal, scheduled for February 20th. It was finally held at the hall of Serjeants Inn, Chancery Lane.
A large, curious crowd had gathered, but most were denied entry: the judges told me they had decided a private hearing would be more satisfactory in view of the disclosures that would necessarily have to be made concerning the financial and other affairs of the former Lord Worsley, now Earl of Yarborough. The public was, therefore, barred, with the exception of a shorthand writer for the judges, and my faithful brother Henry. I suspected at that point that the dice would be loaded against me!
When I stood there in the hall the faces looking down at me from the Bench were familiar enough: I’d known them as juniors, as QCs, and socially, as well as in the House of Commons. But their features were expressionless: I could have been a stranger. President of the Court was the Lord Chief Baron, Fitzroy Kelly, whom I’d routed in The Queen v Bernard; Bovill was there too with Baron Martin, who had presided at the Running Rein case and Russell Gurney who had spoken against me in 1861 at the Benchers’ Inquiry. These were men I’d known well on circuit as QCs. Justice Blackburn was present: I never thought much of him, a jumped-up nonentity whom I was surprised to see had risen to the Bench; and otherwise there were only Justices Quain and Grove, apart from Justice Keating, the man whose promotion had left the post of Solicitor General open to me in 1861, when my luck had finally run out.
And there was not one among them I could count on as a friend, or even one willing to give me a sympathetic hearing.
And that was what happened. They listened to my side of the case but their eyes were hard. The first step I took was to request that Justice Bovill stand down on the grounds that he had been Ingram’s counsel in Scully v Ingram. They agreed, and a grumpy Bovill stumped out of the hall. It was my only success. I began my speech in that long, almost empty, echoing hall. It lasted throughout the day.
It was useless, of course. My main argument was that no specific charges had ever been levelled against me as a result of that Benchers’ Inquiry in 1861, and I could see that when I began to put my side regarding the financial transactions, private financial transactions which should have been of no concern to the Inner Temple Benchers, their eyes did not meet mine.
I remember stating, ‘I am not seeking to avoid responsibility, but I did pay all interest and premiums due on the loans, and on the last advance of £13,589 made by the Eagle Office there were no previous liabilities. . . .’
And all would have been well, I insisted. Even up to the time of the Benchers’ Inquiry all could have been salvaged if only I had been left alone. The Benchers had condemned me for not reducing Lord Worsley’s involvement out of the Eagle loan, but I insisted that this was never the agreement I had made with Lord Worsley. The Benchers had interfered without jurisdiction.
I dealt with Scully v Ingram, and the loan I’d received from Herbert Ingram as a fellow Reform Club member. But I soon realized all this was to no avail. I could not tell them the real reason for my leaving England while the Inquiry was still sitting, and I knew they still felt that desertion had been a sign of my guilt.
I didn’t even bother turning up for the second day of the hearing. George Lewis spoke on my behalf. I knew the outcome was preordained.
I was there again on Saturday morning, for the verdict. But it was all a waste of time and effort, and my hopes were quickly dashed.
Things might have been different if I’d led a quiet life, I admit. But the judges could look back over the years and recall the events of Horsham; Fitzroy Kelly could remember the facts that came out in Newmarch v James; there had been the rabble-rousing defences of Dr Simon Bernard and the black slave Anderson and the indiscretions of the Café Chantant affair. They could recall the curious Dickson business, and my later espousal of the American cause in the controversial arrest of the Confederates Mason and Slidell in the seizure of the Trent on the high seas and then there were all the damaging rumours thereafter that had crossed the Atlantic, published by my enemies at the Manchester Guardian: the Hayward business, my work for the New York Clipper, and my relationships with pugilists and sensational actresses and the low life of New York. They were determined to avoid scandal, wanted to maintain a high moral ground . . . in spite of the facts.
In their eyes, I was a man who seemed to attract scandal: and they felt the Bar should not again be forced to accept an individual with such a doubtful, tarnished reputation.
Their statement, when it came, was hardly surprising.
They refused to readmit me to practise at the English Bar.
I don’t deny it was a crushing blow, for me and for Eliza, who never lost her faith in me. I’d felt confident that since my creditors had allowed me to return I could have won back my right to practise, but the hope was now dashed. What was left for me now?
I sent short stories to the Temple Bar Magazine: one successful one was entitled Next-Door Neighbours, an account of a confidence trick with a twist in the tail; and then I looked around for other possibilities. In September 1873 the seat at Marylebone fell vacant and I immediately tried to put the clock back by offering myself as a candidate for my old seat. But I had no money to pay bribes and other election expenses and the electorate displayed a humiliating indifference to my oratory. Simon Bernard was just a memory and Reform no longer a burning issue. The Marylebone Mercury, once my champion, described me as an ageing roué who lacked neither the money to buy Marylebone nor the fame to persua
de it. I realized that a renewal of my political life was just a pipe dream. Running Rein, Horsham days and Marylebone triumphs were just a distant memory.
So finally, I took the bitter step of approaching an old enemy: the attorney Mr Parkes, who along with Mr Tallents had persuaded Lord Yarborough to press the issues which led to my resignations from my clubs, Recordership and seat in the House of Commons. Mr Parkes heard me out, and took great pleasure in offering me a final humiliation – a seat in his legal office, with the intention that I should become a solicitor at his office in 46, Moorgate Street.
Should I have been surprised at the resultant uproar? Perhaps not. The Law Society demanded to know why I could be admitted without first passing the required examinations. Me, Edwin James, the QC who had terrorized witnesses and counsel in some of the greatest cases of the day! I needed to take examinations?
It was an humiliation too far.
I returned home to Eliza, then cocked a snook at both Law Society and Bar and placed an advertisement in the London press.
‘Mr E. James may be counselled preparatory to the commencement of lega1 proceedings upon questions of American and English law by parties in financial difficulties and in all matters of a confidential character. 9 New Burlington Street, W.’