NIMBLE WIT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 593, 26 July 1933, Page 2

NIMBLE WIT

MR. TIM HEALY INSTANCES OF REPARTEE IN LAW PQURT CA'SPS. AMUSING STOiRIES. Many stories are told of the impish humour of Mr. "Tim" Healy, the late Governor-General of the Irish Free State. In "Heydays," Mr. C. P. Hawkes, soldier barrister, author, and artist, relates that Mr. Healy once ga.ve a dinner at Gray's Inn to four friends from the Irish Bar. Afterwards he took them down to the House of Commons, deposited them in the Strangers' Gallery, and went to his accustomed seat. There was a thin House, says Mr. Hawkes, for the debate, on some bill dealing with the importation of pigs, was deadly dull. After a time "Tim" went up to see his friends and found them bored, so he descended again, watched his opportunity, got up and turned the subject round to the wr'ongs of the Irish pig, developing his argument so that it became a violent personal attack on Mr. Gladstone. The House began to fill, and bewildered Government Whips sent word at once for the Prime Minister, who wa.s dining out. Tim was at his impish best; he stung the Minister s into interruptionS, there were icheers )E.nd r(epartees from the Irish party behind him, and Gladstone at last hurried in in evening dress. At once Tim's accusing finger shot out at him, and one of the wildest Donnybrooks of a stormy session was set well1 going — and all for the delectation of four young limbs of Law from Dublin who were bored after a good dinner at Gray's Inn. Mr. Healy had many famous duels wtih Lord Carson. In a certain suit, Mr. Hawkes tells us, he began his speech for the defenda,nts thus: — "Jintlemen," he said, "my friend, Sir Edward Carson, described to you just now, when he realised the position of the defendant under this will, the cruelty and injustice of ut drew tears to his eyes! Let me tell you, jintlemen, that if that really happened, it was the greatest mir-r-racle since Moses struck the rock!" Lord Carson himself had a quick wit on occasions. "My friend, Sir Edward," said the counsel against him in a probate case, "has told the jury that he .advised his client to continue this action in the cause of peaee. In fact, though the quotation may- savour of impiety'!" He has brought not peace ■but a sword. "Aye, the sword of Justice!' countered Carson, quick as thought. The late Lord Birkenhead got the ibetter of him on one occasion. On the question of the •admissibility in evidence of a letter to which "F.E." objected when they were on opposite sides, Carson lent across and asked him in a more than audible aside, Are^ you tryin' to teach me my business, Freddie ? " "Unsucessfully, N;ed," came in a flash F.E.'s equivocal retort. John Mui'phy, a barrister of Gargantuan build, says Mr. Hawkes, made capital out of his size even when "bowing himself in' as a K.C., for when welcomed by the judge in the customary formula, "Mr. Murphy, do you move?" h'e replied from within the restricted area of the "fr.ont pew," "with trouble, M'Lud!" and his Hibernicism though sometimes forced', occasionally asserted itself unconsciously; as when he opened a cross-examind-tion by saying to the witness, "Now, Mrs. O'Donovan, I think that, like myself, you're an Irishwoman?" An eloquent "Silk," Willoughby Jardine, a former Recorder of Leeds, once! concluded his speech in defsnce to a charge of arson as follows: — "Gentlemen, I beg, nay demand, that you should not send this roundfaced boy to gaol, whose only crime has been to lean up against a lighted cigarette with a haystack 'in his mouth!" Victor Coutts-Trotter, once Chief Justice of Madras, had a disconcerting experience in York caused by the blunder of his instructing-solicitor s clerk. In an attempted murder case he told his solieitor to secure the services of an expei't witness of any local toxicologist." There was no time to take the witnesses' proof, and in the afternoon a shaibby old gentleman appeared in the box and was asked by Trott'er: "Yo'u are, I believe, a toxicologist?" "Er-" answered the witness, obviously perplexed. "You are," repeated the counsel, "an expert in poisons, I believe?" "Poisons?" replied the old gentleman, shaking his tousled head. ' Aa know" nowt about poisons — Aa'm nobbut a bird-stuffer!" Lord Gorrell, says Mr. Hawkes, was a "silent judge,' who frowned on laughter in court. But he had his moments. When Reginald Le Bas, whose normal voice in court was calculated to be audible from the Strand to "the windy plains of Troy," raised its tone still hig'her in the heat of argument, I heard the President remark with caustic dryness, "Speak up, please Mr. Le Bas." And when a vacancy occurred in the junior judgeship of the JDivision and the distinguished leader to whom it was offered declined it becaus,e he disapproved of divorce on ecclesiastical 'grounds, Lord Gorrell is said to have complained that "the next man they ask will probably be a Unitarian, who'll object to sit in Admiralty with the Trinity Masters!" In a case, Coffin v. Coffin, we ar,e told, the petitioner was a bottle-wash-er by calling, and his counsel, who had a nervous trick of transposing words, opened by telling the court that his l client's name was Bottle, and that he J was a coffin-washer. "A f estive name, ! Mr. G ," was the Judge's comment as he wrote it down, "but a very far from festive occupation." It was at York, so the story tgoes, that a judge's clerk, when swearing a jury, one member of which was a Jew, with time-saving ingenuity caried the usual conclusion of his charge by saying: "As to 11 of you, ,so help you God, and as to the twelfth, dehovah!" An elderly p'orter at a sttiali country station, as he looked after a judge's wigcase knd' golf^b'ag, made' this memorable remark to the marshal. "I've put the tin 'oldall in the van, along with ( is Lordships 'ock'ey-knocker s ! " "" But Mr. Hawke's anecdotes are by no imeans exclusively legal in flavour. S1 sc

A fainous coaching 'maii 'of the past was' ColoneV Tdni ' Thofh'eycrof t.' ' ' ! He had a fine but very whip-shy hunter, which he drove as off-leader; .and since to touch him with the lash meant trouble, the old Colonel would keep. him up -fo the col|ar by blowing a pea . tTiroiigh a peashooter af his ears. 'An eccehtric- o^d "sportsman, he always wore the regimental buttons of the. Staffordshire Yeomanry on his dresscoat, even when dining at the Cafe Royal, and would r,ebuke any one whcrpassed by his 'table, and peered too curiously at them, by remarkirug "If ye don't like my buttons, look at someond else's." IJdr. Hawkes quotes the story of a visit' paid by George Augustus S;ala, the famous journalist, to Wi'lliam j.yiorris' shop to order a carpet. He was shown some exquisite specimens by thepoet-designer himself . "Now that,';' said 'Morris en'tiTusiastically displaying | a superb example of medieval pattern, [ "is a work of Art!" "But I don't want 1 a work of Art," objected Sala — "I | 'want a carpet." At once the MasterJ of Kelmscott bur^t into a fury. "Then F what d'you come here for?' he shout-f ed. "Get out of my shop!" and he j hustled Sala into the street, splutteripg, "Go to 's, go to 's, and be' d'amned!" Charles Brookfield, the actor, had a ibiting tongue. To the elder George Grossmith, who was chaffing some despondent actors because h'e could' make a handsome profit, as he »aid, "by .simply travelling round th'e country with a suit of dress-clothes and a piano," he growled. "Yes, George, but we don't all look so damned funny in a dress-suit as you do!" Wben he'first thought of going on the stage a clerical relative wrote. imploring him t'o reconsider his decision. "I beg of you," the letter concluded, "not to go on the stage — in the name of God!" "Have no fear," wrote Brookfield in impenitent repiy, "I shall act under my own." Henry Duke of Northumberland use to co'mmand the niilitia'b'attalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers to which Mr. Hawkes belong.ed, and even after his retirement always presided at the regimental dinners in London. On one occasion iri the ante-room of the restaurant he extended his hand to a smart soldierly young man wh'o advanced towards him from the door. "Good evening," said the Duke. '^1 don't think* I know your face; I expect you joined after my time?" "Your Grace," came in embarrassed and unmistakably T.eutonic accents ; from the young head-waitex*, "I vish to announce that ze dinner vos serv- ( ed!" There were some wags among the Northumbrian soldiers: — "Why they give stripes tae chaps like thou, I canna think!" I remember hea.ring a disappointed postulant for a lance-stripe remark sourly to a successful one. "Not for bein' lazy, at any rate!" was the pointed retort. "Aa knaw that," replied the jealous one, '",f they gave '.em for that, thou'd look like a zebra!" And again: "What's • yon mean?" asked a reeruit of an old hand, pcinting to a door in barracks I bearing the mystic letters N.C.O. "Non-combatants only!" growled the veteran, and passed on. Mr. Hawkes calls his book "a salad of memories and impressions." An I excellently varied salad it is too, with ' a dressing of amusing stories to make it thoroughly palatable.