Mr. Pickwick, unfortunate in his Counsel, his Solicitor, his Jury—one of prejudiced tradesmen—was also to be unlucky in the Judge who tried his case. No doubt Perker had comforted him: “no matter how it goes, however unfair Buzfuz may be, we have a judge to hold the scales fair and keep the jury straight. The Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the Right Hon. Sir Nicholas Conyngham Tindal is a man of immense reputation at the Bar. We are most fortunate in having him.” Judge then of the disappointment when on coming to court it was found that Sir Stephen Gaselee was to take the case “owing to the absence of the Chief Justice, occasioned by indisposition.” (I protest that at times one does not know whether we are following out a course of real events, or tracing the incidents of a fiction, so wonderfully does Boz make his fiction blend with reality.) This was a serious blow. Tindal was an admirable judge. Did not his chroniclers write of him: “His sagacity, impartiality and plain sense, his industry and clear sightedness made him an admiration of non-professional spectators: while among lawyers he was very highly esteemed for his invariable kindness to all who appeared before him. He retained to the last their respect and affection.” With such a man presiding Sergeant Buzfuz’s eccentric violence and abuse of the defendant would have been restrained (“having the outward appearance of a man and not of a monster.”) Mr. Skimpin’s gross insinuations, to wit, that Winkle was “telegraphing” to his friend, would have been summarily put down, and all “bullying” checked; more, he would have calmly kept Counsel’s attention to the issue. This perfect impartiality would have made him show to the Jury how little evidence there was to support the plaintiff’s case. Instead came this unlucky indisposition: and his place was taken by “my Brother Gaselee:” with what results Mr. Pickwick was to learn disastrously.

It is curious, however, that the Chief Justice, in spite of his indisposition, should still be associated with the case; for he had tried the momentous case of Norton v. Melbourne, and had heard there letters read, which were parodied in the “chops and tomato sauce” correspondence, so Boz had him well before him. The case had to be tried at the Guildhall Sessions; so a fair and rational judge would have spoilt all sport. Further, as Boz had seen the fairness and dignity of the Chief Justice he was naturally reluctant to exhibit him unfavorably. The only thing was to make the Chief Justice become suddenly “indisposed,” and have his place taken by a grotesque judge.

The Judge who was to try the case, Mr. Justice Stareleigh, as is well known, was drawn from Sir Stephen Gaselee, of whose name Stareleigh is a sort of synonym. Serjeant Gaselee was once well known in the prosecutions directed against Radicals and so-called Reformers, but Pickwick has given him a greater reputation. The baiting he received from patriotic advocates may have inflamed his temper and made him irritable. He is described by one author, in a most humorous, if personal fashion. He was “a most particularly short man, and so fat that he seemed all face and waistcoat. He rolled in upon two little turned legs, and having bobbed gravely to the bar who bobbed gravely to him, put his little legs under the table, when all you could see of him was two queer little eyes, one broad, pink face, and somewhere about half of a big and very comical-looking wig.” All through he is shown as arrogant and incapable, and also as making some absurd mistakes.

It will be a surprise to most people to learn that this picture is no more than an amusing caricature, and that the judge was really a person of high character. He is described as “a very painstaking, upright judge, and, in his private capacity, a worthy and benevolent man.” Thus, Mr. Croker, who, however, supplies a sound reason for his being the subject of such satire. “With many admirable qualities both of head and heart, he had made himself a legitimate object of ridicule by his explosions on the Bench.” Under such conditions, the Bar, the suitors and the public had neither the wish nor the opportunity to search for extenuating excuses in his private life. They suffered enough from the “explosions” and that was all that concerned them. He had been fourteen years on the Bench, and, like Stareleigh, belonged to the Common Pleas. He was suffering too from infirmities, particularly from deafness, and appears to have misapprehended statements in the same grotesque fashion that he mistook Winkle’s name.

Boz’s fashion of burlesque, by the way, is happily shown in his treatment of this topic. Another would have been content with “Daniel,” the simple misapprehension. “Nathaniel, sir,” says Winkle. “Daniel—any other name?” “Nathaniel, sir—my lord, I mean.” “Nathaniel Daniel—or Daniel Nathaniel?” “No, my lord, only Nathaniel, not Daniel at all.”

“What did you tell me it was Daniel for, then, sir?”

“I didn’t, my lord.”

“You did, sir. How could I have got Nathaniel in my notes, unless you told me so, sir?”

How admirable is this. The sly satire goes deeper, as Judges, under less gross conditions, have often made this illogical appeal to “my notes.”

Though not gifted with oratorical powers which were likely to gain him employment as a leader, Gaselee’s reputation for legal knowledge soon recommended him to a judge’s place. He was accordingly selected on July 1st, 1824, to fill a vacancy in the Court of Common Pleas. In that Court he sat for nearly fourteen years “with the character of a painstaking judge, and in his private capacity as a worthy and benevolent man.” Thus Mr. Foss, F.S.A.

The reader will have noted the Judge’s severity to poor Groffin, the chemist, who had pleaded the danger of his boy mistaking oxalic acid for Epsom salts. Could it be that the Judge’s experience as the son of a provincial doctor, had shown what class of man was before him? Later, unexpectedly, we learn that the Judge was a steady member for fourteen years of the Royal Humane Society, of which institution he was also a Vice-President.

But we now come to a most extraordinary thing—the result of the young author’s telling and most sarcastic portrait of the irascible little judge. It is curious that Forster, while enumerating various instances of Boz’s severe treatment of living persons, as a sort of chastisement for their defects of manner or character, seems not to have thought of this treatment of the judge—and passes it by. Nor did he notice the prompt result that followed on the sketch. The report of the trial appeared in the March number, 1837—and we are told, the luckless judge retired from the Bench, shortly after the end of Hilary Term, that is in April or the beginning of May. We may assume that the poor gentleman could not endure the jests of his confrÈres or the scarcely concealed tittering of the Barristers, all of whom had of course devoured and enjoyed the number. We may say that the learned Sergeant Buzfuz was not likely to be affected in any way by his picture; it may indeed have added to his reputation. I confess to some sympathy for the poor old judge who was thus driven from the Bench. Sam Foote was much given to this sort of personal attack, and made the lives of some of his victims wretched. Boz, however, seems to have felt himself called upon to act thus as public executioner on two occasions only. After the fall of the judge in June, 1837, he wanted a model for a tyrannical magistrate in Oliver Twist—and Mr. Laing, the Hatton Garden Magistrate—a harsh, ferocious personage, at once occurred to him. He wrote accordingly to one of his friends that he wished to be smuggled into his office some morning to study him. This “smuggling” of course meant the placing him where he would not be observed—as a magistrate knowing his “sketches” might recognise him. “I know the man perfectly well” he added. So he did, for he forgot that he had introduced him already in Pickwick as Nupkins—whose talk is exactly alike, in places almost word for word to that of “Mr. Fang.”

These palliations, Boz, a young fellow of three and twenty or so, did not pause to weigh. He only saw a testy, red-faced old fellow with goggle eyes, and seventy-four years old, and past his work. His infirmities already made him incapable of carrying through the business of the Court as the mistake, “Is it Daniel Nathaniel or Nathaniel Daniel?” shows. It is curious, however, that this weakness of misapprehending names is described of another judge, Arabin—a strange grotesque. Theodore Hook gives an amusing specimen in his Gilbert Gurney.

From the general description in the text, it is evident Stareleigh was the prey of gouty affections—which swelled him into grotesque shape, and he found himself unequal to the office. He died two years after his retirement at No. 13, Montagu Place, Russell Square; so that the Judge in Bardell v. Pickwick was living close to Perker the Attorney in the same case. Here we seem to mix up the fictional and the living characters, but this is the law of Pickwick—the confines between the two worlds being quite confused or broken down. The late commander of our forces in China, Sir A. Gaselee, is of this family. It should be remembered, however, when we think of this judge’s frowardness, that judges in those times were dictatorial and carried matters with a high hand. There were often angry conflicts between them, and members of the Bar, and Stareleigh was really not so very tyrannical. He did what so many judges do—took a side from the first, and had decided in his own mind that Mr. Pickwick could not possibly have a case. That curious form of address from the Bench is now no longer heard—“who is with you, Brother Buzfuz?” Judges and sergeants were then common members of the Guild—both wore the “coif.”