There are jokers and jokers. Professors of the art of practical joking are disappearing before an advancing civilization like the Red Indian of the Far West. The evanishment of the verbal joker is due to a deplorable shrinkage in the national sense of humour. There will soon be left to us the joker which is the fifty-third card in the pack, and is incapable of any sense or emotion whatever.

But in the days of my vanity grown men carried with them into a tun-bellied middle-age the fine flow of animal spirits and inordinate capacity for fun which nowadays would be deprecated by the well-regulated schoolboy. In Fleet Street one would have thought that there would have been no time for any joking beyond an occasional interchange of verbal pleasantries. But even in that busy thoroughfare the practical joker found—or made—occasions for the exercise of his fearsome talents.

It is something of a truism to say that the real man is very seldom the man as he is observed in his public appearances. Who, for instance, who only knew Edmund O’Donovan as the learned writer of travel articles in the Quarterly Review, the accomplished special correspondent of a one-time influential daily, the honoured guest of savants, the respected lecturer before Royal Societies—who, I say, who saw O’Donovan with his Society war-paint on could have imagined the wild, undisciplined, half-mad, but wholly delightful creature that was exhibited at intervals to Society in conventional garb. He was the maddest and the most modest Irishman I ever met. When he returned from his extraordinary adventures in Merv, he did not put up at some swagger hotel in London, where he would be easily accessible to Society intent on making him the lion of a season. He lodged at a public-house in Holborn kept by a fellow-countryman of his, named Peter Cowell. This house was at the time known to the police in connection with the visits of Irish patriots of the physical force party in national politics. It was the resort of the scattered remnants of a disintegrated Fenianism.

Cowell revered his strange guest, and when customers heard the sounds of revolver practice in the upper part of the house, you may be sure that he did not give his patrons the true explanation of the noise. The fact was that O’Donovan, in bed at midday, had grown greatly annoyed at the crude art evinced in the engravings that Cowell had hung upon his walls, and that he was engaged in shooting those masterpieces into smithereens. This revolver practice in his bedroom only ceased when there was nothing breakable left to fire at. “Glory be to God!” said Peter Cowell, in relating the circumstance to a correspondent, “there’s not a pictur’ nor a frame nor a utinshill of anny kyoind that Misther O’Donovan hasn’t bruk an’ ped for!”

Two foreign gentlemen who refused to give their names, but who had some important intelligence to convey, called at my office. I signalled down that I would see them. I expected men in European garb. But the two weird creatures who shuffled into my sanctum were clothed in undressed animal skins reaching almost to their feet. They were shod in the same material. And their head-dress was also a fur so fashioned that only the eyes and nose of the individuals were visible. The curious part of the equipment was that the visitors carried pistols in their skin belts. I think that it was this little circumstance that “gave the show away.” I looked very hard at the taller of the two men, and then, feeling sure in my surmise, I said cheerily:

“My dear O’Donovan, how are you? I’m delighted to see you.”

“Faith, I knew you’d know me!” he declared, in a tone that entirely disguised his disappointment. “Come out and have a drink.”Now, this hospitable invitation placed me in something of a dilemma. For in the first place I did not wish to offend O’Donovan by refusing, and in the second I had no desire to walk up Fleet Street in the company of companions so strangely clad. I suggested that, if O’Donovan and his friend would go on to the “Cheese,” I would follow when I had finished writing the letter on which I was then busy.

“That’s a beastly picture of Dizzy,” said O’Donovan quietly. He had taken his revolver from his belt, and was pointing with it to “Ape’s” cartoon of Beaconsfield which hung opposite my desk.

I understood the hint. I rose and accompanied my remorseless friend. My worst anticipations were realized when I reached the office door. Quite a large crowd of Fleet Street loafers—and I think that in the Street of Adventure we could have boasted of as many loafers to the square yard as any thoroughfare in London—pressed round the door. The Fleet Street loafer is often exhilarated by the sight of strange visitors; but he had never yet seen visitors quite so strange as these. The crowd did not make any demonstration. But Cockney criticisms of the general appearance of my companions were freely bandied about. We had to cross the street and encounter the jibes of cab-drivers and omnibus cads. The crowd followed us right up to the doors of the tavern to which I had been invited. Here was another assembly. For O’Donovan had already visited the Cheshire Cheese, and had announced his intention of returning to lunch. I believe that old Moore had during that afternoon the most anxious time of his life. The fun waxed fast and furious. But there is safety in a multitude of any kind, and the intrepid traveller had so many friends and admirers in this gathering that I was soon able to slip away unnoticed.

The man who accompanied O’Donovan on this occasion was Frank Power—one of the most accomplished humbugs that ever made a way in life by means of a glib tongue, a vivid imagination, and an entire absence of scruple of any kind. O’Donovan subsequently engaged him as secretary, and he was to have accompanied his employer during the march with Hicks Pasha. It was characteristic of Power that when the march was made Power remained behind in Khartoum. He was once mentioned in the House of Commons. A question was asked by an Irish Member as to the qualifications of Mr. Frank Power, who had contrived to get himself made British Consul at Khartoum. Mr. Gladstone, whose imagination was at times as vivid as that of Power himself, replied promptly that the gentleman in question was an “esteemed merchant” of that city.

In letters home, O’Donovan freely expressed his belief that the chances of his ever returning to England alive were extremely small. It is inconceivable that he should not have communicated this opinion to Power. That young gentleman, holding that discretion is the better part of valour, had an attack of dysentery at the very moment when his services should have—under ordinary circumstances—become of any value to his chief. He did not accompany the intrepid column that marched across the sands to inevitable and complete annihilation. As to O’Donovan, I know that he died as he would have wished to die. No survivor of that ill-fated expedition was allowed to escape with the story of the fight. But I can picture O’Donovan in the midst of the mÊlÉe, his eyes bright with the fury of battle, his wild Irish “Whirroo!” appalling even his frantic assailants, his desperate play with revolver, his final collapse on the hot bosom of Mother Earth, his warm Irish blood reddening the sands of the African desert.

John Augustus O’Shea, of the Standard, was another war-correspondent who was very much given to practical joking, and disguise generally played a prominent part in his plans. On one occasion he was commissioned by his editor to describe a certain Lord Mayor’s Show. Elephants were to play a part in this particular pageant; and it occurred to the accomplished correspondent that from the back of an elephant he might obtain an unrivalled view of the rivals of the route. George Sanger was providing the elephants, and O’Shea experienced no difficulty in obtaining permission to ride in a howdah and illustrate the fidelity of Indian Princes to the Empire. Sanger was also able to provide the Oriental costume essential to the part, together with the stage diamonds without which no self-respecting Prince ever goes out elephant-riding. His face was made up to the proper tint; his turban was a triumph of millinery; and as O’Shea passed through Fleet Street in the character of an Eastern potentate, and in the train of a London Lord Mayor, not a soul recognized him.

Indeed, the completeness of the disguise led to some inconvenience. For when the show was at an end, and O’Shea went on his elephant to Sanger’s stables in the Westminster Bridge Road, he found himself pressed for time, and unable, therefore, to abandon his disguise. He got into a hansom just as he was, and drove off to Shoe Lane to write his descriptive article for the Evening Standard. He was about to pass the commissionaire who stood sentry at the office door. But that old soldier did not recognize a member of the staff in the garb of a pious Hindu, and O’Shea, unable to curb his love of practical joking, soundly rated the old soldier in an improvised gibberish which the warrior, no doubt, thought he recognized as something he had been acquainted with in the East. O’Shea endeavoured to push past. The man “on the door” barred his progress. The war of strange words between them grew loud and furious. The commissionaire called to a member of the crowd that was gathering round the door to go for the police, and upstairs the sub-editor was anxiously waiting for O’Shea’s copy.

Before the police could arrive Gilbert Venables came on the scene, recognized the correspondent under the disguise of the dusky Indian, and explained matters to the faithful doorkeeper. The anxiety of the sub-editor was soon appeased, and O’Shea sat down to reel off a column of humorous descriptive copy such as he alone on that staff could produce. “The Giniral”—as O’Shea was called in Fleet Street—was one of those strange men who think that it is never time to go to bed. Even when he got home in the small-hours he never felt inclined to “turn in.” And as he never could do without company of some sort, he bought an owl. This bird he installed in his “study,” and when he went home in the morning he related some of the more piquant experiences of the day to the wise-looking fowl. When the owl exhibited any signs of inattention or betrayed symptoms of sleepiness, O’Shea would recall him to a sense of his responsibilities by throwing a slipper or any other handy missile at his feathered companion. As some of these missiles hit their mark, the life of the sagacious bird was neither peaceful nor protracted.

On one occasion the festive little correspondent was sent into the country to describe a two-day function, the exact nature of which I forget. On the morning of the second day another representative of the London Press gave a breakfast at his hotel to some of his colleagues. Those invited were of the swagger order of pressmen—Bernard Becker, Harry Pearse, Godfrey Turner, Edmund Yates, and some others. O’Shea heard of this social function, and, I dare say, rather resented the fact that he had not been invited. He got there, however, for in the middle of the meal O’Shea’s card was brought in to the founder of the feast. The host did the only thing he could do under the circumstance: he desired the visitor to be shown in. After a few minutes something was heard rumbling along the hotel passage. The door of the sitting-room in which O’Shea’s distinguished contemporaries were breakfasting was thrown open, a Bath-chair was trundled into the apartment by a couple of men, and in the Bath-chair sat O’Shea, a red Gibus on his head, a churchwarden pipe in his mouth, and on his wrists a pair of handcuffs. These he held up to us appealingly. But it suited him to pretend to be a deaf-mute, and his companions explained that the gentleman was a little mad, that they were his keepers, and that, as it was dangerous to thwart him, they were bound to accede to his request to be shown in to the present distinguished party.

O’Shea kept the game up for a long time. He resisted all efforts to induce him to appear in propria persona and sit down at table. He shook his head, he made queer guttural noises, and when he felt that he had entirely upset everybody he made signs to his companions to wheel him away. He was taken from the hotel to the public promenade, and was driven up and down that select area, still in red Gibus, handcuffs, and long clay pipe, followed everywhere by an interested crowd. Eventually the police interfered, and in the afternoon “the Giniral” appeared before the scandalized breakfast-party of the morning clothed and in his right mind.

A powerful practical joke of a double-barrelled kind was played by a Fleet Street artist, and got into the papers of the time. There were two black-and-white artists in the Street of Adventure. One was H. Furniss with an “i”; the other was H. Furness with an “e.” The one was an Irishman; the other was a Yorkshireman. The latter was the perpetrator of the joke. Joseph Biggar, the well-known Parliamentary obstructionist, was so unfortunate as to have been made the defendant in an action for breach of promise of marriage. What was still more unfortunate was that he lost his case, and was cast in heavy damages. Furness (with an “e”) herein saw an opening. He drew a cheque for the amount of the damages incurred, and forwarded it to Jo Biggar in a letter glowing with expressions of sympathy and admiration. Biggar attributed this act of princely generosity to Furniss (with an “i”), and sent to that gentleman an acknowledgment of his great indebtedness. Meanwhile the joker had stopped his cheque at the bank, and Jo Biggar had given the correspondence—the donor’s letter and his own reply—to the Press. Biggar was covered with shame, Furniss (with an “i”) was aroused to indignation, and Furness (with an “e”) had proved himself—as is the nature of furnaces, however spelt—to be very hot stuff.

But it was among my theatrical friends that I found the most patient, enterprising, and scientific prosecutors of humour in action. J. L. Toole was very fond of the practical joke. But he did not carry his schemes out on the generous scale that seemed the proper proportions to certain of his colleagues. His jokes were small personal affairs, never calculated to give pain or annoyance, and invariably described in some paper or another. “How do these things get into the papers?” Sothern was a past-master in the fine art of practical joking. Some of his most notorious successes in that line have been narrated in works of biography or autobiography by other men. But I was a witness of two of his efforts in this way which I have never seen described in print. They indicate the time, thought, and pains, which Sothern was always prepared to spend over the elaboration of a practical joke in order that it might eventually be presented complete and perfect. He possessed a true actor’s faith in efficient rehearsal.

The breakfasts of Sam Rogers, the banker-poet, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, may have been very interesting reunions; but they could not have been half as amusing as the breakfasts of Sothern given during the closing years of that century. No one was invited to these gatherings who was not either odd or interesting or witty. The conversation was kept up to the mark by a host who could play on the faculties of his guests as a musician on the strings of an instrument.

One Sunday forenoon at Sothern’s London pied-À-terre in Vere Street, John Maclean, of the Gaiety Theatre, was present. Maclean was what was called in those days a “useful actor.” He was a wonderfully fine mimic, and was particularly good at reproducing the different shades of Irish and Scotch dialects in all their varying enormity. He used to tell a story about George Cordery, the property-master at the Theatre Royal, Dublin, and Barry Sullivan, the tragedian, which introduced admirable imitations of both those worthies. The story itself would lose most of its point by translation into cold print. It described an altercation between the tragedian and the property-master as to the correct cue for the lowering of the cauldron in “Macbeth,” Cordery insisting that “filthy ’ags” was the cue, because he had been so taught by his “old mawster, Mister Phellups—an’ ’e was a man as knew ’ow to play Macbeth.” Sullivan insisted on the cue being, “May eternal curses light upon you!” At the last rehearsal of the Witch scene, Barry Sullivan stalked over to the trap through which the cauldron was to disappear, and called down to the property-master:

“Do you know the cue now, Mr. Cordery?”“S’wulp me, Goad!” came back the voice of the exasperated George, “I shall never forgit it. It’s ‘May etarnal cusses light upon you!’—meanin’ nothing personal to you, Mr. Barry Soolivan!”

The breakfast at an end and cigars lighted, there was always experienced a feeling of suspense and expectancy. Sothern requested Maclean to give his famous imitation of the tragedian and the property-master. After the usual amount of demur, Johnny rose to do as he had been bidden. Sothern placed his victim on the hearthrug, where, with his back to the fire, he could command the entire company, and where he was at the farthest point from the entrance to the room. The gifted imitator launched into his narrative, and soon had the assembly in a roar. But just when he had come to the height of the colloquy between the tragedian and his subordinate, the door of the room was suddenly opened, and Sothern’s man announced:

“Mr. Barry Sullivan!”

The tragedian entered, bowing right and left, and shaking hands with his host.

“Go on with your recitation, Johnny!” cried Sothern.

But Maclean had collapsed and taken refuge behind the chair of a friend. Nor was he greatly reconciled to the situation when it was discovered that the new-comer was not Sullivan at all, but a brother comedian made up for the part.

Another of Sothern’s practical jokes was carried out with the assistance of Sir Charles Wyndham—in those days innocent of any pretensions to the accolade. This particular experiment was six months in the working, and by the elaborate means adopted its victim was kept on the tenterhooks of suspense during all that time. The late Mr. Edgar Bruce, then lately joined to the ranks of “the profession,” was the unfortunate dupe. Bruce was an ambitious young gentleman, and the joke was so contrived as to play on this characteristic. It commenced in this way: Sothern had it put about that he had been approached by the Russian Minister on the possibility of getting together a company of English comedians to play in St. Petersburg. He personally could not accept the flattering command. He pretended to offer it to Wyndham, and Wyndham handed the proposal on to Bruce. Bruce jumped at it, and then, and for a period of six months, the fun waxed fast and furious. Bruce was invited to meet the Minister. An old nobleman smothered in orders, but having no language but French and his native tongue, was introduced to Bruce at a luncheon given for the purpose. At that time Bruce had no French, and the conversation was carried on with Wyndham as interpreter. Preliminaries were settled. An agreement was signed. There remained nothing now but to engage a company. Here again his good friends Wyndham and Sothern came to the rescue. They made a careful selection of actors and actresses who were let into the secret.

Eventually the affair got paragraphed in the newspapers. The public was as greatly duped as Bruce himself, and those interested in theatrical matters gossiped knowingly about the visit of the English comedians to Russia. Constant devices were adopted to raise, and sometimes to dash, the hopes of the victim. Once Sothern borrowed a thousand pounds’ worth of diamonds from his jeweller, and lent them to Miss Edith Chalice—one of the supposed Bruce Company—who exhibited them to the deluded victim as a gift from the Minister, asking him to name any little souvenir he would desire for himself from the same potentates. Bruce made his desires known; but that was as far as the matter ever went in that particular direction.

I was at a Bohemian party given by Val Bromley one night at his studios in Bloomsbury Square, when there was an amusing exhibition of the system adopted by Sothern and Wyndham to arouse the anxiety of poor Bruce. All three of them happened to be at this jolly function. At about one o’clock in the morning a sudden altercation broke out between Sothern and Wyndham; they stood in the middle of the studio in attitudes of menace, their voices were raised. “Never dare to speak to me again!” shouted one of the angry men. “You are a contemptible scoundrel, sir!” roared the other. The war of words grew hot, the gestures more threatening, and Bruce ran from friend to friend in the room, crying: “For Heaven’s sake pacify them! My whole future is ruined if those two men quarrel!” He spoke with the greatest emotion, and his face was deadly pale. At length one of the disputants cried out: “A friend of mine will wait upon you in the morning, sir!” and strode out of the room, speedily followed by his brother-conspirator. Soon after this the whole thing was “given away” by one or other, or by both, of the authors of the joke. But the curious part of the thing is that Edgar Bruce had for six months so convinced himself that he was a manager that he could not rid himself of the character. He had achieved the reputation. He had, moreover, made openings for himself among performers, costumiers, authors, and musicians. In six months he had gained experience of the managerial methods, and, being a manager in imagination, he crystallized into a manager in reality. His first managerial experiment was, I think, at the Royalty Theatre in Dean Street, Soho. Here he engaged as his representative in front of the house a comparatively unknown young man called Augustus Harris, little imagining that he was employing an Augustus Druriolanus in the making. He subsequently built the Lyric Theatre, and he died a comparatively rich man. The theatrical career of Edgar Bruce is the only practically good thing that I have known to result from the playing of a practical joke.

These carefully-devised experiments on a large scale, becoming known, naturally fired the ambition of imitators and a number of gabies, whose only indication of humour consisted in the fatuous smirk with which they greeted one in season and out of season, set up as professors of the game. Certain of these misguided young men formed themselves into a nomadic club called “The Who-bodies.” But a better name for them was invented by Wallis Mackay, who lashed them unmercifully in his “Captious Critic” under the name of “Theodore Hooklings.”

The humour which is not of a practical kind appears to have died away out of our literature, our legislature and our judicature alike. Nay, it is fading out of our street life with the disappearance of the omnibus cad and the driver of the hansom. Even the gamin is losing his characteristic gaiety in the solving of puzzles in his favourite publications or in calculating the odds in turf handicaps. The last of the Parliamentary wits was Bernal Osborne. He scintillated before I entered on a journalistic career, but I well remember the stimulation which the newspaper reports of his utterances afforded me in my younger days. In contesting Waterford at a General Election, he was opposed by Sir Patrick O’Brien, a very old man whose enunciation was not of the clearest. Following the revered Baronet on the hustings, Osborne, exactly mimicking the tones of his rival, commenced: “Pity the sorrows of a poor old man whose trembling limbs have borne him to these hustings!” Then, addressing himself to one of the nasty points of the other candidate’s attack, he said: “But when the honourable Baronet describes me as the rejected of seven constituencies, I hurl the accusation back in his teeth—if he has any!” In the House he was equally ready. Liskeard was among the constituencies that had rejected him. A question arising regarding that now happily disfranchised borough, it was referred to Bernal Osborne. He immediately rose and said: “I regret, sir, that I am unable to recall any particulars respecting that highly respectable street!” Viscount Amberley was a small, baby-faced man. When he sat in Parliament, and when Bernal Osborne was at the Admiralty, Amberley asked some inconvenient question regarding that Department. Osborne smilingly informed the House: “That is a matter which was settled when the honourable Viscount was in his—er—perambulator!”

Bernal Osborne’s patronymic was Bernal. He was a Jew and the son of Mr. Ralph Bernal, who was for many years Chairman of Committees in the House of Commons. He added the name Osborne to his own on marrying Lady Osborne, with whom he did not always agree. When he married he was a dashing young officer and Aide-de-Camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. I suppose he was not quite so successful in the dull domestic round, for he and his wife led a cat-and-dog life. They soon separated, and during the period of this first grass-widowhood the lady wrote a novel in which her husband was depicted, under a thin disguise and in very lurid colours. Society was greatly diverted. Bernal begged his wife’s forgiveness. A reconciliation was effected, the novel was withdrawn from circulation, and Bernal settled down once more as the model married man. The vivacity of his disposition, however, and his great extravagance, occasioned fresh quarrels. There was another separation, succeeded shortly after by a reissue of the wife’s literary caricature of her refractory husband.

Bernal Osborne was what, in more heroic times than these, was known as a “diner-out”—that is to say, a man who was asked to dinner entirely on account of the sparkle of his conversation. Nowadays the sparkle is the monopoly of the champagne. The very last of the “diners-out” was Father Healy of Bray, in County Wicklow. For some years before his death, that wittiest of Irishmen was invited to London during the season, and was to be met night after night at the tables of the leaders of Society. He was a wit of parts, and the curious thing about him was that he never for a moment supposed that he owed his acceptance in Society to his wit and humour. He always believed that the great ones of the earth inviting him to their tables were anxious to ascertain his views on Irish politics. Dining one night at the table of Lord Ardilaun, he met a prelate of the Church of England. Healy by no means appreciated the tone of easy condescension adopted by the Bishop. His lordship was patronizing, and Healy bitterly resented anything of the kind. He bided his time. It came, as all things do to him who knows how—and how long—to wait.

“I’ve lived sixty years in this wicked world,” at length said the Bishop, smiling and expansive, “and I have never yet been able to see the difference between a good Catholic and a good Protestant.”

“Faith, me lord,” answered Healy, “you won’t be sixty seconds in the next before you’ll know all about it!”

Dowse is a name utterly forgotten by the present generation. Yet Dowse afforded a great deal of occupation to the pressmen of his day in reporting his sayings. He was a rough-looking Irishman, red-headed and rotund. Originally, as a boy, he had herded goats about the mountains near Dungannon. He contrived, however, to get an education, read for the Irish Bar, was duly called, became Solicitor-General for Ireland, and, in the fulness of time, Chief Baron of the Irish Exchequer. He was famous for his “bulls,” and when in the House of Commons succeeded in introducing one at least before which those of Sir Boyle Roche are simply negligible. A question was put to him, while he was Solicitor-General, respecting certain religious riots that had broken out in Londonderry. Dowse explained that the riots had been occasioned by the ceremony connected with the “shutting of the gates.”

“And that,” he continued, “is an anniversary that takes place twice a year in Derry!”

Bernal Osborne has been, I confess, rather irrelevantly introduced into this chapter, for I never knew him. But I had the honour of knowing Baron Dowse. And I enjoyed the still greater privilege of dining at the table of Father Healy, to whom I was introduced by Mr. John Gunn, of the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. Healy was one of the handsomest as Dowse was one of the ugliest of men.

The illustration of the science of humour on the judicial bench is now the province of ermined jokers. Perhaps nothing could give a more vivid idea of the decadence of the bench in this respect than a comparison of the Ally Sloperian japes of certain living judges with the polished shafts of the late Lord Justice Bowen. Lord Bowen’s was the true Attic salt. And because he knew its quality, he never offered it to either the groundlings or the gallery. The reappearance of his shafts—bright and polished as they were—only caused him to shudder, even when followed in the newspaper by the reportorial “(laughter).” To some of our Judges, the constant appearance in the columns of their jokes, followed by “laughter” in brackets, would appear to be a chief end of their existence. Indeed, a Judge, quite recently dead, has occasionally supplied me, what time I sat in an editorial chair, with little impromptus which he has let off in the course of the day. For verily all is vanity.

Two examples of Lord Bowen’s wit may be recorded here. Bowen was a Liberal in politics, but, like a great many other thinking men, he deserted his party when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill. Tackled by one who regarded him as guilty of political apostasy, and challenged as to his then opinion of Mr. Gladstone, he replied, in those mincing, modulated tones which he had acquired at Balliol:

“Mr. Gladstone’s is one of the greatest and most complex minds of our time. He possesses all the apostolic fervour of St. Paul with all the moral obliquity of Ananias.”

On the occasion of the Jubilee of Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, the Judges met to decide on an address from their body to be presented to their Sovereign. A draft was submitted by one of their number. It commenced with the words:

“Madam, conscious as we are of our own infirmities.” But immediate objection was taken by their lordships to this opening, and suggestions were invited. The measured calculated drawl of Bowen made itself heard:

“Suppose we substitute for the paragraph this: ‘Conscious as we are of one another’s infirmities!’”

Mr. Commissioner Kerr was a Judge whose rasping voice and strong Glasgow accent issued from the bench of my time utterances both strange and strong. The old gentleman was, in effect, brutally rude, and that’s a fact. He was particularly hard on solicitors. On one occasion I heard him open a charge in this way:

“There are a number of hairpies who infest this coort. An’ when I use the words ‘hairpies,’ I do not wish to be meesunderstood. I refer to the soleecitors who lie in wait about the corridors of the coort.”

I was present also when the following colloquy took place between the bench and a perfectly respectable witness to whom Kerr had evidently taken an instinctive dislike:

Kerr: “What air you?”

Witness: “I’m a merchant.”

Kerr: “What’s your mairchandise?”

Witness: “I’m an importer of lemons.”

Kerr: “An importher of lemons! Why, ye ken you’re naething mair nor less than a huckster!”

Lewis Glyn the barrister, whom Kerr hated to see come into his court, once got very much the better of the learned Commissioner. Glyn, in addressing the court, had indulged in a French expression.

“Talk the Queen’s English, Misther Glyn. We don’t want anny of your bad French in this coort,” snapped out the Commissioner.

“I beg your Honour’s pardon, but I thought that by this time the court had become so accustomed to strange dialects that one more or less would not matter,” answered Glyn sweetly.

But though rude and brusque in the extreme, Kerr was a sound lawyer and a strong Judge. It must be recalled to his credit, also, that he was invariably the champion of the poor and oppressed who appeared before him. He was down on usurers, and his constant attacks on the immunity of those plunderers of the poor, under the law as it existed, did much to hasten the reform in the legislature—small as it is—under which money-lenders now ply their calling.

Undoubtedly the most colossal joker of my time was that huge mountain of flesh who came from the antipodes to claim the title and estates of the Tichborne family. When that obese impostor copied from Miss Braddon’s novel the inspiring sentence, “Them as has money and no branes was made for them as has branes and no money,” he declared the spirit in which he played the game. He must have enjoyed the joke immensely—while it lasted. And it lasted long enough, unfortunately, to ruin the twelve jurymen who sat for the greater part of a year on the second trial.

Whether the Claimant was really Arthur Orton or Castro I never troubled myself to determine. That he was not Tichborne, or, indeed, a gentleman of any degree whatever, I satisfied myself at my first interview with him. It was during the trial before the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Alexander Cockburn, and I was as yet a novice in Fleet Street. Mr. G. W. Whalley, the eccentric Member for Peterborough, was an acquaintance of mine, and he believed that were I to meet the Claimant I would be convinced that he was Roger Tichborne, and that I would do my little utmost for him on the Press. Whalley was a tremendous Protestant, anti-Ritualist, and “no Popery” man, and I believe that he espoused the cause of the Wapping butcher from Wagga-Wagga, not because he was in any degree attracted by him but because he believed him to be the victim of a gigantic Jesuitical intrigue in which Parliament, the Judicial Bench, and the British Press, were all concerned to keep the man out of his own.

Whalley took me to visit his adipose protÉgÉ in a street in Pimlico. I think it was called Bessborough Street; I recollect that it was a continuation of Tachbrook Street. Here “Sir Roger” had installed Miss Norrie Jordan, a member of the chorus at the Globe Theatre, in control of his domestic arrangements, “Lady Tichborne” being provided for elsewhere. This was quite characteristic of the Claimant. He had not the slightest affection for Miss Jordan, and appeared to feel uncomfortable in her presence. But it was the fashion for gentlemen of title to run “side-shows,” as they were called; and “Sir Roger” was determined to stand by his order, and show himself a man sensitive to the slightest movements of Society, however personally unpleasant to himself the experiments involved might be.

My subsequent meetings with the fellow proved to me that the sum of his so-called accomplishments might be set down in a line or two. He had an unbounded capacity for swallowing gin-and-soda; he had a good eye and a steady hand as a pigeon-shot; and he possessed an unrivalled faculty for exploiting “mugs.” In dealing with possible subscribers to the Tichborne “stock,” it was a favourite ruse of his to ask the intended victim to try on the Claimant’s gloves. This trial proved that the hands of the Claimant were small, whereas those of Orton were said to have been large. When the “unfortunate nobleman” went to Dartmoor to “languish” for a term of years, it was a great relief to the Press and an infinite advantage to the community at large.

He had indeed proved himself the very Prince of Jokers, but his joke had begun to pall.