In My Notebook
I have frequently been asked by young barristers, or proud parents of young barristers, for some easy road to success. There is, of course, no such road. But I know an easy road to moderate success, namely the keeping of two notebooks, one to contain literary quotations culled from the young man’s reading and one to contain notes from his perusal of legal writings.
All who sought my advice seemed to be taken aback by this very simple suggestion; and of the numbers I have so advised l feel confident that not one in twelve has ever accepted the advice. It is quite useless if the young barrister declines to read. I have known many to whom the most interesting book makes no appeal and who are exhausted beyond description by the tremendous effort of opening and closing a book. But if a man is an omnivorous reader, even though not a careful and systems one, he must come across snatches of verse, pieces of doggerel delightfully-phrased sentences, fit for use on many occasions and of a quality to which he personally could not hope to create. I personally had tremendous profit from the habit; I worked on the principle of the ancient Roman who proclaimed that “anything that has once been well said is mine”. I was not generous in acknowledging my sources on the principle that anyone who recognised the source of the quotation would be so very proud of his sagacity and learning that he would not need to have the source pointed out to him. On the other hand, those who did not know anything of its authorship would be little the wiser if I accorded tribute to the author.
Verse and even doggerel cannot be effectively quoted if a line, or even a word is omitted or misplaced. Complete accuracy is necessary. Much the same applies to good prose. I have frequently been irritated by an ineffective speaker attempting to give his audience something delightfully written or spoken by its author but so maltreated by the speaker that it loses its effectiveness and brands its user as inexpert.
A reference note book is the only insurance against this. To get full benefit from reading, a note book should always be at hand, into which the appealing verse or quotation should be written immediately; if it is too long, the name of the book, its author, subject and page reference should be noted. That I have not consistently followed my own advice is something I greatly regret, but I have benefitted much from what I did note. My taste has not been impeccable; some would term it execrable but the accumulated material has proved of great value when I was obliged to speak, and even when quotations were not made verbatim their perusal was always thought-provoking.
Perusing some of the notes is a reminder of stages through which one himself passed. I note early in the book my obvious appreciation of Masefield’s verse:
“Not of Princes and Prelates, with periwigged charioteers,
Riding triumphantly laurelled, to lap the fat of the years
Rather the spurned, the rejected, the men hemmed in with spears
Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road
The slave with the sack on his shoulders, pricked on with the goad
The man with the too heavy burden – too weary a load”.
Then came from Services’ “The Song of the Wage Slave:-
“When the long, long day is over and the big Boss gives me my pay,
I hope it won’t be hell fire, as some of the parsons say”
and so on.
Then a little snippet from Tolstoy:
“We will do almost anything for the poor man, anything but get off his back”.
And the over-quoted paragraph:
“The law in its majestic majesty forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to be in the streets, or to steal bread”.
James Russell Lowell contributed:
“They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak
They are slaves who will not choose hatred, scoffing and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think,
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three”.
Lest I weary you, let me come to the last few lines. I remember well, very well when I noted them and they still appeal –
“Small art, and love and beauty
Their drudging spirits knew
“Yes it is bread we fight for,
But we fight for roses too”.
I will not go through the transitional stages but comparatively late in the book I noted Erasmus whose wisdom, despite the fact that he lived in the 15th century and was deprived of all the experience provided by a hundred years, was really remarkable. I hope some of my earlier radicalism still remains, yet I can see now something in what Erasmus wrote in “In Praise of Folly”. I think it’s worth setting down: appreciation varies with the reader’s age.
“Since the human race insists upon being completely crazy, from the richest of men to the most miserable of pauper since the whole world has firmly set its heart against using God-given brains but insists upon being guided by its greed, its vanity and its ignorance, why in the name of a reasonable Deity should the few truly intelligent people waste so much of their time and their effort in trying to change the human race into something that it never wanted to be. Let them be happy in their folly, don’t deprive them of that which gives them more satisfaction than anything else, their divine right to make fools of themselves”.
Refusal to recognize the Erasmus theory confounds many great planners. I have seen it in civil life, I have seen it Army life, I have seen it everywhere. Their plans are wonderful and defy criticism. There is only one thing the planners lack and that is the knowledge that their plans have to be put into effect by and for the race of man of whom Erasmus wrote.
I remember too a few lines of which I was once very fond: – See Above –
I have a passion for donkeys and even today keep two or three of them on a property in the north of Victoria. I recognise their abhorrence of the lush grass and their preference for ring-barking priceless trees. Nevertheless I decline to part with the donkeys and am pleased when passers-by stop, call in and frequently enquire whether one can be bought. My passion for Chesterton’s poem, “The Donkey”, is therefore understandable:
“With monstrous head, and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings
The devil’s walking parody,
Of all four footed things,
It is sometimes alleged that the one radical fault of the legal profession is a narrowness of perception. Its defe??? claim that the law does not narrow the lawyer, but vice versa. However, we have to admit that occasionally decisions are given which startle anyone not sufficiently learned to have lost his common sense.
Sometimes trivial lines found their way into my note book; for instance those lines on Francis Michael Forde, the Minister for the Army during the second war.
“Of Queensland’s rum and peanut belt
Since 22 the Lord
Penfriend of all constituents
Was Francis Michael Forde
Of Strathfield leading citizen
Ex-Riverina’s squire
At Canberra with care he stokes
His Capricornia fire.
Of Army he’s the Minister
Who sees the war well fought
And every time a gun misfires
He calls for a report”.
Looking at the now almost-indecipherable rough index which I prepared, I come across pages devoted to Chesterton, Wilde, Trollope, Horace Walpole, Lincoln, Junius, Mencken, and a score of others. I cannot claim to have been a profound reader of all of them but obviously I found sufficient in their pages to merit inclusion in mine. I note that, according to one gentleman, “an advocate is merely a verbal automaton with a brain put into motion in the law courts for a client whose inarticulate views it expresses”. I find, too, the statement that in the Probate Office no corroboration is to be found for the saying that the meek shall inherit the earth.
I was once very partial to quoting Pope’s lines:
“No lengthened scroll, no praise encumbered stone, My epitaph shall be my name alone. That and that only shall single out the spot By that remembered or by that forgot”.
The wisest judgment I ever heard was given by Pope Paul III who had to decide which was the wife of a man who, living in a far-off land with different customs, had several wives before be became a convert to Christianity. The Pope said that the man could retain the wife he preferred if he did not remember who was his first.
Of sporting journalists, I have known several who were men of high calbire and great attainments but I regret to state that my opinion of them generally is not as high as that which they have of themselves. I agree with that writer who said that it is the prerogative of these gentlemen to be arrogantly merciless.
Memo: “Every calling is great if greatly pursued”.
I was always intensely interested in the detection and exposure of certain types of skullduggery whether practiced within or without the law. The most interesting Zascalit, involved the operation of public companies and I was attracted by everything written concerning the activities of various English company promoters between the early 1890’s and the end of the century. Disasters were numerous; some were due to ignorance, megalomania overexpansion, lack of consolidation and some to sheer knavery. Always then as now, seventy years afterwards, when a director of repute and means was called upon to explain his apparent apathy while the company’s funds were being mulcted, the inevitable explanation was “I trusted”, “I was only a director, and could not be expected to know everything that went on”. I, on the contrary, believe that an office boy steals 10/- from petty cash the responsibility extends right up to the Managing Director and the Chairman. I am not suggesting that they check the petty cash but they must take responsibility. When things do well, and dividends are declared the Managing Director and his colleagues puff on their cigars and take a bow. When things go badly it is not sufficient to attribute blame to the lower echelons while the “establishment” bows out.
With that introduction may I tell a story I noted years ago. I am not sure where it came from but the source is probably well known, I have always exercised the right of that great Roman who claimed “Whatever has once been well said is mine”.
In the year I owed much to Henry Lawson. I suppose many people would not expect to find in Lawson’s works words so appropriate for quotation during the war years.
“She’s England yet”.
Our own who — not of the King’s regalia,
Tinsel of crowns and Courts that fume and fret
Are fighting for her, fighting for Australia
And blasphemously hail her as England yet.
She’s England yet, with little to regret,
Aye, more than ever she’ll be England yet”.
In the pages I see two given over to a betting system for use in Casinos: you first bet two points, increase a point in each of your four following bets and after your fifth bet you do so and so and finally pick yourself up and go home. It originated during the Napoleonic years but I’m not commended.
In the book are dozens of legal stories, all so old, all reprinted so often, and recounted so frequently at legal gatherings that there is a really worthwhile task awaiting some industrious young barrister. All legal stories should be collected, and published in one volume Which should be a compulsory purchase for every young man entering the law: this publicity would ensure· that none of them would ever be re-told. The only one worth preservation is Birkenhead’s devastating monosyllabic comment ever made by Judge of Counsel. An Attorney General was presenting an appeal in a gaming case before Birkenhead who had misspent sufficient of his life at cards and similar pastimes not to need further instruction. However, the Attorney General took the bible?? low from table to table –
“First table my Lord, Baccarat – which as your Lordship knows is played with cards.
Second table, Solo – which as your Lordship knows is played with cards.
Third table, Bridge – which as your Lordship knows is played with cards.
Next table Blackjack – which as your Lordship knows is played with cards”.
Birkenhead became increasingly impatient, but allowed counsel to lead him to the last table where the game of roulette was in progress –
“On that table My Lord roulette was being played – another game as your Lordship knows, which is played with cards”.
The Noble Lord benignly leant forward and addressed the Attorney General – “Balls, Mr Attorney, Balls”.
I have never claimed to be deeply read, but this has not prevented my being surprised at the ignorance of many of those who practice politics, control finance, or advocate new social orders. So many of them appear to believe that the measures they support or advocate are innovations of whose discovery they are as proud as Christopher Columbus was when he made history(??). All they need is a tail.
Talking of the present attitude towards prosperity and possession of money, let us turn to Isocrates who was wandering around I suppose about 400 years B.C. Here’s a passage from Isocrates –
“When I was a boy it was considered not only safe but honourable to create an estate so that almost all men of standing wished to add to their possessions and felt a certain dignified honour in prospering but now we must apologise for any success in business as if it were an utter violation of the moral code so that today it is worse to seem to prosper than to be an open criminal”.
I repeat the date of this observation – roughly 400 B.C., not……..
I have always admitted my tendency to being diverted by the trivial. It helped me to laugh. Many were shocked that I should be interested in trifles but I always was. Frequently I noted trivia like the story of bookmaker Frank Isaacs who dreamed he was at a race meeting with three horses participating all at 6/4 on (a true bookmaker’s dream). He woke up bathed in perspiration: He had found that his clerk had forgotten to bring any betting tickets. Similarly when someone said to me. “where can I get £500 wholesale” this ridiculous question found its way into the book. I won’t quote more than the first line of the well known limerick –
“There was a young girl of Madras”.