The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick | Page 5

to start a
subject which all the company could take a part in discussing--"I have
been to-night in a place which you all know very well, doubtless, but
which I have not been in for some years, and know very little of; I
mean Gray's Inn, gentlemen. Curious little nooks in a great place, like
London, these old Inns are."
"By Jove!" said the chairman, whispering across the table to Mr.
Pickwick, "you have hit upon something that one of us, at least, would
talk upon for ever. You'll draw old Jack Bamber out; he was never
heard to talk about anything else but the Inns, and he has lived alone in
them till he's half crazy."
"Aha!" said the old man, a brief description of whose manner and
appearance concluded the last chapter, "aha! who was talking about the
Inns?"
"I was, sir," replied Mr. Pickwick; "I was observing what singular old
places they are."
"You!" said the old man, contemptuously. "What do you know of the
time when young men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms, and
read and read, hour after hour, and night after night, till their reason
wandered beneath their midnight studies; till their mental powers were
exhausted: till morning's light brought no freshness or health to them;
and they sank beneath the unnatural devotion of their youthful energies
to their dry old books? Coming down to a later time, and a very
different day, what do you know of the gradual sinking beneath
consumption, or the quick wasting of fever--the grand results of 'life'
and dissipation--which men have undergone in these same rooms? How
many vain pleaders for mercy, do you think, have turned away heart-

sick from the lawyer's office, to find a resting-place in the Thames, or a
refuge in the gaol? They are no ordinary houses, those. There is not a
panel in the old wainscoting but what, if it were endowed with the
powers of speech and memory, could start from the wall and tell its tale
of horror--the romance of life, sir, the romance of life! Commonplace
as they may seem now, I tell you they are strange old places, and I
would rather hear many a legend with a terrific-sounding name than the
true history of one old set of chambers."
There was something so odd in the old man's sudden energy, and the
subject which had called it forth, that Mr. Pickwick was prepared with
no observation in reply; and the old man checking his impetuosity, and
resuming the leer, which had disappeared during his previous
excitement, said,--
"Look at them in another light; their most common-place and least
romantic. What fine places of slow torture they are! Think of the needy
man who has spent his all, beggared himself and pinched his friends to
enter the profession, which will never yield him a morsel of bread. The
waiting--the hope--the disappointment--the fear--the misery--the
poverty--the blight on his hopes and end to his career--the suicide,
perhaps, or the shabby, slipshod drunkard. Am I not right about them?"
And the old man rubbed his hands, and leered as if in delight at having
found another point of view in which to place his favourite subject.
Mr. Pickwick eyed the old man with great curiosity, and the remainder
of the company smiled, and looked on in silence.
"Talk of your German universities," said the little old man. "Pooh!
pooh! there's romance enough at home without going half a mile for it;
only people never think of it.'"
"I never thought of the romance of this particular subject before,
certainly," said Mr. Pickwick, laughing.
"To be sure you didn't," said the little old man, "of course not. As a
friend of mine used to say to me, 'What is there in chambers in
particular?' 'Queer old places,' said I. 'Not at all,' said he. 'Lonely,' said I.

'Not a bit of it,' said he. He died one morning of apoplexy, as he was
going to open his outer door. Fell with his head in his own letter-box,
and there he lay for eighteen months. Everybody thought he'd gone out
of town.
"And how was he found out at last?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.
"The benchers determined to have his door broken open, as he hadn't
paid any rent for two years. So they did. Forced the lock; and a very
dusty skeleton in a blue coat, black knee-shorts, and silks, fell forward
in the arms of the porter who opened the door. Queer, that. Rather,
perhaps?" The little old man put his head more on one side, and rubbed
his hands with unspeakable glee.
"I know another case," said the little old man, when his chuckles had in
some degree subsided. "It occurred in Clifford's Inn. Tenant of a top
set--bad character--shut himself