The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick

The Law and Lawyers of
Pickwick, by Frank

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Frank Lockwood
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Title: The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick A Lecture
Author: Frank Lockwood

Release Date: April 25, 2007 [eBook #21214]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAW
AND LAWYERS OF PICKWICK***

Transcribed from the 1894 Roxburghe Press edition by David Price,
email [email protected]

The Law and Lawyers of Pickwick.
A LECTURE.
With an Original Drawing of "Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz."
BY FRANK LOCKWOOD, Q.C. M.P.
LONDON: THE ROXBURGHE PRESS, 3, Victoria Street, Westminster,
AND 32, CHARING CROSS, S.W.
Uniform with this Edition.
CHARLES DICKENS' HEROINES AND WOMEN-FOLK:
Some Thoughts Concerning Them.
BY CHARLES F. RIDEAL.
With an original Drawing of Edith Dombey.
{Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz: p0.jpg}

PREFATORY.
At the request of my friend Lord Russell of Killowen, then
Attorney-General, I delivered this lecture at the Morley Hall, Hackney,
on December 13th, 1893. I had previously delivered it in the city of
York at the request of some of my constituents. I feel that some
apology is required for its reproduction in a more permanent form,
which apology I most respectfully tender to all who may read this little
book.
F. L.

THE LAW AND LAWYERS OF "PICKWICK."
Sir CHARLES RUSSELL: I stand but for a single instant between you
and our friend, Mr. Lockwood. He needs no introduction here; but I am
sure I may in your name bid him a hearty welcome.
Mr. FRANK LOCKWOOD: Mr. Attorney-General, Ladies and
Gentlemen--It is some little time ago that I was first asked whether I
was prepared to deliver a lecture. Now I am bound at the outset to
confess to you that lecturing has been and is very little in my way. I
spent some three years of my life at the University in avoiding lectures.
But it came about that in the constituency which I have the honour to
represent, it was suggested to me that it was necessary for me to give a
lecture, and it was further explained to me that it did not really very
much matter as to what I lectured about. I am bound to say there was a
very great charm to me in the idea of lecturing my constituents. I know
it does sometimes occur that constituents lecture their representatives,
especially in Scotland, and I was anxious, if I might, to have an
opportunity of lecturing those who had so many opportunities of
reading, no doubt very useful lectures to me. But the difficulty was to
find a subject. My own profession suggested itself to me as a fit topic
for a lecture, but unfortunately my profession is not a popular one. I do
not know how it is, but you never find a lawyer introduced either into a
play or into a three-volume novel except for the purpose of exposing
him as a scoundrel in the one, and having him kicked in the third act in
the other. I do not know how it is, but so it is. All the heroes of fiction
either in the drama or in the novel are found in the ranks--no, not in the
ranks of the army, but in the officers of the army, or in the clergy. It is
so in novels, it is so in dramas; Mr. Attorney-General, I believe it is so
in real life.
And so, looking about for a subject, being reminded, as I was, that the
subject of the law was unpopular, I turned--as I have often done in the
hour of trouble--I turned to my Dickens, and there I found that at any
rate in Dickens we have a great literary man who has been impartial in
his treatment of lawyers. He has seen both the good and the bad in
them, and it occurred to me that my lecture might take the form of

dealing with the lawyers of Dickens. I soon found that was too great a
subject to be dealt with within the short space which could be accorded
to any reasonable lecturer by any reasonable audience. I found that the
novels of Dickens abounded with lawyers, to use a perhaps apt
expression. Having regard to my profession, they fairly bristled with
them, and so I determined to take the lawyers of one of his books; and I
chose as that book "Pickwick"; and I chose as my title "The Law and
the Lawyers of 'Pickwick.'"
Ladies and gentlemen, it is an