The Gazette 1972

Figures in the Hall C. P. Curran, S C. D. Litt. Gandon 's Great Hall Gandon's Great Hall differs little from its original form. Certain levels have been altered between the hall, vestibule, and portico. The vestibule still bears its panels displaying the mace and staff, fasces, axe, and scales of justice, but in Gandon's day a second vestibule beyond the clock gave on to the Rolls Court which approxi- mately occupied the present site of the Supreme Court and marked the northern limit of his building. This Court was taken down and replaced in 1835 by a differently sited Rolls Court, when the new Nisi Prius Court was also erected. There was, however, a material difference in its general aspect. Time, which, in Sir Thomas Browne's phrase, antiquates antiquity, did not spare its minor monuments. The hall as we knew it before 1922 was at ®nce more severe and more appropriately ornate. It was Bagged in echoing stone and, though the niches which Gandon had designed for allegorical figures were never Ailed, statues of judges were set around the walls and the bare unpainted pillars rose austerely to a richer and more significant decoration of the inner dome. On the pccasion of the opening of the building for public use m Michaelmas 1796 a writer in the Dublin Evening Post (19th November 1796) gave an account of this decoration : . Round the inside of the dome is a continued large trieze of foliage, festoons of oak leaves, etc., and on the centre over each window, united with their ornaments are eight medallions of the antient legislators, much lar ger than life, viz. : Solon, Confucius, Numa, Lycur- gus, Alfred, Moses, Manco Capac, and the Irish Legis- 'ator, Ollamh Fodhla. In the piers between the windows ar , e . exec uted in stucco eight colossal statues in basso- relievo emblematic of Justice, Eloquence, Wisdom, liberty, Mercy, Prudence, Law, and Punishment, all executed to the bold masterly true style of the antique- grotesque—but the eye is particularly attracted by the statue of Punishment who stands with the fasces, the axe surrounded with rods, the string! of which are unbound as letting them loose to execute judgment, ^hilst the statue has its head averted and the hand before the eyes as loth to behold the punishment that Justi ce obliges Law to put in force." This is the work which Gandon mentioned in 1794 as having been cast and then modelled in situ the better to emphasise its e uef. To this contemporary description we may add a f t ^ w ? r d s o u r own. The frieze ran scroll-wire above windows and was lightly connected between the piers with the eight bas-relief statues which stood on insoles. Of these allegorical figures other than Punish- ment I can record only that Law was a noble female flgure helmeted and with a scroll in her left hand, flolding aloft in her right the lightnings of the Law, grille Mercy, garlanded, carried on her left arm an olive ra nch and, graciously extending her right arm, trod a sword and axe. Tablets on the consoles carried Ac names. The medallions were circular. Solon was aid and clean-shaven; Confucius, bearded, had a sun- a t of reeds or straw, and Manco Capac wore a high Cr own of feathers. The identity of this Peruvian legis- at °r, son of the sun, who introduced the arts of civil-

isation to his country, began early to baffle guide-book writers who invented Latin titles for him like Marcello Capae, though his name like the others was clearly written below. Not much later the French sculptor, Chaudet, was carving some of the same subjects on the Legislation pediment of one of the Louvre pavilions. His statues included Moses, Numa, and Manco Capac. Manco Capac also appears in Samuel Humphrey's translation from the French of certain Peruvian Tales published in Dublin in 1784 in a fifth edition. The translator's introduction to my copy, written in 1734, largely consists of a long account of Manco Capac drawn from Sir William Temple's essay on Heroic Virtue. It is evident that the Peruvian still stood for American Jurisprudence in European eyes in the very decade which saw Thomas Jefferson draw up the Declaration of Independence. The Dome The interior dome which carried this decoration opened through a balustraded aperture upon an outside dome of hardly less dimensions, lit by twelve windows in the drum. Gandon, as was evident in the Custom House, was partial to lantern lighting and certainly the light which poured into the hall from this source fell with fine effect. There is reason to think that the external dome was intended for use as a library, but, in fact, from its earliest days it became a depository for the Auditor General's records. Up to 1812 his books and documents had accumulated here to the enormous mass of fifty-two tons, threatening the safety of the entire fabric. When this great bulk was eventually removed, the dome continued to be used for storing records of which mv predecessor in the King's Bench, Mr. Henry Vivian Yeo, had charge as a young man, and I have seen the groove in the gallery rail worn by the rope and pulley by means of which, as he told me, these records were lowered to the hall. On the attic pedestal above the continuous entablature which ran around the inner dome, there were also four panels in bas-relief placed over the openings to the Court. Whether these pseudo-historical designs were by Edward Smyth him- self or were the work of an assistant they hardly deserved the encomia with which they were received as being "elegantly designed and executed with strict adherence to costume, in the habits, arms, and decorations of the times". In fact the Normans appeared in plate armour and the general composition exhibited only mediocre ability. The Ha'l, a bustling meeting place This ha'l in the absence of librarv or consultation rooms was the meeting-place of counsel, attorney, client and witnesses. Its bustling life was a perennial source of interested comment by visitors. It had become the rally- ing point of the wits of the town and the focus of town gossip. It doubled the parts of consulting room and fashionable promenade, foreseeing which we find from a King's Inns minute of 1796 the prudent Benchers appointing thirteen tipstaves wearing black gowns and black caps and carrying staves "for the purpose of keeping the hall quiet and free from improper and 45