The Gazette 1994

GAZETTE

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1994

Ely Place has pet mice, known as Sadlier and Keogh, which escape and are found behind "a weighty bundle tied up in green tape . . . labelled "in re Lynch, Haughey v Colley" . . . the papers were rather loose as if they had been put together in a hurry" (The Lambert Mile, 1969). "Hanna and Figgis" must have seemed an unlikely firm of booksellers in 1966, but so also would "Swiss & Browners" as a department store in 1959. His characters and their situations have many comic features, and there are some set pieces, such as a gymkhana in Mr Stephen or a hunt in An Affair with the Moon of which Waugh would have been proud. However in his writing there is an underlying seriousness of purpose and a number of illustrations of how comic situations may have uncomic consequences. Relations between men and women in his books are rarely straightforward. The Remainderman is the story, again told in the first person, of Michael Whaley, a young man of 17 who, following the death of his mother, is apprenticed to the family solicitor in Ely Place in 1929. (Mr de Vere White himself was apprenticed when 16.) It is primarily about his sentimental education and encounters with the opposite sex, but contains some unforgettable accounts of the old- fashioned legal office and style of legal practice. His master was a person whose room and appearance conveyed "an impression of inflexible respectability". Running messages was "dignified by the name of court work". Mr de Vere White had a particular gift for conveying straight-faced and utterly convincing accounts of incompletely understood events seen through the eyes of a young observer. Prenez Garde (1961) is narrated by a nine-year old boy. One of his best passages on the subject of first encountering the law is the description (in A Fretful Midge ) of his introduction to the courts, which deserves to be quoted in full: "On my first day in the office I went down with one of the clerks to court. He had to attend a young barrister who was making an application of

k

Portrait of the late Terence de Vere White, by Muriel Brandt, which hangs in the offices of McCann FitzGerald, Dublin.

down today to prompt you'.

some kind. It was a formal matter, but I noticed with surprise that before the barrister could answer the questions which the Judge put to him, he had to turn to the clerk who muttered the answers. It surprised me to find that the role of barrister was that of an elaborately decorated conduit pipe. It seemed a clumsy arrangement and, had I been the Judge, I should have been irritated by being addressed by a redundant interpreter. I began to wonder if the life of a barrister was not one of ridiculous ease compared to a solicitor's, in which all this information had to be collected. Next day I was sent down with a brief to the same barrister. I demurred. What use would I be who knew nothing about the case? The clerk assured me that I had no need to worry, and I could explain that he was too busy to come down himself. I handed the barrister his brief with respectful deference and apologised for the clerk 'who', I said, 'asked me to explain that he is too busy to come

I thought there was something distant in the barrister's manner at parting, but I attributed it to natural shyness. Years later when I found he regarded me with profound suspicion, I remembered our first conversation." The young solicitor, when he had qualified, might encounter difficulty too: " 'How long would it take to get [a court order]?' " Ralph hesitated. He wasn't sure. One was always meeting these elementary questions, and it was humiliating not to have the answer p a t . . . . [He] hoped he sounded authoritative; he felt miserable" ( The Lambert Mile). Mr Fox, Ralph's employer, "had a dominating personality; speaking he commanded silence; his own silences were daunting. Even after a client had stated his business Mr Fox in measured terms repeated it again as if to demonstrate that until then it was a mystery. . . as he had no temptation to

264