CHARLES PHILLIPS

I WOULD endeavour to rescue from oblivion the memory of one who was a man of some mark in his time, but whose name in later years was scarcely spread beyond the circle of his immediate friends. Born under more favourable auspices, Charles Phillips might have risen to eminence; but he was condemned by adverse fortune to an obscure career, and was glad, after a long life of labour, to find repose on the soft cushion of a chair in the Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors. Nature had made Phillips fit to occupy a conspicuous position in almost any intellectual career, Fate condemned him to be an Old-Bailey barrister; but the fine qualities of the man were never wholly obliterated by the vulgar associations of a life of drudgery. He remained to the last genial, good-natured, and brimful of humour; in spite of many eccentricities, one of the pleasantest companions it has ever been my fortune to meet.

If the reader will be kind enough to imagine a stout gentleman, elderly, gray-whiskered, and inclined to corpulence, whose look and bearing were manly, dressed in a dark-blue paletot of the fashion so popular fifteen years ago, black trousers, boots of the kind called highlows, a carefully-brushed hat with a curly brim settled well back on his head, a black-silk handkerchief bound loosely round his neck, surmounted by high shirt-collars, he will have as good an idea as I can give him of the late Commissioner of her Majesty's Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors. In his early life he must have been eminently handsome. When I knew him in his decline, his features, though finely chiselled, had become coarse. Their heaviness was, however, redeemed by a pair of eyes deep-set, full of intelligence, dark, and more lustrous than I have ever seen in any head, the late Duke of Wellington alone excepted.

I think I can see my old friend now, rolling along the King'sroad at Brighton, much in the same fashion as I suppose the great Samuel Johnson used to do, flourishing his walking-stick. It was an Irish blackthorn, bought annually at Mr. Thatcher's, his habit, when this important purchase had been completed, being to present its predecessor to Mr. Alfred Hurley, who united in himself the triple functions of valet, body-clerk, and usher of the court in Portugal-street. This personage also inherited the cast-off paletot, the hat with the curly brim, and I have no doubt many other properties of his distinguished master. Phillips was curiously methodical and exact in all his habits. With the exception of another friend of

mine, the late W. A. Mackinnon, M.P. for Rye, he was the worstdressed man in Europe. He never wore gloves, and except once in his own house I do not remember ever seeing him in any other dress than that which I have described.

It was at Brighton I saw most of him. He used to spend his long vacations there, occupying for many successive seasons the same house in Cavendish-place, nearly opposite to that in which the accomplished daughters of the late Horace Smith, author of the Rejected Addresses, exercised for many years a genial and graceful hospitality. The daily companion of my morning walks, he found in me a ready listener to the anecdotes of which he had accumulated a fund which was apparently inexhaustible; and he acted these stories as well as he told them, stopping short, striking his blackthorn suddenly on the ground, and elevating his chin in a direction parallel to the plane of the horizon by way of emphasis, when he had made what he considered a good point.

Although educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated, Phillips seemed to me to owe less to culture than to the genuine native humour and shrewdness of his character. He was profoundly ignorant of all modern languages except his own. He knew little of what was going on in other countries. He never was on the Continent. His sympathies were apparently liberal, but I do not think he had any political opinions except those which it suited his friend and patron, Lord Brougham, for the time being to profess. Our readers are familiar with the Irishmen of Sir Jonah Barrington and Charles Lever: Phillips seemed to unite all these varied types of national character in himself. But he had one quality which is not national. He was prudent, and very careful of his money. I have seen him regard with mournful solicitude a five-pound banknote he was about to change, holding it up to the light and looking as if the chances were he would never see another. I have seen him also fondle the half-crown he was about to bestow in charity with a lingering affection, as if it went to his heart to part with the coin. He told me once, with tears in his eyes, how a friend of his in early life had succeeded in extracting from him the loan of a tenpound note, under the pretext of wanting it to go and bury his father. 'I believed him,' said Phillips; but I learned afterwards that he spent it in a house of doubtful reputation, where he was drunk for a week.' And then, as if the recollection of such atrocity was too painful for endurance, down went his stick, and up went his chin with his favourite gesture, while fiery indignation flashed from his eyes.

I saw him once shaking this blackthorn over the head of the late Mr. Albany Fonblanque, the editor of the Examiner, whom we encountered suddenly at Brighton. At another time I, the present writer, was in danger. I had indiscreetly endeavoured to reproduce

Chisholm Anstey's imitation of the peroration of one of his celebrated speeches I do not require vindictive damages at your hands, gentlemen of the jury; all I ask from you is to give me the value of this poor man's choild.' This Anstey did with infinite humour. I probably failed in catching his spirit, for the Commissioner was highly incensed, and swore he would be the death of Anstey as well as myself.

Phillips was high-spirited, and liked a 'shindy.' shindy.' He used to describe with grim humour what his sensations were in a duel he once fought, when he felt his antagonist's bullet graze his whisker; and I believe at any time of his life would have been quite pleased to engage in single combat with any foeman worthy of his steel. But he was fonder of a war of words, and was a neat hand at repartee.

There was a certain Jew stockbroker in those days at Brighton, who was reputed to be a man of great wealth. He used to carry a large gold snuff-box in his hand, with the contents of which he was pleased to regale his friends. Phillips was fond of chaffing this man of the money-bags, who knocked the letter H about, and was obtrusively vulgar.

We met once opposite the Bedford Hotel. The weather was warm, and the stockbroker, taking off his hat, mopped his face with a handkerchief. Then, looking attentively at Phillips, he said, Well, Mr. Commissioner, we are much of the same age, I think, but it does strike me as curious that your head is quite white. Now look at mine I have not a single gray hair, while my whiskers, you may observe, are as gray as yours. I have often wondered what the reason could be. I can account for it in no other having eaten some peaches in the month of October. occurred soon afterwards.'

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'No, sir,' says Phillips, that is not the cause. would like to know why your hair retains its original colour while your whiskers are white, I will tell you. Your jaws have been going for the last five-and-forty years, while your brains have been idle all that time.' Then, taking a huge pinch of snuff out of the gold box, he marched off, leaving the stockbroker pondering whether he had received a medical opinion or an insult.

It would be idle to deny that Phillips owed much of his success in life to the assiduity with which he cultivated the good graces of two of the most eminent men of his own time. But to infer, as his enemies did, that he was a tuft-hunter, would be to attribute to him a weakness quite inconsistent with the manly independence of his nature and the energetic industry which distinguished his career. It was to the kindness of John Philpot Curran, the great orator, and the then Master of the Rolls in Ireland-of whom he has written a biography, pronounced by Brougham to be equal to Bos

well's Life of Johnson-that he owed his first start in life; and it was through the influence of Lord Brougham himself that he obtained the valuable appointment which enabled him to pass his declining years in ease and comfort. To have attracted the notice and won the regard of two such men is in itself enough to prove that Phillips possessed no ordinary qualities. But a servile worshipper of rank he certainly was not; nor, although rigid even to parsimony in his personal expenditure, was he a lover of money for the sake of its sordid acquisition. It was, I think, part of his nature to be a hero-worshipper; and I believe the idea that he was thereby to derive any solid advantages was one which never crossed his mind. Yet it somehow came to pass that he proved an exception to the rule which forbids us to place our trust in princes. The great men to whom he paid homage were more or less grateful. That this homage was not insincere, but came direct from his heart, I would infer, from the fact that he was the faithful and devoted adherent, cum grano salis, as I shall presently relate, in all their vicissitudes of fortune, of the Bonaparte family, who could not be supposed likely to advance the fortunes of an English barrister. He was on terms of intimacy with General Gourgeaux, and aided by him, with Barry O'Meara, took an active part in alleviating the sufferings of Napoleon at St. Helena.

The public life of Phillips had ceased many years before his death, when a violent attack upon him, made by Mr. Fonblanque in the Examiner, brought him once more prominently before the world; and it was about that period a new edition of his Life and Times of Curran made its appearance. No man was better qualified than he, from long habits of familiar intercourse, to do justice to the memory of the great Irishman; and he has certainly performed the task with a wonderful fidelity and truth to nature. The book abounds in the drollest anecdotes, and contains many interesting particulars of the great orator's contemporaries. But as I write, I can recall one as humorous as any in the book itself. I relate it on the authority of the late Mr. Carew O'Dyer, sometime M.P. for Drogheda. Phillips, it seemed, was in the habit of going to the Priory whenever he pleased, and staying as long as suited his convenience. During one of these visitations the distinguished host, who prided himself on having one of the finest cellars of wine in the country, became weary, I suppose, of his guest, and the following dialogue took place between them:

Curran, Master of the Rolls, loquitur. Charles Phillips, I am getting tired of your society. I begin to perceive you repeat the same stories. I wish you would go away out of my house into your own, that is to say, if you have got one.

Phillips, briefless barrister, loquitur. I will go out of your house, Mr. Curran. I am only sorry I ever came into it. Your

bad wine has destroyed the coats of my stomach, and your damp sheets have given me the rheumatism.

If our readers will remember the respective positions of the two men-the one a great equity judge and the foremost orator of his day, the other a sucking barrister, without a brief or a guinea in his pocket-they will be able to appreciate the exquisite humour of this little passage of arms.

But the pair were soon friends again, and nothing occurred to disturb their intimacy until the death of Curran. The last note he ever penned was to Phillips. It was an invitation to dinner, and remarkable for not having in it a single superfluous word. It was, I believe, at the suggestion of his friend that the remains of the Master of the Rolls were removed from Paddington to their present resting-place at the cemetery of Glasnevin in Ireland.

Why Charles Phillips ever left the Irish bar, where he had achieved some sort of reputation as an advocate, I could never clearly understand. He was under the impression, which I believe to have been a complete delusion, that O'Connell was jealous of him, and used his influence to prevent his obtaining professional employment. But at one time they were great friends. Phillips accompanied him on the memorable occasion when he shot poor Mr. Desterre. He described the scene graphically. The field, he said, was white with snow; the surrounding hills crowded by spectators, who, had Desterre been successful, had determined he should never leave the ground alive. O'Connell took him aside and whispered,

Charles, they don't know it, but I am a dead shot; and if this man don't kill me, I shall kill him. I can't miss him as he stands out against the white ground.'

But for many years later on O'Connell and he were not upon speaking terms; and he was fond of describing how the great agitator, meeting him one evening in the lobby of the House of Commons, came up to him with both his hands open, and said in his silkiest manner, Charles, I forgive you from the very bottom of my heart. I am tired of quarrelling with you; let us be friends.' 'Did you ever hear of such confounded impudence ?' said Phillips, telling the story. It was I who had to forgive; he tried to take the very bread out of my mouth.'

Sligo had the honour of being my friend's birthplace, and he once tried to represent the county. Of his early career I know little more than was communicated to me by himself; but he had a wonderful memory, and spoke without much reserve of himself as well as of his associates. He shared the same lodgings in Dublin, he told me, with Richard Shiel, who was afterwards Master of the Mint and ambassador at Florence, and for this early friend he seemed to have a sincere affection. He used to describe most comically his first love.