Greek v. Greek, or "An Ode to an Esquire."—1st May, 1847.
Cavenagh v. Boursiquot.
This was an action for libel tried before Judge A'Beckett and a Special Jury of Twelve, the origin of which arose thus:— The plaintiff was Mr. George Cavenagh, the proprietor and editor of the 'Herald', and the defendant was Mr. George D'Arly Boursiquot, proprietor and editor of the 'Patriot'. The two "Georges" were not only newspaper rivals, but personal foes, and their mutual animosity was such that had they been the two proverbial Kilkenny cats, they would have welcomed the opportunity that gave them a chance of engaging in a tight-rope encounter similar to that which the traditional grimalkins, according to Irish folk-lore, gobbled up each other. In the month of January the Special Jury List was revised by the Melbourne Court of Petty Sessions, and the name of Cavenagh, a Special Juror for the preceding year, being inadvertently omitted by the compiler, an application for its restoration was made and granted. In those times the position of special juryman was believed to confer a badge of social distinction, and as Cavenagh was now "on," Boursiquot could not comprehend why he should be "off;" and "on" he sought to be placed accordingly. For this purpose he put in an application, which, to his infinite chagrin, and Cavenagh's intense satisfaction, the Justices rejected. A paragraph appeared in the Herald recording the occurrence, and though it was piquantly peppered, it was nothing more than one of the many small spiteful interchanges of ill-will weekly bandied betyveen the contemporaries, and altogether insufficient to justify the manner in which the Patriot retaliated. The magisterial meeting was held on the 17th, the Herald notice appeared the day following, and after taking a week not only to nurse his wrath, but so shape it that it would scorch, the Patriot of the 26th published a poetical squib that nigh drove Cavenagh to distraction. Clever, pungent, witty, and telling; every second word like the sting of a wasp — an epitome of the real or reputed antecedents and characteristics of Cavenagh—it gibbetted him after a fashion he never forgot. It was not written by Boursiquot, but was the effusion of a guerilla rhymester named Hammond, and headed "An Ode to an Esquire." It will be seen from the following specimen extract that a more personal composition has hardly ever appeared in print:—
"His coward heart with venomed malice swells,
While rancid envy festers in its cells.
His brutal coarseness wakes th'indignant flush,
By manners fit to make St. Giles's blush—
Then turns apostate after he has hurled
His Dens' Theology against the world."
The special sting in this lampoon was its religious reference. Prior to Cavenagh founding a newspaper in Port Phillip he managed the Sydney Gazette, from the office of which journal was issued a cooked and mutilated edition of Dens' Theology, which certain controversialists averred was one of the class-books prescribed for the theological curriculum in some of the Roman Catholic colleges of Europe. Any individual responsibility on this score had been more than once disavowed by Cavenagh; but as his Melbourne paper was largely supported by the Roman Catholic community, trade-capital was occasionally made out of the Dens' transaction, and references to it wrung his withers considerably. The trial elicited a good deal of interest. Messrs. Williams and Stawell were Counsel for the plaintiff, and Mr. Barry for the defendant. The defence set up was that, as everything was fair in newspaper warfare, the matter complained of was only a journalistic "quid pro quo." The alleged libel had been provoked by the notice in the Herald in re the failure of the defendant's application to be enrolled as a Special Juror, as well as divers publications in the Herald disparaging the Patriot as to its circulation and in other respects. After an elaborate and dispassionate summing up by the Judge, the jury retired for three-quarters of an hour, and found for the plaintiff, damages £40, but only £13 found its way to Cavenagh, £10 of which he gave to the Hospital, and a further £10 to a Scotch Relief Fund.
