ing part in this cause!—dissolve my marriage! Mr. Barber refused to give me his arm when we were out walking together—dissolve my marriage! Mr. Barber put on my very preposterous and exaggerated crinoline one evening;—and, Gentlemen, where would have been the great harm if my client had shamed the lady into the use of a somewhat less ridiculous petticoat?—dissolve my marriage! Now, Gentlemen, be just; whatever opinion you may entertain of my client, as husbands, as fathers, as brothers, you must, I am very confident, be ready to set your faces against the prevailing fashion of ladies’ dress, and not be very much at variance with Mr. Barber, who holds strong and serious opinions upon the subject, and esteems this crinoline, as it is called, not a fitting garb for the wear of a modest and decorous British matron. Again, Gentlemen (and here I must call your attention specifically to the fact that it is not we who have raised this question;—Mr. Barber would, if the lady had allowed it, have been the last man to resort to recrimination, or to unveil her little foibles before the eyes of a British Jury, although she has shown no great tenderness to his defects of temper); but, again: Mrs. Barber says, my husband would not permit me to wear transparent petticoats over my huge balloon-like crinoline—dissolve my marriage! Why, doesn’t the very course and tenor of the accusation drive your minds—as I confess it does my own—irresistibly to the conclusion, that is was not of neglect of the lady, but of over-care and nervous anxiety for her welfare and fair repute, of which my client was guilty—if guilt there were; until she herself, by her own levity and coquetry, and by a system of petty persecutions, drove him from her side, estranged his affections, and did her best to compel him to seek elsewhere for that domestic comfort and sympathy which he could no longer look for at home.” (Mr. Shuttlecock accompanied the concluding phrases with a rising and falling movement of his body, just like a jockey over the last quarter of a mile of a race-course.) “Why, if Mr. Barber hadn’t cared for his wife, why should he have troubled himself as to what she wore, or what she didn’t wear? He wouldn’t have cared a button about it. She might, in the exercise of her own discretion, have displayed, or not displayed, her feet and ankles. All he would have wanted would have been to be relieved from the onus of her presence. In point of fact, the more ridiculous and unbecoming her attire, the better pleased would he have been. But this was not so. Mr. Barber in this instance, as in all others till his home was rendered unbearable to him, was an over-indulgent, an over-attentive, an over-anxious, an over-fond husband. That was his real fault, and that is why we are here to-day.”
I was beginning to forget what Mr. Battledove had told us, and what Mrs. Barber had stated herself when under examination; but the Court and the Jury will put Mr. Shuttlecock right in the end. Had he been in Court when the lady was in the pen, I am very sure he would never have represented these little transactions in so odious a light. Dr. Lobb ought to have carried the case through; he was handling it very nicely when Mr. Shuttlecock came in, and put our minds into such a state of confusion. The learned gentleman continued:
“There is certainly another point—I scarcely know how to approach it with sufficient gravity—but since so much has been made of it on the other side, I suppose it will be expected that in Mr. Barber’s name I should answer the charge. Mrs. Barber says, ‘I had stipulated with my husband in a very special and express way before my marriage—ay, during the period of our courtship—that I should be allowed, during coverture, to wear silken stockings, and no others. Despite, however, of all his promises—of all his protestations—my brutal and perjured husband did, within a very short space, forget these sacred obligations, and compel me to wear stockings, half of silk—half of cotton; or, if my learned friend, Dr. Dodge, will have it so,—Cotton Tops. Now, Gentlemen, let us pause for a moment over these Cotton Tops—let us turn them inside out—and see what is the legitimate inference to be derived thence. Here we find a young lady just at the most critical period of her life—when she has exchanged vows, for the first time, with her lover or husband—call him what you will—who sees before her an unknown and untried future, which, in most cases, Love tinges with its purple hues. What is she thinking about?—that she will be a glory in his prosperity—a solace in his sickness and adversity, to that man in whom she believes as the type and exemplar of glorified humanity? Pardon me, Gentlemen, if I carry you back to the times in which we also—we hard worldly men believed in such things—even we! Well! what is this young girl thinking about? Why, that a silken stocking will set off her foot and ankle to greater advantage than a stocking of any other texture. That is her notion of Love—that is the acorn out of which the sturdy oak of Mr. Barber’s domestic happiness is to grow. Do you see, now, Gentlemen, where I am coming to? Does not that agreement, made during the burning fervour of courtship, furnish you with a key by which you can explain the subsequent transactions at Folkestone, at Brussels, and elsewhere? Of course a lady who loved to clothe her dainty feet to such advantage, would be nervously anxious to keep the secret of her hidden symmetries and charms to herself, especially when her affections had departed from her husband, as Mrs. Barber admits in her own case, they had. She wouldn’t lift the end of her gown by a quarter of an inch upon a railway-platform—not she! Would not—and I leave this suggestion to your own consideration, Gentlemen of the Jury,—would not the same feeling which had imposed that pre-nuptial agreement pervade the whole of Mrs. Barber’s married life? Silk stockings in the first place—Love afterwards.”
This seemed a very hardy way of dealing with this incident; but what certainly did surprise me was to see my friend Lamb, by whose side I was sitting, take out a pencil and indorse a brief which his clerk had just brought with him—“Mr. Shuttlecock, Q.C., with you Dr. Dodge, 50 guas.” The learned Counsel continued, without being aware of the good fortune which was awaiting him, in a sentimental way:
