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GAZETTE
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 1994
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Portrait of the late Terence de Vere White, by Muriel Brandt, which hangs
in the offices of McCann FitzGerald, Dublin.
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
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
down today to prompt you'.
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
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