Eleven. One Tired Little Shuttlecock
Eleven
One Tired Little Shuttlecock
IN THE MATTER OF SCOTT v. SCOTT
Lincoln’s Inn, September 5, 1865
Sir Cresswell took his seat on the raised podium and surveyed the packed gallery. He attributed much of his own early success on the Northern Circuit to the practice of German physicist Lichtenberg’s pathognomy. By closely studying a person’s facial reactions and gestures, Cresswell believed he could determine their true motivation and character; given the bizarre matter again before him, he would now need to put this skill to its greatest test.
The petitioner sat facing Sir Cresswell, having renewed his application from two months earlier. This time, however, Mr. Denham Scott sought only a writ of seizure with respect to the marital property he claimed. Sir Cresswell had been surprised by this renewal—he had groaned so loud at seeing Scott v. Scott back on the docket that both his young clerks had come running. Cresswell was not surprised, however, by the decision to drop the petition for divorce altogether, requiring as it did proof of adultery. For all the petitioner’s continuing legal efforts, he now appeared unwilling, or at least unable, to accuse his estranged wife of that .
Sitting a short distance from Mr. Scott were three Americans: a striking young woman wearing a black-and-white ensemble that matched the colors of the barristers’ robes, an older woman who possessed worn-down features beneath an equally worn traveling cap and held a notepad and pencil at the ready, and a well-built, well-dressed young man with lively brown eyes. They were all three glaring at the back of the petitioner’s downcast head, and nobody whom Cresswell himself would want to cross.
“But the respondent is again not here?” Sir Cresswell asked Dr. Richard Pankhurst, who looked as frustrated as him to be back in court.
“Yes, My Lord.”
“Yet this matter is again before me.” Cresswell sighed. He closely studied the petitioner, whom he called in his head the “three-weeks-and-a-day” man. Such stubbornness of jaw, yet a sadness about the eyes—there was something else going on with him, Cresswell just knew it.
“I have been asked to adjudicate, once again, on the validity of the petitioner’s marriage at sea and any consequent right to the property of his wife. My counterpart in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the Honorable Associate Justice Roderick Norton, has seen fit to deny that foreign court any jurisdiction in this matter. We have before us a most rare and unfortunate instance of renvoi.”
There was a muttering of incomprehension throughout the court.
“Allow me to explain in less dizzying, more workmanlike terms. I passed the case to America, and they have passed it back to me. They are saying English law is to apply. But what is the law of England here, you ask? It is that American law should apply. Hence, renvoi, and the very clear danger of its ceaseless repetition should I indeed toss the case back over the ocean again, rendering it one very tired little shuttlecock—as am I of this matter, I assure the court.” Cresswell knew his reputation for being impatient and short-tempered—it was impossible to dispense with a divorce case a day otherwise.
“I should therefore like to inquire, before we proceed further, as to the nature of the object that has preoccupied the courts on two different continents. I can only surmise, given the extraordinary persistence of the petitioner, that the object he seeks to recover must be of equally extraordinary value.”
The petitioner quickly looked to his counsel, who stood up. “Your Lordship, the value is not at issue—only the court’s assignment of ownership.”
Sir Cresswell put up his right hand to silence the barrister.
“It is in our society’s great interest that marriage, individually and institutionally, be upheld whenever possible. It is in countries’ best interests that they be allowed to apply their own laws to the acts of their citizenry. We have here a days-old union threatened by a mere object. I will not make a decision in favor of English law and issue seizure against an American resident so blindly, when the stakes are so high.”
“Again, My Lord, the petitioner would prefer to disclose neither the value nor the facts of the object, if at all possible, but can attest to it being most easy to seize and transport.”
Sir Cresswell studied the petitioner again with narrowed, assessing eyes. Being a famous insomniac himself, he recognized the lines of fatigue about Scott’s eyes—one doesn’t dispense with a divorce case a day without it also taking a toll at night. “The petitioner is to approach the bench,” he ordered.
Denham Scott stood up and reacted as if to a noise coming from the three Americans sitting behind him. To Sir Cresswell’s relief, there was no sound of stomping suffragists as of yet.
“Mr. Scott, you are most persistent in your application. You have lost a wife, and much time and legal fees, to it. Before I allow you to further exhaust this court’s time as well, I must know what you are fighting for.”
The petitioner looked back at the front row of scornful Americans watching his every move, then to the rear of the gallery. Following his gaze, Sir Cresswell noticed among the crowd a nondescript group of young people, shabbily dressed and similar in feature to Mr. Scott.
“Your Lordship, the property that I seek to recover is of a most private and confidential nature. It is in written form and connected to one of the great literary figures of our time. As such, its disclosure would be newsworthy and, according to the editor of the Reynolds’s , could fetch upward of several hundred—possibly even a thousand—pounds.” For all his worn-down state, Scott held himself impressively tall, a look of pride in his eyes. “This sum may not seem significant to many in the court, but it represents ten years of work to me at least, and would immediately discharge my increasing legal debts and lift my seven much younger brothers and sisters, whom I support, out of poverty.”
Sir Cresswell took all of this in with some alarm: the idea of seven hungry little mouths going unfed struck the bachelor judge to his core. But as much as hundreds of pounds might mean to the young man before him, Sir Cresswell could not believe he was willing to throw over so much for it. Mr. Scott’s pained, brokenhearted visage caused Sir Cresswell to wonder: What if petitioner and respondent need only face each other, for both love and Lady Justice to be served?
Dr. Richard Pankhurst stood up to address the bench with all the spirit of a beleaguered parent. “This matter is a waste of the court’s time, Your Lordship. The petitioner has just allowed that the property in question is of a most private and confidential nature, yet in the same breath promotes its widest dissemination possible, through publication in a weekly news rag? The petitioner appears not to know top from bottom”—there was now loud female tittering from the gallery above—“and so I ask that Your Lordship apply renvoi and send the matter back again to America, where my client, Mrs. Scott, can renew her suit for divorce on the grounds of cruelty and rest assured of her right to the property in dispute. The prolonged and very public nature of these proceedings on both sides of the Atlantic, in and of itself, has caused my client the cruelest of pain and mortification, I can assure the court, and should satisfy any such grounds for dissolution.”
Sir Cresswell listened, but most of all, he looked. In fact, he was trying to read the room in so many directions, it made his head spin: the three angry Americans, the stubborn yet sad petitioner, the impoverished relations, and the suffragists in the upper gallery, boots at the ready. As the Judge Ordinary of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, Cresswell had full power to decide the matter. Once he did, there would be no going back, a newspaper headline worth shouting along with an historic legal precedent, and at least one heartbroken newlywed still to deal with.