“I shall now move on to some legal reminiscences,” said Ramsey, looking down at his wife in her comfortable chair. He preferred to read while standing, as this gave freedom to the diaphragm and allowed the voice to be projected.
“Legal things,” muttered Betty. “That’s nice, dear.”
“I have been a lawyer for my entire working life,” Ramsey began. “And I have never regretted, not for one single moment, my choice of the law. Had I decided differently at that fateful lunch with my prospective father-in-law in Broughty Ferry, I might have ended up in the marmalade business, but I did not.
I stuck to the law.
“Now that should not be taken to mean that I have anything but the highest regard for those in the marmalade business. I know that there are some who think it in some sense undignified to be involved in that sort of trade, but I have never understood that view. In my view, it is neither the bed you are born in, nor the trade you follow, that determines your value. It is what you are as a man. That’s what counts. And I believe that Robert Burns, our national poet, expressed that philosophy perfectly when he wrote A Man’s a Man for A’ That. It does not matter who you are or what you do; the ultimate question is this: have you led a good life, a decent life? And I believe, although I do not wish to be immodest, that I can answer these questions in the affirmative.
“I have, as it happens, had a strong interest in Burns since the age of ten. That was when I started to learn his works off The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part IV – Legal Matters 199
by heart, starting with To a Mouse. I always recommend that poem to parents who want their children to learn to love poetry.
Start with that and then move on to Tam O’Shanter when the child is slightly older and will not get too nervous over all those references to bogles and the like.
“But I digress. I knew from my very first day as a law student that the law was the mistress for me. I remember very clearly my first lecture in Roman Law when the professor told us all about the Corpus Iuris Civilis of Justinian and of how it had been trans-mitted, through the agency of Italian and Dutch scholars, to Scotland. That was romance for you! And it got better and better as we went on to topics such as the Scots law of succession and the principles of the law of delict. Succession was full of human interest, and I still remember the roar of appreciative laughter that rose up in the lecture theatre when Dr George Campbell Paton told us about the case of Mr Aitken of Musselburgh who instructed his executors to erect in his memory a bronze equestrian statue in Musselburgh High Street. And then there was the man in Dundee who left his money to his dog. That was very funny indeed, and it was only through the firmness of the House of Lords that the instruction was held to be contra bonos mores. I shudder to think, incidentally, what would have happened had the courts decided otherwise. It’s not that I have anything against dogs
– anything but – it’s just that all sort of ridiculous misuse of money would have to be sanctioned in the name of testamentary freedom.
I have very strong views on that.
“One never forgets cases like that. And there were many of them, including the famous case of Donoghue v. Stevenson, which was concerned with the unfortunate experience of a Mrs May Donoghue who went into the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley and was served a bottle of ginger beer in which there was a decaying snail. Mrs Donoghue was quite ill as a result, and so we should not laugh at the facts of the case. But it must certainly be very disconcerting indeed to find a snail in one’s ginger beer!
And there were other very good Scots cases, such as the case of Bourhill v. Young, which dealt with the claim of Mrs Euphemia Bourhill, a fishwife, who saw a motorcyclist suffer
200 The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty an unfortunate accident very close to the bus in which she was travelling. There is a remarkable, but little known fact about that case. The former professor of jurisprudence at the University of Edinburgh, the late Professor Archie Campbell, employed a housekeeper whose nephew was involved in the accident! I happen to know that, but not many others do. And there is a further coincidence. Archie Campbell used to live in one of those streets behind the Braid Hills Hotel, which is not far from the house occupied by me and my wife, Betty. Edinburgh is a bit like that.”
Ramsey Dunbarton paused after these disclosures, and looked at his wife. She had gone to sleep.
61. The Ramsey Dunbarton Story:
Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty
“I do think it’s a bit rude of you to nod off like that,” said Ramsey Dunbarton. “Here I am going to the trouble of reading you my memoirs and I look up and see you fast asleep. Really, Betty, I expect a bit more of you!”
The Ramsey Dunbarton Story: Part V – Johnny Auchtermuchty 201
Betty rubbed at her eyes. “I’m terribly sorry, dear. I was only away for a moment or two. I think that you had got to the point where somebody was building a statue of a dog in Dundee.”
“Oh really!” Ramsey said peevishly. “You’ve got it all mixed up. It was Musselburgh that the bronze equestrian statue . . .”
“Of a dog?” interrupted Betty. “Surely not. Surely one couldn’t have an equestrian statue of a dog? Wouldn’t that look a bit odd, even in Musselburgh?”
Ramsey sighed. “My dear, if you had been listening, instead of sleeping, you would have understood that the dog was in Dundee, and there was never any question of erecting a statue to it, equestrian or otherwise. But, look, do you want me to go on reading or do you want me to stop?”
“Oh, you must carry on reading, Ramsey,” said Betty enthusiastically. “Why don’t we do this: you read and then, every so often, take a look in my direction and see if my eyes are closed.
If they are, give me a gentle nudge.”
Ramsey agreed, reluctantly, and took up his manuscript again.
“Well, after all that legal training and whatnot I was duly admitted as a solicitor and found myself as an assistant in the Edinburgh firm of Ptarmigan Monboddo. It was a very good firm, with eight partners, headed by Mr Hamish Ptarmigan. I liked him, and he was always very good to me. If ever I needed advice, I would go straight to him and he would tell me exactly what to do. And he was never wrong.
“ ‘Always remember,’ he said, ‘that although you have a duty to do what your client wishes, you need never do anything that offends your conscience. If a client asks you to do that, you can simply decline to accept his instructions. And if you do this, you will never get into any trouble with either the Law Society of Scotland, or God.’