Jeaffreson opens not with a black-letter treatise but with the surprising domesticity of the Inns of Court in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. He observes that women of character once frequented the gardens of Gray's Inn and the Temple, a stark contrast to the Victorian present where a lady entering those precincts must be "protected by circumstances that guard them from impertinence." This immediate focus on social space and gender sets the tone for a book that treats lawyers as inhabitants of a peculiar world, not merely as practitioners of law.

A Chorister's Defeat and a Chief Justice's Envy

The excerpt recounting Charles Abbott's failed bid for a Canterbury chorister place is the book's most sustained narrative. Jeaffreson builds the scene with novelistic detail: the barber father trimming a wig at his shop window, the rival boy fortified by a new-laid egg, and the young Abbott sobbing on the floor after losing. The author then pivots to the moral—"Failure is often the first step to eminence"—and reveals that the disappointed boy became Lord Tenterden, Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

Jeaffreson caps the story with a courtroom anecdote: the aged Lord Tenterden, attending service at Canterbury Cathedral, points out the successful chorister to a fellow judge and remarks, "Behold the only being I ever envied." The passage illustrates the author's method: a vivid, almost sentimental vignette followed by a wry, deflating punchline. The reader should note how Jeaffreson uses such set-pieces to humanize legal eminence, often by contrasting youthful failure with later success.

The Heckled Sergeant and the Rope-Dancer's Retort

In the chapter on amateur theatricals, Jeaffreson recounts Sergeant Wilkins being shouted down from a hustings with the cry "Go home, you rope-dancer!" The author notes that Wilkins had been a dramatic actor before turning to law. Rather than defend the stage or admit the charge, the sergeant simply ignored the interruption—a tactic Jeaffreson explains by noting that Wilkins "knew his audience" and that his stage past was best left unmentioned.

The anecdote is brief but revealing. It shows Jeaffreson's interest in the lawyer as performer, a theme that recurs across the book's sections on music, costume, and mirth. The reader should watch for how the author treats the boundary between legal dignity and theatrical display: here, the mob's insult is deflected by silence, not by eloquence. The episode also hints at the precarious social standing of barristers who had once trod the boards, a tension Jeaffreson explores more fully in later chapters.

Ladies in Law Colleges: A Lost Domesticity

The opening chapter establishes a central preoccupation: the decline of the Inns of Court as domestic spaces. Jeaffreson writes that "women of character and social position" once moved freely through the gardens and terraces, but now a lady enters the Temple only under conditions that "announce even to casual passers the object of her visit." He contrasts the present-day barrister's wife waiting in her carriage with an earlier era when lawyers' families lived within the colleges.

This observation is not merely nostalgic. The author uses the changing status of women in the Inns as a lens through which to view broader shifts in legal culture—from a collegiate, almost residential profession to a more commercial and masculine one. The reader should note that Jeaffreson does not argue this point abstractly; he grounds it in specific details of gates, lanes, and squares. The physical geography of Lincoln's Inn Fields and Middle Temple Lane becomes evidence for a social argument.

Structure and Voice: The Anecdotal Method

Jeaffreson's book is organized thematically—Houses, Loves, Money, Costume, Music, Theatricals, Education, Mirth—rather than chronologically. Each part contains chapters that mix historical survey with personal anecdote. The author, a barrister himself, writes in a genial, slightly arch tone, often addressing the reader directly. He is fond of the moralizing tag ("Failure is often the first step to eminence") but undercuts it with irony.

The excerpts show a writer who moves easily from the general to the particular. A chapter on "Ladies in Law Colleges" begins with a broad statement about the present-day inhospitality of the Inns, then narrows to a specific story about a barber's son. The reader should approach the book as a collection of loosely connected essays rather than a continuous narrative. Jeaffreson's evidence is drawn from memoirs, letters, and his own professional knowledge; he rarely cites statutes or cases. The pleasure lies in the digressions.

Jeaffreson's book rewards the reader who treats it as a cabinet of curiosities rather than a systematic history. The excerpts suggest that the author's real subject is not law but the lives of lawyers—their marriages, meals, wigs, and wit. A first-time reader should feel free to skip between parts, following whatever topic catches the eye. The index of contents, with headings like "The Piano in Chambers" and "A Rod Pickled by William Cole," gives a fair sense of the book's eccentric charm.