EDWIN WILKINS FIELD.* BY the personal friends of such a
man as the subject of this memorial-sketch no memorial whatever is needed. The only fear is that they will find any memorial inadequate to describe the character of the man who was so just and so wise, whose energy was so untiring, whose kindness was so hearty and active. For there was that in his actual presence which hardly any description can supply—the honest brightening eyes, the encouraging manner, the immediately helpful word—which were the first engines of the amazing influence he exercised over others in setting them hope- fully to work, in shaping their courses, and in colouring their whole lives. Therefore Dr. Sadler has done well to prefix to his memoir a photograph-copy of the portrait by Sir W. Gordon, and so to recall as far as may be the outward presentment of the man. Besides the lofty and capacious head, the picture reminds us of the strongly-knit frame, deep-chested and exceeding the middle height in stature, which fitted and disposed Edwin Field to every manly exercise by land or by water ; whether it were walking (with his load of sketching apparatus on his back), riding on horseback, or rowing, or swimming. But whatever it was, the exercise was pursued, not so much as an art or a sport per se, as for the end it secured. And herein his innate kindness was always predominant. Once an amateur sketcher had for some weeks en- joyed his delightful intimacy and sympathy on the river he loved so well, but being forced to depart, proposed to do so by rowing his own boat, with his portmanteau in the stern, to the nearest railway station accessible by water. Field was not satisfied without giving not only his company, but his help by taking an oar for one-half the journey, and all the while pretended it was because he wanted to see some particular effect of evening sun in some particular meadow which lay in the route. To some extent, therefore, the picture is an aid to recall identity to those who knew the man. It helps also to explain his nature to those who knew him but little or not at all ; and to these especially is the memorial useful. Who has not felt the solemn effect of reading how a good and diligent man has spent his time ; how serious a thing he thought it to be endowed with life and high faculties ; how little he counted what be had done in comparison with what re- mained to be done? What sermon could possibly be so wholesome ? Such a life was that here sketched ; and although the lesson might perhaps have been read with greater distinctness if Dr. Sadler had narrated events as they occurred in chronological order, instead of grouping together certain subjects by chapters, as " Law Reform," " Art," &c., yet enough appears to indicate a life of surpassing activity and usefulness.
Edwin Field was born in 1804, of a substantial Warwickshire family, and counted Oliver Cromwell among his lineal ancestors. We are told nothing of his boyhood except that he was educated at his father's school at Leam, and that in 1821 he was articled to Messrs. Taylor and Roscoe, solicitors, in London. Having quali- fied for the exercise of his profession in due course, he soon met in his path the inveterate evils which then obstructed the adminis- tration of the law. He set himself to remove these with characteristic energy ; and six clerks, clerks in court, and other enemies, fell before the reforming forces which were mainly raised and marshalled by him. Procedure rather than jurispru- dence he justly considered as more urgently requiring improve- ment. "The object should be to assimilate ultimately the pro-
cedure of all judicial establishments It cannot be right • Edwin Wilkins Field: a Memorial Sketch. By Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. London: Macmillan and Co. 1872.
that we should have one mode in the common law, another in equity, another in bankruptcy, another in lunacy, another in the Ecclesiastical Courts (to say nothing of the Scotch methods) ; that we should adopt, as now, one principle of procedure in a bank- ruptcy appeal, another in an appeal in equity to the Chancellor, and a third again in appeals to the Privy Council and the House of Lords." The Winding-up Acts, in the passing of which he was very instrumental, entirely altered the procedure of the Courts in regard to joint-stock companies. Indeed the practical impossi- bility of dealing with the affairs of such bodies under existing rules of procedure pressed upon him in cases where he was pro- fessionally engaged, and led him to take the first step towards those enactments. And here it should be observed that the same large views which revealed to him the defects of the law enabled him to deal with extraordinary difficulties in a manner and with a success quite beyond the thoughts of the mere legal practitioner. For instance, in the case of a well-known Irish bank, he declared that the shareholders must contribute according to their means, and not according to the number of their shares, if the concern was to be extricated from its difficulties ; and such was the ardour with which (as on all occasions) he enforced his conviction, that he carried his novel scheme not only with the consent, but with the gratitude of the shareholders. Another alteration in the law for which he stoutly fought and saw at last adopted was the limitation of the liability of shareholders in joint-stock companies ; and he partly succeeded, though not to the full extent he desired, in reforming the principle on which lawyers are paid for their work. The bills of solicitors, it is well known, are subject to official supervision or " taxation," —a supervision imposed on no other trade or profession. Con- formity to official rule is generally hollow, and brings absurdity and abuse in its train. " The false and mischievous principle," wrote Mr. Field, " of paying for what is not done, by way of com- pensation for not paying for what is done, pervades the whole frame of the law ; " and rather than countenance the system, he resolutely declined the most highly paid office that was open to him, namely, that of taxing-master.
Contemporaneously with his efforts to procure the passing of the Winding-up Acts, Mr. Field was also busy in securing what must always be considered one of his greatest public victories, the passing of the Dissenters' Chapels' Act of 1844. The occasion upon which the Bill was proposed is thus stated by Dr. Sadler (p. 43) :—
"In the well-known Lady Ile wley case it was held by the judges and ruled by the Lords that no endowment could be regarded as intended in favour of a form of worship which the law did 'not tolerate at the time of the endowment, and that this original defect was not cured by any subsequent legalization of the same form of worship.' " Of course no law passed now can retrospectively create a new intention. The intention remains what it was, however often
the law may be changed. But, in fact, the judgment in the case of Lady Hewley's charities is not here accurately stated. The question was whether Unitarians were included among the objects of Lady Hewley's charity, and if Dr. Sadler will read the report in 9 Clark and Finelly, 355, he will find that the judges inferred what Lady Hewley's intention was almost entirely from the known opinions of herself and her associates, and from the mean- ing generally attached to the language she had used at the time of the endowment. In the words of one of the most eminent of the judges, they proceeded " on the ground that the words of the deed, as then generally understood, did not comprise those who- impugned the doctrine of the Trinity, not because they were not then tolerated by law." In another place the author says (p. 134) :—
" In his professional capacity he was frequently employed in prepar- ing trust-deeds for chapels, institutions, and endowments in connection with his own religious body. True to the Presbyterian traditions in which he was brought up, he was strongly of opinion that no congre- gation should attempt to bind after generations to any doctrines or forms, under penalty of renouncing ancestral property."
It may well be believed that the traditions in which Mr. Field was brought up were of the liberal kind here described. For he was most tolerant as well as most religious. But that these were- Presbyterian traditions will be a surprise to those who have had opportunities of perusing Presbyterian endowment-deeds.
It is not to be supposed that, because Mr. Field was impatient- of abuses and all that he thought such, there was any' shadow of discontent on his spirit. The eagerness with which he pur- sued whatever promised improvement by no means interfered with present enjoyment, though it may be that the celerity with
which he extracted the good from anything, left others with less active brains and temperaments far behind. His sovereign remedy for "a mind worn and torn by affairs was nature, with art as the truly efficacious mode of applying it." "The revival and cure," he said, " are effected by a process not slow and vegetative, as when we turn out a worn horse to grass ; but instantaneous almost and Antrean,—renewing to a man, just about to faint in his world-struggles, all his first strength, the moment we bring bim into genuine contact with his mother Earth. This belongs not so much to artists, as the study there is in the very life-struggle itself. But to amateurs who have other duties as their main call- ing art is a relaxation and cordial only." A remarkable illustra- tion of these positions is to be found in the portrait picture by Mr. Walter Field, referred to p. 62n (a picture representing an actual event), where the amateur is standing up in the boat calling on his companions to see the beauty of the prospect, while the " artist-friend " reposes more tranquilly in the stern-sheets. Sketching from nature was Mr. Field's constant occupation in the holidays, and among amateurs he stood facile princeps. What- ever be the lever, he once said, with which you propose to move the world, it requires brains to know how to use it. And so, when he took the brush in his hand, no wonder he excelled most others. His drawings spoke in a language as distinctly individual as was his speech, and bore what he rightly declared was the "essential element of all real works of art, viz., the passion and peculiar mental character and impulse of the individual human being who painted it." And again, " Art is nature reflected not in or through a lens, but in or through a highly-organised sentient soul ; such soul eliminating [eliciting ?] that which to such soul is the exciting quality of the scene forming the theme of his picture." Such were the doctrines with which he interested those who undertook the carriage through Parliament of the Bill for giving copyright in works of fine art (1862), the enactments of which, however, as finally clogged by the wisdom of our legislators with proviso upon proviso, have been of less use to the artist than to the photographer. He was, indeed, in the true sense an artist. But with all the artist's impetuosity, he had none of his irritability. And when sketching from his boat moored in his favourite Thames, it was no uncommon sight to see him beset by a swarm of other boats rowed by his children (then quite young), who claimed his attention to this or that, as that he should whistle for A, who had carried off B's boat, or should compel C to restore D's rudder to its rightful owner, all which he did, and resumed his brush with perfect equanimity. For he was made of proved metal, and was equally fit to bear the rubs of action and to explore the realms of poetry. Mr. Field's feelings regarding art were summed up in four little words, "I do reverence Art."
Dr. Sadler has executed a difficult task well. It was no easy thing to review such a life in the narrow limits of one hundred and seventy small pages. But he has done it very completely, and the brevity of his book is, in these days of dull prolixity, only another claim on our gratitude. Besides the memorial thus secured zre perennies, a considerable sum has been subscribed, and is still growing, for the purpose of erecting or establishing in more outward and visible form "some suitable and permanent memorial of Edwin Field," and thus of marking " the general feeling that exists of admiration for his character and respect for his memory." It is good that we who survive should cherish such a memory, and do what we can to hand it down to those who come after us. There is no better incentive to a good life than the example of a good man.
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