Horace Rumpole
While certain biographical details differ slightly between the original television series and the subsequent book series, Horace Rumpole has a number of definite character traits that are constant. First and foremost, he loves the courtroom. Despite attempts by his friends and family to get him to move on to a more respectable position for his age, such as a Queen's Counsel (QC) or a Circuit Judge (positions Rumpole sarcastically calls "Queer Customers" and "Circus Judges"), he only enjoys defending his clients (who are often legal aid cases) at the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court: "the honour of being an Old Bailey Hack", as he describes his work. A devotee of Arthur Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse , he often quotes Wordsworth (and other poets less frequently, e.g. Shakespeare). He privately refers to his wife, Hilda, as "She Who Must Be Obeyed", a reference to the fearsome queen in H. Rider Haggard's adventure novel She .
His skill at defending his clients is legendary among the criminal classes. The Timson clan of "minor villains" (primarily thieves) regularly rely on Rumpole to get them out of their latest bit of trouble with the law. Rumpole is proud of his successful handling of the Penge Bungalow Murders "alone and without a leader" (that is, as a "junior" barrister without a QC) early in his career and of his extensive knowledge of bloodstains and typewriters. Cross-examination is one of his favourite activities, and he disdains barristers who lack either the skill or courage to ask the right questions. His courtroom zeal gets him into trouble from time to time. Often, his investigations reveal more than his client wants him to know. Rumpole's chanciest encounters stem from arguing with judges, particularly those who seem to believe that being on trial implies guilt or that the police are infallible.
Rumpole enjoys smoking inexpensive cigars (cheroots), drinking cheap red wine and a diet of fried breakfasts, overboiled vegetables and steak and kidney pudding. Every day he visits "Pomeroy's", [1] a wine bar on Fleet Street within walking distance of the Old Bailey and his chambers at Equity Court, at which he contributes regularly to an ever-increasing bar tab by purchasing glasses of red wine of questionable quality, which he calls variously "Cooking Claret", "Pomeroy's Plonk", "Pomeroy's Very Ordinary", "Chateau Thames Embankment", or "Chateau Fleet Street".
His cigar smoking is often the subject of debate within his chambers. His peers sometimes criticise his attire, noting his old, battered Homburg hat, imperfectly aligned clothes, cigar ash trailing down his waistcoat and faded barrister's wig, "bought second hand from a former Chief Justice of Tonga" (or the Windward Islands: Rumpole is occasionally an unreliable narrator).
Despite his affection for the criminal classes, Rumpole has firm ethics. He is a staunch believer in the presumption of innocence, the "Golden Thread of British Justice". He often reinforces this by proclaiming that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent to be convicted (essentially Blackstone's formulation).
Accordingly, Rumpole's credo is "I never plead guilty", although he has qualified that credo by stating on several occasions that he is morally bound to enter a guilty plea if he knows for a fact that the defendant is guilty of the crime of which they are accused (in fact, he enters a guilty plea on behalf of his clients in "Rumpole's Last Case"). But if he has any doubt whatsoever about the facts surrounding the commission of the crime, even if the defendant has confessed to the deed (having stated, and proved, on one occasion that "there is no piece of evidence more unreliable than a confession!"), Rumpole feels equally honour bound to enter a plea of "not guilty" and offer the best defence possible. His "never plead guilty" credo also prevents him from making deals that involve pleading guilty to lesser charges (again, with some exceptions; in "Rumpole and the Tap End" he persuades his client to plead guilty to assault in exchange for the dismissal of a charge of attempted murder). Rumpole also refuses to prosecute, feeling it more important to defend the accused than to work to imprison them. There was one exception, when Rumpole took on a private prosecution, working for a private citizen rather than for the crown, but he proved that the defendant was innocent and then reaffirmed, "from now on, Rumpole only defends".
Some of Rumpole's clients feel that things would have been better for them if they had been found guilty and resent him for getting them off. [2]
Mortimer's 2009 obituary in The Daily Telegraph confirmed that Rumpole was, in part, based on a chance meeting in court with James Burge QC:
In the early 1970s Mortimer was appearing for some football hooligans when James Burge, with whom he was sharing the defence, told him: "I'm really an anarchist at heart, but I don't think even my darling old Prince Peter Kropotkin would have approved of this lot." "And there," Mortimer realised, "I had Rumpole." [3]
In the television series, where Rumpole first appeared, there is some consistency with regard to Rumpole's backstory. The original play is set in 1974, and Rumpole says he is 64 years old, suggesting a birthdate of 1910 (Leo McKern, the actor who played Rumpole, was born in 1920). Rumpole's Oxford Book of English Verse is inscribed "Horace Rumpole, Little Wicks School 1923. Cursed be he who steals this book," (Series 4 – 1987); in Rumpole and the Fascist Beast it is mentioned that he studied at Birkenshaw School, which he calls "a wind-blasted penal colony on the Norfolk coast"; he bought his barrister's wig in 1932; first appeared in court in 1937; first met Hilda on 14 August 1938; served in the RAF Ground Staff in World War II; married Hilda in approximately 1944; won the Penge Bungalow Murder case in 1947; and had his son Nick in 1951. The series itself takes place between 1967 and 1992, when Rumpole is getting on in years.
Within many short stories and occasional novels, which were written over a 29-year period (1978–2007), Rumpole's biographical details fluctuated. For example, in the first book, published in 1978, Rumpole mentions buying his wig in 1932, and another time to proposing to Hilda in 1938, and his "sixty-eight next birthday". In Rumpole and the Fascist Beast it is mentioned that Rumpole was born sometime before the outbreak of World War I. These last two pieces of information would indicate a birth year of 1911, but later books contradict this. Rumpole and the Primrose Path, for instance, appeared in 2003 and was set in the present day, but Rumpole was in his seventies, not 92. Nonetheless, when in Rumpole and the Primrose Path Erskine-Brown asks Rumpole what he sings to himself when he is alone, Rumpole replies, "A ballad of the war years."
In general, in the book series, it would seem that Rumpole has been frozen at an age of around 70 years, and past events in his life have been retconned to fit each story's time frame. Thus, in the books published in 1996 and before, he proposed to Hilda in 1938, and in books published in 2003 and after, it appears that he neither became a barrister nor met Hilda until after World War II ended in 1945. Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, containing his first unled case and his engagement to Hilda, takes place in the early 1950s, entirely inconsistent with the early stories. Since 1988, when Phyllida Erskine-Brown became a QC and "Soapy" Sam Ballard became Head of Chambers, the other characters seem to be similarly frozen in time. In Rumpole and the Reign of Terror, Rumpole was still practising in 2006, and Judge Bullingham was still in post – unless this is a different Bullingham, but that is never stated explicitly. In the 1990 story Rumpole at Sea, Rumpole says of Bullingham: "But now we have lost him." The prior "Mad Bull" was Roger Bullingham, and this Bullingham's name is Leonard.
The son of Reverend Wilfred Rumpole and his wife Alice, and born at Dulwich, [4] [5] Rumpole attended "Linklater's" (a fictional minor public school) [6] and studied law at either Keble College [7] or the fictional "St Joseph's College", Oxford, [8] coming away with "a dubious third" (Oxford then awarded fourths, so a third is equivalent to a 2:2). Rumpole was called to the bar at the "Outer Temple" (a fictional Inn of Court, named on the analogy of the Inner Temple, where John Mortimer was called, and the Middle Temple).
Rumpole's family
Apart from the legal drama in each story, Rumpole also has to deal with his relationships with family and friends. His wife Hilda (whom he refers to as "She Who Must Be Obeyed") was proud of her "daddy" (as she calls him), C. H. Wystan, [9] who was Rumpole's Head of Chambers, and she frequently advocates that Rumpole seek a higher position in the legal world such as Head of Chambers, Queen's Counsel or a judgeship. [10] The Rumpoles reside in a cavernous, underheated mansion flat at 25B Froxbury Mansions (sometimes called Froxbury Court), Gloucester Road, London.
Rumpole raises tensions with his American daughter-in-law Erica (Deborah Fallender) because of their differing views (such as her disapproval of his cross-examining a rape victim he believed to be lying). [11] His associates' dynamic social positions contrast with his relatively static views, which causes feelings between him and the others to shift over time.
Rumpole retired for a short period of time, moving to Florida to be near his son Nick, a sociology professor and now department head at the University of Miami. [12] Nick is described by Rumpole as "the brains of the family". Nick was educated at public school as a teenager, then studied at Oxford University and Princeton. His academic visit to Baltimore University was determinant for staying in the US. Rumpole often says that Nick is proud of his father's work in criminal law, and enjoyed his accounts of his cases and "harmless legal anecdotes".
