The Rev. E. Burnaby ; 63 



Colonel Fred Burnaby, my old friend in the Blues, and his 

 brother Evelyn, were much attached to one another. The 

 letters they wrote were refreshing, so full of fun and affection. 

 I wish it were a more general attitude in families ; brothers and 

 relations are so often jealous of each other, which spoils the 

 pleasure of family life entirely. 



Once while Evelyn was nursing Fred, who was laid up near 

 Nice, he had a difference of opinion with a Pole who wished to 

 fight him. Fred interviewed the enraged Pole and pointed out 

 that Evelyn could not very well fight him, as he was reading tor 

 Holy Orders, and duelling was not quite the thing for budding 

 curates, but that he would be very pleased to take his place and 

 give the foreigner satisfaction. As Fred's prowess with various 

 weapons was already well known, the offer was not accepted, and 

 the affair subsided. 



I do not think the Church was the profession of the Rev. 

 Evelyn's heart. When a boy he was studying for the law, 

 which interested him, but he was told that the family living 

 was being held for him under an Act of George IV., and his 

 fate was sealed one evening at dinner when Chief Baron Pollock 

 and Chief Justice Erie were his father's guests during the Assize 

 week at Bedford, and they were consulted by Evelyn's father 

 as to his son's career. Erie advised Evelyn to take the living, 

 but Pollock said he had made £500 in his first year at the Bar, 

 adding that no doubt it was an exceptional case. The Chief 

 Baron had been Senior Wrangler at Cambridge, and Mr. Burnaby, 

 senior, wishing to puzzle the Judge, asked him to write down 

 " eleven thousand eleven hundred and eleven " in figures. 

 He promptly answered 12,111, remarking, " It is only a trick." 

 The result of the after-dinner discussion was that Evelyn was 

 ordained, but the law was what he loved, and does to this 

 day ; indeed, nothing about Evelyn Burnaby 's life interests me 

 so much as his extraordinary interest in great trials. During 

 his career as a parson he made time to attend most of the 

 sensational murder trials that took place in nearly half a 

 century. 



From his corner of the court, or seat on the bench, which 

 was often accorded him, this hunting parson watched the 

 human dramas played out with such a keen eye for the dramatic 

 or bizarre that one wonders what his luck would have been if 



