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
– 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 Cafe 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
Ramsey Dunbarton paused after these disclosures, and looked at his wife. She had gone to sleep.
“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!”
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.’
“And I remembered this advice when a client came to me and said that he wished to transfer all his assets into immoveable property – or land, as laymen call it – and in this way to defeat the right of his son, whom he did not like, to claim his legal rights to a share of the property on his father’s death. I was 202
“The client became very agitated by this and said: ‘If that’s the way you feel, then I can always go to another firm.’ So I said to him, ‘You do just that! I would remind you that I am a professional man and not some paid lackey you can order to do this, that and the next thing.’
“He took his business away from the firm and I had to report this to Mr Ptarmigan. I shall never forget his reaction. He said:
‘Dunbarton, you have done the right thing, even if this is going to cost the firm a lot of money, for which I must express a slight regret. But well done, nonetheless.’
“Later, I am happy to say, the son, whose interests I had sought to protect, and who had heard of my stand, became very successful and brought his business to us. Mr Ptarmigan noted that fact and pointed out that virtue was not always its own reward, in the sense that it sometimes brought additional benefits of a material nature. We both had a good laugh over that!
“Of course that particular client was an important one, but I never got to know him particularly well. I knew other clients rather better, and one or two of them even became friends.
Johnny Auchtermuchty was one of these.
