Sir John Watson Gordon, Ra, 1788-1864 Portrait of Samuel Warren, D.c.l. (1807–1877)

Sir John Watson Gordon, RA, 1788-1864

Portrait of Samuel Warren, D.C.L. (1807–1877)

Portrait of Samuel Warren, D.C.L.

oil on canvas

92 x 72 cm. (36 x 28 in.)

Warren, Samuel (1807–1877), lawyer and writer, was born on 23 May 1807 near Wrexham, Denbighshire, the elder son of Dr Samuel Warren (1781–1862), clergyman, and his first wife, Anne (1778–1823), daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Williams. Little is known about Samuel Warren's early education except his statement in the preface to Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician that he was for six years before 1827 'actively engaged in the practical study of physic' (Preface to fifth edition, edn of 1837 Passages in Warren, Works, 1854–5, vol. 1), perhaps as an apothecary's apprentice. From 1826 to 1828 Warren attended the University of Edinburgh where he studied various subjects and won prizes in comparative jurisprudence and poetry, but did not obtain a degree. His poetry prize led to introductions to Christopher North (John Wilson), and to Thomas De Quincey, two of the leading lights in Blackwood's Magazine.

Warren was admitted to the Inner Temple, London, in 1828; he studied law and worked as a special pleader there until 1837, when he was called to the bar. In 1831 he had married Eliza Ballinger (c.1802–1868); they had two sons and a daughter. This period also saw the serialization in Blackwood's Magazine of the work that made his literary reputation, Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician (1831–7). He later described his views and feelings in writing the book as 'those not of a Novelist, but of a Moralist' whose 'steady purpose … was to exhibit deathbeds' (Preface, 1854 edn of Passages in Warren, Works, 1854–5, vol. 1). The success of the book depended on the sensational and melodramatic atmosphere of the stories which parade the horrors of debauchery, disease, madness, and death with an almost erotic fascination.

Warren had not restricted his writing to creative efforts during this time; he also published the first edition of A Popular Introduction to Law Studies (1835), a guide for those intending to become law students. In 1837 Warren, with John William Smith, published Select Extracts from Blackstone's Commentaries, and he was later to publish a much extended Blackstone's in 1855 and 1856.

Warren's second novel, published in Blackwood's Magazine from 1839 to 1841, was Ten Thousand a-Year. The novel, which was an immediate best-seller, concerns a firm of attorneys who discover that Tittlebat Titmouse, a poor draper's clerk, may have a claim to the large estate of Yatton. The attorneys commence an action which results in Titmouse displacing the unbelievably pious John Aubrey as the owner of the estate, and its annual income of £10,000. Titmouse revels in his new found wealth, until a new round of litigation is commenced which returns Aubrey to his place as squire of Yatton. Titmouse is disgraced, and ends his life in a lunatic asylum. The narrator repeatedly tells the reader that the English legal system is close to perfection, but the actual workings of the law in Ten Thousand a-Year paint a more negative picture.

Dickens seems to have read Warren's fiction and non-fiction, and to have borrowed images and ideas. Sir Leicester Dedlock and the solicitor Vholes in Bleak House (1852–3) resemble the earl of Dreddlington and Gammon, Titmouse's principal lawyer, in Ten Thousand a-Year. The striking picture of barristers in court bobbing up and down like hammers in a pianoforte in the first chapter of Bleak House is similar to an image in chapter nine of the second edition of A Popular Introduction to Law Studies (1845). Wemmick's habit of collecting mementos from Jaggers's criminal clients in Great Expectations parallels Quirk's practice in Ten Thousand a-Year. Warren may have returned the favour by using elements of the Bardell v. P