The bow tie is very interesting in England. It's certainly a sign of flamboyance and also of status in certain professions.

The cravat in England is another interesting thing. Very dubious.

This is really weird because we have been re-watching both Rumpole and Midsomer on Youtube recently! I remember many a speculation over the basis for Rumpole. One of them is that the name may come from the Rumboe pub in Old Bailey. Pommeroy's Wine Bar is a thinly-disguised El Vinos, and probably gets the name from a picture on the wall at the back, advertising Pommery champagne. As to the character: there is undoubtedly a bit of the late Caesar James Crespi QC there (although he only prosecuted) and also something of the late Mungo Fitzpatrick, as well as the 'One-Armed Bandit' (whose name I have temporarily forgotten). I'll dig out something about these people later on. They were all very distinctive.

Here's Crespi's obit in The Independent:-

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-james-crespi-1531501.html

Mungo Fitzpatrick was not generally so well known but he was also a real character and part of Crespi's coterie in El Vinos, and I remember that he always wore spongebags and black coats with frayed cuffs. Sometimes I saw him and his wife in the Clissold Arms in Fortis Green (Muswell Hill) and they would always have a chat. Once a pupil was reading The Beano comic in Mungo's room in chambers and a pompous bore entered and said 'Can't your pupil find something better to read!'. The pupil put down The Beano and picked up a volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall - and Mungo looked at the bore and said 'I don't suppose that you read that either, do you!'

These people were, despite their crusty appearances, romantic in the way that Rumpole is and, while not in the slightest 'politically correct', they were concerned with the rule of law; perfectly honest and kindly and enjoyed getting on with the job, instead of paper-chasing and form-filling and indulging in all the increasing forced pettiness of modern life. They would not understand how the legal profession has become, first and foremost, a kind of business with advertising and boasting about how good you are. They saw the point of having money but they didn't hark on about it or see it as the main objective. I suspect that they (and Rumpole too) would despise some of the modern ways; especially the ways in which the victims' charter overshadows criminal trials and the defendant is increasingly forced to explain himself or have adverse inferences drawn - quite appalling, really - changes brought in to genuflect to fleeting public opinion, whipped-up, by the press, in the face of some ghastly failure by social services or the police, resulting in an avoidable child death or something like that.

Much like James Bond, Rumpole probably doesn't draw on just one character but many and some of the candidates are still alive so I won't mention their names. John Mortimer did say in an introduction to a Rumpole episode that he wrote the books with Alistair Sim in mind but was very happy with Leo McKern.

Rumpole did get smarter as the series progressed but his battered homburg, umbrella and old scarf endured. In fact, he was once brow-beaten into buying a bowler to replace the homburg but, at the end of one of the books, he opens a cupboard and sees his old hat, puts it back on and dumps the bowler in the bin.

I am not sure that the clothes make Rumpole; the books don't say much about them. I think that it is his philosophy; his particular point of view; his refusal to compromise or be compromised, and the apt quotations, which people that Rumpole doesn't like never understand. His greatest attribute is that he is incorruptible because all that he wants is to make enough to keep She Who Must Be Obeyed in Vim, washing powder and groceries, to smoke his small cigars and drink his Chateau Thames Embankment, in Pommeroy's, at the end of the long day, with like-minded friends, such as George Frobisher. I hope that is why he is loved.

Last edited by NJS (2013-08-31 16:04:59)

Last edited by formby (2013-09-01 07:48:05)