More on the Legal Drafgtsman’s Dept. and those who adorned it

Excerpted from a Cabinet Secretary’s Memoirs by BP Peiris

(Continued from Apr. 9)

Mervyn was succeeded as Legal Draftsman by P. C. Villavarayan, a classical scholar from Oxford and a great gentleman, so polished in his manners that he never liked to hurt anyone else’s feelings. He always had a Greek and a Latin book on his table: Martial’s Epigrams, Vergil, or the Greek Anthology to check up on quotations. Apart from being a scholar, he was a philosopher and his philosophy was obviously based on and influenced by his classical training.

He was never worried; he was never flurried; and he never seemed to be in a hurry. His ordinary letters were short essays in English, polished and cultured. He was the politest of men; but when the occasion demanded, he could be the firmest also. He had integrity and strength of character and was not prepared to knuckle down to others.

When I started as a temporary draftsman, P. C. V. was asked to supervise my work. He went out of his way to help me. I worked in his room and we lunched together in an ante-room. There has always been a camaraderie among the legal profession and age did not seem to count. I had rice and curry from home. He existed on four cheese sandwiches, two plantains and an apple.

His lunch was the same every day and, as if his doctor had prescribed it, he always consumed the three items of his diet in the order mentioned, the apple coming last. He gave no explanation for this rigid habit—how could he?—for he was robust and in the best of health. In spite of the age difference between the two of us, he was a genial companion.

Colonel Halland, the new Inspector-General of Police imported from India, was an imperialist and a snob. Admiral Layton, the Commander-in-Chief, once summoned a conference to decide on the steps to be taken to impose a blackout. It was attended by senior officers of the Police, the Local Government Department, the Controller of Motor Traffic, others concerned with various aspects of the problem, and P. C. V. Decisions were reached and orders given that the necessary draft legislation should be got ready as soon as possible for the consideration of the Commander-in-Chief. The next day, while I was in P. C. V.’s room, his telephone rang. Col. Halland was on the line and the following conversation took place:

Halland – About yesterday’s conference, I have fixed a meeting in my room for 11 a.m. today and I expect to see you here. I hope the time suits you.

V. – The time suits me, Col. Halland. Meetings of this nature are always held in my chambers and I will be waiting for all of you here.

H. – But why is that? I have called this meeting.

V. – That is correct, but on yesterday’s decisions, a legal draft has to be prepared, and that is always done in my Chambers.

H. – You must remember that I am the Head of a large and important Department.

V. – I know that, Col. Halland, but you have not been long enough in this country to know that I am the head of a very small but very important department.

H. – What is the principle about this?

V. – There is no principle. It has always been the practice. But if you want to know, I suppose it is on the basis that the client comes to the lawyer, not the lawyer to the client.

H.- But you ate not putting me in the position of an ordinary client? I told you that I am the head of a very big department.

V. – Well, Col. Halland, Admiral Layton has ordered you to produce a draft of the proposed legislation. If you can prepare it, please do so. If you want me to prepare it, it will be done in my Chambers.

H. – I shall report this to the Legal Secretary.

V. – Please do so. He knows the practice.

The conference was held in the Legal Draftsman’s Chambers, but Halland did not attend. The bubble of his arrogance had been pricked by Villavarayan and he sent a subordinate officer to represent him. That was how the Defence (Blackout) Regulations came to be drafted.

I was asked to draft a set of Defence Regulations for the formation of a Women’s Auxiliary Corps. At that time we had the WRENS and the WAAFS here, and I had therefore to draft in such a way that our girls would not be mistaken for the foreigners. Following normal office routine, my draft found its way into P. C. V.’s tray. After he had been through it, he sent for me and said something like this: “Peiris, in your regulations, you have grossly insulted the women who will be the members of this Corps. Look at the name you have given to the Corps – ‘Ceylon Auxiliary Territorial Service’ – Can these women carry the letters CATS on their caps? I am altering it to ATS (C). In the second place, you are guilty of gross cruelty to the women. Look at your regulation 18, which deals with uniforms. You say here that medals shall be pinned on the left breast. I cannot possibly let that pass.” And he altered the word “breast” to “lapel of the coat.” My regulation had been taken over rather carelessly from a corresponding regulation relating to a men’s regiment.

P. C. V. retired at 55 when he could have worked till sixty because, as he said, he was disappointed with the D.S. Senanayake regime. D.S. had P. C. V.’s salary increased by £ 200 on the condition he would not ask to be considered for appointment to the Supreme Court Bench.

On his retirement, he refused a farewell by his office staff, came to the office on his last day of work, and walked out at the end of the day without saying “Good-bye” to a single one of his colleagues or the members of the staff. We were all sorry he left us in this way.

At the time when Mervyn was Draftsman, P. C. V., the senior assistant and I, a temporary assistant; the next in the line of succession was Harry Wendt, a son of Mr Justice Wendt and a brother of Lionel, a name too well known in Ceylon and abroad to need any special reference from me. Harry was a well-bred, well-read gentleman. There is one thing that a legal draftsman dislikes, and that is to be disturbed in the middle of his drafting; it breaks his train of thought.

This sort of disturbance never seemed to affect Harry. He was ever ready to put his draft away and give us, Juniors, his advice on a matter of law or drafting whenever his advise was sought. He would put his own papers away, listen to our problem, bring his mind to bear on our difficulty, and then tell us how we should proceed with our draft. A gracious, patient man.

Harry had few friends. He used to come to my house in a rickshaw, dressed in a well-starched suit. He liked informality and was in the habit of taking his coat off and making himself comfortable in my armchair. Then followed, over a drink, a very interesting conversation lasting a couple of hours. I once kept him to dinner. We had string hoppers, chicken curry and a very hot sambol, prepared by my wife at Harry’s special request. Harry enjoyed the sambol, but towards the end of the meal, tears were streaming out of his eyes and he called them tears of joy.

Harry was a slow but a very thorough draftsman. After several years of drafting, he became tired of the work; the strain was beginning to tell on him and he desired a change. Drayton said that no man ought to be kept as a draftsman for more than 10 years. Howard, who was then Legal Secretary was sympathetic, and asked Harry whether he would like to go as Additional District Judge, Nuwara Eliya, which post was at that moment vacant.

The change of work and the climate would have done Harry a world of good. Harry was happy and accepted, but Mervyn, as Head of Department said that he could not be released. Harry never forgave Mervyn for that. Later, everyone saw the reasonableness of Harry’s request for a change of work and Villavarayan saw to it that he went as Additional District Judge of Galle.

I asked Harry what he would do, never having been a judge before, if one of the lawyers suddenly rose before him and raised a preliminary objection. He said that he had been so long drafting that he had forgotten the niceties of the practice of the law. He said he would ask the lawyer under what provision of law he was objecting, would then ask counsel on the other side what he had to say, and, having listened to both sides, would be in a position to make up his own mind and make his order.

He proposed, as much as possible, to keep his mouth shut on the Bench and pretend to be wise, as any sensible judge would, and listen carefully to the arguments presented to him. He was a most popular and acceptable judge. From Galle he came fora short time as Commissioner of Requests, Colombo and, again, carried the office with great dignity.

He died suddenly while having dinner at a friend’s house, in 1945, at the early age of 41. His brother had pre-deceased him, leaving him the patrimony. They came from a very wealthy family. I was a witness to Harry’s last will. After making extremely generous legacies in favour of his servants, he left the entire residue for a trust in the name of his brother. We have today the Lionel Wendt Memorial Hall.

He himself wished to be forgotten. I believe, he left something like Rs 60,000 to his head boy, and lesser amounts to his other servants in proportion to their length of service. One servant got his motor car. This sudden windfall, entirely unexpected, turned the boys’ heads. The head boy, a married man, with a wife and children, used his money to build himself a house. The servant who received the car, ran it for hire and crashed into a bollard. The younger servants took their money to the racecourse and very soon ended up as paupers.

The usual tributes were paid to him in the District Court of Galle and the Court of Requests, Colombo. One of his friends wrote: Others will, out of their qualifications and experience, speak of the contributions which Harry Wendt made to the intellectual dignity of Ceylon, both in the draftsmanship of the law and its adjudication. But there are many who will not soon forget the incomparable quality of gentle friendship which this sensitive man had, and which, lightened by a wit and much intimacy with cultivated ideas and civilized thought, he gave out freely and with catholicity. Ceylon is much impoverished by the passing of the Wendts, Harry so soon after Lionel; but their standards are clearly there for us to see.”

Another friend said: It was only the other day that Harry Wendt and 1, after calling on a friend, drove together to the sea front and there talked, among other things, of his plan for the future. He looked forward, in the years ahead, to resuming a practice at the Bar, in which he felt there would be a field under the constitution to be, and, upon my urging, almost assented to writing a comprehensive treatise on the laws of Ceylon, written as only he could have written, with erudition, lucidity, ease, grace and a meditative balance of mind. Well, that locus classicus on the laws of Ceylon, which only Harry Wendt could have written, will now never be written. It is indeed inscrutable that glorious spirits like these should pass away while gnomes and ghouls remain and flourish.

On Harry’s death in 1945 and Mervyn Fonseka’s in 1946, each of the assistants rose two steps up the departmental ladder – Clifford Pereira’s third and fourth correct predictions. The Department now consisted of Villavarayan, Legal Draftsman, H. N. G. Fernando (now Chief Justice), myself, and the following in order of seniority – James Homer-Vanniasinkam (later acting Attorney-General, Seychelles), A. W. H. Abeysundera (later Puisne Justice), S. Namasivayam (later Parliamentary Counsel, Ghana), Percy de Silva (now Legal Draftsman) and S. Mahadeva. It is gratifying to note that views in high quarters have changed and that a legal draftsman is no longer considered merely as a quill-driver and a scissors and paste artist.

H. N. G. was the most brilliant man I have been privileged to work with. He had a brain like a razor blade, sharp and quick. When he was asked to draft a Bill, he would roll the scheme in his mind for four or five days without putting pencil to paper. He would then have the Bill firmly fixed in his mind, call the stenographer and dictate the entire Bill, a thing which no other draftsman ever dared to attempt.

We would struggle with our pencil, write something, cut it out, write again, rewrite and so on ad infinitum. To listen to him dictating a Bill was a treat. Naturally, he would go wrong on a few cross-references, but these mistakes were not many. All in all, it was an amazing piece of work and a feat of memory.

Fernando and I had, one day, to meet a deputation of three senior doctors from the Ministry of Health over an amendment of the Schedules to the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance. The names of the Drugs specified in the Schedules were long and commuted from the Schedule. After a few hours’ discussion, we arrived at decisions, and H. N. G. asked the doctors how long they would take to send him their report and instructions.

He was surprised to hear that the doctors would need about six weeks. He asked them whether they could wait about half an hour longer, called a stenographer and dictated the doctors’ report, having told them to correct him if he was wrong, and the doctors had not a single correction to make.

Some time -after H. N. G. became Legal Draftsman on P. C. V’s retirement, he applied for silk. Alan Rose, the Attorney-General sat on the file and nothing came of it. But other honours were to come his way later. He was awarded the O.B.E., but the greatest honour was when he was made Puisne Justice and wore his late father’s scarlet robes.