Thursday, August 13, 2009
Page 15
REMINISCING (Column)
Francis P. Lefroy: Lawyer With a Pedigree
By ROGER M. GRACE
Most of what is known about Francis Paul Lefroy—law partner of Lewis A. Groff when the two opened up shop in the Wilcox Building in 1896—has nothing to do with his practice of law.
Educated at Cambridge, a member of high society in Australia, a world traveler and a writer, Lefroy would surely have been out of place in Los Angeles’ bawdy and rowdy wild west days of but a short time in the past.
In 1896, there was a somewhat more sedate, yet still high-spirited climate here, and I wonder just how easily Lefroy adapted to it.
Lefroy was born in Cromwell, England, in 1857, the son of an Irish Protestant cleric. He attended Marlborough College, in southwest England, a boarding school for teenage boys who were sons of Anglican clergymen. (The institution still exists, though now coeducational.)
Records of the school show that on Nov. 13, 1871, Lefroy was expelled from its Natural History Society “for abuse of the Museum,” whatever that entailed.
Apparently having been reinstated, he was present at an acrimonious meeting of the society on Nov. 28, resigning along with six others. Lefroy and five of his contingency were compelled to leave the room. Their repudiated action was that of advocating the election of officers and making of rule changes in closed sessions, with no proxy voting. What mischief might have led to their call for such a measure is unknown.
School controversies of that sort do seem to the participants, at the time, to be of great moment, implicating cherished and enduring principles… yet, generally, the controversies are soon forgotten by those involved in them. For reason good or not, the matter is here recited 137 years later.
Note is also made here of the instance when Lefroy appeared publicly in a dress. An 1874 edition of “The Marlburian,” a publication of the school, tells of a June 23 talent show featuring a scene from Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” with Lefroy portraying Olivia. This was, after all, an all-boys school, with all parts being played by boys.
On July 10 of that year, according to the publication, Lefroy put forth the proposition, as a member of the Debating Society, “[t]hat the ill-effects of horse-racing so far outweigh the good, as to render its suppression by law necessary.”
Undertaking university studies, he was president in 1879 of the Cambridge Union Society, a debating forum. Under the “laws” of the society published that year, a “debate may be on any subject not strictly theological.”
Lefroy on Sept. 2, 1884, was joined in matrimony with Beatrice Shand, niece of the governor of Queensland, then a British colony, now an Australian state. An article the next day in the Brisbane Courier says that the wedding, at an Anglican church, was “invested with more than ordinary interest.”
It identifies Lefroy as “son of the Very Rev. Anthony Lefroy, Dean of Dromore, Ireland.” Actually, Anthony Lefroy was his uncle, a former member of the British Parliament. His father was the Very Reverend Jeffry Lefroy, an Anglican cleric who oversaw parishes of the Church of [Northern] Ireland in Dromore.
The article continues:
“Mr. Lefroy is, we understand, a grandson of the late Chief Baron Lefroy, and also nearly related to General Sir J. H. Lefroy, who was Governor of the Bermudas from 1871 to 1877, and of Tasmania in 1880 and 1881.”
Inexplicably, the bride dressed as if the ceremony were a funeral, rather than a wedding. The report in the Courier says: “The bride—contrary to the usual custom in the city—was attired in a travelling costume of dark slate…colour—with bonnet and veil to match.”
The piece notes that “Lefroy’s health has been in weakly condition for some time past, and he recently travelled on the Continent of Europe and elsewhere in consequence.”
“Chief Baron Lefroy” was Thomas Langlois Lefroy, who had been chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Ireland from 1852-66. His youthful, flirtatous relationship with author Jane Austen was fictionally elevated in the 2007 film, “Becoming Jane,” into an intense romance.
“General Sir J. H. Lefroy” was Sir John Henry Lefroy, knighted in 1877. Francis P. Lefroy’s great great grandfather was J. H. Lefroy’s great grandfather; they were but second cousins once removed.
Copyright 2009, Metropolitan News Company