THE VERDICT -- robert gardner

There used to be a fad that prompted people to hire a genealogist out of

the Yellow Pages and buy a family tree done up on fake vellum with fancy

red and gold calligraphy.

You could go back as far as you wanted, depending on how much you wanted

to spend and how much wall space you wanted to cover.

I read somewhere that Charlemagne was a favorite ancestor to whom people

liked to trace their roots. However, if those rumors about his incest

with sister are true, I’d be a little leery about that line of descent,

unless you wanted to use it as an excuse for some loony member of the

tribe.

My family never had to indulge in such nonsense. Uncle John took care of

it for us -- and he never got close to Charlemagne.

My Uncle John was the scholar of the family. Consistent with the practice

of his time, he spoke both Latin and classical Greek. I guess he had cold

legs because I can dimly remember him as a bearded old man sitting in a

corner with a shawl over his lap spouting Latin or Greek. Of course, he

could have been speaking Urdu or Esperanto for all I knew. After three

years of high school Latin, all I could do was proclaim that all Gaul was

divided into three parts.

Sometime long before I was born, the family sent Uncle John back to

Scotland to trace the Gardner family tree. This he did in his usual

scholarly manner. I understand he winced a little when he came upon the

ancestor hanged for stealing sheep, but gamely set his Gardner jaw and

persevered. Hard work and deep research finally paid off. Uncle John

finally found the man who started the Gardner line -- and it wasn’t

Charlemagne.

It seems that sometime back in Scottish history, a young man worked as a

gardener on the grounds and behind the walls of the castle of a Scottish

chief. This gardener had no name because his father had declined to

identify himself. As I remember the story, his mother was some kind of a

scullery maid, and she, too, had been born on the wrong side of the

sheets. I guess the modern generation doesn’t have a corner on

carelessness about marriage vows.

Well, one year there was a famine. The villagers went to the castle and

begged the chief for some of the food he had hoarded in the castle or

something from the castle vegetable garden. The chief, being a typical

chief, would have none of that kind of nonsense. If he did, he, too,

would be hungry, which wasn’t his idea of the chiefly thing to be.

Nevertheless, when my ancestor, the gardener without a name, would cut a

head of cabbage for the chief, he would throw the root and stalk over the

wall to the starving villagers. Whereupon, they would yell (in Gaelic, of

course), “That bastard gardener just threw us some yummy cabbage roots.”

The gardener then dropped an ‘E’ from his name and capitalized the ‘G’

and was thereafter known as “Gardner the Bastard,” or “that bastard

Gardner.”

Somehow, Uncle John never mentioned his first name. In my childhood, I

always assumed it was Robert, after Robert Bruce, but that is childish

wishful thinking with no foundation in objective research.

The appellation of ‘bastard’ was rather common in those days. William the

Conqueror was originally named William the Bastard. I have always thought

the reason he left Normandy and conquered England was just to get a more

dignified name.

Uncle John’s quest ceased at this point. Why go further? For that matter,

how could he go further? After all those years, the real father of

Gardner the Bastard wasn’t going to come forth and fess up.

Be that as it may, it has been a matter of great comfort to me throughout

the years when I have heard the lawyers refer to me as “that bastard

Gardner” to know they were using the word ‘bastard’ in a historical, not

a pejorative sense.

This bar sinister in my background probably explains why I was

mysteriously sent a membership card in the International Order of Old

Bastards. I gather there is some kind of great Doomsday Book that keeps

track of the nullius filius (sons of nobody) in our backgrounds.

Uncle John would be proud of that Latin phrase, which I picked up in law

school.

* JUDGE GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and former judge. His column

appears on Tuesdays.