Among his sham titles are Dux Roani and ‘de Roano,’ clearly referring, as Mr. Steuart notices, to de la Cloche’s travelling name of Henri de Rohan. The Neapolitan pretender, therefore, knew the secret of that incognito, and so of de la Cloche’s mission to England in 1668. That, possessing this secret, he was set free, is a most unaccountable circumstance. Charles had written to Oliva that his life hung on absolute secrecy, yet the owner of the secret is left at liberty.
Our first sources leave us in these perplexities. They are not disentangled by the ‘Lettere’ of Vincenzo Armanni (1674). I have been unable, as has been said, to see this book. In the summary by Mr. Brady we read that (1668-1669) Prince James Stuart, with a French Knight of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, came to Naples for his health. This must have been in December 1668 or January 1669; by March 1669 the pretender had been ‘for some months’ in Naples. The Frenchman went by way of Malta to England, recommending Prince James to a confessor at Naples, who was a parish priest. This priest was Armanni’s informant. He advised the Prince to lodge with Corona, and here James proposed to Teresa. She at first held aloof, and the priest discountenanced the affair. The Prince ceased to be devout, but later chose another confessor. Both priests knew, in confession, the secret of his birth: the Prince says so in his will, and leaves them great legacies. So far Armanni’s version is corroborated.
Mr. Brady goes on, citing Armanni: ‘At last he chose another spiritual director, to whom he revealed not only his passion for Teresa Corona, but also the secret of his birth, showing to him the letters written by the Queen of Sweden and the Father General of the Jesuits.’ Was the latter document Oliva’s note from Leghorn of October 14, 1668? That did not contain a word about de la Cloche’s birth: he is merely styled ‘the French gentleman.’ Again, the letter of the Queen of Sweden is now in the Jesuit archives; how could it be in the possession of the pretender at Naples? Was it taken from him in prison, and returned to Oliva?
The new confessor approved of the wedding which was certainly celebrated on February 19, 1669. Old Corona now began to show his money: his new son-in-law was suspected of being a false coiner, and was arrested by the Viceroy. ‘The certificates and papers attesting the parentage of James Stuart were then produced....’ How could this be—they were in the hands of the Jesuits at Rome. Had de la Cloche brought them to Naples, the Corona family would have clung to them, but they are in the Gesu at Rome to this day. The rest is much as we know it, save, what is important, that the Prince, from prison, ‘wrote to the General of the Jesuits, beseeching him to interpose his good offices with the Viceroy, and to obtain permission for him to go to England via Leghorn’ (as in 1688) ‘and Marseilles.’
Armanni knew nothing, or says nothing, of de la Cloche’s having been in the Jesuit novitiate. His informant, the priest, must have known that, but under seal of confession, so he would not tell Armanni. He did tell him that James Stuart wrote to the Jesuit general, asking his help in procuring leave to go to England. The General knew de la Cloche’s hand, and would not be taken in by the impostor’s. This point is in favour of the identity of James Stuart with de la Cloche. The Viceroy had, however, already written to London, and waited for a reply. ‘Immediately on arrival of the answer from London, the Prince was set at liberty and left Naples. It may be supposed he went to England. After a few months he returned to Naples with an assignment of 50,000 scudi,’ and died of fever.
Nothing is said by Armanni of the imprisonment among the low scum of the Vicaria: nothing of the intended whipping, nothing of the visit by James Stuart to France. The 50,000 scudi have a mythical ring. Why should James, if he had 50,000 scudi, be buried at the expense of his father-in-law, who also has to pay 50 ducats to the notary for drawing the will of this ‘prince or cheate’? Probably the parish priest and ex-confessor of the prince was misinformed on some points. The Corona family would make out the best case they could for their royal kinsman.
Was the man of Naples ‘prince or cheate’? Was he de la Cloche, or, as Lord Acton suggests, a servant who had robbed de la Cloche of money and papers?
Every hypothesis (we shall recapitulate them) which we can try as a key fails to fit the lock. Say that de la Cloche had confided his secret to a friend among the Jesuit novices; say that this young man either robbed de la Cloche, or, having money and jewels of his own, fled from the S. Andrea training college, and, when arrested, assumed the name and pretended to the rank of de la Cloche. This is not inconceivable, but it is odd that he had no language but French, and that, possessing secrets of capital importance, he was released from prison, and allowed to depart where he would, and return to Naples when he chose.
Say that a French servant of de la Cloche robbed and perhaps even murdered him. In that case he certainly would not have been released from prison. The man at Naples was regarded as a gentleman, but that is not so important in an age when the low scoundrel, Bedloe, could pass in Spain and elsewhere for an English peer.
But again, if the Naples man is a swindler, as already remarked, he behaves unlike one. A swindler would have tried to entrap a woman of property into a marriage—he might have seduced, but would not have married, the penniless Teresa Corona, giving what money he had to her father. When arrested, the man had not in money more than 160 pounds. His maintenance, while in prison, was paid for by the Viceroy. No detaining charges, from other victims, appear to have been lodged against him. His will ordains that the document shall be destroyed by his confessor, if the secret of his birth therein contained is divulged before his death. The secret perhaps was only known—before his arrest—to his confessors; it came out when he was arrested by the Viceroy as a coiner of false money. Like de la Cloche, he was pious, though not much turns on that. If Armanni’s information is correct, if, when taken, the man wrote to the General of the Jesuits—who knew de la Cloche’s handwriting—we can scarcely escape the inference that he was de la Cloche.
On the other hand is the monstrous will. Unworldly as de la Cloche may have been, he can hardly have fancied that Wales was the appanage of a bastard of the Crown; and he certainly knew that ‘the province of Monmouth’ already gave a title to his younger brother, the duke, born in 1649. Yet the testator claims Wales or Monmouth for his unborn child. Again, de la Cloche may not have known who his mother was. But not only can no Mary, or Mary Henrietta, of the Lennox family be found, except the impossible Lady Mary who was younger than de la Cloche; but we observe no trace of the presence of any d’Aubigny, or even of any Stewart, male or female, at the court of the Prince of Wales in Jersey, in 1646.*
The names of the suite are given by Dr. Hoskins from the journal (MS.) of Chevalier, a Jersey man, and from the Osborne papers. No Stewart or Stuart occurs, but, in a crowd of some 3,000 refugees, there MAY have been a young lady of the name. Lady Fanshaw, who was in Jersey, is silent. The will is absurd throughout, but whether it is all of the dying pretender’s composition, whether it may not be a thing concocted by an agent of the Corona family, is another question.
It is a mere conjecture, suggested by more than one inquirer, as by Mr. Steuart, that the words ‘Signora D. Maria Stuardo della famiglia delli Baroni di S. Marzo,’ refer to the Lennox family, which would naturally be spoken of as Lennox, or as d’Aubigny. About the marquisate of Juvigny (which cannot mean the dukedom of d’Aubigny) we have said enough. In short, the whole will is absurd, and it is all but inconceivable that the real de la Cloche could have been so ignorant as to compose it.
So the matter stands; one of two hypotheses must be correct—the Naples man was de la Cloche or he was not—yet either hypothesis is almost impossible.*
It may be added that, on December 27, 1668, Charles wrote to his sister, Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans: ‘I assure you that nobody does, nor shall, know anything of it here’ (of his intended conversion and secret dealings with France) ‘but my selfe, and that one person more, till it be fitte to be publique...’ ‘That one person more’ is not elsewhere referred to in Charles’s known letters to his sister, unless he be ‘he that came last, and delivered me your letter of the 9th December; he has given me a full account of what he was charged with, and I am very well pleased with what he tells me’ (Whitehall, December 14, 1668).
This mysterious person, the one sharer of the King’s secret, may be de la Cloche, if he could have left England by November 18, visited Rome, and returned to Paris by December 9. If so, de la Cloche may have fulfilled his mission. Did he return to Italy, and appear in Naples in January or February 1669? (See Madame, by Julia Cartwright, pp. 274, 275, London, 1894.)
Everybody has heard about ‘Fisher’s Ghost.’ It is one of the stock ‘yarns’ of the world, and reappears now and again in magazines, books like ‘The Night Side of Nature,’ newspapers, and general conversation. As usually told, the story runs thus: One Fisher, an Australian settler of unknown date, dwelling not far from Sydney, disappeared. His overseer, like himself an ex-convict, gave out that Fisher had returned to England, leaving him as plenipotentiary. One evening a neighbour (one Farley), returning from market, saw Fisher sitting on the fence of his paddock, walked up to speak to him, and marked him leave the fence and retreat into the field, where he was lost to sight. The neighbour reported Fisher’s return, and, as Fisher could nowhere be found, made a deposition before magistrates. A native tracker was taken to the fence where the pseudo Fisher sat, discovered ‘white man’s blood’ on it, detected ‘white man’s fat’ on the scum of a pool hard by, and, finally, found ‘white man’s body’ buried in a brake. The overseer was tried, condemned, and hanged after confession.
Such is the yarn: occasionally the ghost of Fisher is said to have been viewed several times on the fence.
Now, if the yarn were true, it would be no proof of a ghost. The person sitting on the fence might be mistaken for Fisher by a confusion of identity, or might be a mere subjective hallucination of a sort recognised even by official science as not uncommon. On the other hand, that such an illusion should perch exactly on the rail where ‘white man’s blood’ was later found, would be a very remarkable coincidence. Finally, the story of the appearance might be explained as an excuse for laying information against the overseer, already suspected on other grounds. But while this motive might act among a Celtic population, naturally credulous of ghosts, and honourably averse to assisting the law (as in Glenclunie in 1749), it is not a probable motive in an English Crown colony, as Sydney then was. Nor did the seer inform against anybody.
The tale is told in ‘Tegg’s Monthly Magazine’ (Sydney, March 1836); in ‘Household Words’ for 1853; in Mr. John Lang’s book, ‘Botany Bay’ (about 1840), where the yarn is much dressed up; and in Mr. Montgomery Martin’s ‘History of the British Colonies,’ vol. iv. (1835). Nowhere is a date given, but Mr. Martin says that the events occurred while he was in the colony. His most intimate surviving friend has often heard him tell the tale, and discuss it with a legal official, who is said to have been present at the trial of the overseer.* Other living witnesses have heard the story from a gentleman who attended the trial. Mr. Martin’s narrative given as a lowest date, the occurrences were before 1835. Moreover, the yarn of the ghost was in circulation before that year, and was accepted by a serious writer on a serious subject. But we have still no date for the murder.
That date shall now be given. Frederick Fisher was murdered by George Worrall, his overseer, at Campbelltown on June 16 (or 17), 1826. After that date, as Fisher was missing, Worrall told various tales to account for his absence. The trial of Worrall is reported in the ‘Sydney Gazette’ of February 5, 1827. Not one word is printed about Fisher’s ghost; but the reader will observe that there is a lacuna in the evidence exactly where the ghost, if ghost there were, should have come in. The search for Fisher’s body starts, it will be seen, from a spot on Fisher’s paddock-fence, and the witness gives no reason why that spot was inspected, or rather no account of how, or by whom, sprinkled blood was detected on the rail. Nobody saw the murder committed. Chief-Justice Forbes said, in summing up (on February 2, 1827), that the evidence was purely circumstantial. We are therefore so far left wholly in the dark as to why the police began their investigations at a rail in a fence.
At the trial Mr. D. Cooper deposed to having been owed 80 pounds by Fisher. After Fisher’s disappearance Cooper frequently spoke to Worrall about this debt, which Worrall offered to pay if Cooper would give up to him certain papers (title-deeds) of Fisher’s in his possession. Worrall even wrote, from Banbury Curran, certifying Cooper of Fisher’s departure from the colony, which, he said, he was authorised to announce. Cooper replied that he would wait for his 80 pounds if Fisher were still in the country. Worrall exhibited uneasiness, but promised to show a written commission to act for Fisher. This document he never produced, but was most anxious to get back Fisher’s papers and to pay the 80 pounds. This arrangement was refused by Cooper.
James Coddington deposed that on July 8, 1826, when Fisher had been missing for three weeks, Worrall tried to sell him a colt, which Coddington believed to be Fisher’s. Worrall averred that Fisher had left the country. A few days later Worrall showed Coddington Fisher’s receipt for the price paid to him by Worrall for the horse. ‘Witness, from having seen Fisher write, had considerable doubt as to the genuineness of the receipt.’
James Hamilton swore that in August 1826 he bluntly told Worrall that foul play was suspected; he ‘turned pale, and endeavoured to force a smile.’ He merely said that Fisher ‘was on salt water,’ but could not or would not name his ship. A receipt to Worrall from Fisher was sworn to by Lewis Solomon as a forgery.
Samuel Hopkins, who lived under Fisher’s roof, last saw Fisher on June 17, 1826 (June 16 may be meant), in the evening. Some other people, including one Lawrence, were in the house, they left shortly after Fisher went out that evening, and later remarked on the strangeness of his not returning. Nathaniel Cole gave evidence to the same effect. Fisher, in short, strolled out on June 17 (16?), 1826, and was seen no more in the body.
Robert Burke, of Campbelltown, constable, deposed to having apprehended Worrall. We may now give in full the evidence as to the search for Fisher’s body on October 20, 1826.
Here let us first remark that Fisher’s body was not easily found. A reward for its discovery was offered by Government on September 27, 1826, when Fisher had been dead for three months, and this may have stimulated all that was immortal of Fisher to perch on his own paddock-rail, and so draw attention to the position of his body. But on this point we have no information, and we proceed to real evidence. From this it appears that though a reward was offered on September 27, the local magistrates (to whom the ghost-seer went, in the yarn) did not bid their constable make SPECIAL researches till October 20, apparently after the seer told his tale.
‘George Leonard, a constable at Campbelltown, stated that by order of the bench of the magistrates he commenced a search for the body of the deceased on the 20th of October last: witness WENT TO A PLACE WHERE SOME BLOOD WAS SAID TO HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED, and saw traces of it on several rails of a fence at the corner of the deceased’s paddock adjoining the fence of Mr. Bradbury, and about fifty rods from prisoner’s house: witness proceeded to search with an iron rod over the ground, when two black natives came up and joined in the search till they came to a creek where one of them saw something on the water: a man named Gilbert, a black native, went into the water, and scumming some of the top with a leaf, which he afterwards tasted, called out that “there was the fat of a white man” [of which he was clearly an amateur]: they then proceeded to another creek about forty or fifty yards farther up, STILL LED BY THE NATIVES, when one of them struck the rod into some marshy ground and called out that “there was something there:” a spade was immediately found, and the place dug, when the first thing that presented itself was the left hand of a man lying on his side, which witness, from a long acquaintance with him, immediately declared to be the hand of Frederick Fisher: the body was decayed a little, particularly the under-jaw: witness immediately informed Mr. William Howe and the Rev. Mr. Reddall, and obtained a warrant to apprehend the parties who were supposed to be concerned in the murder; the coroner was sent for, and, the body being taken out of the earth the next morning, several fractures were found in the head: an inquest was held, and a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown was returned: witness particularly examined the fence: there appeared to have been a fire made under the lower rail, as if to burn out the mark: the blood seemed as if it were sprinkled over the rails....
‘The declaration of the prisoner’ (Worrall) ‘was put in and read: it stated that, on the evening of the 17th of June, a man named Lawrence got some money from the deceased, and together with four others went to a neighbouring public-house to drink: that after some time they returned, and the prisoner being then outside the house, and not seen by the others, he saw two of them enter, whilst the other two, one of whom was Lawrence, remained at the door: the prisoner then went down to the bottom of the yard, and after a little time heard a scuffle, and saw Lawrence and the others drag something along the yard, which they struck several times. The prisoner then came forward, and called out to know who it was. One of them replied, “It is a dog.” The prisoner coming up said, “It is Fisher, and you have prevented him from crying out any more.” They said they had murdered him in order to possess themselves of what money he had, and bound the prisoner by a solemn pledge not to reveal it.
‘For the prisoner Nathaniel Boom deposed: he knew deceased, and intended to institute a prosecution against him for forgery when he disappeared.
‘Chief-justice summed up: observed it was a case entirely of circumstances. The jury were first to consider if identity of body with Fisher was satisfactorily established. If not: no case. If so: they would then consider testimony as affecting prisoner. Impossible, though wholly circumstantial, for evidence to be stronger. He offered no opinion, but left case to jury.
‘The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Sentence of death passed.’
‘George Worrall, convicted on Friday last of murder of F. Fisher, yesterday suffered the last penalty of the law. Till about 5 o’clock on the morning of his execution, he persisted in asserting his innocence, when he was induced to confess to a gentleman who had sat up with him during the night, that he alone had perpetrated the murder, but positively affirmed it was not his intention at the time to do so.’
We need not follow Worrall’s attempts to explain away the crime as an accident. He admitted that ‘he had intended to hang Lawrence and Cole.’
It is a curious case. WHY WAS NOBODY INTERROGATED ABOUT THE DISCOVERY, ON THE RAIL, OF BLOOD THREE MONTHS OLD, if not four months? What was the apparent date of the fire under the rail? How did the ghost-story get into circulation, and reach Mr. Montgomery Martin (1835)?
To suggest a solution of these problems, we have a precisely analogous case in England.
On October 25, 1828, one William Edden, a market-gardener, did not come home at night. His wife rushed into the neighbouring village, announcing that she had seen her husband’s ghost; that he had a hammer, or some such instrument, in his hand; that she knew he had been hammered to death on the road by a man whose name she gave, one Tyler. Her husband was found on the road, between Aylesbury and Thame, killed by blows of a blunt instrument, and the wife in vain repeatedly invited the man, Joseph Tyler, to come and see the corpse. Probably she believed that it would bleed in his presence, in accordance with the old superstition. All this the poor woman stated on oath at an inquiry before the magistrates, reported in the Buckinghamshire county paper of August 29, 1829.
Here is her evidence, given at Aylesbury Petty Sessions, August 22, before Lord Nugent, Sir J. D. King, R. Brown, Esq., and others:
‘“After my husband’s corpse was brought home, I sent to Tyler, for some reasons I had, to come and see the corpse. I sent for him five or six times. I had some particular reason for sending for him which I never did divulge.... I will tell my reasons if you gentlemen ask me, in the face of Tyler, even if my life should be in danger for it. When I was ironing a shirt, on the Saturday night my husband was murdered, something came over me—something rushed over me—and I thought my husband came by me. I looked up, and I thought I heard the voice of my husband come from near my mahogany table, as I turned from my ironing. I ran out and said, ‘Oh dear God! my husband is murdered, and his ribs are broken.’ I told this to several of my neighbours. Mrs. Chester was the first to whom I told it. I mentioned it also at the Saracen’s Head.”
‘Sir J. D. King.—“Have you any objection to say why you thought your husband had been murdered?”
‘“No! I thought I saw my husband’s apparition and the man that had done it, and that man was Tyler, and that was the reason I sent for him.... When my neighbours asked me what was the matter when I ran out, I told them that I had seen my husband’s apparition.... When I mentioned it to Mrs. Chester, I said: ‘My husband is murdered, and his ribs are broken; I have seen him by the mahogany table.’ I did not tell her who did it.... I was always frightened, since my husband had been stopped on the road.” (The deceased Edden had once before been waylaid, but was then too powerful for his assailants.) “In consequence of what I saw, I went in search of my husband, until I was taken so ill I could go no further.”
‘Lord Nugent.—“What made you think your husband’s ribs were broken?”
‘“He held up his hand like this” (holds up her arm), “and I saw a hammer, or something like a hammer, and it came into my mind that his ribs were broken.”
‘Sewell stated that the murder was accomplished by means of a hammer. The examination was continued on August 31 and September 13; and finally both prisoners were discharged for want of sufficient evidence. Sewell declared that he had only been a looker-on, and his accusations against Tyler were so full of prevarications that they were not held sufficient to incriminate him. The inquiry was again resumed on February 11, 1830, and Sewell, Tyler, and a man named Gardner were committed for trial.
‘The trial (see “Buckingham Gazette,” March 13, 1830) took place before Mr. Baron Vaughan and a grand jury at the Buckingham Lent Assizes, March 5, 1830; BUT IN THE REPORT OF MRS. EDDEN’S EVIDENCE NO MENTION IS MADE OF THE VISION.
‘Sewell and Tyler were found guilty, and were executed, protesting their innocence, on March 8, 1830.
‘Miss Browne, writing to us [Mr. Gurney] from Farnham Castle, in January 1884, gives an account of the vision which substantially accords with that here recorded, adding:—‘"The wife persisted in her account of the vision; consequently the accused was taken up, and, with some circumstantial evidence in addition to the woman’s story, committed for trial by two magistrates—my father, Colonel Robert Browne, and the Rev. Charles Ackfield.”
‘“The murderer was convicted at the assizes, and hanged at Aylesbury.”
‘“It may be added that Colonel Browne was remarkably free from superstition, and was a thorough disbeliever in ‘ghost stories.’”’ *
Now, in the report of the trial at assizes in 1830 there is not one word about the ‘ghost,’ though he is conspicuous in the hearing at petty sessions. The parallel to Fisher’s case is thus complete. And the reason for omitting the ghost in a trial is obvious. The murderers of Sergeant Davies of Guise’s, slain in the autumn of 1749 in Glenclunie, were acquitted by an Edinburgh jury in 1753 in face of overpowering evidence of their guilt, partly because two Highland witnesses deposed to having seen the ghost of the sergeant, partly because the jury were Jacobites. The prisoners’ counsel, as one of them told Sir Walter Scott, knew that their clients were guilty. A witness had seen them in the act. But the advocate (Lockhart, a Jacobite) made such fun out of the ghost that an Edinburgh jury, disbelieving in the spectre, and not loving the House of Hanover, very logically disregarded also the crushing evidence for a crime which was actually described in court by an eye-witness.
Thus, to secure a view of the original form of the yarn of Fisher’s Ghost, what we need is what we are not likely to get—namely, a copy of the depositions made before the bench of magistrates at Campbelltown in October 1826.
For my own part, I think it highly probable that the story of Fisher’s Ghost was told before the magistrates, as in the Buckinghamshire case, and was suppressed in the trial at Sydney.
Worrall’s condemnation is said to have excited popular discontent, as condemnations on purely circumstantial evidence usually do. That dissatisfaction would be increased if a ghost were publicly implicated in the matter, just as in the case of Davies’s murder in 1749. We see how discreetly the wraith or ghost was kept out of the Buckinghamshire case at the trial, and we see why, in Worrall’s affair, no questions were asked as to the discovery of sprinkled blood, not proved by analysis to be human, on the rail where Fisher’s ghost was said to perch.
I had concluded my inquiry here, when I received a letter in which Mr. Rusden kindly referred me to his ‘History of Australia’ (vol. ii. pp. 44, 45). Mr. Rusden there gives a summary of the story, in agreement with that taken from the Sydney newspaper. He has ‘corrected current rumours by comparison with the words of a trustworthy informant, a medical man, who lived long in the neighbourhood, and attended Farley [the man who saw Fisher’s ghost] on his death-bed. He often conversed with Farley on the subject of the vision which scared him.... These facts are compiled from the notes of Chief-Justice Forbes, who presided at the trial, with the exception of the references to the apparition, which, although it led to the discovery of Fisher’s body, could not be alluded to in a court of justice, or be adduced as evidence.‘* There is no justice for ghosts.
An Australian correspondent adds another example. Long after Fisher’s case, this gentleman was himself present at a trial in Maitland, New South Wales. A servant-girl had dreamed that a missing man told her who had killed him, and where his body was concealed. She, being terrified, wanted to leave the house, but her mistress made her impart the story to the chief constable, a man known to my informant, who also knew, and names, the judge who tried the case. The constable excavated at the spot pointed out in the dream, unearthed the body, and arrested the criminal, who was found guilty, confessed, and was hanged. Not a word was allowed to be said in court about the dream. All the chief constable was permitted to say was, that ‘from information received’ he went to Hayes’s farm, and so forth.
Here, then, are two parallels to Fisher’s ghost, and very hard on psychical science it is that ghostly evidence should be deliberately burked through the prejudices of lawyers. Mr. Suttar, in his ‘Australian Stories Retold’ (Bathurst, 1887), remarks that the ghost is not a late mythical accretion in Fisher’s story. ‘I have the authority of a gentleman who was intimately connected with the gentleman who had the charge of the police when the murder was done, that Farley’s story did suggest the search for the body in the creek.’ But Mr. Suttar thinks that Farley invented the tale as an excuse for laying information. That might apply, as has been said, to Highland witnesses in 1753, but hardly to an Englishman in Australia. Besides, if Farley knew the facts, and had the ghost to cover the guilt of peaching, WHY DID HE NOT PEACH? He only pointed to a fence, and, but for the ingenious black Sherlock Holmes, the body would never have been found. What Farley did was not what a man would do who, knowing the facts of the crime, and lured by a reward of 20 pounds, wished to play the informer under cover of a ghost-story.
The case for the ghost, then, stands thus, in my opinion. Despite the silence preserved at the trial, Farley’s ghost-story was really told before the discovery of Fisher’s body, and led to the finding of the body. Despite Mr. Suttar’s theory (of information laid under shelter of a ghost-story), Farley really had experienced an hallucination. Mr. Rusden, who knew his doctor, speaks of his fright, and, according to the version of 1836, he was terrified into an illness. Now, the hallucination indicated the exact spot where Fisher was stricken down, and left traces of his blood, which no evidence shows to have been previously noticed. Was it, then, a fortuitous coincidence that Farley should be casually hallucinated exactly at the one spot—the rail in the fence—where Fisher had been knocked on the head? That is the question, and the state of the odds may be reckoned by the mathematician.
As to the Australian servant-girl’s dream about the place where another murdered body lay, and the dreams which led to the discovery of the Red Barn and Assynt murders, and (May 1903) to the finding of the corpse of a drowned girl at Shanklin, all these may be mere guesses by the sleeping self, which is very clever at discovering lost objects.
Ever and again, in the literary and antiquarian papers, there flickers up debate as to the Mystery of Lord Bateman. This problem in no way concerns the existing baronial house of Bateman, which, in Burke, records no predecessor before a knight and lord mayor of 1717. Our Bateman comes of lordlier and more ancient lineage. The question really concerns ‘The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman. Illustrated by George Cruikshank, London: Charles Tilt, Fleet Street. And Mustapha Syried, Constantinople. MDCCCXXXIX.’
The tiny little volume in green cloth, with a design of Lord Bateman’s marriage ceremony, stamped in gold, opens with a ‘Warning to the Public, concerning the Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman.’ The Warning is signed George Cruikshank, who, however, adds in a postscript: ‘The above is not my writing.’ The ballad follows, and then comes a set of notes, mainly critical. The author of the Warning remarks: ‘In some collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty, which, I am told, bears some remote and distant resemblance to the following Epic Poem.’
Again, the text of the ballad, here styled ‘The Famous History of Lord Bateman,’ with illustrations by Thackeray, ‘plain’ (the original designs were coloured), occurs in the Thirteenth Volume of the Biographical Edition of Thackeray’s works. (pp. lvi-lxi).
The problems debated are: ‘Who wrote the Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, and who wrote the Notes?’ The disputants have not shown much acquaintance with ballad lore in general.
First let us consider Mr. Thackeray’s text of the ballad. It is closely affiliated to the text of ‘The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman,’ whereof the earliest edition with Cruikshank’s illustrations was published in 1839.* The edition here used is that of David Bryce and Son, Glasgow (no date).
Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, in his ‘Life of Cruikshank,’ tells us that the artist sang this ‘old English ballad’ at a dinner where Dickens and Thackeray were present. Mr. Thackeray remarked: ‘I should like to print that ballad with illustrations,’ but Cruikshank ‘warned him off,’ as he intended to do the thing himself. Dickens furnished the learned notes. This account of what occurred was given by Mr. Walter Hamilton, but Mr. Sala furnished another version. The ‘authorship of the ballad,’ Mr. Sala justly observed, ‘is involved in mystery.’ Cruikshank picked it up from the recitation of a minstrel outside a pot-house. In Mr. Sala’s opinion, Mr. Thackeray ‘revised and settled the words, and made them fit for publication.’ Nor did he confine himself to the mere critical work; he added, in Mr. Sala’s opinion, that admired passage about ‘The young bride’s mother, who never before was heard to speak so free,’ also contributing ‘The Proud Young Porter,’ Jeames. Now, in fact, both the interpellation of the bride’s mamma, and the person and characteristics of the proud young porter, are of unknown antiquity, and are not due to Mr. Thackeray—a scholar too conscientious to ‘decorate’ an ancient text. Bishop Percy did such things, and Scott is not beyond suspicion; but Mr. Thackeray, like Joseph Ritson, preferred the authentic voice of tradition. Thus, in the text of the Biographical Edition, he does not imitate the Cockney twang, phonetically rendered in the version of Cruikshank. The second verse, for example, runs thus:
Cruikshank:
Thackeray:
There are discrepancies in the arrangement of the verses, and a most important various reading.
Cruikshank:
To this verse, in Cruikshank’s book, a note (not by Cruikshank) is added:
In this may be recognised, though in a minor degree, the same gifted hand that portrayed the Mussulman, the pirate, the father, and the bigot, in two words (“This Turk”).
‘“The time is gone, the historian knows it, and that is enough for the reader. This is the dignity of history very strikingly exemplified.”’
That note to Cruikshank’s text is, like all the delightful notes, if style is evidence, not by Dickens, but by Thackeray. Yet, in his own text, with an exemplary fidelity, he reads: ‘And fourteen days well known to THEE.’ To whom? We are left in ignorance; and conjecture, though tempting, is unsafe. The reading of Cruikshank, ‘vell known to ME’—that is, to the poet—is confirmed by the hitherto unprinted ‘Lord Bedmin.’ This version, collected by Miss Wyatt Edgell in 1899, as recited by a blind old woman in a workhouse, who had learned it in her youth, now lies before the present writer. He owes this invaluable document to the kindness of Miss Wyatt Edgell and Lady Rosalind Northcote. Invaluable it is, because it proves that Lord Bateman (or Bedmin) is really a volkslied, a popular and current version of the ancient ballad. ‘Famed Turkey’ becomes ‘Torquay’ in this text, probably by a misapprehension on the part of the collector or reciter. The speech of the bride’s mother is here omitted, though it occurs in older texts; but, on the whole, the blind old woman’s memory has proved itself excellent. In one place she gives Thackeray’s reading in preference to that of Cruikshank, thus:
Cruikshank:
Thackeray:
Old Woman:
We have now ascertained the following facts: Cruikshank and Thackeray used a text with merely verbal differences, which was popular among the least educated classes early in last century. Again, Thackeray contributed the notes and critical apparatus to Cruikshank’s version. For this the internal evidence of style is overpowering: no other man wrote in the manner and with the peculiar humour of Mr. Titmarsh. In the humble opinion of the present writer these Notes ought to be appended to Mr. Thackeray’s version of ‘Lord Bateman.’ Finally, Mr. Sala was wrong in supposing that Mr. Thackeray took liberties with the text received from oral tradition.
What was the origin of that text? Professor Child, in the second part of his ‘English and Scottish Popular Ballads’ * lays before us the learning about Lord Bateman, Lord Bedmin, Young Bicham, Young Brechin, Young Bekie, Young Beichan and Susie Pie (the heroine, Sophia, in Thackeray), Lord Beichan, Young Bondwell, and Markgraf Backenweil; for by all these names is Lord Bateman known. The student must carefully note that ‘Thackeray’s List of Broadsides,’ cited, is NOT by Mr. W. M. Thackeray.
As the reader may not remember the incidents in the Thackeray, Cruikshank, and Old Woman version (which represents an ancient ballad, now not so much popularised as vulgarised), a summary may be given. Lord Bateman went wandering: ‘his character, at this time, and his expedition, would seem to have borne a striking resemblance to those of Lord Byron.... SOME foreign country he wished to see, and that was the extent of his desire; any foreign country would answer his purpose—all foreign countries were alike to him.’—(Note, apud Cruikshank.) Arriving in Turkey (or Torquay) he was taken and fastened to a tree by his captor. He was furtively released by the daughter of ‘This Turk.’ ‘The poet has here, by that bold license which only genius can venture upon, surmounted the extreme difficulty of introducing any particular Turk, by assuming a foregone conclusion in the reader’s mind; and adverting, in a casual, careless way, to a Turk hitherto unknown as to an old acquaintance.... “THIS Turk he had” is a master-stroke, a truly Shakespearian touch’—(Note.) The lady, in her father’s cellar (‘Castle,’ Old Woman’s text), consoles the captive with ‘the very best wine,’ secretly stored, for his private enjoyment, by the cruel and hypocritical Mussulman. She confesses the state of her heart, and inquires as to Lord Bateman’s real property, which is ‘half Northumberland.’ To what period in the complicated mediaeval history of the earldom of Northumberland the affair belongs is uncertain.
The pair vow to be celibate for seven years, and Lord Bateman escapes. At the end of the period, Sophia sets out for Northumberland, urged, perhaps, by some telepathic admonition. For, on arriving at Lord Bateman’s palace (Alnwick Castle?), she summons the proud porter, announces herself, and finds that her lover has just celebrated a marriage with another lady. In spite of the remonstrances of the bride’s mamma, Lord Bateman restores that young lady to her family, observing