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spread sensation, especially in the vicinity of Tichborne itself, and no one was more impressed than old Mr. Hopkins. We have seen that during the resettlement of the Tichborne estates in 1850 this gentleman had for some months been brought into close, though not alto- gether friendly, relation with Roger Tichborne, but other- wise his acquaintance with him had been very slight, and he had no precise recollection of his appearance. On the succession of Sir James in 1853 the management of the family affairs had been withdrawn from him, somewhat to his dudgeon; and Roger's will, by putting an end to a term of years of which he was trustee under the settle- ment, had severed the last link which bound him to the family. His interest, however, in the affairs of his former clients remained unabated. The arrival of ' Mr. Taylor' at The Swan had excited a curiosity, which was only heightened by the glimpse of the stranger's muffled form obtained in the roadway by Baigent and himself. He was resolved to see whether his opinion would allow him to corroborate Lady Tichborne, and Baigent was again called into counsel. Mr. Baigent was a man some few years Roger Tich- borne's senior, who had at one time, prior to the latter's entrance into the army, seen a good deal of him, and had given him drawing lessons. He was an anti- quarian and genealogist of no mean attainments, and had devoted much of his lifetime to collecting voluminous materials for the compilation of a history of the Tichborne family, with whose members he enjoyed considerable intimacy, until his marriage with a distant connection of it had brought about a coolness. This, however, did not prevent him from corresponding with Lady Doughty about the impending arrival of the claimant; and while the latter was still on the voyage from Australia, he had obtained from Cater, the baker from Wagga Wagga, a full description of his personal appearance, which he had com- municated to Mr. Hopkins, and which, together with other circumstances, had rendered them both somewhat sceptical. The result of their present deliberations was an invitation to the claimant to meet them at dinner at Mr. Hopkins' house, and the invitation was accepted in the following letter:- 'MY DEAR FRIEND, -- you will no doubt think it strange that i did not call on you when at Alresford. I should have done so with pleasure had I not been under a promise to Mamma not to converce with anybody i knew until I had seen her. i now know her reasons, and am very glad i keeped my promice. i suppose you have heard how i have been served by Gosford and others since i have been away. i should not have gone to Alresford, only i thought nobody would know me, as i had grown so stout, so i thought i would have a quite look round. i know you and Dr. lipscombe are old friends, so praps you will kindly tell him the reason i did not call on him likewise. if Mamma does not send for me to meet her, most likely i will come down with Mr. Holmes to-morrow. hoping, my dear Hopkins, the old friendship that once existed between us may again be renewed and that I may have the pleasure of again re- ceving your advice how to act. I suppose you remember having heard of a Miss Bellow in ireland. Memo only. hoping to have the pleasure of meeting you before long.- I remain, yours faithfully, R. C. D. TICHBORNE' On the 1st of February the claimant, accompanied by Mr. Holmes, arrived at The Swan from Croydon, where Rous had been spending the previous day with him. A long chat with Mr. Hopkins' old clerk may not have been without its uses on the eve of an interview with his former master. The details of the dinner party will best find its place on a subsequent page,1 but the result may be given in the words of the affidavit sworn by Mr. Hopkins a few months afterwards:- 'In a conversation of two or three hours' duration which I had with him on that occasion, he evinced an intimate acquaintance with the state of the garden and grounds about Tichborne House before the alterations, since the year 1853 ; a knowledge of the name of a particular cottage at Tichborne and its inmates; of the names of his deceased uncles, and of their wives and families, and of various particulars relating to them ; a perfect recollection of his being in my house in 1846, and the circumstances leading to it; a recollection of interviews with me when he was my client in 1849, 1850, 1851, and 1852. These and other facts which transpired in conversation satisfied me that he was in fact my old client, Mr. Roger Charles Tichborne.' Mr. Hopkins did not allow the grass to grow under his feet, and the next morning wrote to Mr. Henry Danby Seymour and Lord Arundel of Wardour his conviction that the real Sir Roger had returned; he despatched a similar letter to Mr. Cullington, and gave an invitation to the claimant, who was still at The Swan, to come and stay with him as his guest the following week. What convinced Mr. Hopkins was quite enough for Mr. Baigent also, and from that moment he was ranked amongst the most active and zealous of the claimant's supporters; but a disagreeable incident was destined to mar his satisfaction the very day after the dinner-party. Mr. Baigent was a devout Roman Catholic; and the 3rd of February being a day of obligation, he had gone over to the chapel at Tichborne, where he met Mrs. Greenwood, who charged him to bring Roger over to Brookwood that afternoon. He hastened back to The Swan with the natural conviction that the claimant would embrace the opportunity of a meeting with his cousin. On the con- trary, he pleaded illness, and much to his disappointment, Mr. Baigent had to appear at Brookwood minus the expected guest, but plus the following letter:- 'MY DEAR COUSING KATE, -- I am very sorry i am not able to come and see you before i go. my head is so bad that i am not fit to come. Mr. Baigent is very much annoyed about it, but i am coming here to spend a fue day at the end of the week, and i shall then have the pleasure of meeting you again. You will excuse me for not coming has it will only be a fue day before i am with you. I have an invitasion from Mr. Hopkins to spend a fue day with him, so i shall be down about Thursday. Give my regard to Cousing William and G. I shall soon be down again and have the pleasure of a hunt with my old friend George. With my best regards my dear Cousin to you and your family.-I remain your affectionate Cousin, R. C. TICHBORNE.'
What Mrs. Greenwood's feelings must have been on receiving this curious epistle may perhaps best be pictured if I give the letter which Roger had written to her on the 6th of December 1852 from Upton, the last he wrote on English soil. ` MY DEAR COUSIN, -- I shall not, I am sorry to say, be able to go and spend a day or two at Brookwood, as you had the kindness to invite me the last time I had the pleasure of seeing you. I shall be obliged to go to Paris at the beginning of next week, where I shall remain, in all probability, till about a week or ten days before I embark for South America. My time is in consequence so much taken up with one thing or other, that it will be, I regret to say, impossible for me to leave Upton this week. I should feel much obliged if, when you have a moment to spare, you favoured me with a letter. Though I shall be far away, it will always give me much pleasure, during my wanderings in South America, to hear from you or Colonel Greenwood. I certainly will answer your letters (though you must excuse my bad handwriting), and give you an account, if you feel any interest in it, what kind of sport I get at the top of the Andes, and in the middle of the forest of South America.-- Pray remember me very kindly to Colonel Greenwood, and believe me, my dear Cousin your affectionate Cousin, R. C. TICHBORNE.' The claimant's absence from Alresford was a brief one, but his anticipations of a hunt with his old friend George were never destined to be gratified. On the 8th of February he came down to stay with Mr. Hopkins, and remained there as an honoured guest until the 13th. The reception he met with from the neighbours had a further effect upon his fortunes, but for the moment we will follow him in his relations with the various branches of Roger Tichborne's family. Mr. Hopkins was a shrewd old lawyer, and must have seen what could hardly have escaped the notice of persons of less penetration, that unless the claimant could obtain the adherence of some other of his relatives, the effect of his mother's recognition would be somewhat discounted, and we may conjecture that it was at his instigation that the following letter was written to Mr. Henry Danby Seymour:- 'MY DEAR UNCLE, You will excuse me not commu- cating with you before. I have been so shamefully treated since I have arrived in England that I did not know whose where my frinds. I am staying with my old frind Mr. Hopkins for a fue day, And if you could come down I would so much like to see you. I am very glad to hear you are a member for Poole. I suppose you remember the time they wanted me to stand for it. -- Hoping my dear Uncle to see you before long and renew that old friendship that once existed between us, I remain, your affectionate Nephew, R. C. TICHBORNE.' Apart from peculiarities of orthography and diction, there were two things in this letter which could not fail to attract Mr. Seymour's attention. One was the use of the word `uncle,' a term never employed by Roger, for they had been ` Henry' and ` Roger ' to one another all their lives; the other was the allusion to the Poole election. Roger, as his letters prove, had gone down in 1852 to assist Mr. Seymour in his candidature, but there was no record that any one had ever dreamt of asking him to come forward himself, and the fact was highly improbable. Mr. Seymour at once acceded to the suggestion, for the difficulty hitherto experienced by the family had been how to obtain a sight of the claimant, and he brought with him, without giving notice of his intention, a man of about forty years of age, named William Burden, who now held a position of trust in the Customs' service, and as a young man had been valet to Sir James Tichborne. In this capacity he had known Roger well, and on his last visit to Paris in 1853 had nursed him in an attack of illness. They went straight to The Swan, and from one of its windows saw Mr. Hopkins walking along the street with a man whom neither of them recognised. Hastening out they caught them on Mr. Hopkins's doorway. Mr. Seymour touched the latter on the shoulder, and he turned round, and without pausing for a moment went through the ceremony -- hardly necessary one would have thought -- of introduction. `This is Sir Roger Tichborne, Mr. Danby Seymour.' The claimant was thus helped out of any difficulty he may have been in, but he was posed by Mr. Seymour pointing to Burden and saying, ' If you are Roger Tichborne, you will know this gentleman.' The claimant hesitated, and then said it was his `Uncle Nangle,' an old gentleman who, though still alive, was over seventy years of age. They all went in, and a long conversation took place. Mr. Seymour began in French, but the claimant explained that he had forgotten the language, and the general result of the interview was that at the close Mr. Seymour politely said that he was unable to recognise the claimant in any way, but he invited him to come and see his sisters, Lady Rawlinson and Mrs. Bouverie, and an appointment was made to meet them the next day in Upper Grosvenor Street. Two incidents in the course of this meeting deserve notice. In the first place the claimant produced a helmet which had been worn by Roger in the Carabineers, and sent down from Tichborne House where it had been pre- served. The claimant essayed to put it on, but it was much too small, and even when an old pad of newspaper had been removed from the lining, he could barely get his head into it. The other incident was more striking. As the four men were sitting round the table, Burden suddenly produced an envelope addressed to himself, and asked the claimant if he knew the writing. He looked at it care- fully and said he did not; whereon Mr. Hopkins, casting a glance over it, exclaimed, `Good God, that is your father's handwriting!' On the 13th the claimant left Alresford, not to keep his appointment at Upper Grosvenor Street, which remained unfulfilled,to the end of time, but for Croydon, whence he wrote to Lady Tichborne :-- ` . . . MY DEAR MAMA, -- I have meet with many friends at Alresford that knew me well and have receved a very welcome reception from them. the Alresford church bells rung very merrily when I arrive. I receved a visit from Col. Lushington at Mr. Hopkins. He lunch with us at Hopkins the next day with Mrs. Lushington Hopkins and myself then returned with them to Tichborne. I pointed out to the Col. the picture that belong to me. The Col. found my Helmet and I put it on. it fit me now has well has ever. of cause the Col. is perfectly satisfied and has acted very kindly and told me he would give up the house at any time I wanted it . . . . I have receved a very kind letter from Mr. scott and Mr. and Mrs. Mark. I have seen Henry Seymore but .he had been so poisoned by Cullington and Gosford that at first he would not own me. Mr. Hopkins very kindly had a long talk with him and so did I. of cause he soon altered his mind a little.' That week Lady Tichborne arrived in England, and at once took up her abode with the claimant and his family at Croydon, where she remained until the end of April; and it was during her visit that the final efforts of the Tichborne family to obtain an amicable meeting with him were made. There had been the usual sparring between the solicitors, Mr. Holmes on one side and Messrs. Dobinson and Geare, the London agents of Mr. Frederick Bowker, on the other. In a letter of the 22nd of February the latter pointed out that `when Mr. Roger Charles Tich- borne left this country he was twenty-four years of age; he had lived on the most intimate and affectionate and familiar terms with numerous friends and relatives: there are scores of persons now living who could identify him to a certainty. The great majority of his relatives have no pecuniary interest in the issue whether he be dead or living; they are persons of position and honour, irrespec- tive of mere fortune, far above the possibility of being influenced by any other than honourable motives.' They added that it was not a question of remote or intricate pedigree, but of mere personal identity, the times being of the most recent date; and they concluded by formally demanding a meeting between the claimant and the relatives and friends, with whom Roger lived and asso- ciated from early youth to the time of his leaving the country. He was at liberty to surround himself with every protection and aid that might be thought necessary -- counsel, solicitor, and friends -- and to choose his own time and place. Mr. Holmes in reply rode the high horse, said that the recognition by the dowager, by Mr. Hopkins, by Mr. Baigent, and others, had fully established his client's identity, and he harped on the conduct of the family, declaring that since his arrival in England they had hunted the claimant, caused his footsteps to be. traced, and broken in upon his privacy. However, it was arranged that Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe should have an interview with the claimant in his house in Croydon, and on the 8th of March they went down there, bringing with them Mrs. Towneley. Arrived at Essex Lodge, Mrs. Radcliffe was left outside in the cab, and her cousin went in with Mr. Radcliffe. The meeting began unpleasantly: the dowager was known to be in the house, and as the claimant emerged from the back drawing-room, Mr. Radcliffe, desirous that he should not be prompted, shut the door behind him, to his great annoyance. The claimant com- menced by taking Mrs. Towneley for Mrs. Radcliffe, and addressed her as `Kattie'; for the moment he was not undeceived, and Mr. Radcliffe, saying that there was an- other cousin outside, fetched in his wife, to whom the claimant, failing to recognise the woman from whom Roger had parted heartbroken fourteen years before, bowed, saying, `How are you, Lucy ?' This mistake was explained to him, and the visitors proceeded to examine him on family incidents, names and dates and places. He utterly failed to satisfy them, but while Mrs. Towneley was absolutely convinced that the man was not Roger, and Mr. Radcliffe was strongly of the same opinion, Mrs. Radcliffe was reluctant to pronounce a definite verdict without further investigation; there was something about the voice that reminded her of Roger, a sort of French accent, which, whether assumed or not, was clearly percep- tible, and there was a suspicion of broken English. Accordingly Mr. Radcliffe wrote, the same evening, to Mr. Holmes, expressing his regret that the party did not feel satisfied with their interview, and saying that some further conversation would be required before they could be certain that it was Roger Tichborne. An appointment was accordingly made for the 12th, and it was agreed that Lady Doughty and the Radcliffes should meet the claimant at Mr. Holmes's house. But Lady Doughty was unable to attend, and Mrs. Radcliffe missed the train, and in their stead came Mrs. Towneley with Mrs. Nangle and her daughter. Mr. Holmes was out when they arrived, and Mr. Radcliffe went off to fetch the claimant from his house close by, while the ladies sat down in the drawing- room. Mr. Radcliffe brought the claimant back with him, and in the cab the latter 's memory seemed to have im- proved, and though on the last occasion he had denied ever meeting Mr. Radcliffe before, he now alluded to their having been together at Burton-Constable and elsewhere. In the house, however, the meeting was a greater fiasco than before: the claimant was utterly nonplussed by the presence of Mrs. and Miss Nangle, for whom he was not prepared, though Mrs. Nangle, as a resident in Paris, had known Roger from babyhood, and her daughter had been one of the party in the days of his romance with Miss Doughty. Asked by Mrs. Nangle who she was, he said, ` I don't know, I don't know,' and when spoken to in French he made no response except once to ejaculate, `Oui, Madame,'. in a very un-Parisian accent, and to keep muttering that `this was not in the contract.' Then Mrs. Towneley called him an impostor, and he approached Mr. Radcliffe in a menacing way as if about to strike him. The meeting broke up, and on returning to London Mr. Radcliffe wrote to Mr. Holmes to say that all those who had been down to Croydon were thoroughly convinced that his client was not Roger Tichborne, not only because they failed to recognise him, but because he evidently did not recognise his nearest relations. Mr. Holmes replied that `the way in which you and the three ladies behaved for the very few moments Sir Roger Tichborne condescended to see you was an entire breach of the arrangement.' Why any arrangement hemmed in with conditions should have been necessary for a meeting between such near relatives is not very apparent on the supposition that the real Roger was returned, but it certainly was unfortunate that the suggestion as to presence of solicitor or counsel was not carried out, for the claimant's version, years afterwards, of what took place at the interview differed very materially from that given by the rest of the party. We must now go back to his second visit to Alresford when he stayed there as Mr. Hopkins's guest. During that period, from the 8th to the 13th of February, Colonel Lushington, the lessee of Tichborne Park, came over to luncheon; he had never known Roger, but was satisfied by Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins that the real baronet was under their roof, and treated him with the utmost civility. He invited him to come and stay at the house, and, as we have seen, sent over the old dragoon helmet and other accoutrements. The invitation was accepted, and later in the month the claimant found himself as a visitor in the home of the Tichbornes, accompanied by the invaluable and assiduous Baigent, and astonishing his host by the know- ledge he displayed of the family pictures and other `objects of bigotry and virtue.' The news spread through the county, the freely expressed opinions and active partisanship of Mr. Hopkins carried much weight with it, and a considerable number of the Hampshire gentry came forward to recog- nise Sir Roger, conspicuous among them being Mr. James Winter Scott of Rotherfield and Mr. Guildford Onslow, M.P. Another name, destined to a sinister association with the darkest chapter in the story, was that of Mr. Bulpett, the local banker, who gave practical evidence of his sincerity by placing the sum of £500 to the, claimant's credit. Nor was the dowager idle: she wrote to Sir Frederick Clifford Constable, an old friend of the family, who consented to see the claimant at his seat near Hull, and who, after some hesitation at first, was convinced of the latter's identity by the acquaintance he displayed with the circumstances of a visit paid by Roger Tichborne to Burton-Constable. Later on, in May, Mr. Anthony Biddulph, a connection of the Tichbornes, who had hitherto joined in denouncing the new-comer as an impostor, was induced to come down to Croydon, and returned a strong convert. Long before this, however, an important development had taken place. A former soldier servant of Roger's, by name Carter, had left the army, entered domestic service, and was just then at a loose end. Seeing in the papers an account of the triumphant entry into Alresford of the long absent baronet, he wrote asking to be taken back into his employment, and was received at Croydon in that capacity on the 25th of February. Early in March another old trooper, named M'Cann, who had also acted as servant to Roger in the regiment, but was now ill and past all work, was taken into the establishment at Essex Lodge and accommodated with a lodging there. The claimant was now in touch with men who had been in the Carabineers throughout the whole of Roger Tichborne's military career, and there commenced a general hunting up of all the soldiers who had served with and under him. The Carabineers were stationed at Leeds, and a pilgrimage thither was undertaken; there were a good many old members of the Regiment at Sandhurst, and to Sandhurst the claimant and his military followers repaired. As miracles were wrought at medieval shrines, so every day and from all parts of the country the claimant was enabled to report to the dowager wonderful instances of recogni- tions. Under what circumstances they were brought about we may see in the sequel; but it was not only by the troopers and non-commissioned officers that the claimant was acknowledged. A considerable body of those who had held commissions with him, some of whom had now attained high rank in the service,were prepared to swear that their old comrade was before them. On the other hand there were many others, including those who had been brought into the most intimate relations with Roger, who stoutly affirmed the contrary. The evidence of the believers was embodied in affidavits, after being taken down in the first instance by Rous or Baigent and polished up and occasionally strengthened by the deft hands of equity draftsmen. A similar process was adopted with the Alresford tradesmen and Tichborne villagers, and regular levées were held at The Swan, where the cloud of witnesses was regaled from the tap till their turn came to enter the temporary sanctum of the law. The affidavits thus procured were printed in book form and largely distributed amongst those whose adhesion was hoped for and whose memories it was desirable to stimulate. Towards the end of April Lady Tichborne quitted Croydon: the reason stated in her affidavit being that it did not agree with her health. She told one of her old Paris friends, however, that she could not stand the life there -- too much noise, too many people, too much ex- pense ; and indeed it was no place for a delicately nurtured lady. Decayed troopers, cast-off serving men, money- lenders, solicitors' clerks, all used it as a house of call, and a coarse but profuse hospitality was exercised towards all comers. With the claimant, however, she maintained a constant correspondence, and she exercised a never-failing generosity towards him. Some of his letters to her are worthy of perusal:- 'April 20.--MY DEAR MAMMA, -- I refrained from writing untill I had seen the Dr. He says I am a great deal better. But must not leave my bed for several days yet. I hope my dear mamma you have found some of the letters.' `April 29.-- . . . I have sent both horses to be sold. My reason for doing so is that I knew they would be seized for Cubitt Bill. The parties holding the Bill Has promiced not to molest me, as it would be against their own entrets, so I thought it would be best to sell them at once . . . . I hope my dear mamma you are better than you ware. I am a great deal better now that it busted. Of cause I am in less pain now.' ` May 11.-- . . . I saw Mr. Holmes last night. He says he will be ready to file the Bills on Tuesday. But he wants five hundred pounds before he can file them . . . . I have got about thirty pounds mama dear. But that you see mama dear is not sufficient. Next Tuesday is mary Birth day, and Mr. Long Father is coming to dine with us, so do try and come mama dear. You know mama dear it of great importance that these gentlemans come to see me. Because it gets all over Hampshire.' `May 22.- . . . I spoke to Mr. Holmes about you agoing to call on him to-day . . . . I receved a letter from Talbot constable yestrday . . . . Will you my dear mama answer Talbot letter for me. I don't lick the way he writes, I think he has been tampered with by the other partis. We must be very careful my dear mama. Now my case is so strong. If he was to come up to be Godfather to my son and then say he did not know me it would injure my case very much.' `July 2.-We have succeeded first class since we been here (Alresford). I met Major Haywood here yesterday. He called on me with Mr. Sumner, the Bishop of Win- chester son. He recognised me at once and made an affidavid at once. I likewise was very successful at Sand- hurst has I met several there who I had not seen before. I had them down here and they had their milatary clothes on, and I think they thougt I was agoing to take the town.' This day or two at The Swan, with its `milatary' parade and swearing of ` affidavids,' appears to have been not inexpensive, for in a letter dated the 4th of July the claimant wrote: ` It cost me very near all my £50 at Alresford this trip'; but he seems to have got his money's worth in affidavits. One more letter must suffice:- 'July 28.-I shall be in London all day to-morrow pre- paring for my examination on Tuesday . . . . It appears Elizaberth did not write the letter as Mary says. But I have the letter. and she wrote one to you. so we can compare them and see.' Leaving aside all questions of spelling and punctuation, there are one or two points in these letters that should be noticed. In the first place, there are the allusions to the claimant's health. From the moment that he had aban- doned the poverty and privations of his colonial life a decided change for the worse had manifested itself in his physical condition. He had increased enormously in bulk, turning the scale at five-and-twenty stone; riotous living and debauchery had played havoc with him, he was subject to constant attacks of erysipelas in the legs, and was fast becoming a mass of disease due to his coarse excesses. The extracts also contain allusions to his pecuniary difficulties, and others left unquoted paint the desperate financial straits that he was in. Money had to be borrowed in all quarters, and often at most usurious rates -- there was one loan of £150 for which he gave £1000. Lady Tichborne's allowance -- all and more than the poor lady could spare -- was insufficient to maintain the establishment at Croydon swollen by the gang of para- sites; the trips all over England in search of witnesses, identification, and affidavits were a costly item, and to them had now to be added the expenses of a gigantic law- suit. |
