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foreman of the jury inquired when there was any likeli- hood of the claimant himself being examined, as nothing else apparently could shorten the interminable cross- examination of the witnesses; and on the following morn- ing he intimated, on behalf of his fellow-jurors, that the time had come to call upon counsel to fulfil his promise, and place the claimant and Bogle in the witness-box. To this Serjeant Ballantine assented, and in the course of Tuesday, the 30th of May, the claimant, whose mysterious personality had for years loomed large in the public imagination, was duly sworn, and examined in chief by Mr. Hardinge Giffard. This process took upwards of two days, the reader is acquainted with the outline of the story, and it would be tedious and unnecessary to follow it in detail. One or two points only require notice in view of the subsequent cross-examination. The claimant now gave a connected account of what he had called in his first letter from Australia to Lady Tichborne the Brighton card case. He was at Brighton, he said, for about three days on leave from his regiment, and there lost £1500 at cards to some strangers named Broome, Robin, and Ecclestone. He had difficulty in raising the money; but at last his mother got him £500, and made him promise never to play cards again. He could not say whether any of the servants knew about it, but it was a matter well known in the family circle. He was asked whether before he went abroad he had given a sealed packet to. Mr. Gosford ; he replied in the affirma- tive, and said he had read the contents of it over to him. Gosford was then called on his subpoena to produce the packet, and said he did not produce it; whereupon Mr. Giffard asked the claimant, `Are you able to repeat the con- tents of that sealed packet ?' --' I am, but I decline to do so.' --'What I am asking you now is whether you are able to repeat the contents.'? --' I am.' --`Are there reasons for not stating them publicly ?`--There are very strong reasons.' He now altered the period of his visit to Melipilla from the date he had given before Mr. Roupell, and fixed it as taking place on the journey from Santiago to Valparaiso, shortly after his arrival in South America. He stayed there for two or three weeks, as the vessel in which he had a passage for the coasting journey was not ready to sail. He was there as Don Tomas Castro's guest, and was intro- duced by him to many of the gentlemen in the neighbour- hood, and shared in their shooting expeditions and the recreations of the place. In his account of the shipwreck of the Bella, and his early wanderings in Australia, he substantially repeated the contents of his affidavit. But with the mention of the name of Arthur Orton new ground was reached, and the claimant proceeded to tell how he had first met him at Boisdale, when he had been in Mr. Foster's service for about eighteen months, and was in charge of the Dargo station. Orton was a stockrider, had rather sharp features, and a long face, and was large boned, and slightly but distinctly marked with the small- pox. He had very red eyes, and was about an inch and a half taller than the witness, with large hands and feet. Orton got very intimate with him at Dargo, and succeeded him there on the station. At a later date Orton took the name of Alfred Smith for a time; and they were together again at Myer's Flat, one of the suburbs of the Bendigo Diggings. Orton had been at Wagga Wagga more than once, and was there when the claimant finally quitted it for Sydney ; he had been hanging about outside Gibbes' office while the claimant made his will, and as soon as the claimant got an advance from Gibbes he gave £50 of it to Orton. They had been for a short time in the employment of Mr. Higgins; but while the claimant was in the butchering department, Orton was in the stable-yard. Altogether their acquaintance had lasted from 1857 to 1866, but had not been continuous, and on one occasion they had lost sight of one another for three years. Asked how he first came to see the advertisement inserted in the papers by Lady Tichborne, he said it was shown to him some time in 1866 by a great friend of his, a Hampshire man named Slate, who brought back the paper from Melbourne, and pointed it out to him. ` I suppose he had heard me mention Hampshire.' Under the skilful way in which it was elicited by Mr. Giffard a composite and coherent story had now been placed before the public. It rested with the defence to test that narrative, and to see how far it represented the sum of the claimant's knowledge. Cross-examination is ever a two-edged weapon, and many a claim has been established by evidence extracted through its means which hung doubtfully in the balance when the examination in chief had ended. It was the duty of the defendants through their counsel to test at every point the sound- ness of the entire fabric of the story, to follow out every clue, to bring to light every inconsistency. And Sir John Coleridge was bent on demolishing the whole of this fabric, on showing that the claimant differed in physiog- nomy, style, habits, taste, language, and education from Roger Tichborne. It was part of his plan to show that all the knowledge which the claimant possessed about the career of Roger and about the Tichborne family was know- ledge which he had had an opportunity of acquiring; to show that whatever he knew could have come from careful coaching, from gossip, or from documents to which he had access, and that he knew nothing about Roger except what he could have learned from such sources, The Solicitor-General started with the Wagga Wagga will. The claimant said that he could not get an advance from Gibbes without making it, therefore he trumped up any kind of thing he possibly could, making the whole contents wrong in every shape, and that he executed it knowing it to be untrue from beginning to end. Of course he knew his mother's name was Henriette Felicité (which he pronounced Feleceet), but he put it Hannah Frances on the same principle that he put everything else wrong. He was asked if Henry Angel and John Jarvis, appointed as executors thereof, were not intimate friends of Arthur Orton's father, but he could not say, though he admitted that Arthur suggested the names to him. He did not know the latter's present whereabouts. `Are you sure he is not in this Court ?` --'He may be, for aught I know; it would puzzle me to see all who are here.' And he now publicly admitted having gone to Wapping on the night of his arrival in England, to make inquiries, he said, after Arthur Orton's father, whose address he had brought from Australia on a piece of paper. Asked about the Brighton card case, he said it occurred in August, September, or October 1852, and was pressed a good deal as to whether he did not re- member a card swindling case at Brighton that year in which the Broomes and the others were prosecuted for swindling a man named Hamp out of a large sum. He swore he knew nothing about it, though one of his witnesses had said before the Australian Commission that Castro had often talked about the case, and professed to know the Broomes. He fixed the date at which he first discovered that his attentions to Miss Doughty were not acceptable to her father as being July or August 1852. The last time he saw her, he said, was in the latter end of October, or early in November that year, at the lower end of Tichborne village, as he was returning from hunting, and he then promised to marry her if she was single when he came from abroad. He asserted that he told the purport of the sealed packet to his cousin, but did not give her a copy; and he was next referred to one of his affidavits in which he had sworn that he had placed in the hands of Gosford a sealed document relating to his cousin, only to be opened in certain events, one of which he knew had not happened, and the other of which he hoped had not. With great difficulty he was brought to fix his own death as the event which he knew had not happened, but for a long time he refused to give any clue to the event which he hoped had not ; the Solicitor-General, however, was obdurate. The claimant had made this abominable charge; it had been allowed to reach the ears of the public. Serjeant Ballantine had made his knowledge of the contents of the sealed packet a clinching proof of his identity, and he was not to be allowed to ride off under a miserable affectation of spurious chivalry and delicacy. Nay, more, Mrs. Radcliffe was herself in Court with her husband by her side, and her instructions were imperative that the slander should be dragged into the light of day to give her an opportunity of denying it on oath. `I repeat the question again, What is the event you hoped had not happened ?`--The confinement of my cousin.'?--` Do you mean to swear before the judge and jury that you seduced this lady ?' --'I most solemnly to my God swear I did.' Some further questions were put to him, and then he was given several papers, all of which he said were in his handwriting, and they were read to the jury. One of them was the writing dated the 22nd of June given to Miss Doughty, and containing the vow to the Holy Virgin to build the church at Tichborne. Another was the letter to Gosford, in which, after mentioning that he had left the draft of his will with Slaughter, he said he had omitted from it any mention of the church, ' which I will only build under the circumstances I have left you in writing.' There was also read to the jury the statement of the contents of the packet written down by the claimant in August 1867, and another version, somewhat inconsistent in detail, but to the same effect, which he had drawn up during the course of the trial in the presence of one of his solicitors. He was then taken to Roger's early life at Paris. He could give but little account of his studies with Chatillon, and did not remember the name of a single book he had read with him; but he thought that M. Jolivalt, who succeeded Chatillon as his tutor, and taught him for some years, was a boy he used to play with. A passage from a letter written by Roger in 1852 to Lady Doughty containing a long criticism on Chateaubriand's tale of Réné was read to him, and he said it was an extract from the life of St. Nicholas. He could not read French now, he said ; had forgotten it ; but he could speak `Castilian,' which he had acquired during his eighteen months' sojourn in South America. He had discontinued French since he went to Australia; and though he had formerly known Paris well, his recollection of it had almost entirely vanished, it was a part of his life he never cared to look back at. And certainly he got into hopeless confusion as to the residences of Mr. and Mrs. James Tichborne; the Rue de la Madeleine, the Rue de la Ferme, the Rue des Pyramides, the Rue St. Honoré, were all in an inextricable jungle, and he committed him- self to remembering the view of the Hotel de Louvre from the windows of the house in the Rue St. Honoré, though it was not built till after Roger sailed for South America. He was unable to answer a single question as to his early recreations, swimming, dancing, fencing, or places of amusement, or the details of any of the annual summer trips with his father and brother and Chatillon, excepting only the accident at ` Ponnic.' While on the subject of Chatillon, the Solicitor-General adverted to his interview with the latter at Paris in 1867, which gave rise to an incredible amount of wriggling and fencing, the claimant trying to maintain that Chatillon had come on his own initiative, but eventually admitting that Lady Tichborne had herself insisted on going to fetch him. At this point he was asked if he had ever been tatooed, and he said he never had, and bore no such marks on his person, but he gave an elaborate account of a seton which he said had been inserted in his shoulder when a boy and kept open by the movement of silk threads. The examination next travelled to Stonyhurst. The claimant insisted that he had lived in ` the cottages' adjoining the College. On his mention of the quadrangle, he was pressed for a definition of that word, but would not go beyond the assertion that it was a staircase or some other part of a building; and a reference being made to the `seminary,' the detached part of the College where Roger had lived with the other ` Philosophers,' he first of all thought it was the cemetery, and tlien knew nothing at all about it. He knew even less about the divisions and classes than about the College buildings. These classes were seven in number, known as Elements, Figures, Rudiments, Grammar, Syntax, Poetry, and Rhe- toric, but all recollection of those had vanished. Finally, he said there were two sets of scholars, and two only -- the Philosophers to whom he belonged, and `the Laity who were studying for the Church.' The number of the former he put at 150 to 180, whereas they never exceeded 20, and as a rule were about 14. He could not remember the hours for meals nor the days for holidays, and hardly the name of a single schoolfellow, or priest, or attendant. He said he had attended lectures in Hebrew, and Latin, and Greek. Hebrew and Greek he had entirely forgotten, and was not sure whether he went so far as the alphabet in them, but he was sure he learned the Latin alphabet. He did not know whether be had read Caesar, and was not sure whether he was a Greek or Latin writer, and whether in poetry or prose. Shown a copy of Virgil, he would not say whether it was Latin or Greek, but rather fancied the latter. He vras not sure if he learned Euclid, but it had nothing to do with mathematics. He took an inquiry about the Pons Asinorum as a personal insult, and declined to say how far it was from Stonyhurst. Chemistry he described as being about different herbs and poisons, and the substance of medicines. ` Do you mean what is in a chemist's shop ?' queried the Solicitor-General. He said he had played cricket, and football, and hockey; but on being asked about `bandy,' the game at which Roger had excelled as a boy, he first thought it was the nickname of a person, and then that it was part of a building. Being told its real nature, he consulted a dictionary after the Court had risen, and complained the next day that hockey, bandy, and-horresco referens-golf were all the same game. A.M.D.G. and L.D.S. were blazoned in every room at Stonyhurst, and printed in every book, and written at the top and bottom of every scholastic exercise. The claimant had forgotten the fact ; but when told that the former represented ad majorem dei gloriam, said it was undoubtedly so, and that the two last words meant ` God's glory,' while Laus Deo Semper meant `the laws of God for ever, or permanently.' Finally, he denied that a list of the Jesuit Fathers at Stonyhurst had ever been procured for his use, though a charge relating to it was contained in the bill of Lady Tich- borne's solicitor, and pointed out to him. With regard to his school holidays, he gave a very confused account of the visit to Burton-Constable, his knowledge of which had so impressed Sir Talbot, but he declared that on one night he had danced the cancan before a lot of ladies and gentlemen in the library! He could remember little or nothing of Knoyle, old Mr. Sey- mour's place, nor could he identify a photograph of it, nor of Townley, nor of Bilton Grange, the home of his cousin, Mrs. Washington Hibbert, and he had now utterly for- gotten the Christian names of his aunts, Mrs. Bouverie and Lady Rawlinson. Roger Tichborne had constantly played chess with his cousins; but the claimant did not know, or professed not to know, the names of the moves or pieces.1 Shown a letter of Roger to his mother in French, sending a thousand embraces from himself and belle tête, the term by which the former always spoke of his curly-haired little brother, it conveyed no meaning to him: His recollection of the course of study for the army was vague in the extreme, but he said he had been taught forti- fications, that is, 'the landmarks of England;' `it insinuates the formation of the points of land round the coast.' He had utterly forgotten the `beggarly elements' of his military training and drill, and had never heard of the Queen's Regulations; but the Solicitor-General was not much better informed himself, and though coached by dis- tinguished officers, did not succeed in putting his questions very intelligibly, or in appreciating the force of the answers. Questioned as to the provisions of Roger Tichborne's will of 1852 and of the family resettlements in 1850, he betrayed an absolute and chaotic ignorance, and the facts which he did know in this connection were even more significant than those which he did not. The Orton part of the case was then entered on, and all the known events of Arthur Orton's life were formally put to him as having occurred to himself, and were denied categorically by him. It was suggested that he had told a fellow-passenger on the way home from New York that as a child in Paris he had been so frightened by a house in flames on the opposite side of the street that it had brought on St. Vitus's dance. This was strangely like what had undoubtedly befallen Arthur Orton in Wapping; but the claimant denied the whole incident, or that he had ever had St. Vitus's dance, or ever said so, or ever received a letter from Pedro Castro about a disease called San Vito. The lock of hair sent over from Chili was produced, and he now declared, after some hesitation, that it was not his; and he could only explain his letter acknowledging it and saying the senora had done him great service, by asserting that it was written at Mr. Holmes's dictation.1 He admitted having dictated to the schoolmaster at Wagga Wagga a letter addressed to Richardson of Wap- ping inquiring after the Ortons ; he could give no reason for not writing it himself, and said the address had been given him by Orton. His motive in writing had been to communicate something to Orton if in England, but he refused to say what, on the ground that it would incriminate himself. He solemnly denied that he had borne the name of Orton until 1859 or 1860, and then on being accused of horse-stealing changed it to Castro. He admitted that Orton had been accused of bush-ranging, but declined to say whether he had himself been charged with that crime, though be asserted that he and Orton had been tried together at Castlemaine in 1859 on the charge of horse-stealing and been acquitted. He was asked whether he ever found out during his long friendship with Orton that the latter had also been at Melipilla, and whether Orton had never asked him his reasons for assum- ing the name of Castro, which must have been so familiar to him, but he could give no explanation. He was asked about the meeting at Alresford on his return from Chili, and he corroborated the account given in the box by Mr. Scott. The two `Stephens' letters to Mrs. Pardon and Mrs. Tredgett, which Mr. Holmes had read to the meeting, were handed to him by the Solicitor-General, and he now confessed that they were in his handwriting. He said he had denied them previously because he was afraid of losing his friends, and he admitted that he had allowed Mr. Scott to come into the box and give evidence under the impression they were forgeries, without undeceiving him or any of his other witnesses. And he also admitted that the photographs which he had shown to Mrs. Pardon and sent to Mrs. Tredgett were those of his own wife and child. ` They were bothering me to send them a photograph; and as I had got one of my wife, I thought I would send that just to quiet them, but I didn't think they would retaliate as they have.' The letter of the same date from Arthur Orton to Mrs. Tredgett was not yet in the possession of the defendants, but they were on the scent, and the Solicitor-General pressed the claimant hard. He admitted that he had received a letter from one of the Orton sisters, which he had destroyed, in which the writer had taxed the imaginary Mr. Stephens with being her brother Arthur, but he swore that she did not say that she had recognised him by the handwriting. Then the subsequent relations between the claimant, and Charles Orton, and the sisters, their affidavits and the money payments to them, and the `Brand' letter to the claimant's wife were all dragged out, including the fact that the Orton sisters had written frequently to him, and that he had destroyed their letters. Miss Mary Ann Loder was brought into Court, and he was asked if he had ever been engaged to her. He denied that he had ever seen her till detective Whicher brought her down to Croydon. In the `Stephens' letter to Mrs. Pardon he had alleged that Arthur Orton had charged him to make inquiries about her. These inquiries he had never made, and he finally declared there was not a word of truth in any of the statements made by him in these 'Stephens' letters. His present version of the visit to Wapping was that he went down there to see whether Orton had got to England before him; he went to the address given him by the latter, and finding the house shut, he went to the nearest public house to inquire for Miss Orton's address, and having got it, he went away. He only remained there a few minutes, and he totally denied the conversation which the landlady said had taken place between them. The next morning he had gone down to Mrs. Tredgett's address; she was out, and so he had gone next door to Mrs. Pardon, given her his card, `William H. Stephens,' and told her he was com- missioned by Miss Orton's brother, who was a great friend of his, to see her and help her with money if necessary. He was examined rigorously as to his various journeys in South America and their dates. He would not admit having sent his journal home to Sir James and Lady Tichborne, but he would not swear to the contrary. He did not think that while Lady Tichborne was living with him at Croydon she showed him old books or memoranda, and was sure she didn't show him the old letters from South America and elsewhere. He still adhered to his account of the wreck of the Bella, and said he had tried without success to find any of the crew of that vessel or the Osprey. He swore he had never been at Lloyd's to examine their books for particulars of these and other vessels, and denied all knowledge of the place; but the clerk who had conducted the search with him was produced in Court, and the claimant was reduced to admitting that he might have been there once, certainly not twice. I do not propose to follow the Solicitor-General in his treatment of the interviews with Gosford and the various members of the Tichborne and Seymour families. The claimant was taken through them in great detail, and allowed to give his own version, which was in every case in violent contradiction with that of the other persons who had been present. He was put seriatim through the list of all the relatives who had at any time known Roger Tichborne and were still alive, and he admitted that with the exception of Mr. Biddulph not one had ever recognised him. Asked why in his affidavit he had sworn that they fully identified him, he replied, `After knowing me in my young days, and me not being so much altered, and after other people had recognised me, why couldn't they ? The conclusion of the cross-examination was its least successful part. There had been in the office of Messrs. Dobinson and Geare a copying clerk of the name of Pittendreigh, who, in the summer of 1867, just when the defendants were upon the Orton track, got himself through the medium of his wife in communication with the claimant. Mrs. Pittendreigh wrote letters to the latter giving him important information, and visited him at his house in Croydon for the same purpose, and the claimant did not deny that there had been this relationship between them, or that he had written to her more than once and had paid her sums of money. Four letters purporting to come from him to Mrs. Pittendreigh were put to the claimant; they were of a damaging character, and one of them contained an offer of £200 for 'Orton information and all my letters.' This letter, however, and two others out of the four the claimant absolutely denied having written, with a warmth that had not characterised some of his other denials. It appeared afterwards that Chabot the expert had expressed grave doubts whether they were not forgeries, and in his address to the jury the Solicitor General expressly said that he did not propose to rely on them. What their history was; if forged, who was the forger; and from what source they came, remains obscure ; but the fact of their having been tendered to the claimant was afterwards made a handle for the most violent mis- representations. The re-examination by Serjeant Ballantine was skilful and adroit, though it was open to the criticism that during the twenty-two days in which the claimant had been under fire he might have picked up a good deal of the superior knowledge which he now exhibited. He was asked most pointedly whether he had sought to refresh his memory on early incidents by conversations with Lady Tichborne, or Bogle, or his old servants, or in any other way; and he replied, ` My memory would not be quite so bad if I had.' He repeated that there were no tattoo marks about his body, and that he was never tattooed by anybody either at Stonyhurst or elsewhere. He asserted that since his return to Europe he had had conversations with Lady Tichborne on the subject of the Brighton card case, but the matter of the conversations was ruled to be inadmissible. Orton's three sisters were asked to stand up, and the claimant swore that this was only the second time in his life that he had seen them. ` I deliberately and on my solemn oath swear that I never saw them except on one occasion in Holmes' presence.' There was not the slightest resemblance between himself and Arthur Orton, the latter being a big-boned man with large hands and feet. He insisted that he had seen a great deal of Guilfoyle in Sydney; that the latter had recognised him first, and had never expressed a doubt about his identity, but had been piqued at his failure to keep a dinner engagement, and had withdrawn his support. He was asked if he wished to give any explanation as to why during the. time he was in Australia he had made no communication to any member of his family. `I thought I would come home some day and surprise them. I was in the saddle at six in the morning until eight or nine at night. I used to feel tired, and even on Sunday I was often obliged to go to neighbouring stations. So the time passed on, and I never wrote at all. It was certainly from no motive that I didn't write. It was more from careless- ness and neglect.' The claimant had entered the box on the 30th of May, and he finally quitted it on the 7th of July, from which date the case was adjourned to the 7th of November. The Solicitor-General's cross-examination was the subject of universal comment and of much criticism, some of it just, some of it very much the reverse. The enormous length to which it extended, the area over which it travelled, the amazing ignorance, real or assumed, of the claimant in some respects, his extraordinary shrewdness in others, the unblushing effrontery with which he ad- mitted the most disgraceful actions, the wearisome reitera- tion of the phrase, `Should you be surprised to hear,?' all these and many other circumstances rendered it the most absorbing of topics, and during its slow procession the Court became, so far as its scanty accommodation permitted, the lounge of the fashionable world and the junior bar. At a very early period the most hostile relations were established between the claimant and his examiner; before he had been in the box an hour the former had com- plained to the judge that he thought the conduct of the Solicitor-General very insolent; and the latter had, with unfortunate candour, replied that he meant it to be so. From that moment the buttons were off the foils, the claimant hitting out with coarse brutality, and on one occasion taunting the Solicitor-General with having a Jesuit priest for his brother; the latter with far more delicate weapons pricking the hide of his ponderous antagonist. The honours of war, however, were by no means confined to the Solicitor-General, and we may adopt the words subsequently used by him to the jury:-- ' Did you ever see a more clever man, more ready, more astute, or with more ability in dealing with information, extracting information, and making use of the slightest hint dropped by the cross-examining counsel ? Do you not think that many a time he was cross-examining me ? Did you not see that he got a great deal more out of me than I got out of him, and that he made most uncommon good use of what he did get ?' Indeed, it may be fully admitted that the gifts of Sir John Coleridge were not those which would enable him to baffle and confound what has been called the `bulldog audacity of the claimant.' His subtle intellect, reinforced by the matchless industry and acumen of Bowen, was admirably adapted for the task of probing the whole field of the claimant's knowledge, and of en- tangling him in contradictions, the fatal effect of which was afterwards to become apparent; but there was a want of force, an absence of the power to clinch and drive home a damaging admission, which often gave the claimant the opportunity of wriggling out of his blunders and appa- rently strengthening his position. Yet as a work of art considered in relation to its ultimate aims rather than to the triumph of the moment, the cross- examination was admirable and unsurpassed. Its object was to lay the foundations for that speech which we shall shortly have to consider, and which by one lightning flash laid bare the evolution and history of this most extra ordinary claim. The drift of quite two-thirds of it must have been unintelligible to the bulk of those who heard or read it, ignorant as they were of the real history alike of Roger Tichborne and of Arthur Orton, and of the wealth of corroborative detail in the possession of the defendants. The mere fact that the claimant went through the ordeal without collapsing under it in the first few days was con- sidered a proof of his identity; the avowal of the brutal imputation on the character of Mrs. Radcliffe was held to be strongly in his favour from the very injury it was bound to inflict on him by diverting the sympathies of all decent men and women from his cause, and the suggestion that it was a mere leap in the dark was brushed aside as incon- ceivable. The wild blunders in spelling and in the rudi- ments of education were unconvincing to the crowd, who could easily parallel them from Etonians who had forgotten their geography, and Harrovians who remembered not the Greek alphabet, and noblemen whose spelling was lamentably deficient. There was something in the claimant's manner which gave rise to the idea, sedulously promulgated by his supporters, that he was not so igno- rant as he made himself out to be, and that the exhibition he gave was due partly to genuine confusion and forget- fulness, partly to mere temper and sullenness.1 The Court reassembled on the 7th of November, and sat until the 20th of December, on which date Serjeant Ballantine closed the claimant's case. Something like ninety additional witnesses were examined, and for the most part their evidence resembled in character that given by their predecessors, whose testimony may be taken as a fair specimen of the whole case. But it should be men- tioned that, with the exception of technical and expert witnesses on questions of photography and surgery and the like, and of a few other individual instances, the list of persons of weight and character who swore to the identity of the claimant was exhausted before he was allowed to enter the box; and further, that no evidence was given relative to the Orton hypothesis, Serjeant Ballantine claiming the right to call rebutting evidence on that subject at a later period if it should become necessary. Out of 1The story was current that some of his friends discovered he was a chess player, and remonstrated with him for professing total ignorance of the game, whereupon he replied, ° Do you think I should be such a fool as to tell all I know about chess to the damned thief of a Solicitor General?' the mass of these later witnesses, however, there are one or two who call for detailed treatment. Andrew Bogle declared that he had seen a great deal of Roger during his visits at Upton and Tichborne ; at the latter place there was only a little room between their bedrooms; and he used often to go out fishing and shooting with the young gentleman, sometimes with the keeper, sometimes alone: ' There was sometimes a good deal of society, but he was fonder of being downstairs with the servants than with the gentlemen.' He described his going to the claimant's hotel at Sydney, and how, directly he saw him, he knew it was Sir Roger Tichborne at the very first sight. Then the claimant had asked him after all sorts and conditions of people in Hampshire: the brothers Godwin, two farmers near Tichborne; the Guys, well-known people in the village, ` rather low characters'; Mrs. Martin, the old nurse; Etheridge the blacksmith, people whose names Bogle had half forgotten. At the end of the conversation he was more than ever convinced it was Sir Roger, and said that at the first appearance he felt he was as like his uncle, the late Sir Henry Joseph, as two peas. Bogle absolutely denied having given the claimant any information or coaching whatsoever; he could have done so easily, he said, but the claimant never asked for any. Sir John Coleridge, who had very recently succeeded to the post of Attorney-General in the place of Sir Robert Collier, did not extract much from Bogle, except some sharp retorts; he indicated sufficiently, however, the line which the claimant's answer to his evidence would take. Considering the importance of this witness, the comparative brevity exercised by both sides in his examination was a matter of surprise to all in Court. Colonel Lushington had never seen Roger Tichborne previous to his departure abroad, and his acceptance of the claimant was mainly due, he said, to the influence of Mr. Hopkins; but other circumstances had impressed him very strongly -- the claimant's recognition of the pictures at Tichborne, his pointing out a skinned bird which he remembered having sent home from America, and his use of the French phrase sans cérémonie. In cross-examina- tion the skin was produced in a very dilapidated condition, and proved indistinguishable from that of an English cock-pheasant; and it was suggested to the witness that the claimant's knowledge of the pictures might have been derived from Bogle's visit to the house, of which circum- stance the Colonel was unaware, or from Lady Tichborne herself. He said he had disbelieved the claimant's denial of the authorship of the 'Stephens' letters, and was inclined to think he had referred to him as a thundering liar. Mr. Bulpett said he had not known Roger Tichborne intimately, in fact, he had merely seen him out hunting four or five times ; but he had a recollection of his features, on the strength of which, being one day in Mr. Holmes' office when Sir Roger Tichborne was announced, he looked him thoroughly over and said, ` I have great pleasure in recognising you as Sir Roger Tichborne -- the same man I saw in the hunting field.' He had then advanced him £500, and furthered his cause in every way, including the bringing about of the meeting at the Grosvenor Hotel. According to him, Gosford had said that the claimant's answers there were perfectly true and correct, and had ad- mitted having got the sealed packet with him in London. On cross-examination he was forced to correct himself as to the date of the advance, and to admit that it was made prior to any recognition taking place. His affidavit, he now allowed, was wrong in several important details; he had frequently re-read it, but had taken no steps to correct it, though knowing the purpose for which these affidavits were used. With regard to the Grosvenor Hotel meeting he was twisted inside out, and eventually brought to confirm that account of the transaction which I have given on an earlier, page.1 After much shuffling he admitted that he had read through and initialed the claimant's version of the sealed packet, excusing himself on the ground that he thought it a matter of very little importance, and he would not swear positively that the suggestion to embody it in writing did not proceed from him. On point after point he was forced to the humiliating con- fession that he could not adhere to the statement he had made in his examination in chief. Mr. Locock Webb, who had acted for the claimant in Chancery from the very first, was now called; and the seal of professional secrecy being withdrawn by his client, he gave the Court an account of his conneotion with the case, stated what papers had originally been laid before him, produced the opinion he had given, together with a whole mass of documents, including not only the drafts of the affidavits, but the witness's statements on which they had been founded. Before undertaking the case he had insisted on a per- sonal interview with the claimant, at which he took him through the whole of his adventures step by step, and also examined him as to the Tichborne and Doughty title-deeds. ` He evinced such a knowledge of them as I think no layman. could have done who had not been a party to them.' ` I never examined a witness who stated a case with less hesitation. I could not make him con- tradict himself on a single point. His statement became more reasonable and probable in my view from being repeated in precisely the same language in which it was expressed first of all.' But on cross-examination it appeared that not only had all hints of the claimant's Wapping expedition been kept back from his counsel, but the latter had not even been informed of Mr. Taylor's visit to Alresford and Tichborne prior to the recognition by the Dowager. Mr. Locock Webb's evidence throughout was coloured by the grievance that the case had ever been removed from the surer and more expeditious realms of Chancery, where he said the matter would have been disposed of in a month. ' As a short cause ?' suggested the Attorney-General. To the witness's mind an affidavit was conclusive proof of the matters deposed to in it. Asked if it was usual in Chancery to print affidavits in an octavo form and circulate them, he replied that he had never known it done. It was apparently news to him that the affidavits in this case had been circulated in pamphlet form, and he con- sidered it most irregular. `Supposing an attorney to circulate in a question of disputed identity a statement that certain persons had identified the person by his voice, features, manner, and personal appearance, particularly the upper part of his face, by a singular twitching of the eyebrow, a peculiar gait and walk occasioned by the right knee being naturally turned inwards, by his likeness to other members of a family, and his knowledge of facts and incidents which occurred during their acquaintance with him?' Mr. Locock Webb expressed disapproval, and the Lord Chief Justice concurred in more emphatic terms. His Lordship had, on more than one occasion, found the oral evidence of witnesses differ so much from their affidavits that he had stigmatised the latter as being disgraceful; and in particular, though the draft statement of Mr. Hopkins had contained an averment that he did not recognise the claimant by his personal appearance, and had no recollection of his features, this had disappeared from the affidavit as finally settled and sworn to.1 Mr. Francis Joseph Baigent, whose name has figured frequently in this narrative, described his intimate acquaintance with Roger Tichborne and with the whole family. Roger, he said, was very shy and awkward, afraid of being laughed at for his bad speaking, and pre- ferring to associate with persons who would not take such liberties. He told how at first he had formed an opinion from what he read in the newspapers, and from what he learnt from Cates,2 that the claimant could not be Sir Roger, and that on his visit to Mr. Hopkinson the 31st of December he had been unable to form any decided view; but the sight of Bogle at the station had made him think there was something in it after all. On the 4th of February he had again come over by appointment and gone to The Swan, where he was shown a photograph of the claimant, which was unmistakably that of Roger. Then he was shown into a room where the claimant was seated, and, still doubting, went up to him and said, ` I never expected to see you again.' The 1The process described in the Mikado as giving verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative was for many years known in Chancery Chambers under the designation of 'Locock-Webbing an affidavit.' 2 See p. 206 infra. claimant ` put on a smile, which I remember of old, and said, "I am very pleased to see you."' They conversed from five till half-past; the claimant's voice went through Baigent ; it thrilled him like an electric shock, but he care- fully abstained from giving any scrap of family information, as his object was to test him. They next went together to the house of Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins, who received the claimant in a kind, friendly way, and dinner was announced. During that meal Baigent watched his features, and observed a likeness to Sir Alfred Tichborne, and the same expression. He had previously noted that his hands were the old weak nerveless hands of Roger, who had no grip of anything. After Mrs. Hopkins had gone out they drew their chairs together, and began to question him about old days. Mr. Hopkins said, 'Do you remember the first time you were in my house ?' The claimant looked up with a melancholy smile and said, 'I do. Papa and mamma did not always agree.' Mr. Hopkins asked if he remembered sending him some saddle cloths. After a minute or two he said `Yes' ; and related how once at Henry Seymour's, finding a parcel done up, he had directed it to Mr. Hopkins, thinking the contents were papers, when in reality they were saddle-cloths. At first he could not recollect where Mr. Seymour's London house was; but seeing a letter headed No. 39 Upper Grosvenor Street, he identified that as the address. Baigent handed him a letter folded so as to conceal the signature, and he at once said it was his father's writing. He also related family matters which none but he and Mr. Hopkins could possibly have known, and he entirely satisfied the latter as to the arrangements made on re- settling the Doughty and Tichborne property when he came of age. During the whole of the interview Baigent watched him minutely, observing every movement of the features, and he came to a decided conclusion: 'You could see that he had to make a great effort of the brain, and that it was a great trial to have to recall these things. The perspiration rolled from his face; it was a dreadful ordeal for him to go through.' Finally Baigent had not the least doubt in the world that he was Sir Roger Tichborne. The cross-examination at the hands of Mr. Hawkins lasted from the 25th of November to the 11th of December, and ranked in importance second only to that of the claimant himself. Baigent was the first, as he was the only witness of education and intelligence who had from start to finish been in the inner ring of the claimant's advisers; and the pitiless insistence of Mr. Hawkins, together with the fatal mass of correspond- ence which Rous had handed over, enabled him to tear out the heart of the whole story in a manner which will be better presented in the summary which I am about to give of the Attorney-General's speech than by any detailed resumé. The cross-examination, however, cannot be passed over altogether without remark. To begin with, Baigent's intimacy with Roger Tich- borne was considerably whittled down, till he admitted that he had been a mere acquaintance; and a significant passage from one of his own letters was quoted, in which, before he had become a convert, he had written, ' There are now very few people who knew much of Roger, and I don't think his father or mother had seen much of him before leaving England.' He asserted that the letter1 in which the claimant accepted Mr. Hopkins' first invitation was to be treated as a test, letter to see whether he could mention in it some circumstance known only to Mr. Hopkins and Roger, and that Mr. Hopkins said it fulfilled that condition; but he was absolutely unable to point out from the letter what the circumstance was, or to give any explanation of the allusion to ` Miss Bellow. Memo. only.' And he admitted that during the whole of the interview the claimant made no inquiries for old friends, or men- tioned of his own initiative a single person whom Roger knew, or a single place that Roger had ever been at or seen, or a single circumstance prior to 1853. He was taken one by one through the occurrences at the interview. The claimant's answer that `Papa and Mamma' were not always good friends referred to a painful family quarrel, when Mrs. James Tichborne had come unbidden to her brother-in-law's, and had been induced to wait for her husband under Mr. Hopkins' roof. It had not occurred to the witness that the claimant, coming straight from Paris, might have heard of the incident from the Dowager; nor had it occurred to him that the fact of the saddle cloths being sent by mistake might have been known to the clerks in Hopkins' office, of whom Rous had been one at the time; or that the clerks would have known of Mr. Hopkins' visit to young Mr. Tichborne at Cahir. He had taken no steps to see whether the claimant's account of the resettlement of the property was accurate, nor, appa- rently, had Mr. Hopkins either. It appeared that the Seymour letter had been lying on the table with the address exposed, and it was suggested that the latter might not improbably have been mentioned in conversa- tion with Lady Tichborne. Mr. Hawkins asked him to hand down the letter from Sir James folded just as it had been when handed to the claimant, and the first thing that caught the eye of counsel was the signature, `James Doughty Tichborne.' `But he did not see that,' screamed Baigent; `he never looked at it like that. It is enough to make one angry to hear these insinuations against the character of another person.' Long before this Mr. Baigent had worked himself up into a state of excitement, which rendered him an easy victim to his tormentor; his personal appearance set off by a curious cape, which he wore to protect himself from the draught; his empressé manner, which had induced even Serjeant Ballantine to tell him not to be sentimental; his voluble and rambling statements; and his deafness, which made it necessary for awkward questions to be bawled at the top of the voice all combined to render him food for mirth. But there was an irascibility, a grief and horror at the odious imputations under which his adored Sir Roger was made to labour, which proved irresistible. He was in every sense of the word a difficult witness; his shrewdness enabled him to see the drift of the questions well in advance, and his method of fencing with them brought down stern reproof from the Court. `It is manifest to me,' said the Chief Justice, `that you understood the question put to you, and intended not to answer it; your manner conveys the impression that you are keeping something back.' As for the `scenes' that took place between him and Mr. Hawkins, their name was legion. `Mr. Baigent,' the latter would say, `will you be kind enough to hold your tongue until a question is put to you ?' 'That is very rude of you, Mr. Hawkins.' `Don't get out of temper, Mr. Baigent; it is too early in the morning for that.' ` I don't get out of temper so much as you do, Mr. Hawkins.' Or again : `It is perfectly harassing these questions; it is done on purpose to annoy me. These questions are perfectly childish; it is done on purpose to annoy me.' Sometimes one is driven to compassion. `Do not bully me, if you please, Mr. Hawkins. Pray do not bully me; we are not in an old Bailey Court.' ` I get so excited, my Lord, that I don't know what I am doing.' ` To be bullied by a person with those robes on.' ` Well, now, my Lord, I think I am a little quieter.' ` It is a very simple question,' remarked his Lordship. ` It is a very ridiculous question,' expostulated Baigent. But it was in the later stages of his correspondence with Rous that the chronicle of the daily hopes and fears, the revelation of the bickerings and of the suspicions of treachery which had pervaded the whole party, became more and more damaging. The effect produced upon them by the gradual unfolding of the Orton story was most vividly portrayed in letters such as the following :-- `It is a sad thing that Sir Roger will work in a round about way, and will not be open and make a clean breast of everything; or in other words, show that confidence in his friends that he ought to . . . . There is something in Orton's business that I cannot unravel. There is something we do not know, and a great deal that wants to be explained. This appears to be the woman who lent the £14 to A. 0.1 about which that letter related that I saw the photograph copy of at Mr. Holmes, together with the I.O.U. She admits in her letter that Sir Roger got into his trouble through communicating with the family. Now this is what the opposition have always said --t hat they `were indebted to Sir Roger's own anxiety to find them out and to see them for giving them a clue as to who he was in reality'; and as the evidence from abroad accumu- lated the dismay was seen to deepen. ` Castro and Orton,' wrote Baigent, ' run together throughout Australia rather too close to be comfortable;' but he comforted himself and his correspondent none the less with the remark that, ` If all Australians are like the baronet, I would not give much for anything they swear.' A letter written and signed by Arthur Orton had dismayed them from its resemblance to the caligraphy of Sir Roger. And the climax was reached in a letter of the 20th of March 1869, just after Mr. Holmes had retired from the case, and the claimant was threatening to become a bankrupt in order that, as he expressed it, the former might be 'overhauled' about his bill. ` In becoming a bankrupt,' ran the letter, `Holmes' bill would have to be filed, of which the opposi- tion would then get a copy, and from it learn all that Mr. Holmes has done for him since his arrival in England. And would not the Solicitor-General cross-examine Sir Roger on it and the items --it would cost him his estates almost, if not quite.' Three doctors, Sir William Ferguson, Dr. Sutherland, and Mr. Edward Caxton gave evidence as to the various physical marks, such as the traces of the lanced.veins, the alleged bruise on the head, and the sore resulting from the seton or issue which were said to identify the claimant with Roger; and on the 19th of December, in a private room off the Court, the judge, the jury, with the medical men and the counsel on both sides, had a full examination of the corpus vile itself. The depositions of four or five of the Australian witnesses who were favourable to the claimant were read and put in; but it should be noted that that of Mr. Gibbes was not among the number, while the evidence of Mr. Cubitt had not been taken by either side, and the most favourable of these depositions was some what vitiated by the fact that its author was undergoing a sentence of imprisonment for bigamy.1 And then after an effort to bring up quasi-expert evidence as to loss of memory by eminent scholars, which was promptly squashed, the case was closed. And paradoxical as it may appear to the readers of this and the preceding chapter, the claimant's chances never looked brighter to the general public than when the Court rose for the Christmas vacation. Serjeant Ballantine's dexterous handling of the materials at his command, and the mass of one hundred and twenty witnesses, good, bad, and indifferent, hurled rank after rank, like the successive waves of Russian infantry at Plevna, had pro- duced its effect amongst those who are accustomed to count rather than to weigh testimony. The claimant's performances in the witness box had become a dim memory, the cross-examination of Baigent had wearied the newspaper reader by its length and thoroughness, whilst oddly enough his remarkable evidence in chief remained unimpaired in their memory.2 And even amongst those who had watched the case thoroughly and carefully, there were so many mysteries, so much to be 1 P. 338 infra. 2It should be added that during those dark December days when Baigent was in the box the Prince of Wales was hovering between life and death, and the heart of England was beating with an emotion that left little room for scanning anything but the bulletins from the bedside at Sandringham. explained, so much that was contradictory and obscure, that judicious reserve was the general attitude with which the unfolding of the defendants' case was awaited. |
