Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. V, No. XXV, June, 1852

And when, upon the arrival of the King's Commission at Exeter, Mr. Prince received a very full and carefully-drawn brief in defense – a specious, but almost wholly unsupported story of the prisoner's appeared all that could be relied upon in rebuttal of the evidence for the crown. According to Edward Drysdale, he merely sought Mr. Bradshaw upon the evening in question for the purpose of concluding with that gentleman an arrangement for the separation of himself from his wife and children, and their domiciliation at Rodney Place. It was further averred that he was received with greater civility than he expected; that the interview was a long one, during which he, Drysdale, had seen nobody but Mr. Bradshaw, although he believed the aged and deaf cook was in the kitchen. That he had arranged that Mrs. Drysdale and his children should be early on the morrow with her uncle, and that he had received the money found on his person and at his house from the deceased's own hands, in order to pay the debt and costs in the suit wherein execution was about to be levied on his furniture, and that the residue was to be applied to his, the prisoner's, own use. That the expressions deposed to by Anne Moody, and his own and Mrs. Drysdale's emotion after his return home, which had told so heavily against him in the examinations before the magistrates, were perfectly reconcilable with this statement – as, indeed, they were – and did not, therefore, bear the frightful meaning that had been attached to them. With respect to the change of hats, that might easily have happened, because his hat had been left on entering in the hall-passage, and in his hurry, in coming out by the same way, he had no doubt mistaken Berry's for his own; but he solemnly denied having been in the room, or near the part of the house where his hat was alleged to have been found. This was the gist of the explanation; but, unfortunately, it was not sustained by any receivable testimony in any material particular. True, Mrs. Drysdale, whom every body fully believed, declared that this account exactly coincided with what her husband told her immediately on arriving home in the post-chaise – but what of that? It was not what story the prisoner had told, nor how many times he had told it, that could avail, especially against the heavy improbabilities that weighed upon his, at first view, plausible statement. How was it that, knowing Mr. Bradshaw's almost insane dislike of himself, he did not counsel his wife to make terms with her uncle, preparatory to her returning to Rodney Place? And was it at all likely that Mr. Bradshaw, whose implacable humor Mrs. Drysdale had experienced on the very day previous to the murder, should have so suddenly softened toward the man he so thoroughly hated and despised? I trow not; and the first consultation on the case wore a wretchedly-dismal aspect, till the hawk-eye of Mr. Prince lit upon an assertion of Thomas Burnham's, that he had gone to Mr. Bradshaw's house upon some particular business at a quarter past twelve on the night of the murder, and had seen the deceased alive at that time, who had answered him, as he frequently did, from his bedroom window. "Rodney Place," said Mr. Prince, "is nine miles from Drysdale's residence. I understood you to say, Mr. Sims, that Mrs. Drysdale declares her husband was at home at twenty minutes to one?"

"Certainly she does; but the wife's evidence, you are aware, can not avail her husband."

"True; but the servant girl! The driver of the post-chaise! This is a vital point, and must be cleared up without delay."

I and Williams, Sims' clerk, set off instantly to see Mrs. Drysdale, who had not left her room since her husband's apprehension. She was confident it was barely so late as twenty minutes to one when the post-chaise drove up to the door. Her evidence was, however, legally inadmissible, and our hopes rested on Anne Moody, who was immediately called in. Her answer was exasperating. She had been asleep in the kitchen, and could not positively say whether it was twelve, one, or two o'clock when her master reached home. There was still a chance left – that of the post-chaise driver. He did not, we found, reach Exeter, a distance of three miles only from Mr. Drysdale's, till a quarter to three o'clock, and was then much the worse of liquor. So much for our chance of proving an alibi!

There was one circumstance perpetually harped upon by our bright, one-eyed friend of the Hunter's Inn; Cyclops, I and Williams called him. What had become of a large sum in notes paid, it was well known, to Mr. Bradshaw three or four days before his death? What also of a ruby ring, and some unset precious stones he had brought from abroad, and which he had always estimated, rightly or wrongly, at so high a price? Drysdale's house and garden had been turned inside out, but nothing had been found, and so for that matter had been Rodney Place, and its two remaining inmates had been examined with the like ill success. Burnham, who was excessively dissatisfied with the progress of affairs, swore there was an infernal mystery somewhere, and that he shouldn't sleep till he had ferreted it out. That was his business: ours was to make the best of the wretched materials at our disposal; but the result we all expected followed. The foregone conclusion of the jury that were empaneled in the case was just about to be formally recorded in a verdict of guilty, when a note was handed across to Mr. Sims. One Mr. Jay, a timber merchant, who had heard the evidence of the postillion, desired to be examined. This the judge at once consented to, and Mr. Jay deposed, that having left Exeter in his gig upon pressing business, at about two o'clock on the morning of the murder, he had observed a post-chaise at the edge of a pond about a mile and a half out of the city, where the jaded horses had been, he supposed, drinking. They were standing still, and the post-boy, who was inside, and had reins to drive with passed through the front windows, was fast asleep – a drunken sleep it seemed, and he, Mr. Jay, had to bawl for some time, and strike the chaise with his whip, before he could awake the man, who, at last, with a growl and a curse, drove on. He believed, but would not like to positively swear, that the postillion he had heard examined was that man. This testimony, strongly suggestive as it was, his lordship opined, did not materially affect the case; the jury concurred, and a verdict of guilty was pronounced and recorded amidst the death-like silence of a hushed and anxious auditory.

The unfortunate convict staggered visibly beneath the blow, fully expected, as it must have been, and a terrible spasm convulsed his features and shook his frame. It passed away; and his bearing and speech, when asked what he had to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced according to law, was not without a certain calm dignity and power, while his tones, tremulous, it is true, were silvery and unassuming as a child's.

"I can not blame the gentlemen of the jury," he said. "Their fatal verdict is, I am sure, as conscientious as God and myself know it to be erroneous – false! Circumstances are, I feel, strangely arrayed against me; and it has been my fate through life to be always harshly judged, save only by one whose truth and affection have shed over my checkered existence the only happiness it has ever known. I observed, too, the telling sneer of the prosecuting counsel, connecting the circumstances under which I left the navy with the cowardice of the deed with which I stand here accused – convicted, I suppose, I should say. I forgive that gentleman his cruel sneer as freely as I do you, gentlemen of the jury, your mistaken verdict – you, my lord, the death-sentence you are about to pronounce. The manner in which I hope to pass through the brief, but dark and bitter passage lying between me and the grave will, I trust, be a sufficient answer to the taunt of cowardice, and the future vindication of my innocence, not for my own, but my wife and children's sake, I confidently leave them to Him into whose hands I shall soon, untimely, render up my spirit. This is all I have to say."

The prisoner's calm, simple, unhurried words, produced a marvelous effect upon the court and auditory. The judge, Chief Baron Macdonald, a conscientious, and somewhat nervous man, paused in the act of assuming the black-cap, and presently said, rather hastily, "Let the prisoner be removed; I will pass sentence to-morrow." The court then immediately adjourned.

I was miserably depressed in spirits, which the cold, sleety weather that greeted us on emerging from the hot and crowded court considerably increased. I was thinking – excuse the seeming bathos – I was only a clerk, and used to such tragedies; I was thinking, I say, that a glass of brandy and water might not be amiss, when whom should I rudely jostle against but Cyclops, alias Thomas Burnham. He was going the same way as myself in prodigious haste – his eye bright and flaming as a live coal, and his whole manner denoting intense excitement. "Is that you?" he broke out. "Come along, then, and quick, for the love of God! I've missed Sims and his clerk, but you'll do as well; perhaps better." I had no power, if I had the inclination to refuse, for the enthusiastic man seized me by the arm, and hurried me along at a tremendous rate toward the outskirts of the city. "This is the place," he exclaimed, as he burst into a tavern parlor, where two trunks had been deposited. "He's not come yet," Burnham went on, "but the coach is to call for him here. He thinks to be off to London this very night."

"Whom are you talking of? Who's off to London to-night?"

"James Berry, if he's clever enough! Look there!"

"I see; 'James Berry, Passenger, London.' These, then, are his trunks, I suppose."

"Right, my boy; but there is nothing of importance in them. Sly, steady-going Margery has well ascertained that. You know Margery? – but hush! here he comes."

Berry – it was he – could not repress a nervous start, as he unexpectedly encountered Burnham's burly person and fierce glare.

"You here?" he stammered, as he mechanically took a chair by the fire. "Who would have thought it?"

"Not you, Jim, I'm sure; it must be, therefore, an unexpected pleasure. I'm come to have a smoke and a bit of chat with you, Berry – there isn't a riper Berry than you are in the kingdom – before you go to London, Jim – do you mark? – before you go to London – ha, ha! ho, ho! But, zounds! how pale and shaky you're looking, and before this rousing fire, too! D – n thee, villain!" shouted Burnham, jumping suddenly up from his chair, and dashing his pipe to fragments on the floor. "I can't play with thee any longer. Tell me – when did the devil teach thee to stuff coat-collars with the spoils of murdered men, eh?"

A yell of dismay escaped Berry, and he made a desperate rush to get past Burnham. Vainly did so. The fierce publican caught him by the throat, and held him by a grip of steel. "You're caught, scoundrel! – nicked, trapped, found out, and by whom, think you? Why, by deaf, paralytic, Margery, whose old eyes have never wearied in watching you from the hour you slew and robbed her good old master till to-day, when you dreamed yourself alone, and she discovered the mystery of the coat-collar."

"Let me go!" gasped the miscreant, down whose pallid cheeks big drops of agony were streaming. "Take all, and let me go."

A fierce imprecation followed by a blow, replied to the despairing felon. A constable, attracted by the increasing uproar, soon arrived; the thick coat-collar was ripped, and in it were found a considerable sum in Exeter notes – the ruby ring, and other valuables well known to have belonged to Mr. Bradshaw. Berry was quickly lodged in jail. A true bill was returned the next day by the grand jury before noon, and by the time the clock struck four, the murderer was, on his own confession, convicted of the foul crime of which a perfectly innocent man had been not many hours before pronounced guilty! A great lesson this was felt to be at the time in Exeter, and in the western country generally. A lesson of the watchfulness of Providence over innocent lives; of rebuke to the self-sufficing infallibility of men, however organized or empaneled, and of patience under unmerited obloquy and slander.

Edward Drysdale was, I need hardly say, liberated by the king's pardon – pardoned for an uncommitted offense, and he and his true-hearted wife, the heiress of her uncle, are still living, I believe, in competence, content, and harmony.

A PRISON-SCENE DURING THE REIGN OF TERROR

I was mentioning one day to an old friend and fellow-rambler of mine the pleasure I had derived from a visit to the Palais du Luxembourg, in Paris. "Oh," said he, "my recollections of the Luxembourg Palace are any thing but pleasant. One entire generation has passed away, and a second has followed far on the same road, since I entered it; but were I to live to the age of an antediluvian, I imagine the remembrance of the period which I passed in the Luxembourg would dwell with me to the last hour of my life."

These words naturally raised my curiosity, and, from the character of the speaker, whom I had known for many years as a man of much and varied knowledge and unimpeachable probity, also aroused my sympathy; I pressed him, therefore, to favor me with the incidents which had made so indelible an impression upon his mind. He made no difficulty of complying with my request; but, stirring the fire, and leaning back in his easy chair, delivered his brief narrative very nearly in the following words.

You do not perhaps remember that the Palais du Luxembourg was at one period used as a prison. Some of those splendid saloons which you so much admire were once bordered with cells hastily erected with rough planks, the centre of the area being used as a common room for the whole of the prisoners. When the Revolution of 1798 broke out in France, I was the junior partner of an English house doing business in a certain kind of merchandise in the Rue St. Honoré. I was very young, almost a lad, indeed, but I had invested the whole of my small fortune in the concern. I was active and sedulous, and I devoted my entire energies to the prosecution of our joint interests, which throve considerably. When the troubles came, my partners, who conceived that they had grounds for apprehension, resolved to quit the country; and they offered me the whole of the business upon terms so advantageous that I did not feel justified in refusing them. I had never meddled with politics (for which, indeed, I had no talent or inclination), I was too young to have any enemies or to be suspected of partisanship; so I closed with the offer that was made me, and resolved to brave the perils of the time, making my business the sole object of my care and solicitude, and leaving all things else to take their course. I pursued this plan rigidly, avoiding all participation in the excitement of the period, and not even conversing on the subject of public affairs, concerning which upon all occasions I professed, what indeed was the truth, that I knew nothing. I went on thus for some years, and amidst all the horrors and vicissitudes of the Revolution my business throve prosperously. I experienced no sort of interruption – never received a single domiciliary visit from any one of the factions upon whom the sovereign authority so suddenly devolved – and, to all appearance, had escaped suspicion under each and all of the rapidly-changing dynasties. I had well-nigh doubled my wealth by unwearied diligence, and had long banished all thought of peril in the course I was pursuing, when, one rainy night in the summer of 1793, I was roused from my rest after I had been a full hour asleep in bed, compelled to hurry on a few clothes at a minute's notice, pushed into a carriage waiting at my door, and driven off to a midnight tribunal. Arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, I requested to hear the charge which had been made against me but was desired to hold my peace. I was brought there for identification, and not for a hearing, the ruffian in office informed me, and it would be time enough for me to hear the charge when I was called upon to answer it. It was in vain that I pleaded the injustice of such a proceeding; I was obliged to submit to their pleasure. A pen was put into my hand, and I was ordered to write my protest, if I had any to make. I did so in a few words, claiming protection as a French citizen. The presiding scoundrel pretended to compare my writing with some imaginary seditious document of which it was not possible that I could have been the author, and at once committed me to prison. I was kept in waiting while some other pretended examinations were gone through, and then, in company with three more unfortunates, was driven off to the Luxembourg, where, at about two o'clock in the morning, I was bundled into a cell furnished with a straw paillasse and rug, a deal table and a single chair, and lighted by a small lamp suspended aloft out of my reach.

When I could find time to reflect upon the sudden calamity which had overtaken me, I could come to no other conclusion than that I had been made the victim of the cupidity of some villain or villains who had contrived to incarcerate me out of the way, while they made a plunder of my property. The imputation of seditious correspondence, which I knew to be nothing but a pretense, bore me out in this conjecture; and upon thinking the matter over again and again, I came to the conviction at last, that, bad as the matter was, it might have been much worse. I thought I saw that there was little chance of my being brought up for trial, as it would be more for the interest of my enemies, whoever they were, to keep me out of the way, than to bring me before a tribunal which might or might not condemn me to death, but which could hardly fail of discovering the motive of my abduction and imprisonment. Thus I got rid of the fear of the guillotine, and I soon found another cause for gratulation in the fact that I had not been searched. I had a considerable sum of money in my pocket-book, and, by a piece of good fortune, the book containing my banking-account was in the breast-pocket of my overcoat, which I had put on on the previous evening in consequence of a sudden storm, and which, on hearing the pattering rain, I had instinctively seized upon coming away. Before I lay down upon my miserable couch I contrived effectually to secrete my valuables, in the fear that they might be abstracted in case I should be so fortunate as to sleep. I had been locked in by the jailer, and I imagined that the ten square feet which limited my view would confine all my motions during the term of my imprisonment. In spite of all my anxieties and the disagreeable novelty of my position, I fell off to slumber about sunrise, and into a pleasant dream of home in England, and the sunny fields of childhood.

I was awoke soon after seven o'clock by the sound of laughter and loud voices mingled with the twanging of a lute. I started up, and seeing that the door of my cell was standing ajar, I bent forward and looked out. My apparition in a red night-cap was received with a burst of merriment loud and prolonged from some fifty well-dressed individuals seated on chairs or lounging on tables in the centre of a large arena, surrounded on all sides with cells, the counterpart of my own. They hailed me as "Le Bonnet Rouge," and wished me joy of my advent among them. Making my toilet as speedily as possible, I joined them with the best grace I could, and requested to be allowed the pleasure of their society, if, as I supposed from what I saw, the rules of the prison permitted me the indulgence. A young man politely stepped forward, and volunteered to instruct me in the constitution and the etiquette of the society into which I had been so abruptly introduced. He was the model of courtesy and good breeding, and soon initiated me into the mysteries of the association which the prisoners had set on foot for the purpose of relieving the tedium of confinement, and for banishing the gloomy shadow of speedy and certain death impending over the major part of them. He informed me that we were at liberty either to take our meals in common at the general table in the saloon where we then were, or to withdraw with our several messes to our own cells; but that no gentleman who could not show a cheerful countenance, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, was expected to make his appearance either at dinner or supper, or, indeed, in the saloon at all, save for the purpose of periodical exercise. He argued that a dejected and sorrowful face, though it might be allowable in the case of a solitary prisoner, was clearly an offense against the whole assembly, each of whom having his own burden to bear, was entitled to at least as good an example of courage as he could furnish himself; and that upon those grounds they had come to the understanding, which was perfectly well known and acted upon among them, that those who had not sufficient fortitude to oppose a smile to the scowl of Fate should confine their sorrows to their own cabins, and not disturb the enjoyments, short-lived as they were, nor unsettle the constancy of their fellows by the parade of unavailing dejection. He added, that if I could conduce to the amusement of their circle by any means, no matter how, I should be regarded in the light of a benefactor; that they had music, public debates, and dramatic representations, though without scenery or appropriate dresses; and that in all or any of these amusements I might take a part if I chose, and might feel sure of their candid appreciation of my endeavors. He then, with the utmost sang froid, gave me to understand that their first violin would that morning leave them, though he would give them a parting cavatina before he mounted the tumbril, which would call on its way to the guillotine about twelve o'clock. Fifteen other gentlemen of their community were bound on the same voyage; they were liable to such deductions from their social circle, he was sorry to say – and he shrugged his shoulders – on occasions far too frequent for their repose; but then they were constantly receiving fresh additions, and their number was generally very nearly if not quite complete. He told me that among the twenty or thirty gentlemen conversing so cheerfully at the next table, seven would die that morning, and apologized for not pointing out the particular individuals, on the score of its being hardly polite to do so.

I was perfectly horrified at the communication of my voluble companion. Though living so long in the very centre and focus of revolution, I had kept so carefully clear of the terrible drama which had been acting, and had been so wrapped up in my own concerns, that I was altogether unprepared for the recognition of such a state of feeling on the subject of certain, sudden, and murderous death, as I now found existing around me. It required all the courage and self-control I was master of to repress the natural exclamations of dismay that rose to my lips. I thanked my new friend for his courtesy, expressed my determination not to appear in the social circle at any time when my spirits were not up to the mark, and, bowing ceremoniously, withdrew to my own cell to ruminate alone upon what I had heard. You may imagine what passed in my mind. I had been religiously educated in a Protestant country; I had never, even in France, neglected the daily duties of religion. I had knelt, morning, and evening, from my earliest childhood, to my father's God; and I had devoutly sought the especial direction of his providence both in taking the step which led me to Paris in the first instance, and in that which had fixed me there when my partners had fled in apprehension of calamity. The idea of death had been to me always one of unmingled solemnity; and the thought of opposing laughter and merriment to the grim aspect of the grisly king was abhorrent to my imagination. I remained all the morning in my cell, a prey to miserable and anxious thought. I heard the cavatina played with firmness and brilliancy by the musician who knew to a certainty that within an hour he would be a headless corpse. I heard the tumbril drive up to the door which was to convey sixteen of my fellow-prisoners to feed the dripping ax. I saw them defile past my cell as the jailer checked them off on his list, and heard them respond gayly to the "Bon voyage" of their companions ere they departed in the fatal cart which was to carry them "out of the world."

There is, however, a force in circumstances strong enough to overcome the habits and instincts of a life-time. I had not been a month in the Luxembourg before the idea of death by violence, once so terrible and appalling, began to assume a very different aspect in my mind. Our society consisted of above a hundred in number, and the major part of them, incarcerated for political offenses, were but in the position of losers in a game in which they had played the stake of life for the chance of power. They paid the penalty as readily and as recklessly as they had played the game; and the spectacle which their fate presented to my view, though it never reconciled me to their repulsive indifference to the importance of life, yet gradually undermined my own estimate of its value. Every means of amusement that could be thought of was resorted to for diversion. Plays were acted night after night, the female characters being personated by the youngest of the party in robes borrowed from the wardrobe of the jailer's wife. Concerts were got up, and the songs of all nations were sung with much taste to the accompaniment of the lute in the hands of an old professor, who, it afterward came out, had been imprisoned by mistake, because he bore the name of an offender. Card-parties sat down to play every evening; and men would continue the game, and deal the cards with a steady hand, though they heard their names called over in the list of those who were to grace the guillotine on the morrow. It was rare that executions followed on two successive days; there was often, indeed, a respite for a fortnight together; but I noticed with a shudder that, whenever the cells were all occupied, an execution, and usually of a large number, speedily followed.