The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies

‘Lord Nugent. – “What made you think your husband’s ribs were broken?”

‘“He held up his hand like this” (holds up her arm), “and I saw a hammer, or something like a hammer, and it came into my mind that his ribs were broken.”

‘Sewell stated that the murder was accomplished by means of a hammer. The examination was continued on August 31 and September 13; and finally both prisoners were discharged for want of sufficient evidence. Sewell declared that he had only been a looker-on, and his accusations against Tyler were so full of prevarications that they were not held sufficient to incriminate him. The inquiry was again resumed on February 11, 1830, and Sewell, Tyler, and a man named Gardner were committed for trial.

‘The trial (see “Buckingham Gazette,” March 13, 1830) took place before Mr. Baron Vaughan and a grand jury at the Buckingham Lent Assizes, March 5, 1830; BUT IN THE REPORT OF MRS. EDDEN’S EVIDENCE NO MENTION IS MADE OF THE VISION.

‘Sewell and Tyler were found guilty, and were executed, protesting their innocence, on March 8, 1830.

‘Miss Browne, writing to us [Mr. Gurney] from Farnham Castle, in January 1884, gives an account of the vision which substantially accords with that here recorded, adding: – ‘"The wife persisted in her account of the vision; consequently the accused was taken up, and, with some circumstantial evidence in addition to the woman’s story, committed for trial by two magistrates – my father, Colonel Robert Browne, and the Rev. Charles Ackfield.”

‘“The murderer was convicted at the assizes, and hanged at Aylesbury.”

‘“It may be added that Colonel Browne was remarkably free from superstition, and was a thorough disbeliever in ‘ghost stories.’”’ *

*From Phantasms of the Living, Gurney and Myers, vol. ii. p. 586.

Now, in the report of the trial at assizes in 1830 there is not one word about the ‘ghost,’ though he is conspicuous in the hearing at petty sessions. The parallel to Fisher’s case is thus complete. And the reason for omitting the ghost in a trial is obvious. The murderers of Sergeant Davies of Guise’s, slain in the autumn of 1749 in Glenclunie, were acquitted by an Edinburgh jury in 1753 in face of overpowering evidence of their guilt, partly because two Highland witnesses deposed to having seen the ghost of the sergeant, partly because the jury were Jacobites. The prisoners’ counsel, as one of them told Sir Walter Scott, knew that their clients were guilty. A witness had seen them in the act. But the advocate (Lockhart, a Jacobite) made such fun out of the ghost that an Edinburgh jury, disbelieving in the spectre, and not loving the House of Hanover, very logically disregarded also the crushing evidence for a crime which was actually described in court by an eye-witness.

Thus, to secure a view of the original form of the yarn of Fisher’s Ghost, what we need is what we are not likely to get – namely, a copy of the depositions made before the bench of magistrates at Campbelltown in October 1826.

For my own part, I think it highly probable that the story of Fisher’s Ghost was told before the magistrates, as in the Buckinghamshire case, and was suppressed in the trial at Sydney.

Worrall’s condemnation is said to have excited popular discontent, as condemnations on purely circumstantial evidence usually do. That dissatisfaction would be increased if a ghost were publicly implicated in the matter, just as in the case of Davies’s murder in 1749. We see how discreetly the wraith or ghost was kept out of the Buckinghamshire case at the trial, and we see why, in Worrall’s affair, no questions were asked as to the discovery of sprinkled blood, not proved by analysis to be human, on the rail where Fisher’s ghost was said to perch.

I had concluded my inquiry here, when I received a letter in which Mr. Rusden kindly referred me to his ‘History of Australia’ (vol. ii. pp. 44, 45). Mr. Rusden there gives a summary of the story, in agreement with that taken from the Sydney newspaper. He has ‘corrected current rumours by comparison with the words of a trustworthy informant, a medical man, who lived long in the neighbourhood, and attended Farley [the man who saw Fisher’s ghost] on his death-bed. He often conversed with Farley on the subject of the vision which scared him… These facts are compiled from the notes of Chief-Justice Forbes, who presided at the trial, with the exception of the references to the apparition, which, although it led to the discovery of Fisher’s body, could not be alluded to in a court of justice, or be adduced as evidence.‘* There is no justice for ghosts.

*Thanks to the kindness of the Countess of Jersey, and the obliging researches of the Chief Justice of New South Wales, I have received a transcript of the judge’s notes. They are correctly analysed by Mr.

Rusden.

An Australian correspondent adds another example. Long after Fisher’s case, this gentleman was himself present at a trial in Maitland, New South Wales. A servant-girl had dreamed that a missing man told her who had killed him, and where his body was concealed. She, being terrified, wanted to leave the house, but her mistress made her impart the story to the chief constable, a man known to my informant, who also knew, and names, the judge who tried the case. The constable excavated at the spot pointed out in the dream, unearthed the body, and arrested the criminal, who was found guilty, confessed, and was hanged. Not a word was allowed to be said in court about the dream. All the chief constable was permitted to say was, that ‘from information received’ he went to Hayes’s farm, and so forth.

Here, then, are two parallels to Fisher’s ghost, and very hard on psychical science it is that ghostly evidence should be deliberately burked through the prejudices of lawyers. Mr. Suttar, in his ‘Australian Stories Retold’ (Bathurst, 1887), remarks that the ghost is not a late mythical accretion in Fisher’s story. ‘I have the authority of a gentleman who was intimately connected with the gentleman who had the charge of the police when the murder was done, that Farley’s story did suggest the search for the body in the creek.’ But Mr. Suttar thinks that Farley invented the tale as an excuse for laying information. That might apply, as has been said, to Highland witnesses in 1753, but hardly to an Englishman in Australia. Besides, if Farley knew the facts, and had the ghost to cover the guilt of peaching, WHY DID HE NOT PEACH? He only pointed to a fence, and, but for the ingenious black Sherlock Holmes, the body would never have been found. What Farley did was not what a man would do who, knowing the facts of the crime, and lured by a reward of 20 pounds, wished to play the informer under cover of a ghost-story.

The case for the ghost, then, stands thus, in my opinion. Despite the silence preserved at the trial, Farley’s ghost-story was really told before the discovery of Fisher’s body, and led to the finding of the body. Despite Mr. Suttar’s theory (of information laid under shelter of a ghost-story), Farley really had experienced an hallucination. Mr. Rusden, who knew his doctor, speaks of his fright, and, according to the version of 1836, he was terrified into an illness. Now, the hallucination indicated the exact spot where Fisher was stricken down, and left traces of his blood, which no evidence shows to have been previously noticed. Was it, then, a fortuitous coincidence that Farley should be casually hallucinated exactly at the one spot – the rail in the fence – where Fisher had been knocked on the head? That is the question, and the state of the odds may be reckoned by the mathematician.

As to the Australian servant-girl’s dream about the place where another murdered body lay, and the dreams which led to the discovery of the Red Barn and Assynt murders, and (May 1903) to the finding of the corpse of a drowned girl at Shanklin, all these may be mere guesses by the sleeping self, which is very clever at discovering lost objects.

X. THE MYSTERY OF LORD BATEMAN

Ever and again, in the literary and antiquarian papers, there flickers up debate as to the Mystery of Lord Bateman. This problem in no way concerns the existing baronial house of Bateman, which, in Burke, records no predecessor before a knight and lord mayor of 1717. Our Bateman comes of lordlier and more ancient lineage. The question really concerns ‘The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman. Illustrated by George Cruikshank, London: Charles Tilt, Fleet Street. And Mustapha Syried, Constantinople. MDCCCXXXIX.’

The tiny little volume in green cloth, with a design of Lord Bateman’s marriage ceremony, stamped in gold, opens with a ‘Warning to the Public, concerning the Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman.’ The Warning is signed George Cruikshank, who, however, adds in a postscript: ‘The above is not my writing.’ The ballad follows, and then comes a set of notes, mainly critical. The author of the Warning remarks: ‘In some collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty, which, I am told, bears some remote and distant resemblance to the following Epic Poem.’

Again, the text of the ballad, here styled ‘The Famous History of Lord Bateman,’ with illustrations by Thackeray, ‘plain’ (the original designs were coloured), occurs in the Thirteenth Volume of the Biographical Edition of Thackeray’s works. (pp. lvi-lxi).

The problems debated are: ‘Who wrote the Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, and who wrote the Notes?’ The disputants have not shown much acquaintance with ballad lore in general.

First let us consider Mr. Thackeray’s text of the ballad. It is closely affiliated to the text of ‘The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman,’ whereof the earliest edition with Cruikshank’s illustrations was published in 1839.* The edition here used is that of David Bryce and Son, Glasgow (no date).

*There are undated cheap broadside copies, not illustrated, in the British Museum.

Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, in his ‘Life of Cruikshank,’ tells us that the artist sang this ‘old English ballad’ at a dinner where Dickens and Thackeray were present. Mr. Thackeray remarked: ‘I should like to print that ballad with illustrations,’ but Cruikshank ‘warned him off,’ as he intended to do the thing himself. Dickens furnished the learned notes. This account of what occurred was given by Mr. Walter Hamilton, but Mr. Sala furnished another version. The ‘authorship of the ballad,’ Mr. Sala justly observed, ‘is involved in mystery.’ Cruikshank picked it up from the recitation of a minstrel outside a pot-house. In Mr. Sala’s opinion, Mr. Thackeray ‘revised and settled the words, and made them fit for publication.’ Nor did he confine himself to the mere critical work; he added, in Mr. Sala’s opinion, that admired passage about ‘The young bride’s mother, who never before was heard to speak so free,’ also contributing ‘The Proud Young Porter,’ Jeames. Now, in fact, both the interpellation of the bride’s mamma, and the person and characteristics of the proud young porter, are of unknown antiquity, and are not due to Mr. Thackeray – a scholar too conscientious to ‘decorate’ an ancient text. Bishop Percy did such things, and Scott is not beyond suspicion; but Mr. Thackeray, like Joseph Ritson, preferred the authentic voice of tradition. Thus, in the text of the Biographical Edition, he does not imitate the Cockney twang, phonetically rendered in the version of Cruikshank. The second verse, for example, runs thus:

Cruikshank:

          He sail-ed east, he sail-ed vest,               Until he came to famed Tur-key,          Vere he vos taken and put to prisin,               Until his life was quite wea-ry.

Thackeray:

          He sailed East, and he sailed West,               Until he came to proud Turkey,          Where he was taken and put to prison,               Until his life was almost weary.

There are discrepancies in the arrangement of the verses, and a most important various reading.

Cruikshank:

          Now sevin long years is gone and past,               And fourteen days vell known to me;          She packed up all her gay clouthing,               And swore Lord Bateman she would go see.

To this verse, in Cruikshank’s book, a note (not by Cruikshank) is added:

          ‘“Now sevin long years is gone and past,               And fourteen days well known to me.”’

In this may be recognised, though in a minor degree, the same gifted hand that portrayed the Mussulman, the pirate, the father, and the bigot, in two words (“This Turk”).

‘“The time is gone, the historian knows it, and that is enough for the reader. This is the dignity of history very strikingly exemplified.”’

That note to Cruikshank’s text is, like all the delightful notes, if style is evidence, not by Dickens, but by Thackeray. Yet, in his own text, with an exemplary fidelity, he reads: ‘And fourteen days well known to THEE.’ To whom? We are left in ignorance; and conjecture, though tempting, is unsafe. The reading of Cruikshank, ‘vell known to ME’ – that is, to the poet – is confirmed by the hitherto unprinted ‘Lord Bedmin.’ This version, collected by Miss Wyatt Edgell in 1899, as recited by a blind old woman in a workhouse, who had learned it in her youth, now lies before the present writer. He owes this invaluable document to the kindness of Miss Wyatt Edgell and Lady Rosalind Northcote. Invaluable it is, because it proves that Lord Bateman (or Bedmin) is really a volkslied, a popular and current version of the ancient ballad. ‘Famed Turkey’ becomes ‘Torquay’ in this text, probably by a misapprehension on the part of the collector or reciter. The speech of the bride’s mother is here omitted, though it occurs in older texts; but, on the whole, the blind old woman’s memory has proved itself excellent. In one place she gives Thackeray’s reading in preference to that of Cruikshank, thus:

Cruikshank:

          Ven he vent down on his bended knee.

Thackeray:

          Down on his bended knees fell he.

Old Woman:

          Down on his bended knee fell he.

We have now ascertained the following facts: Cruikshank and Thackeray used a text with merely verbal differences, which was popular among the least educated classes early in last century. Again, Thackeray contributed the notes and critical apparatus to Cruikshank’s version. For this the internal evidence of style is overpowering: no other man wrote in the manner and with the peculiar humour of Mr. Titmarsh. In the humble opinion of the present writer these Notes ought to be appended to Mr. Thackeray’s version of ‘Lord Bateman.’ Finally, Mr. Sala was wrong in supposing that Mr. Thackeray took liberties with the text received from oral tradition.

What was the origin of that text? Professor Child, in the second part of his ‘English and Scottish Popular Ballads’ * lays before us the learning about Lord Bateman, Lord Bedmin, Young Bicham, Young Brechin, Young Bekie, Young Beichan and Susie Pie (the heroine, Sophia, in Thackeray), Lord Beichan, Young Bondwell, and Markgraf Backenweil; for by all these names is Lord Bateman known. The student must carefully note that ‘Thackeray’s List of Broadsides,’ cited, is NOT by Mr. W. M. Thackeray.

*Pt. ii. p. 454 et seq., and in various other places.

As the reader may not remember the incidents in the Thackeray, Cruikshank, and Old Woman version (which represents an ancient ballad, now not so much popularised as vulgarised), a summary may be given. Lord Bateman went wandering: ‘his character, at this time, and his expedition, would seem to have borne a striking resemblance to those of Lord Byron… SOME foreign country he wished to see, and that was the extent of his desire; any foreign country would answer his purpose – all foreign countries were alike to him.’ – (Note, apud Cruikshank.) Arriving in Turkey (or Torquay) he was taken and fastened to a tree by his captor. He was furtively released by the daughter of ‘This Turk.’ ‘The poet has here, by that bold license which only genius can venture upon, surmounted the extreme difficulty of introducing any particular Turk, by assuming a foregone conclusion in the reader’s mind; and adverting, in a casual, careless way, to a Turk hitherto unknown as to an old acquaintance… “THIS Turk he had” is a master-stroke, a truly Shakespearian touch’ – (Note.) The lady, in her father’s cellar (‘Castle,’ Old Woman’s text), consoles the captive with ‘the very best wine,’ secretly stored, for his private enjoyment, by the cruel and hypocritical Mussulman. She confesses the state of her heart, and inquires as to Lord Bateman’s real property, which is ‘half Northumberland.’ To what period in the complicated mediaeval history of the earldom of Northumberland the affair belongs is uncertain.

The pair vow to be celibate for seven years, and Lord Bateman escapes. At the end of the period, Sophia sets out for Northumberland, urged, perhaps, by some telepathic admonition. For, on arriving at Lord Bateman’s palace (Alnwick Castle?), she summons the proud porter, announces herself, and finds that her lover has just celebrated a marriage with another lady. In spite of the remonstrances of the bride’s mamma, Lord Bateman restores that young lady to her family, observing

          She is neither the better nor the worse for me.

So Thackeray and Old Woman. Cruikshank prudishly reads,

          O you’ll see what I’ll do for you and she.

‘Lord Bateman then prepared another marriage, having plenty of superfluous wealth to bestow upon the Church.’ – (Note.) All the rest was bliss.

The reader may ask: How did Sophia know anything about the obscure Christian captive? WHY did she leave home exactly in time for his marriage? How came Lord Bateman to be so fickle? The Annotator replies: ‘His lordship had doubtless been impelled by despair of ever recovering his lost Sophia, and a natural anxiety not to die without leaving an heir to his estate.’ Finally how was the difficulty of Sophia’s religion overcome?

To all these questions the Cockney version gives no replies, but the older forms of the ballad offer sufficient though varying answers, as we shall see.

Meanwhile one thing is plain from this analysis of the pot-house version of an old ballad, namely, that the story is constructed out of fragments from the great universal store of popular romance. The central ideas are two: first, the situation of a young man in the hands of a cruel captor (often a god, a giant, a witch, a fiend), but here – a Turk. The youth is loved and released (commonly through magic spells) by the daughter of the gaoler, god, giant, witch, Turk, or what not. In Greece, Jason is the Lord Bateman, Medea is the Sophia, of the tale, which was known to Homer and Hesiod, and was fully narrated by Pindar. THE OTHER YOUNG PERSON, the second bride, however, comes in differently, in the Greek. In far-off Samoa, a god is the captor.* The gaoler is a magician in Red Indian versions.**

*Turner’s ‘Samoa,’ p. 102.

**For a list, though an imperfect one, of the Captor’s Daughter story, see the Author’s Custom and Myth, pp. 86-102.

As a rule, in these tales, from Finland to Japan, from Samoa to Madagascar, Greece and India, the girl accompanies her lover in his flight, delaying the pursuer by her magic. In ‘Lord Bateman’ another formula, almost as widely diffused, is preferred.

The old true love comes back just after her lover’s wedding. He returns to her. Now, as a rule, in popular tales, the lover’s fickleness is explained by a spell or by a breach of a taboo. The old true love has great difficulty in getting access to him, and in waking him from a sleep, drugged or magical.

          The bloody shirt I wrang for thee,          The Hill o’ Glass I clamb for thee,          And wilt thou no waken and speak to me?

He wakens at last, and all is well. In a Romaic ballad the deserted girl, meeting her love on his wedding-day, merely reminds him of old kindness. He answers —

          Now he that will may scatter nuts,               And he may wed that will,          But she that was my old true love               Shall be my true love still.

This incident, the strange, often magically caused oblivion of the lover, whose love returns to him, like Sophia, at, or after, his marriage, is found in popular tales of Scotland, Norway, Iceland, Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Gaelic Western Islands. It does not occur in ‘Lord Bateman,’ where Mr. Thackeray suggests probable reasons for Lord Bateman’s fickleness. But the world-wide incidents are found in older versions of ‘Lord Bateman,’ from which they have been expelled by the English genius for the commonplace.

Thus, if we ask, how did Sophia at first know of Bateman’s existence? The lovely and delicate daughter of the Turk, doubtless, was unaware that, in the crowded dungeons of her sire, one captive of wealth, noble birth, and personal fascination, was languishing. The Annotator explains: ‘She hears from an aged and garrulous attendant, her only female adviser (for her mother died while she was yet an infant), of the sorrows and sufferings of the Christian captive.’ In ancient versions of the ballad another explanation occurs. She overhears a song which he sings about his unlucky condition. This account is in Young Bekie (Scottish: mark the name, Bekie), where France is the scene and the king’s daughter is the lady. The same formula of the song sung by the prisoner is usual. Not uncommon, too, is a TOKEN carried by Sophia when she pursues her lost adorer, to insure her recognition. It is half of her broken ring. Once more, why does Sophia leave home to find Bateman in the very nick of time? Thackeray’s version does not tell us; but Scottish versions do. ‘She longed fu’ sair her love to see.’ Elsewhere a supernatural being, ‘The Billy Blin,’ or a fairy, clad in green, gives her warning. The fickleness of the hero is caused, sometimes, by constraint, another noble ‘has his marriage,’ as his feudal superior, and makes him marry, but only in form.

          There is a marriage in yonder hall,               Has lasted thirty days and three,          The bridegroom winna bed the bride,               For the sake o’ one that’s owre the sea.

In this Scottish version, by the way, occurs —

          Up spoke the young bride’s mother,               Who never was heard to speak so free,

wrongly attributed to Mr. Thackeray’s own pen.

The incident of the magical oblivion which comes over the bridegroom occurs in Scandinavian versions of ‘Lord Bateman’ from manuscripts of the sixteenth century.* Finally, the religious difficulty in several Scottish versions is got over by the conversion and baptism of Sophia, who had professed the creed of Islam. That all these problems in ‘Lord Bateman’ are left unsolved is, then, the result of decay. The modern vulgar English version of the pot-house minstrel (known as ‘The Tripe Skewer,’ according to the author of the Introduction to Cruikshank’s version) has forgotten, has been heedless of, and has dropped the ancient universal elements of folk-tale and folk-song.

*Child, ii. 459-461.

These graces, it is true, are not too conspicuous even in the oldest and best versions of ‘Lord Bateman.’ Choosing at random, however, we find a Scots version open thus:

          In the lands where Lord Beichan was born,               Among the stately steps o’ stane,          He wore the goud at his left shoulder,               But to the Holy Land he’s gane.

That is not in the tone of the ditty sung by the Tripe Skewer. Again, in his prison,

          He made na his moan to a stock,               He made na it to a stone,          But it was to the Queen of Heaven               That he made his moan.

The lines are from a version of the North of Scotland, and, on the face of it, are older than the extirpation of the Catholic faith in the loyal North. The reference to Holy Land preserves a touch of the crusading age. In short, poor as they may be, the Scottish versions are those of a people not yet wholly vulgarised, not yet lost to romance. The singers have ‘half remembered and half forgot’ the legend of Gilbert Becket (Bekie, Beichan), the father of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Gilbert, in the legend, went to Holy Land, was cast into a Saracen’s prison, and won his daughter’s heart. He escaped, but the lady followed him, like Sophia, and, like Sophia, found and wedded him; Gilbert’s servant, Richard, playing the part of the proud young porter. Yet, as Professor Child justly observes, the ballad ‘is not derived from the legend,’ though the legend as to Gilbert Becket exists in a manuscript of about 1300. The Bateman motive is older than Gilbert Becket, and has been attached to later versions of the adventures of that hero. Gilbert Becket about 1300 was credited with a floating, popular tale of the Bateman sort, and out of his legend, thus altered, the existing ballads drew their ‘Bekie’ and ‘Beichan,’ from the name of Becket.