I too was on the edge of my seat when Dougal MacArcher sprang to his feet and began to call his rebuttal witnesses. Someone called the butler a liar. Someone else called the valet a liar. Dougal MacArcher spun them along mechanically, his air of excited expectancy seeming to look beyond them. Soon an attendant handed him a folded billet. He took a single look, and dismissed his witness half heard.
“And now!” he cried in ringing tones, “now, my Lords, I call into court Edmund Barfield, second Duke of Bredingham, Lady Eltham’s brother and own uncle to James Ansley!”
Instantly pandemonium burst forth, everyone shouting at once. In the din Dr. Sam: Johnson came marching up the aisle, and the wax-work Duke seemed to march with him, supported on the one side by Dr. Johnson, and on the other by Frank Barber, who rolled his dark eyes in terror, yet strode manfully forward.
“You cannot call a dead man into court!” the Earl’s lawyer was bellowing. At the same moment Earl Richard, squinting at the waxen face, started up and began to bawl: “You cannot call James Ansley, he is an interested party, he is incompetent!”
“Sit down, you fool!—uh, my Lord—” hissed Sergeant Grimthorpe furiously, “you give your cause away, this is not James Ansley, but a wax-work of his uncle—uh, that is—(aloud with a roar) I submit, my Lords, they cannot call a wax-work into court!”
“My learned friend is quite correct, my Lords,” said Dougal MacArcher smoothly, well pleased with his effect. “I withdraw the witness, and I call Samuel Johnson!”
Johnson was already on the stand, supporting the waxen Duke at his side. He took the oath with measured and solemn sonority. In emphatick tones, while the packed court-room stared at his waxen companion, he proceeded to account for the history of the Ducal effigy, so carefully crafted to be an exact likeness of my Lady Eltham’s brother.
“James Ansley, stand up!”
At Dougal MacArcher’s bidding the tall blond young man rose in his place.
“Come forward.” The claimant stood on the stand beside the figure of his uncle. The likeness was inescapable.
“Now, my Lords and gentlemen of the jury,” cried Dougal MacArcher,” if we take the nobleman’s robe and place it upon James Ansley’s shoulders (doing so with a flourish), and the coronet upon his head—behold the rightful Earl of Angleby!”
The crowd broke into irrepressible applause. No protests from the bar, no repression from the bench, could quell it. It was all over. The lawyers’ closing arguments, the judges’ summing up, unheard, were hastily cut short. The jury rushed through their verdict:
“We find for the Plaintiff!”
They assessed costs against the usurping Earl, but nobody heard it for cheering.
Cheers were still ringing in our ears, the hearty handshake of the new Earl still tingled on our palms, Lady Lalage’s kisses still burned on my cheek, when at last my friend and I drew breath at the Mitre.
“And thus was the truth made visible,” observed Dr. Johnson with a smile.
“It was well played, sir,” I replied, “but pray, sir, tell me one thing: How did you know that there was a portrait of Duke Bredingham among the Westminster wax-works?”
JOHNSON: By reading, sir, how else? There’s a book newly published, how the wax-works are found and put to rights and may be seen for sixpence, and a list of them added.
BOSWELL: And how did you manage to spirit the waxen Earl from his appointed home in the Abbey?
JOHNSON: With the utmost simplicity, sir, I subpoenaed it.
BOSWELL: What, my Lord Chief Justice issued a subpoena for such a toy?
JOHNSON: Well, no, sir. But I can make a writ as impressive as any Lord Chief Justice in the land.
BOSWELL: But your writ will not run.
JOHNSON: Did the honest verger know that? He looked with big eyes at the inky flourishes and the waxen seals, and hastened to give over the Earl, catafalque and all. Nay, he lent a hand to transfer it from his attick to the cart I had provided. Thus Frank and I carted the noble Duke like a malefactor to the court, and the rest you know.
BOSWELL: So James Ansley has come into his patrimony.
JOHNSON: His patrimony? With his blond hair and high nose, James Ansley is certainly his uncle’s nephew and his mother’s son. But when you think of the Ansley cause, think of this: ’Tis a wise child that knows his own father!
[The notorious cause of Annesley versus Anglesey was tried at Dublin in November, 1743. In this story I tell it substantially as it happened, only simplifying some of its intolerable complexities and changing the date and the locale to permit the involvement of Johnson and Boswell.
The Kidnapped Earl won his suit. But real life is seldom so neat, or so just, as fiction. Richard, Earl of Anglesey, may or may not have been a usurper, but he was wicked enough. He was accused of being a dog-stealer and an amateur highwayman, and he was certainly a triple bigamist. He was skilled at infragrant legal chicanery, and managed with one dodge or another to delay judgment so long that when James Annesley died twenty years later, the case was still in the courts. Swiftly afterwards died his two young sons, James Annesley’s line died with them, and the rightful heir who was left was—wicked Uncle Richard! It makes one wonder whether the Black Earl was not as quick with a poison dose as with a kidnapping and a juggernaut coach and six.
Dr. Johnson’s prowess with his oaken stick is not exaggerated. Boswell in the Life of Johnson gives many examples of his utter fearlessness and physical might, and the routing of the Earl’s rapperees is based on one of them.
At the time of this story, Sam: Johnson was not yet “Dr. Johnson.” His first doctorate came to him in 1765 from Trinity College, Dublin. But it would be awkward not to call him by the name we all know, “Dr. Sam: Johnson;” which I have accordingly used in the text.
The wax-work Duke is still to be seen at Westminster Abbey, along with his royal companions, but now you need not climb a back stair to Henry the Seventh’s attic to see him, for he has found a more suitable home in a room off the cloister. There he lies in state in his robe and coronet, James Annesley to the life: which you may prove to yourself if you will compare him with the engraved portrait of James Annesley which forms the frontispiece of the small quarto edition of the trial (London: R. Walker, 1744).
For a full-scale account of the affair of the Kidnapped Earl, you will have to wait for my book, The Annesley Trials, now in preparation.]
THE WESTCOMBE WITCH
THE COVEN
A Pindarick Ode
In Honour of
Miss Fanny Flashwood
By One of Them
Hecate, arise! Assist me while I sing!
Weird Sisters three, approach and tread the Ring!
Cybele join the Round, and Proserpine
To praise your sister Fan, propitiously incline!
“A brummagem effusion!” remarked Dr. Sam: Johnson, the learned critick. “Well, sir, what flower of fancy comes next?”
I continued to read: “Her Coven we—Pray, sir, what is a coven?”
The great lexicographer answered readily: “The followers of a witch. What, is Miss Fanny Flashwood then a witch?” he added with a smile.
“Miss Fanny Flashwood is so reputed,” assented our friend Mr. Ashton seriously.
It was the warm September of the year 1768, and with my friend and mentor, Dr. Sam: Johnson, detector of crime and chicane, I had come to visit the South coast. Our host was good old Mr. Azariah Ashton, late a landwaiter of the King’s Customs, in his snug retreat in the seaside village of Westcombe. To start off our sojourn with éclat, he had this evening fetched us to tread a minuet at the local assembly.
The scene of the coming revels was the upper room at the old half-timbered inn called the Admiral’s Head; but before ever we entered the place, we came upon the Ode to Miss Fan, writ large in a fair hand, and tacked upon the outside of the door.
“You must know,” pursued little old Ashton, his nutcracker countenance wrinkling with relish, “Miss Fanny is a great heire
ss, and the lads are after her like flies after honey. They call themselves ‘the Coven’ in her honour. Sir Francis Flashwood at the Abbey is a man of money; his father amassed it in the French trade, and Miss Fan will have it all.”
“But a witch!” smiled Johnson. “To take a witch with the bundle!”
“I don’t deny,” said Ashton, “that the Squire is up to queer doings at the Abbey, if folk say true. They call him ‘Hell Fire Francis.’ There’s orgies in the ruins, and the Black Mass is celebrated, they do say, in the caves, and the Devil himself has been seen in the deer park, and what is done in the Witch’s Round on Hoy Head in the dark of the moon, I’d rather not know—”
“Sir,” said I, “you raise my curiosity.”
“Subdue it, sir, there are dark matters afoot at the Abbey. Yet Miss Fan is a beauty, and an heiress, and a lass of salt and fire—”
“Say no more!” I cried. “I’ll have her!”
Rising twenty-eight, newly admitted to the bar in Scotland, I was ready to settle down, and was ranging England, Scotland, and Ireland in search of a wife. Why not a beautiful heiress of Dorset?
“How can I view this paragon?” I demanded.
“Nothing is easier,” replied Mr. Ashton, “for here she comes.”
I threw myself into a genteel attitude, the better to shew my assets—a good leg, a face well enough tho’ swarthy and long in the nose, a figure not tall but well set up, adorned for the festivities in a suit of plum-coloured brocade and ruffles of Spanish lace. As I took my stance, a crested coach drew up at the inn door, and Sir Francis Flashwood descended.
“Hell Fire Francis” was well fitted to raise the Devil, if indeed that was his pleasure—tall, spare, with countenance deeply lined and black brows quirking upward in perpetual quiz. I noted no more, for extending sinewy fingers he handed down—
Miss Fanny Flashwood. Of her what shall I say? She was tall like her father, but soft and round where he was hard and spare, gently clad in leaf-green, gold-embroidered tissue that clipped her slender waist and swelled out over a wide hoop. Her upswept hair was unpowdered, and shone fiery red in the torchlight. Her milk-white face was delicately modelled, her bee-stung lip laughed, and her shining eyes were green as the sea.
While I stood staring a dozen stalwart young men surged about her, clamouring their greetings. Yet the one who did not clamour claimed her, a well-knit youth with a handsome unmoved face whose still smile revealed wide-set sharp-looking teeth in a thin-lipped mouth.
“The Honourable Mr. Thomas Talley,” murmured Mr. Ashton, “Sir Francis’ nephew.”
For a moment the fellow stood holding his cousin’s white hand and smiling into her green eyes. Then the surging youths bore the pair with them into the inn, and I was left gaping on the step.
Thus did I first glimpse Miss Fanny Flashwood, the Witch of Westcombe, surrounded by her Coven.
Tho’ little Mr. Ashton as a meer landwaiter did not move in the Flashwood circle, the fame of my learned companion soon brought us an invitation to visit the Abbey.
For this event, my burly friend attired his majestick form in mulberry broadcloth and clean cambrick ruffles, and clapped a well combed brown scratch-wig above his strong-cut countenance. I was decent in chestnut brown, and little Ashton in mouse grey, and so we presented ourselves for tea at the Abbey.
The tea was well enough, the best Bohea, and Miss Fan, clad in coppery shot silk from France, presided at the urn like a queen. But it was the tour of the grounds that provided so much matter for astonishment.
Sir Francis Flashwood had been busy adorning his domain, and we followed him agape from the Grecian columns of his mansion to the Abbey ruins to the curious church tower to the mouth of the caves to the Roman garden and then back to the mansion again.
The ruins of the antient Abbey had been extended and made habitable. The “ruined tower,” indeed, with its greenery-filled crannies, was totally the work of Sir Francis’ stonemasons, only by art seeming to moulder. The truly antient refectory had been roofed over anew, and the monks’ cells flanking the crumbling arches of the cloister were weather-tight. In one I glimpsed a luxurious bed. I wondered much what “nuns” might shelter there. Over all, a painted motto from Rabelais commanded: “Fay ce que voudras.” “Do what you please.”
The church on the hill, where once, it is said, stood a heathen shrine, had been rebuilt according to Sir Francis’ rather eccentrick fantasy. Atop the tower rose, not a spire or a cross, but a gilded ball. It was reached by a narrow iron ladder from the tower. When we swarmed up, clinging to the swaying chains that served for support, we came through a trap door onto a circular floor perhaps twelve feet across. Unglazed windows looked eight ways. Landward stretched the tree tops of Carnock Chase. In the seaward window was set a spyglass, by which we could look across woods and meadows to Hoy Head, and beyond Hoy Cove to the open sea, where a pretty bark was coming in with white sails swelling.
“Make haste, gentlemen, we have much to see,” said Sir Francis abruptly, and we descended again.
“And the caves, Sir Francis?” I urged him.
“The caves, Mr. Boswell? Oh, the chalk pit. There the chalk was mined to pave the harbour road, d’ye see, sir. There’s nothing inside save hollows in the chalk. Walk this way, you shall see the entrance. So ugly was the gash, I have masked it.”
He had masked it indeed, with solemn “ruined” arches, new built of grey flint, under the night-dark yew trees. I longed for a peep inside—was there a sable-draped altar with reversed cross and black candles upon it?—but was given no opportunity to see. Sir Francis led us back towards the house along the edge of the deer park.
Handing Miss Fan, I yet kept a sharp eye for any appearance of the Devil. Once I thought I glimpsed him in a tree; but on second glance there was only the wind in the leaves. Then I spied a presence of the ground; but that was no Devil neither, only a gamekeeper. The fellow had a bull’s hide waistcoat and an ill-favoured countenance, with a desperate bony jaw and hairy brows meeting over a needle-sharp nose. He sketched a grudging salute as we passed.
“Laggett, my keeper,” said Sir Francis, “he does wonders with my outlandish flora and fauna, imported from India.”
I own my attention, fixed upon my lovely companion, wandered from her father’s discourse, which touched on the datura, a dream-making plant, and among the fauna a certain noteworthy specimen of the simian kind.
Then we came to the Roman garden. In the statuary here Sir Francis had expressed a host of exotick fantasies. A naked marble Venus was bending over to take a thorn from her foot: a most unseemly sight, at which Dr. Johnson snorted.
In a grotto a cock was crowing and a Carmelite was laughing in glee at their proverbial amatory prowess. Nearby, a satyr had overtaken a nymph, and a Latin inscription made a bawdy pun: PENI TENTO NON PENITENTI. By this time Dr. Johnson was thoroughly scandalized, and made off without further ado, followed by Mr. Ashton, whose ears were red, and perforce by our host, still discoursing of his Indian specimens. To my great delight I was left alone with Miss Fan, who seemed nothing loath.
We seated ourselves on a marble bench against the boxwood hedge. Beside us a statue of Priapus was adorned in a manner I thought hardly suitable for the young lady, but she paid it no heed. Resolving to improve the opportunity, I took her soft hand and breathed passion. I was quite the Sicilian swain, and my nymph was so gracious I quickly put my fortune to the test.
“Dear sorceress,” said I earnestly, “I most eagerly desire to make one in your Coven, and I entreat you’ll account me of the number.”
I meant no more than to be admitted of her train; but she took it otherwise.
“You shall attend the next Sabbat,” said she, smiling, “if you are not afraid.”
“Try me!” said I boldly; tho’ truth to tell I knew myself susceptible to impression, and how I should behave if in the Witch’s Round I came face to face with the Old Scratch himself, I could not foresee.
But the Westcombe Witch
did not doubt me. We shook hands on the bargain, and so left Priapus leering in the hedge, and walked sedately up to the house after our elders.
It was now only a matter of awaiting the next gathering of the Coven. Whether it would prove to be only a rustick revel, or whether the green-eyed witch would in fact pay homage to Beelzebub, I could not decide. I awaited the summons. It did not come. Michaelmas approached, and with it the end of our visit.
When twilight fell on Michaelmas Eve, something was seen to be astir. Dusky shapes began to pass our garden gate, making for the Abbey. They wore dark cloaks, and—I perceived with a frisson—their faces were blackened. The Sabbat! And I had been invited!
I knew not what Dr. Johnson would say; but why ask? With our host he was safely ensconced by the parlour fire, brewing a bason of punch. In the kitchen I hastily burnt a cork, applied it, tied back my hair with a thong, viewed my Ethiopian countenance in the bottom of a copper pot, threw my cloak about me, and made for the Abbey.
Inside the grounds, dark shapes were gathering. I saw that they were making for the cave. Silently in the dusk I followed, into the wood, and under the arches of the entrance. Inside, the cavern smelt brackish. Drops of water fell with measured sound from the dusky vault above. Smoky torchlight thickened the air, and flickered on dark-clad figures and blackened faces. By the entrance stood a slim boy, all in black from neck to toe. The uncertain light caught fiery gleams from red hair clubbed at the nape—red hair—?
“What, Mr. Boswell,” came the laughing voice, “you come to our Sabbat after all?”
Someone behind her rapped out an oath, and beside her “Hell Fire” Francis, sable clad, exclaimed:
“This is too bad of you, Mr. Boswell. What have you to do here? Take him home, Laggett.”
The burly gamekeeper gripped my arm. Was I to be cheated of the experience after all? But the lady intervened.
“Stay, Laggett, the night is young yet, we may initiate Mr. Boswell, and I’ll take care of him thereafter. Do, father, I have a fancy to see what he’s made of, and no harm shall come by him, I promise you.”
The Return of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector Page 15