Holmes stood up, walked to the window and held a paper to the north light.
“I believe that the usual iron-gall ink of the 1820s has been adulterated by indigo to make the script darker. So far as that goes, what we have appears genuine and is not contradicted by any date in the watermark.
“What is the writing?”
“A corrected page from the manuscript of Canto 6 of Don Juan. John Pierpont Morgan would pay a small fortune to add the complete work to his library, in the author’s own manuscript. According to the list of papers it is in Byron’s own hand. Notice the date at the top, “1822.” The formation of the first ‘2’ makes it look almost like “1892,” does it not?
“Very like.”
“A forger would have taken care to make both figures ‘2’ look alike. None of us signs a name or writes a line in the same way twice. A perfect forgery may be too consistent, too perfect, as if it has been drawn rather than written. Here you will see in the first line Byron has written, ”There is a Tide....” The letter T in both cases has a loop at either end of its cross-piece. Each letter in the line has a gap before the next one. That is almost too consistent, a cause for suspicion. By the fourth line, however, the poet’s pen is flowing freely, rather than hesitating. Every T is joined to the following letter, lacking the loops but sprouting a confidant tail.”
“And that is all?”
“Far from it, old fellow. However, Lord Byron is the most forged of all the English poets. The appetite for new discoveries is insatiable. In 1872, Schultess-Young foisted on the world two sets of Byron letters said to have belonged to his aunts. They were obvious impostures and the manuscripts were not available for inspection. Nineteen others in his book were examined in manuscript and proved to be the work of De Gibler, who called himself Major Byron and claimed to be the poet’s natural son. He had been exposed long before because the paper on which the letters were written was watermarked ten years after the writer’s death!”
Holmes was in his element among so much high-class dishonesty. He sat down at the writing table and adjusted the range of the magnifying lens.
“When a manuscript is examined closely, it is possible to see minute breaks in the line, where the writer has lifted pen from paper. In a genuine copy, as here, there are relatively few places where the pen has been lifted. A forger of modest talents will stop more often, in order to compare his copying with the original. There may also be signs of counterfeiting, when a letter in a word has been patched, as they call it, to make it a more accurate imitation, leaving a feathery appearance.”
“And by such clues forgery is detected?”
“Among many others. A true craftsman, of course, will know what I am looking for and will take care to provide me with it. Indeed, a counterfeiter who practices an author’s script for long enough can produce a flowing imitation. In that case we must use other methods of detection. Perhaps the date of ink or paper, sometimes the provenance of the work. I think we may assume that this is a genuine page of Byron’s manuscript.”
He examined a letter of some kind and then chuckled as he quoted two lines of Don Juan.
‘This note was written upon gilt-edged paper,
With a neat little crow quill, slight and new!’
We need have no doubt about these two pages. They have been known as a forgery for almost eighty years.”
I looked over his shoulder at the narrow page of script, the paper yellowed and the ink rusty. I read the first words, which looked mighty like Byron’s hand that had written Don Juan. “Once More, My Dearest. . . .”
Holmes smiled.
“It poses as a letter from Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb. Unfortunately it was forged by Lady Caroline Lamb herself in 1813 as a means of stealing his portrait. The story is well known. She was insane with love of him, the man whom she called mad, bad and dangerous to know! She forged this letter in his handwriting, authorising her to go to his publisher John Murray and demand the famous Newstead miniature of the poet. She got the portrait and he got her letter back from Murray.”
Under Lady Lamb’s copy of his signature, the poet had written, “This letter was forged in my name by Lady Caroline Lamb,” and he had signed the postscript.
“The two Byron signatures are very much alike.”
“Lady Lamb might have made a competent forger in time. However, look at the letter ‘t’ again. In Byron’s hand the cross-stroke extends over the next two letters. She extends it still further. It is a fatal mistake, when forging, to exaggerate such foibles. She also varies her style twice by adding a strong up-stroke before the main down-stroke of the ’t.’ That is a grave error. A writer who makes a ‘t’ with a strong down-stroke may embellish it but will hardly precede it with a strong up-stroke. The up-strokes of normal script are light, whereas the downstrokes are strong. Where the pressure of a nib is of uniform strength throughout, as it is here, you may suspect facsimile copying or forgery. In short, however like the two scripts may appear to be, Lady Caroline Lamb’s effort raises too many questions to be acceptable.”
“I low did such a document come into Jeffery Aspern’s hands?”
“It must be from Byron. No doubt on the occasion, a few days before his death, when he bequeathed such treasures to his friends before leaving Venice for Greece.”
Despite Aspern’s reputation as the recipient of a rich horde of Byron’s correspondence, a good many documents in the leather box were questionable. There was a further forgery, if one can call printed material by that name, again the work of Lady Caroline Lamb. It had been published in 1819, purporting to be a new canto of the poet’s Don Juan. Holmes read the opening line.
“‘I’m sick of fame—I’m gorged with it—so full....’ Heaven preserve us, Watson! It does not even sound like Byron!”
Then he paused. He had put aside this pastiche and was looking at a sheaf of papers that were clipped unevenly together. His face was grave and yet his features were tense with excitement.
“And here, I believe, is the legend of Lord Byron in the United States! For a good many years before going to fight for Greece against the Turks, it was said that he had determined to make a life for himself as Europe’s ambassador to the New World. Who better than an American poet like Jeffery Aspern to receive his confession?”
He ran his eyes down a sheet of wizened paper, its ink once again rusted by time. Then he passed it to me. I read it with astonishment and a chill in the spine at the thought that I was holding a sheet of paper which the greatest of the romantics once held and that I must be one of only three or four people to read these lines since Jeffrey Aspem had received them from Byron all those years ago.
Ravenna, April 25, 1821
My dear Aspern,
So you and Murray would have me write a modern epic! You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. But what would you say to my hero’s visit to your own country? “Don Juan in the New World”? When anything occurs in it to betray my ignorance of your native Virginia, pray revenge yourself upon the manuscript as freely as you like. If you can observe that condition, let our man take a turn in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson.
Upon the Virgin land is Juan set
A place of beauteous slaves and tropic morals.
(I don’t much wonder that Bob Southey funked it
Or that his women had a score of quarrels.)
Juan lay fast in Venus’ toils, whose jet
And agile limbs wore little else but corals.
Pillowed he lay, on skin as hot as Hades,
Treasured by those who sported like true ladies.
Sing, Muse, of Coleridge and the Susquehanna,
(I won’t sing Southey since he came in first).
Who knows, from Philadelphia to Savannah,
Which of Juan’s conquests would have pleased ‘em worst?
Both Senate’s wives and maiden queen Susannah
Juan’s nocturnal catalogue rehearsed.
O Lords of Golden Horn, stand ye in wond
er
To see our hero steal your Sultan’s thunder!
Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer?
Could you not take a run here with Miss B.—or alone if
need be?
Yours ever & truly,
Byron.
I read it again and stood in disbelief. If this meant what it said, the portmanteau in front of us contained an “American epic,” written by Byron while still in Venice but corrected by Jeffery Aspern to give it the authenticity of Virginia and Georgia. Who could forge such a thing? Not Augustus Howell—but Aspern himself!
But there was nothing in the document, at first glance, to suggest that its substance was counterfeit. The writing and the style were surely Byron‘s—as surely as Lady Lamb’s were not. The paper appeared identical to other documents of that age which are known to be genuine. The black ink had “rusted.” Perhaps most important of all, two stanzas of Byron’s poem were embedded in a letter to Jeffery Aspern, among whose correspondence they had been found. This surely established their provenance beyond question. The style was Byron’s, if anything ever was.
If all these facts were so might not the sheaf of papers, in the portfolio which Holmes was examining, contain one of the great undiscovered literary treasures of our time? Even while Byron led his amorous hero through the gallantries of Seville and Cadiz or the harems of Turkey in Don Juan, his eyes were already raised to the distant prospect of Washington and the Delaware.
I looked at Holmes.
“Can it be true?”
“I should not think so for one minute.”
I was utterly deflated. I felt what the forger’s dupe always feels at first. With all my heart I wanted these lines to be Byron’s own. A cold douche of scepticism was profoundly unwelcome. I had expected my friend’s excitement to turn to enthusiasm. Too late, I saw that his exhilaration was not that of literary discovery but of unmasking a villain. I continued to protest.
“It is entirely convincing.”
“Augustus Howell has a peculiar gift of being entirely convincing. He owes his success to it. Because he has planted this among Aspern’s correspondence from Byron, it will carry all the more conviction in the salerooms of London or New York.”
“How much is in that collection of papers?”
“Enough to kindle a good bonfire.”
My surprise turned to dismay.
“The paper is of the right date—1822?”
“Almost certainly.”
“The ink has rusted over the years?”
“It would appear that it has.”
“It is Byron’s writing.”
“Deceptively like.”
“The handwriting, the ink and the paper are those of seventy years ago. That cannot be Howell. He was not alive seventy years ago.”
“Precisely. Therefore it is a forgery.”
With that he took the letter from my hand and walked to the window again. Holding the page of manuscript horizontally, he tilted it a little this way and that, catching the light on its back and examining the surface with his glass. I felt a certain annoyance at such self-confidence.
I could not tell what he had discovered by scrutinising the surface of the paper. However, he now put it down abruptly, turned to the escritoire and began to pull every drawer clear of its slot. I thought we had already emptied the furniture of all that might be of interest. Now he was looking for scraps. He searched the recesses, as if for some secret compartment. He turned each drawer upside down and shook it, scattering the last fragments of paper, dust and wood-chippings on to the table. Not satisfied with this, he continued to rummage in each of the cavities where the drawers had been. At last he gave a sigh of satisfaction and retrieved a small slip of paper. I could see quite easily what he had found—a receipt from a London ironmonger.
“It behoves us, Watson, to become snappers-up of unconsidered trifles.”
The receipt was stamped by Kinglake & Son, High Holborn, for three shillings and eight pence. Its date was “12 November 1888.” Why should anyone keep a common receipt of this kind for such a length of time and in such apparent secrecy as this? Perhaps, after all, it had not been hidden but had merely fallen from the back of the drawer and been lost behind it. Only Augustus Howell could tell us and he must be presumed dead. Then I saw that there was writing on the back of the receipt.
“1 oz. galls, 1 oz. gum arabick, 1 oz. iron sulphate to oxidise, 6 cloves, 60 grains indigo. Add 30oz. boiling water/stand 12 hours.”
“How soon can we make sense of this?”
“I have already done so. It is a recipe for making iron-gall ink which, I imagine, no one has bothered to do for many years. Logwood and then blue-black replaced it long ago. When I have a reply to my wire, sent to the Vacuum Cleaner Company in St Pancras, we may have a complete explanation.”
“But you have surely not sent such a wire?” “It is remiss of me,” he said impatiently, “I should have known how this would turn out. Trickery—and shoddy trickery into the bargain! We will go to Thomas Cook the courier at once and despatch a cable. Meantime, be good enough to look at the so-called poem of Lord Byron you were reading. Hold it at the window. Let the light fall upon the back of the paper at an angle and tell me what indentations you can make out.”
I stood in the window and held it at various angles, studying it through the magnifying lens.
“It is a little creased here and there, so it should be after seventy years!”
“Look for a pattern.”
“There is a very slight pattern impressed on it.”
“Indeed there is.”
“It appears to be the impression of a grid, a series of horizontal and vertical lines.”
“They suggest, do they not, that the paper has rested for some time on top of such a grid? And that means nothing to you?”
“I can’t say that it does.”
“Then the sooner we reach Messrs Cook, the sooner we shall have an answer.”
5
By that evening we had a reply from St Pancras. The so-called Vacuum Cleaner Company had been a novelty a year or two earlier with its new carpet-cleaning device, though the device itself was not new. Holmes, with his insufferable fund of arcane knowledge, assured me that it had been patented in America as early as 1869. The device had originally required two servants to operate it. One worked a pair of bellows to create a vacuum and the other held a long nozzle which sucked up dust.
My friend, intrigued as always by such eccentricities, had quoted to me an article on the subject in the Hardwareman of the previous May. This promised a cleaner operated by a motor instead of bellows. Though I had heard these “vacuum” contraptions spoken of, I had never seen one of them.
As we sat with our coffee at one of Florian’s tables in St Mark’s Square, Holmes offered his explanation.
“The indentations which you observed, Watson, were those created by the paper lying on a wire mesh.”
“Very likely. What has that to do with a vacuum cleaner?”
“To acquire so clear a pattern, the back of the paper must have been supported for some considerable time on a wire screen, held in place by clips or pegs. In addition, the gentle application of a vacuum tube would suck it back against the mesh, for as long was as necessary. Soft paper, such as this, was always made of rags and takes the impression of metal very easily.”
“But that would not alter the apparent age of the paper, surely.”
“Certainly not. What it would alter is the apparent age of the ink.”
“By the use of a vacuum?”
“Cast your mind back to the formula on the ironmonger’s receipt,” said Holmes patiently. It is a prescription for the manufacture of a small amount of iron-gall ink, used by Jeffrey Aspern, Lord Byron and their contemporaries in the 1820s. It was long ago superseded. Therefore, ask yourself why anyone should want iron-gall ink in November 1888.”
“You did not need to send a wire to a vacuum cleaner manufacture in London to learn abou
t black iron-gall ink!”
He looked surprised.
“My dear fellow, of course not. A pair of bellows may produce a vacuum without the assistance of a cleaning device, though with more effort. The wire was merely sent to inquire whether these benefactors of man and womankind had recently supplied one of their excellent machines to Mr Howell of 94 Southampton Row, London West Central.”
“And the answer?”
“They had not.”
“Then you were wrong!”
“Not entirely. They had supplied a machine to that address. However, the customer gave his—or her—name as Mr Aspern.”
He snapped his fingers for the waiter and ordered more coffee.
“Black iron-gall ink sinks very slowly into such paper as this. As it does so, it goes rusty by reason of oxidation. If it remains black then it cannot be of any great antiquity.”
“As any schoolboy might deduce.”
“One moment, if you please! The purpose of a vacuum applied to the back of soft rag paper, long and gently while the ink is still damp, is to draw the fluid more deeply and quickly into the paper, to accelerate the ageing process. All things considered, I believe we may conclude that Byron never intended Don Juan to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson. However, I think we have followed those of the Bordereau sisters and their forger very closely indeed.”
6
On the following morning Holmes received a note, or rather a press cutting, from Lestrade. Without comment, our Scotland Yard man had forwarded a paragraph cut from the previous Thursday’s edition of the Winning Post and Sportsman’s Weekly, published for racing men by Robert Standish Siever in Pall Mall.
We are informed that the smartest mover in the village, ‘Gussie’ Howell of Southampton Row, has gone to his reward. His mortal remains were interred on Wednesday at Brompton Cemetery, attended by his creditors and the belles of Piccadilly in garters of the friskiest black silk. His elegy by the bard ‘ACS’ is currently circulating among the cognoscenti and reads as follows.
Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil: And Other New Tales Featuring the World's Greatest Detective Page 15