Fanny and Stella

by Neil McKenna

  Mrs Mary Ann Boulton had a very confiding and a very including manner of expressing herself, a manner that drew people in, and once she had begun to speak she could not stop. She told Ernest’s life story (and much of her own) in a series of sweetly charming vignettes which she acted out before the court. She would recall and repeat entire conversations and then pause and look about her to see the effect of her words. She conjured up the past so naturally, so guilelessly, that the entire court was transfixed and transported. When she swelled with pride or shuddered with dread, the court swelled and shuddered with her. When she smiled or she laughed, or was indignant or angry, the court smiled and laughed, and was equally indignant, equally angry.

  Ernest: A Story of Sweetness and Light. It might have been the title of a sentimental tract upon the sanctity of a mother’s love for a son. And a son’s devotion to his mother. A tract upon courage and fortitude in the face of suffering. A tract upon hope, faith and perseverance. Most of all it was a tract upon innocence – innocence of heart, innocence of deed and innocence of thought.

  Ernest. A much-wanted and much-loved child, weak and sickly from birth. So weak and so sickly that Mrs Mary Ann Boulton had had to fret and fuss over her boy. A delicate, fragile boy who delighted in dressing up and in acting. And yes, they had rather encouraged it, as it seemed to make him happy. (And who could deny a sickly child those few precious moments of happiness?)

  Ernest. Such a clever, funny child. A little boy who had dressed up as the maidservant and waited at table, even fooling his Grandmamma. Ernest, with the voice of an angel, who would make grown men weep when he sang.

  Life had not been easy. Mr Boulton’s business affairs, never on the firmest of footings, had gone from bad to worse, and they had experienced great reverses. Not that she had ever allowed any shadow to fall on her two boys. She would go without – indeed she had gone without – rather than let her sons suffer in any way.

  Ernest had gone out to work, but his health could not cope with the rigours of the London and County Bank. So she had put her foot down, and Ernest had resigned, to devote himself to performing. He had performed at charitable benefits in town, and toured the county of Essex with Mr Pavitt, where his reception had been something wonderful. Bouquets, some dozens of bouquets, had been thrown upon the stage. He had performed professionally in Scarborough with Lord Arthur Clinton. And yes, she had kept every single programme, every single newspaper clipping and every photograph of Ernest in character. What Mother worthy of the name would not swell with pride at her son’s successes?

  Then a shadow had fallen. Her worst fears had been realised. Ernest’s health deteriorated. He got worse and after a year of the greatest anxiety they were told that he must have an operation to save his life. She had never known such dread. But she had put a brave face on it. She had smiled and laughed and told Ernest to take no notice of his silly old Mamma weeping over a trifle.

  It was all most affecting, and there were tears in Mrs Mary Ann Boulton’s eyes as she spoke, and lumps in the throats of many of those present in court.

  ‘Ernest has been a most dutiful and affectionate son,’ she proclaimed, smiling radiantly across the courtroom at him. ‘The only fault he ever had was a love of admiration which has been fed by the gross flattery of some very foolish people.’ She would go no further than that. She would not name names. They knew who they were and that was enough. It was because of them that her dear darling boy was standing where he was today.

  There was barely a dry eye in the house, and if the Ancient and Honourable Court of Queen’s Bench had been a theatre (which in a way it was), then Mrs Mary Ann Boulton would most certainly have received a standing ovation, and bouquets – some dozens of bouquets – would have been thrown. As it was, there was an appreciative hum, with much noisy clearing of throats and many blowings of noses.

  Mr Digby Seymour bore more than a passing resemblance to a well-fed cat. He was sleek and smooth and shiny with luxuriant white whiskers. Though rotund, he was surprisingly nimble on his feet, and his voice, with just a touch of his native Irish brogue, was soothing and calming and altogether reassuring. But his eyes were sharp and ever watchful, and he could turn in an instant to snarl and scratch and rend and tear, as the unfortunate Dr Paul had discovered to his cost.

  Mr Digby Seymour rubbed his hands together and positively purred. He had taken Mrs Mary Ann Boulton by the hand and with the greatest courtesy, charm and solicitude guided that good lady through her testimony. It had all gone very well. Better than he had dared to hope.

  Mrs Mary Ann Boulton had held the court spellbound. Her account of Ernest’s life had been as compelling as it was consistent, and it had swept all before it. No matter that it was sugary and sentimental, almost to the point of sickliness. No matter that it was partial and incomplete. No matter that her memory had so consistently and conveniently failed her. She had risen above the morass and mire of claim and counter-claim, of truths, untruths and half-truths, of opinion, conjecture and speculation, and revealed the higher and the greater truth of a mother’s love for her son. Mrs Mary Ann Boulton had convinced herself of the truth of her testimony, and in consequence she had convinced everyone else.

  Mr Digby Seymour knew that the lacklustre performance of his esteemed colleague and friend the Attorney-General had signally failed to prove the case for the prosecution. But it did not necessarily follow that the trial would result in an acquittal. Juries were fickle, frightened creatures who turned this way and that depending on the direction of the wind and the scent in their nostrils. They needed certainty and they needed convincement: commodities which, fortunately for the defence, Mrs Mary Ann Boulton had provided in spades with her Authorised Version of Ernest’s life. From now on hers would be the gold standard of truth against which every other scrap of evidence must be weighed and measured and judged.

  Mrs Mary Ann Boulton was invoked at every possible opportunity by Mr Digby Seymour: ‘We know as a fact from Mrs Boulton,’ he would say. ‘We have it proved by Mrs Boulton’ and ‘Mrs Boulton swears’ and so on and so forth. For every alleged crime and misdemeanour, for every fact and circumstance that told against her son, Mrs Boulton’s seemingly guileless, garrulous testimony was a perfect and complete antidote. She was a universal panacea, a potent remedy of last resort.

  Almost every plank of the case for the prosecution was up-ended and demolished by the asseverations of Mrs Mary Ann Boulton. All was open and above board. She knew about everything and everyone, and everything and everyone had met with her approval. She knew nearly all the defendants in this alleged conspiracy. She knew Mr Frederick Park as her son’s intimate friend and fellow enthusiast for the theatre. Frederick often stayed with them and had stoically and devotedly helped to nurse Ernest back to health after his terrible surgical ordeal. She approved of the friendship between these two young men, and why on earth should she not?

  Mr Louis Hurt was ‘a friend that we esteemed’. He had been a frequent guest at their home. It was not at all a secret that Mr Hurt and her son corresponded – in fact, Ernest always read Mr Hurt’s entertaining letters aloud to her and there was never so much as a hint of impropriety in them. She had encouraged Ernest to accept Mr Hurt’s kind invitation to spend a few weeks recuperating in the bracing air of Edinburgh after his operation. She had supplied Ernest with more than adequate funds for this visit. Indeed, Ernest had always been well supplied with funds. (So why, Mr Digby Seymour was at pains to point out to the Jury, would there be any need for him to prostitute himself to men for money?)

  Mrs Mary Ann Boulton had been no less approving of Ernest’s friendship with the late Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton. The acquaintance had been formed in circumstances of the utmost respectability. She herself had been present on the occasion of a dinner given by Mr and Mrs Richards at which Lord Arthur was also a guest. He had become a friend of the family and visited them in Dulwich on occasions too numerous to mention.

  Yes, she was fully aware that Ernest personated
women in private theatricals, on the amateur stage, and latterly on the professional stage. Ernest had her full sanction and approval. Indeed, she had even given him one or two of her old dresses.

  If Ernest Boulton’s own mother did not object to these theatrical jeunesses, to these burlesques, to these dressings-up in women’s clothes, so Mr Digby Seymour’s persuasive argument ran, if she could not see the harm in this play-acting and pantomiming and make-believe, then was it not reasonable to assume there was no real harm in the behaviour of these young men?

  Mrs Mary Ann Boulton knew, too, that her Ernest’s friends and fellow enthusiasts for all things theatrical – Mr Park, Mr Cumming, Mr Thomas, the late Lord Arthur Clinton and others whose names she could not presently recall – used to call her son ‘Stella’ by way of a nickname. There was nothing sinister or secret about it. It was merely a jest and a joke among boys and she had laughed along with them.

  Now, Mr Digby Seymour argued, if there had been anything untoward, anything unsavoury, anything indicative of unnatural vice in the use of this nickname (as the prosecution had most odiously suggested), then surely Mrs Boulton would have recoiled from its use, as if from the serpent’s kiss itself?

  As to the photographs of young Mr Boulton attired in female costume, what of them? The Attorney-General had made much of them, suggesting that they were in some way indicative of a tendency towards unnatural vice. ‘But there is nothing indecent or indelicate in these photographs, nothing to shock the most critical morality, nothing to disturb the most refined taste,’ Mr Digby Seymour protested. Had not Mrs Boulton been shown each and every one of these photographs of her son so attired? ‘My son sent me every one,’ she had said, more than once. And had she not collected them in an album and kept them, along with the theatrical programmes, the newspaper notices and other related ephemera as memoranda of her son’s growing success and fame?

  If these photographs were what the Attorney-General so filthily suggested, was it conceivable that a son would dare to expose them to the gaze of his mother, or that Mrs Boulton could have borne to look at (let alone collect and keep) such photographs without revulsion?

  And this led Mr Digby Seymour on quite naturally to the whole subject of openness and concealment which went to the very heart of the matter. He did not and could not constitute himself an expert in the ways and means of the dark vice imputed to the defendants, but it struck him forcibly, most forcibly indeed, that the very openness of Boulton and Park’s conduct told strongly in their favour. There was no concealment, no attempt at concealment. On the contrary, there was flaunting and there was display – in theatres, in casinos and in public places. These young men went to any and all lengths to draw attention to themselves, to advertise themselves, to announce themselves to the world.

  ‘You would expect a different kind of conduct,’ said Mr Digby Seymour, ‘you would expect a secret hiding from the sight of men and women. They would try to avoid exciting the suspicions of others. They would shrink and hide away and draw over themselves and their horrible deeds a pall of darkness.’ ‘Would young men engaged in the exchange of wicked and accursed embraces put on the dresses of women and go to theatres and public places for the purpose of exciting each other to the commission of this outrageous crime?’ he asked theatrically.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he answered himself solemnly, ‘the very absurdity of the suggestion is its own refutation.’

  Lastly and with the greatest reluctance, Mr Digby Seymour was obliged to turn to the medical part of the evidence.

  ‘Ernest Boulton comes accused of being the principal actor, or rather, Gentlemen, the principal sufferer in yielding to the habitual embraces of others in this terrible drama of vice,’ he began. But a majority – five out of six – of the eminent medical men, ‘men of the highest position in their profession’, who examined the state of this young man’s parts in Newgate Gaol, ‘were strong and emphatic that there is not one trace, from beginning to end, not one particle of evidence in favour of his guilt’.

  ‘Not one trace and not one particle,’ he repeated.

  That left just two medical gentlemen, Dr Richard Barwell and Dr James Paul, whose testimony suggested that young Mr Boulton had indulged in these ‘vile and wicked practices’. But under cross-examination Dr Barwell had reluctantly admitted that he could not be absolutely certain that the condition of the parts of Ernest Boulton was the consequence of unnatural acts. His was a conjecture merely, a speculation, no doubt arrived at with the best of intentions, but still a conclusion that was subjective and open to contest and to challenge.

  And then there was Dr Paul. Well, the less said about that gentleman the better. And with that, Mr Digby Seymour assumed an expression of dignified contempt. ‘Dr Paul who gave us a story so absurd, after an examination so unsatisfactory, that I shall not say another word about it.’

  Besides, Mrs Boulton had given a compelling account of the very serious illness suffered by her son which culminated, after many months of severe – the severest – pain, in an operation to save his life. No one who had listened to her deeply affecting account could be in any doubt as to its veracity.

  Mr Digby Seymour wished to deal with and dispose of the medical evidence once and for all. Throughout the entire period when, according to the Attorney-General, young Mr Boulton was the willing pathic, if he could so term it, of Lord Arthur Clinton, of Mr Louis Hurt and Mr John Safford Fiske, throughout the period when he was, apparently, being sodomised by dozens – perhaps even hundreds – of unknown and unnamed men, it was an indisputable and an undeniable fact that he was suffering from (or latterly recovering from) the terrible and painful affliction of fistula in ano and was, in consequence, ‘morbidly sensible to pain’.

  Was it conceivable, was it credible, that this young man, already in agony in those delicate parts, would consent to further add to that agony, to further augment it, by allowing himself to be sodomised – as the Attorney-General alleged – at every possible opportunity, when such acts must have created ‘the most exquisite torture’?

  Mr Digby Seymour threw himself upon the common sense of the Jury. ‘Surely, Gentlemen,’ he reasoned, ‘you will say that Ernest Boulton was the very last being alive as to whom you would entertain the suspicion that he would be the suffering and the yielding party to the perpetration of such an offence? I put it before you almost as a physical impossibility.’

  Mr Digby Seymour had made his point well. There were murmurs and nods of agreement, and the Gentlemen of the Jury shifted uncomfortably on their hard benches, their eyes positively watering at the very thought of such exquisite torture.

  Mr Digby Seymour knew that he bore a heavy burden of responsibility. Perhaps the heaviest burden. The Attorney-General had roped together, as it were, all the defendants, which meant that if one fell, they all fell. And if one was found innocent, all were innocent.

  But it was his client, young Ernest Boulton, who bore the brunt of the prosecution. He was at the dark heart of this spider’s web of sodomy and corruption. He was the lynchpin and the king-post of this conspiracy. All roads led to him and all roads led from him. Stella, the shining star to whom all were drawn. Stella, the glittering sun around whom all orbited. Four of the defendants were Ernest Boulton’s paramours, the remaining three his friends and fellow female personators. Without Ernest Boulton there could be no conspiracy. Without Ernest Boulton there was no case. All the evidence, all the evidence that really mattered – the letters and photographs; the tittle-tattle of servants and landladies and ladies’ retiring-room attendants; the observations and insinuations of Dr Paul – all of it was focused and concentrated on Ernest Boulton. Acquit Ernest Boulton, and all would be acquitted.

  There were what looked like tears in Mr Digby Seymour’s eyes and there was a break in his voice as he imploringly invoked the image of Mrs Mary Ann Boulton one last time. He beseeched the Jury to acquit this mother’s child, this mother’s most dutiful and most affectionate son. A young man who could so inspire t
he love and loyalty and admiration of this Mother among Mothers could surely not be ‘capable of plunging at his young age into the depths of this terrible defilement’.

  ‘Pronounce by your verdict that there may be folly, but not guilt,’ Mr Digby Seymour enjoined, his oratory beginning to soar like a lark on the wing. ‘Pronounce by your verdict that there may be extravagance; that there may be madness, if you please, in the indulgence of this fancy on the part of my client. But you will require stronger evidence than this before you come to the conclusion that these men are guilty of the terrible charge made against them.’

  Mr Digby Seymour paused and took a deep and portentous breath before his final peroration.

  ‘I say that, in a case like this, I trust your verdict will establish that the moral atmosphere of England is not yet tainted with the impurities of continental cities, and from our island position we are insulated from these outrages upon Decency, Morality and Nature itself.

  ‘I trust that you will pronounce by your verdict that London is not cursed with the sins of Sodom, or Westminster tainted with the vices of Gomorrah.’

  And with that powerful and patriotic rallying call to reject and renounce the very idea of sodomy and sodomites stalking England’s green and pleasant land, Mr Digby Seymour abruptly and dramatically sat down.

  I t was a few minutes before five o’clock when the Jurymen filed back into the Ancient and Honourable Court of Queen’s Bench. It had taken them just fifty-three minutes to consider their verdict. Such a short deliberation was extremely unusual, especially in a case so complex and important.