Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

What were the lady’s feelings on first beholding this man is an interesting matter for speculation. She had sent away, thirteen years before, a slight, delicate, poetic aristocrat, whose chief characteristic was an excessive refinement that made him quite unfit for the common stresses of life. In his stead there came back a short, gross, enormously fat plebeian, with the lingual faults and vocal solecisms of the cockney. In the place of the young man who knew his French and did not know his English, here was a fellow who could speak not a word of the Gallic tongue and used his English abominably.

None of these things appeared to make any difference to Lady Tichborne. She received the claimant without reservation, said publicly that she had recovered her darling boy, and went so far as to announce her reasons for accepting him as her son.

The return of Roger Tichborne was, to be sure, an exciting topic of the newspapers of the time, with the result that the romantic story of his voyage, the shipwreck of the Bella, his rescue, his wanderings, his final discovery at Wagga Wagga, and his happy return to his mother’s arms became known to millions of people, many of whom accepted the legend for its charm and color alone, without reference to its probability. Indeed, the tale had all the elements that make for popularity and credibility. The opening incident of unrequited love, the journey in quest of forgetfulness, the crossing of the Andes, the ordeal of shipwreck, the adventures in the Australian bush, and the intervention of the hand of Providence to drag him back to his native land, his title and his inheritance! Was there lacking any element of pathetic grace?

For those who saw in his ignorance of Tichborne family affairs and his sad illiteracy sober objections to the pretensions of the claimant, there was triple evidence of identification. Not only had Lady Tichborne recognized this wanderer as her son, but two old Tichborne servants had preceded her in their approval. It happened that one Bogle, an old negro servant, who had been intimate with Roger Tichborne as a boy, was living in New South Wales when the first claim was put forward by the man at Wagga Wagga. At the request of the dowager this man went to see the pretender and talked with him at length, first in the presence of those who were pressing the claim and later alone. The servant and the claimant reviewed a number of incidents in Roger Tichborne’s early life, and Bogle reported that he was satisfied. He became “Sir Roger’s” body servant and subsequently accompanied him to England. Later a former Tichborne gardener, Grillefoyle by name, who also had gone out to Australia, was sent to interview the Wagga Wagga butcher. The result was the same. He reported favorably to his former mistress, and it seems to have been mainly on the opinion of these two men that Lady Tichborne based her decision to disregard the difficulties inherent in the letters and to finance the return of the man to England. Their testimony, backed by the enduring hunger of her own heart, no doubt swayed her to credence when she finally stood face to face with the improbable apparition that pretended to be her son.

The claimant, though he had arrived in England in December, 1866, made various claims and went to court once or twice but did not make the definitive legal move to establish his position or to retrieve the baronetcy and estates until more than three years later. Suit was finally entered toward the end of 1870, and the trial came on before the court of common pleas in London on the eleventh of May, 1871. This was the beginning of one of the most intricate and remarkable law-trial dramas to be found in the records of modern nations.

The Tichborne pretender had used the years of delay for the purpose of gathering evidence and consolidating his case. He had sought out and won over to his side the trusted servants of the house, the family solicitor, students at Stonyhurst, officers of the carabineers and many others. The school, the officers’ mess, the Tichborne seat, and many other localities connected with the youth and young manhood of Roger Tichborne had all been visited. In addition, the obese claimant had further cultivated Lady Tichborne, who came to have more and more faith in him. Originally she had written:

“He confuses everything as if in a dream, but it will not prevent me from recognizing him, though his statements differ from mine.”

Before the suit was filed, and the case came to be tried, his memory improved remarkably; he corrected the many errors in his earlier statements, and his recollection quickly assimilated itself to that of Lady Tichborne. After he had been in England for a time even his handwriting grew to be unmistakably like that revealed in the letters written by Roger Tichborne before his disappearance.

There was, accordingly, a very palpable stuff of evidence in favor of the man from Australia. I have already said that the public accepted the stranger. It needs to be recorded that every new shred of similarity or circumstance that could be brought out only added to the conviction of the people. This was unquestionably Roger Tichborne and none other. Some elements asserted their opinion with a passion that was not far from violence, and the public generally regarded the hostile attitude of the Tichborne family as based on selfish motives. Naturally the other Tichbornes did not want to be dispossessed in favor of a man who had been confidently and perhaps jubilantly counted among the dead for more than fifteen years. The man in the street regarded the family position as natural, but reprehensible. How, it was asked, could there be any doubt when the boy’s mother was so certain? Was there anything surer than a mother’s instinct? To doubt seemed almost monstrous. Accordingly, the butcher of Wagga Wagga became a public idol, and the Tichborne family an object of aversion.

Nor is this in the least exaggerated. When it became known that the claimant had no funds with which to prosecute his case, the suggestion of a public bond issue was made and promptly approved. Bonds, with no other backing than the promise to refund the advanced money when the claimant should come into possession of his property, were issued, and so extreme was the public confidence in the validity of the claim that they were bought up greedily. In addition, a number of wealthy individuals became so interested in the affair and so convinced of the rights of the stranger, that they made him large personal advances. One man, Mr. Guilford Onslow, M. P., is said to have lent as much as 75,000 pounds, while two ladies of the Onslow family advanced 30,000 pounds and Earl Rivers is believed to have wasted as much as 150,000 pounds on the impostor.