Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848

by Various

A strange paradox, truly, but not an uningenious—at least for a native of that "purple land, where law secures not life," who would work out of the very reproach, an argument of honor to his country. If it be true, however, that proneness to the commission of unwonted and atrocious crime is to be held a token of extraordinary vigor—vigor of nerve, of temperament, of passion, of physical development—in a race of men, then surely must the Anglo-Norman breed, under all circumstances of time, place, and climate, be singularly destitute of all these qualities—nay, singularly frail, effeminate, and incomplete.

For it is an undoubted fact, both of the past and present history of that great and still increasing race, whether limited to the narrow bounds of the Island Realm which gave it being, or extended to the boundless breadth of isles, and continents, and oceans, which it has filled with its arms, its arts, its industry, its language—it is, I say, an undoubted fact, that those dreadful and sanguinary crimes, forming a class apart and distinct of themselves, engendered for the most part by morbid passions, love, lust, jealousy, and revenge, which are of daily occurrence in the southern countries of, Europe, Asia, and America, are almost unknown in those happier lands, where English laws prevail, with English liberty and language.

It is to this that must be ascribed the fact, that, in the very few instances where crimes of this nature have occurred in England or America, the memory of them is preserved with singular pertinacity, the smallest details handed down from generation to generation, and the very spots in which they have occurred, howmuchsoever altered or improved in the course of ages, haunted, as if by an actual presence, by the horror and the scent of blood; while on the other hand the fame of ordinary deeds of violence and rapine seems almost to be lost before the lives of the perpetrators are run out.

One, and almost, I believe, a singular instance of this kind—for I would not dignify the brawls and assassinations which have disgraced some of our southern cities, the offspring of low principles and an unregulated society, by comparing them to the class of crimes in question, which imply even in their atrocity a something of perverted honor, of extravagant affection, or at least of not ignoble passion—is the well-known Beauchamp tragedy of Kentucky, a tale of sin and horror which has afforded a theme to the pens of several distinguished writers, and the details of which are as well known on the spot at present, as if years had not elapsed since its occurrence. And this, too, in a country prone above all others, from the migratory habits of its population, to cast aside all tradition, and to lose within a very few years the memory of the greatest and most illustrious events upon the very stage of their occurrence.

It is not, therefore, wonderful that in England, where the immobility of the population, the reverence for antiquity, and the great prevalence of oral tradition, induced probably at first by the want of letters, cause the memory of even past trifles to dwell for ages in the breasts of the simple and moral people, any deed of romantic character, any act of unusual atrocity, any crime prompted by unusual or extraordinary motives, should become, as it were, part and parcel of the place wherein it was wrought; that the leaves of the trees should whisper it to the winds of evening; that the echoes of the lonely hills should repeat it; that the waters should sigh a burthen to its strain; and that the very night should assume a deeper shadow, a more horrid gloom, from the awe of the unforgotten sin.

I knew a place in my boyhood, thus haunted by the memory of strange crime; and whether it was merely the terrible romance of the story, or the wild and gloomy character of the scenery endowed with a sort of natural fitness to be the theatre of terrible events, or yet again the union of the two, I know not; but it produced upon my mind a very powerful influence, amounting to a species of fascination, which constantly attracted me to the spot, although when there, the weight of the tradition, and the awe of the scene produced a sense of actual pain.

The place to which I allude was but a few miles distant from the celebrated public school, at which I passed the happiest days of a not uneventful life, and was within an easy walk of the college limits; so that when I had attained that favored eminence, known as the sixth form, which allows its happy occupants to roam the country, free from the fear of masters, provided only they attend at appointed hours, it was my frequent habit to stroll away from the noisy playing-fields through the green hedgerow lanes, or to scull my wherry over the smooth surface of the silver Thames, toward the scene of dark tradition; and there to lap myself in thick coming fancies, half sad, half sweet, yet terrible withal, and in their very terror attractive, until the call of the homeward rooks, and the lengthened shadows of the tall trees on the greensward, would warn me that I too must hie me back with speed, or pay the penalty of undue delay.

Now, as the story has in itself, apart from the extraneous interest with which a perfect acquaintance with its localities may have invested it in my eyes, a powerful and romantic character; as its catastrophe was no less striking than un-English; and as the passions which gave rise to it were at once the strongest and the most general—though rarely prevailing, at least among us Anglo-Normans, to so fearful an extent—I am led to hope that others may find in it something that may enchain their attention for a time, though it may not affect them as it has me with an influence, unchanged by change of scene, unaltered by the lapse of time, which alters all things.

I propose, therefore, to relate it, as I heard it first from an old superannuated follower of the family, which, owning other, though not fairer demesnes in some distant county, had never more used Ditton-in-the-Dale as their dwelling place, although well nigh two centuries had elapsed since the transaction which had scared them away from their polluted household gods.

But first, I must describe briefly the characteristics of the scenery, without which a part of my tale would be hardly comprehensible, while the remarkable effect produced by the coincidence, if I may so express myself, between the nature of the deed, and the nature of the place, would be lost entirely.