"At last I have got into the enemy's camp. I found Mrs. Dunlop this
morning, and for an hour heard her version, and was aghast at the
violence with which she spoke. I am very glad I have seen her,
because it gives me a fresh insight into the state of things. She
said Francis himself was absolutely passive, and allowed his
friends to act for him; that he was now living on charity, and of
course his friends must defray the cost of prosecution.
"She also said that Mrs. Montgomery's letter was used for the
prosecution only because it happened to be more convenient than
Mrs. Dunlop's evidence. They were _resolved to prosecute you_.
"I was so afraid of doing mischief, I scarcely knew what to say,
but the general point I urged was that I had heard from a Catholic
priest to whom I had spoken on the subject that the accusation of
poison originated with the Abbess, _who had told my informant_ that
Miss Hare had said so _to her_!--and that my informant was ready to
hold her to these words."
I do not think that any words could describe my misery at this
time--"battered and fretted into great sorrow of heart," as Carlyle
would say. It was naturally of far more consequence to _me_ than to any
one else to screen the miserable Francis, whom I _alone_ had cared for
and helped during the long years of his prison life, and who was now--as
a last resource--consenting to extort what was equivalent to hush-money
from me--either hush-money to save the family from the exposure of his
own past life, or a provision for life from the Roman Catholic
conspirators, if they were successful in the scheme to which he lent
himself. Yet I possessed nothing, and even if I could have brought
myself to let the Roman Catholics so far triumph, I could not have
allowed my adopted mother to impoverish herself by the purchase of their
silence. And all the time there was the unutterable weariness of
contradicting all the false reports, of making over and over again the
statement that if my sister were poisoned, _then_ Francis, who had never
seen her during her illness, was innocent of her death, but that if she
were _not_ poisoned, then the moral cause of it must be attributed to
him; and mingled through the whole were silent bursts of indignant
misery over the cruel sufferings which Esmeralda had undergone, and the
calumnious falsehood of her friends, with anguish over her so recent
death.
* * * * *
When it became quite evident that the only real object of the conspiracy
was to extort money from me, because I was supposed to be, as Mrs.
Dunlop expressed it, "the richest of the family," I did all I could to
save family scandal by offering to withdraw the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery altogether. My solicitor made every possible offer on my
part, but was always answered that they must have "pecuniary
compensation,"--in fact, it was always made a question of buying back
the letter to Mrs. Montgomery. The conspirators, as Mrs. Dunlop said,
were "resolved to prosecute," and wished to use the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery because "it was more convenient to use than anything else."
They would listen to nothing, consider nothing. Is it not
Whyte-Melville who says, "I never knew but one woman who could
understand reason, and she wouldn't listen to it?"
When we knew that the trial was inevitable, we did what we could to
prepare for it. I was strongly advised to put the case entirely into the
hands of my sister's solicitor, who was already acquainted with all the
dark page of Francis' past life, rather than to give it to my adopted
mother's respectable, old-fashioned solicitor, who was totally
unacquainted with it. I afterwards regretted this course, as the one
remark made by the latter, "that the Abbess should _now_ be allowed to
deliver her message," showed greater perspicuity than anything which was
done by the former. He, on the contrary, insisted that there should be
no communication at all with Pierina till just before the trial, and
begged that I would not see her at all; he also allowed himself entirely
to lose sight of the servants, in spite of my repeated entreaties. His
plan seems to have consisted in ferreting out all the proofs of what
Francis' conduct had been for many years past, and of the way in which
he preyed upon his sister during the last year of his life, as shown by
his own letters and my sister's accounts, which were in our hands.
In the "declaration of the action for libel" it was set forth as the
necessary "injury" that it had caused Francis to be avoided by all his
friends and acquaintances. Upon this we sued for particulars. Francis
returned a list of the persons whom he declared to have been led to
avoid him--"Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Dunlop, Mr. Monteith, Mrs. Monteith,
Marchioness of Lothian, and Miss Bowles," a list which included the very
persons (several of whom he had not known before) who were at that time
in constant communication with him, and were bringing on and subscribing
for the action, which was nominally on his behalf. On Tuesday, July 28,
the Roman Catholic lawyer asked permission to fix the day for the trial.
This courtesy was not refused. He fixed the day instantly and summoned
his witnesses, but he did not let us know till Saturday, August 1, that
the trial was to be on Monday, August 3, when, owing to the want of a
London post on Sunday, it was most difficult, almost impossible, to
summon the witnesses on our side.
On Friday, July 31, my acting solicitor went to Monsignor Paterson and
took down his deposition as to Pierina's account to him of the
death-bed. Monsignor Paterson then deposed that "the message" had been
given by my sister in the form already described, and that my sister had
also said she was "poisoned, and knew that she died of poison." Upon
receiving this evidence, my solicitor naturally felt sure of his cause.
He then went to see the Abbess Pierina in Mecklenburgh Square, when, to
his utter amazement, she totally denied ever having received the
message; but (being terrified by threats as to the "legal consequences"
which might accrue to her) she did not _then_ say that the message had
been given to the servants and by them delivered to her to give to
Francis.
On Saturday afternoon, August 1, Monsignor Paterson again saw Pierina,
and, to _his_ amazement, was informed that the message which he had so
positively declared to have been given to the Abbess was not what Miss
Hare said to her, but what Miss Hare had said to the maids, who had told
her. Monsignor Paterson wrote this immediately to my solicitor, who
(owing to the want of London post on Sunday) only received it in court.
On Saturday, August 1, the announcement came that the trial would take
place at Guildford on Monday the 3rd. On Monday morning Mary Stanley and
I drove early to the Waterloo station to go down to Guildford. There
were so many passengers for the trial that a special train was put on.
At the station I was close to Mr. Monteith, who had come from Scotland
to represent his wife, and young Gerard, who was to open the
prosecution, but there was no speech between us. Sir Alexander Taylor
went down with us, and at Guildford we were joined by many other
friends.
The heat of that day was awful, a broiling sun and not a breath of air.
We had a little room to meet in at the hotel. Almost immediately I was
hurried by my solicitor to the room where our senior counsel, the great
Hawkins, was breakfasting at the end of a long table. He complained of
the immense mass of evidence he had had to go through. He said--what I
knew--that such a trial must expose terrible family scandals--that it
would be a disgrace not to snatch at any chance of bringing it to a
close--that probably the judge would give it for private investigation
to some other Queen's counsellor--that, in fact, it was never likely to
_be_ a trial.
When I came down from Mr. Hawkins, Mary Stanley and I were taken to
court. There were so many cases to be tried, that ours could not come on
for some time. As Leycester Penrhyn was there, who was chairman of the
Quarter Sessions at Guildford, we were given places on the raised daïs
behind the judge, and there we all sat waiting through many hours. In
that intensely hot weather, the court-house, with its high timber roof
and many open windows, was far cooler than the outer air, and we did not
suffer from the heat. But the judge, Baron Martin, whom I have heard
described as far more at home on a racecourse than on the judgment-seat,
was suffering violently from diarrhœa, was most impatient of the
cases he had to try, and at last snatched his wig from his head and
flung it down upon the ground beside him.
About three o'clock in the afternoon we were assured that it was quite
impossible our case could be brought on that day, as there were still so
many others to be tried, and we were advised to go out and rest. So Mary
Stanley and I went back to the hotel and remained there in a cool room.
Presently, to our horror, a messenger came running down from the court
and said, "Your case is on, and has been on twenty minutes already." We
rushed to the court and found the whole scene changed. All the
approaches to the court were crowded, literally choked up with witnesses
and Roman Catholic spectators. The court itself was packed to
overflowing. As I was hurried through the crowd, I recognised the
individuals forming the large group of figures immediately behind the
judge. There were Pierina of the Precious Blood and her attendant nuns
in their long black veils and scarlet girdles; there, in her quaint
peaked head-dress, was the nun of the Misericorde who had watched
through the illness; there was the burly figure of Mr. Monteith; the
sallow face of Mrs. Dunlop; her husband the Admiral; Mrs. Montgomery,
beautiful still; Lady Lothian in her deep mourning and looking very sad
at being subpœnaed, which was a terrible pain to her; Dr. Squires,
Mr. Seyer, and Miss Bowles.
When I was brought in, all seemed to be confusion, every one speaking at
once; Mr. Hawkins was in vain trying to put in a word, the judge was
declaiming that he would have an end of the trial, whilst Serjeant Parry
for the prosecution was in a loud voice reading the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery and giving his comments upon it.
The proceedings had commenced by the judge saying that he considered the
case one which it would be most undesirable to discuss in a public
court; and suggesting, indeed trying to enforce, that it should be left
to the arbitration of some friend of the family. Repeatedly Baron Martin
urged the expediency of a private investigation, saying that he "felt it
his duty to make the suggestion, and that he thought the learned counsel
(Parry) might act upon it." But the lawyers for the opposition refused
any compromise whatever, for they knew what the evidence of Pierina and
the servants was to be.
Serjeant Parry then opened his speech by describing between whom the
action was taking place. He drew a picture of the nominal prosecutor's
life in which he dwelt on "the brilliant examination at Sandhurst," but
touched lightly upon the time which he had passed in the gaieties both
of the Continent and of this country, after which he became "not
embarrassed, but reduced in circumstances." He then said that Esmeralda
had recently had a tolerable fortune, and was doubtless "supposed at her
death to be in possession of it, but she was not, for she entered into
speculations which had proved unsuccessful, so that she died a
comparatively poor woman." He then described the death-bed will. He
asserted that the only cause of the death was inflammation of the
bowels. He then said that he should proceed to read the letter,
"supplementing it with evidence to prove that the defendant was actuated
by the wickedest malice."
It was at this point that we arrived in court. When a little silence was
obtained, Parry began to read the letter, and having concluded the first
sentence, said, "When the defendant states that a report has been
circulated in London, &c., he states a deliberate falsehood. No such
report ever was heard by him, and I will not say it is the effect of his
imagination, it is simply an invention for the purpose of damaging the
character of his brother."[386]
Serjeant Parry then read the paragraph saying that in the first will
Francis was not even alluded to. "I have reason to believe that this
also is totally false," he said, and that with the will itself lying
open upon the table before him.
Parry passed over the third paragraph of the letter, without any
criticism except an absolute denial, but he read a note written by my
sister before she received Francis' fatal letter, in proof of the
affectionate terms on which they were living. That the "mention of his
name made her scream with horror," he declared to be utterly false, and
he asserted (for the first time stating facts) that the Abbess Pierina
would deny that any message was given by my sister to _her_. Finally,
Parry denied that there was any truth in the statement that Francis had
received money from his sister, beyond the sum of £300.
As Serjeant Parry concluded his speech, Mrs. Montgomery was called into
the witness-box. While the preliminary questions were being put to her,
the confusion in court increased; a letter was brought in to Mr.
Harrison and handed on by him to Mr. Hawkins. It was the letter from
Monsignor Paterson, written on Saturday evening, which announced that
Pierina would deny and belie the deposition he had made. Immediately Mr.
Hawkins turned round to me and said, "Our cause has received a fatal
blow; the Abbess Pierina is about to deny all the evidence she has given
before--deny all that she has said to Monsignor Paterson, and will swear
that your sister's death-bed passed in total silence, save for the
single word 'Auntie,' and under these circumstances it is perfectly
useless to go on; our antagonists will get the money they long for; for
money is all they really care for."--"But," I said, "we can bring
endless persons and Monsignor Paterson's own deposition to prove what
the Abbess's former statements have been."--"No," said Mr. Hawkins, "you
cannot bring a witness to prove a witness."--"But," I said, "we can
prove every other part of the letter."--"That will do no good," said Mr.
Hawkins; "if you fail in proving a single point, you fail in proving the
whole, and the Roman Catholics will get the money; besides, you cannot
prove every other part of the letter, for where is the maid, Mary
Laffam?--she is not here." And in truth, Mary Laffam (whose evidence was
all-important, who was to swear to the screaming at the very mention of
Francis' name, who was constantly present during the illness) was
mysteriously missing, and no trace of her could then be found. Two days
afterwards she was traced, and it was discovered that she had been sent
abroad by the Roman Catholic confederates to be out of the way--sent by
them to the Augustinian Abbey of Charentan in France.
During the discussion which was now taking place, the utmost excitement
prevailed in court. Almost every one stood up. Mr. Hawkins urged--"Are
your adopted family prepared to pay what the Roman Catholics
claim?"--"Certainly not."--"Then you must submit to a verdict."--"I
leave it in your hands." So I wrote on a bit of paper, "Say no more than
this. I withdraw anything that may be legally taken as _libellous_ in
the letter to Mrs. Montgomery." Then the group opened, and Mr. Hawkins
again stood up and said that he was in a position to withdraw the
letter--if it contained any libellous statements to apologise for them.
At the same time "his client could not submit to be told that he had
either acted maliciously or invented anything: he was absent from
England at the time of his sister's death, and had throughout acted
entirely upon information he had received from those upon the spot."
"I will have an end of this, gentlemen," exclaimed the judge--"I give a
verdict for forty shillings."
"Make it ten guineas, my Lord," shouted the Roman Catholic lawyer, who
had previously interrupted Serjeant Parry by saying "We will have money,
we will have money." "There shall be an end of this, gentlemen," said
the judge; "I give a verdict for forty shillings," and he walked out of
court. And so this painful ordeal came to an end. It was not till
afterwards that I was aware that the verdict of forty shillings obliged
me to pay the costs of both sides--£199 to my lawyer, and £293 to the
Roman Catholic lawyer, which was afterwards reduced by a taxing-master
to £207, 9s. 1d.
As soon as we left the court and returned to the hotel, our solicitor
came in, and, before all those of our family who were present, declared
how, by my desire, he had repeatedly offered to withdraw the letter to
Mrs. Montgomery, but how money was always demanded as its price, and how
money was proved throughout to be the only real object of those who
brought the action. In looking back, therefore, upon the whole of this
terrible affair, I only see three ways in which the trial could have
been avoided:--
1. If Miss Stanley had had the courage to go openly to Mrs.
Monteith and Lady Lothian, and say boldly that she, a Roman
Catholic, was the cause of my writing the letter to Mrs.
Montgomery; that as to the "report," I acted entirely and
exclusively on information which she gave; that at first I had
hesitated to do as she wished, but that she had continued to urge
it; and that she, a Catholic, had looked over the letter before it
was sent, and begged me not to alter a word of it.
2. If my solicitor had acted upon the one piece of advice given by
Mr. Phelps, and weeks before the trial had requested Pierina to
deliver her "message," we should then have known that the message
was not given to her except through the medium of the servants,
and therefore that by English law the wording of the letter was
indefensible.
3. If my solicitor had been less supine in summoning witnesses--if
he had at once subpœnaed Mary Laffam and the other maids on our
side, and had also summoned my Aunt Fitz-Gerald, who would have
been willing and glad to give her evidence, and whose very
appearance would have made Francis shrink from allowing the Roman
Catholic confederacy to continue the trial.
Mary Stanley and I went early to the Guildford station to wait for the
train which was to take us back to London. We had not been long on the
platform before all the Roman Catholic party emerged upon it. I went at
once to meet and _pass_ them, thinking it better at once to establish
the terms on which we were to remain through life. The Mother Pierina
alone lingered behind the rest, and, with streaming eyes and
outstretched hands, came towards me. "Oh, I thought it would have been
for peace," she said. I could not refuse to take her hand, when Mr.
Monteith, turning round, roughly seized her by the shoulder and led her
away, saying, "Reverend Mother, I must insist that you do not speak to
that ... _person_." Afterwards, when she was entering the railway
carriage after the others, Mrs. Dunlop seized Pierina and pushed her out
of the carriage, almost throwing her down upon the platform, and slammed
the carriage-door in her face. Admiral Dunlop immediately forced his
wife to get out of the carriage and apologise to the Reverend Mother. I
did not know till long afterwards the reason of Mrs. Dunlop's violence,
which was the persistence with which Pierina throughout that day had
dwelt upon the wicked unfairness of having the trial in the absence of
Mary Laffam, who was the witness really responsible for all that had
been said. On August 19 Mary Stanley wrote to me:--
"Yesterday I saw Sister Pierina. She said how extremely grieved she
had been for you. She said the lawyer on the Catholic side read the
evidence to all the party at Guildford, and that she then expressed
her dissent, saying that it was not in accordance with what Mary
Laffam had said to her and others, and that in justice to you, she,
Laffam, ought to be present. All through that day (which she said
was most dreadful to her) she asserted and reasserted this, and
that you were not fairly dealt with, and to me she complained sadly
of the un-christian spirit in which the affair had been carried on:
Mrs. Dunlop, she said, was _far_ the worst.
"Pierina denies _nothing_. She could only say, when asked about the
message, that none was given directly to _her_, and that to her
your sister had only said, 'Tell Francis that he has been the
cause of my death.' She was forbidden to say to whom the message
was given. So far from going over to the other side, she was at war
with them the whole day, and told me she did not believe any of
that party would ever come near her again; and I met Monsignor
Paterson on Sunday, who told me that Mrs. Dunlop had been to him to
complain bitterly of her."
Afterwards the feeling of the conspirators, especially of Mrs. Dunlop
and Mrs. Montgomery, became so violent against the Mother Pierina (on
account of her persisting in the injustice of the trial), that they not
only stopped their own subscriptions to her charities, but induced
others to do so, and eventually, by the interest of Mr. Monteith with
Monsignor Talbot and other Roman authorities, they brought about her
recall and persecuted her out of England altogether.
On August 7, Monsignor Paterson wrote a long letter to Mary Stanley,
explanatory of his conduct in the affair. It contained the following
remarkable passage:--
"A day or two after Miss Hare's death, which took me quite by
surprise, I went to her house, and there saw Sister Pierina, who
told me she had been summoned, and found Miss Hare actually dying;
that she seemed very suffering, and had some difficulty in
resigning herself to the will of God. I remember also hearing that
she expressed distress at some conduct on the part of Mr. Francis
Hare, and I thought that other expressions used implied a suspicion
on her part of some kind of _foul play_. Of course, had I taken
this _au sérieux_, it would have made a great impression, but I set
it down, after a moment's reflection, as a random (perhaps almost
delirious) expression, such as people who are very ill sometimes
use with very little meaning at all."
Strange certainly that an eminent Roman Catholic priest should call at
his friend's house, hear that she had died suddenly, and that she had
said on her death-bed that she died from "foul play," and yet be able so
easily to dismiss the subject from his mind!
Soon after the trial I wrote a long account of the whole proceedings to
Archbishop Manning. His answer was very kind but very evasive--"Miss
Hare's death was most sad ... the trial must have been most painful," he
"sympathised deeply," &c., but without giving a direct opinion of any
kind.
It was not till some months later that I became acquainted with a secret
which convinced me that, though my sister's end was probably hastened by
the conduct of her brother Francis, yet poison was the original cause of
her death. When we next visited Pisa, Madame Victoire told me how, when
my sister was a little girl of six years old at Paris, she and her own
little girl, Victoria Ackermann, were sitting on two little stools doing
their needlework side by side. Suddenly there was a terrible outcry.
Little Anna Hare had swallowed her thimble. The whole house was in
consternation, doctors were summoned in haste, the child was given
emetics, was held upside down, everything was done that could be done to
bring the thimble back, but it was too late. Then the doctors inquired
what the thimble was like, and on seeing the thimble of the little
Victoria, who had received one at the same time, were satisfied that it
was not dangerous, as the thimble being of walnut-wood, would naturally
dissolve with time, and they gave medicines to hasten its dissolution.
But, in the midst of the confusion, came Mrs. Large, the nurse, who
confessed with bitter tears that, owing to her folly, the thimble was
not what it was imagined to be. She had not liked to see the child of
the mistress with the same thimble as the child of the maid, and had
given little Anna one with a broad band which looked like gold but was
really copper. When the doctors heard this, the accident naturally
assumed a serious aspect, and they redoubled their efforts to bring back
the thimble. But everything failed; the wooden thimble dissolved with
time, but the copper band remained. Gradually, as Esmeralda grew
stronger, the accident was forgotten by all but her mother, Mrs. Large,
and Madame Victoire, who observed from time to time, in childish
illnesses of unusual violence, symptoms which they alone could
recognise, but which were such as would arise through slight injury from
poison of verdigris. As my sister grew, the copper ring grew also,
attenuated to the minutest thread, but encircling her body. From time to
time she was seriously affected by it, but her mother could not bear it
to be spoken of, and her repulsion for the subject communicated itself
to Esmeralda herself. She was warned to evade a damp climate or the use
of vegetables. When she was seized with her violent illness at Dijon,
the symptoms were all such as would be caused by poison of verdigris.
She then went to Pisa, where Madame Victoire was alarmed by what she
heard, and insisted upon the best advice being procured, and a medical
examination. The doctors who saw her, even then spoke to Madame Victoire
of her state as very serious, and requiring the most careful watching.
When Esmeralda went to Rome to the canonisation in the summer of 1867,
she returned by Pisa. The faithful Madame Victoire then sent for a
famous medical professor of the University of Bologna to meet her, and
insisted upon her being examined by him. He afterwards told Madame
Victoire privately that though, by intense care, Miss Hare might live
for many years, her life, in case of accident, hung on a thread, and
that it was highly improbable that she would live long, for that the
copper ring was beginning to tell very seriously upon her constitution,
and that when she died it would probably be suddenly of black sickness,
with every appearance of poison--poison of verdigris. And so it was.
* * * * *
One of the principal actors in the scene at Guildford was soon after
called to account before a higher tribunal than any that earth can
afford. On the 18th of November (1868) I received (at Rome), to my great
surprise, a letter from Madame Flora Limosin, of the Hôtel de Londres at
Pisa (Victoire's youngest daughter), saying that Francis was about to
arrive there from Hyères. He had been sent away from England some time
before, having then £80 in his possession. Whether this sum was obtained
by a Roman Catholic subscription, I have never been able to learn, but
from this time the Roman Catholic conspirators ceased to help him: he
had failed as the instrument for which they required him, and they now
flung him aside as useless. His folly at Guildford, in lending himself
to their designs, had also alienated the whole of his own family, even
to the most distant degrees of relationship. Not knowing where to turn,
he could only think of two persons who would receive him in his
destitution. His mother's faithful maid Madame Victoire and her daughter
Flora were still living at Pisa, and to them, when he had only £20 left,
he determined to make his way. On landing at Spezia, though even then in
a dying state, he would not enter a hotel, because he felt that if he
entered it he would never have strength to leave it again, and he sat
for hours upon his luggage on the platform of the station till the train
started. For the sake of their old companionship in childhood, and of
the kindness she had received from my father, Flora Limosin not only
received Francis, but also the person to whom he was married, and gave
them some quiet rooms opening upon the garden of the Hôtel de Londres,
where he was nursed by the faithful friends of his infancy.[387] He was
attended by Padre Pastacaldi, who administered to him the last offices
of the Church, and says that he died penitent, and sent me a message
hoping that I forgave him for all that had passed at Guildford. He died
on the 27th of November, utterly destitute, and dependent upon the
charity of his humble friends. He was buried by them in a corner of the
Campo Santo at Pisa, near their own family burial-place, where the
letters F. H. in the pavement alone mark the resting-place of Francis
George Hare, the idolised son of his mother.[388]