THE UNSOLVED DRUCE MYSTERY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 11 March 1908, Page 78

THE UNSOLVED DRUCE MYSTERY.

(By T. P. in P. T. O.) I never had the least doubt from the moment I read the first or 6econd day's evidence in the Druce case that when the Druce coffin was opened the body of T. C. Druce 'would be found there. Mr Plowden was quite justified in saying that the whole case was a bubble; and that it was in the interest of the public that the bubble had at last been burst.. And yet the case remains to a certain extent an unsolved''mystery. The first thing to strike the student of human nature is liow such stories always find such a large number of people to credit them. Somehow or other man seems always ready to swallow any story provided there is enough of mystery in it ; and providing also, of course, that there appears to be a chance of making vast sums of money at a small risk. —A. T. Stewart. — There are names in the case which bring back to my memory all sorts of stories of the same kind. People of this generation are doubtless not familiar with the name of A. T. Stewart; but to men of my epoch —especially those who have travelled in Ameiica —it is a very familiar name ; bringing biick the memoiy of many 6trange tales. A. T. Stew-art was a North of Ireland man who went to New York when he was quite young; started in business as what they call here a dry goads meichant; and, irf the end, founded or.o of those colossal stores which bring in Imperial revenues in that wonderful c ity. He was represented to me as. a gum, silent, hard man, who was mainly immersed in the making of his millions; and had no great fund of human affections or sympathies. But, despite all this, he was one of the central personalities of New York; he had that maigic and glamour of giganth wealth which in that city always makes a man a centre of interest, of dreams, and sometimes of plots. Everything he did was recorded laboriously m the papers. One of his exploits was to build in Fifth Avenue a v splendid palace. It was different from the palaces which had already been constructed there, mainly because while they were of brown etone, it- consisted almost entirely of white marble. I went inside the house long after A. T. Stewart was dead; it had been converted into the chief Democratic club of the city. Since then, if 1 remember rightly, it has perished with that extraordinary rapidity with which things pass in the deadly velocity of American life, and its place is now occupied by a grander, a bigger, a more beautiful building than anything even the dreams of A. T, Stewart ever contemplated. —The Stolen Millionaire. — The fame and the exploits associated with him did not die with A. T. Stewart. There was a big dispute over his will. Judge Hilton, who was mentioned in the course of the Druce case, was the chief beneficiary; but he had to face a good deal of litigation ; and if I am not mistaken the mighty business which the genius of the Ulsterman built up gradually disappeared, and now is no more in existence. The body of the dead millionaire was stolen from the grave, und foi months was lost. I believe in the end it wns ransomed from the bold bandits who had taken it awaj'. Even .this is not the end of the story of A. T. Stewart. Some people with whom I am acquainted were approached a few years ago with a story ttiat the millions had gone into wrong hands ; that there was a well-known peer who by marriage had got hold of them ; while, as a matter of fact, there were several people —poor people for the most paTt —and scattered all over Europe, who were entitled to at least a ©hare in the heritage. The man who told the tale, with much circumstantiality, and who corroborated his story by gigantic files of document with laboriously made out genealogies, laised a good deal of money on the story; but, I need scarcely say, it never came to anything. —Money in Mystery. — With the story of Madame Humbert many of my readers are familiar. Here the "adventuress created not merely the heritage, but actually the human beings who were supposed to have left it, the brothers CrawfoTd ; and she laised something like two or three millions sterling and lived 40 years in tbe utmost splendour upon the story. And therefore I am not at all surprised to find that a considerable amount of money was raised on the chance of getting some shaie of the millions of the late Duke of Portland. It is quite clear that the story that there was no such peT&on as T. C. Druce is blown out of the water. But what is not yet clear are the reasons why such a legend should have risen; and why so many people —apparently without any guilty or mercenary motive —should have backed it vp —some by their evidence, some by their money. The witness Cald w«*ll m.'iy be extradited and stand hife trial ; and therefoie 1 cannot discuss Mis case; but whether he swore to the truth or perjured himself, I have heard he is not in thoM* desperate circumstances which induce a m;m to invent such a story as that he told ; he is, I hear, fairly wel 1 off. 1 am told that the fame thing ;s; s truth botli of "Miss" Robinson and of Mrs Hamilton—both of whom gave .strong testimony in favour of the story that the Duke of* Portland and T. C. Diuce were one and the {.amp per'on. The case of "Miss" Robinson is, indeed, \-ery peculiar, and very interesting, ard ako •• little puzzling. n;.l;^n<s and the Duke. — ■ob \ Mi 1- • u'l' Yet she j ,' i ' • , ■■> < 'i! t < f Law to ■< , cist which < , r'\! ius to con- I -' i.- n intimate a.-.! for many ,

yeais ; she tells the story with an extraordinary wealth of detail — -so much detail as to make it easy to disprove what she said ; and, whether by accident or design, 6he drags in the name of Charles Dickene in a curious way. She t>ays she met him in Boston a couple of yeitrs before his death when he was lecturing ; Dickens certainly was in Boston at the time. She describes an interview between Dickens and herself in Kensington Gardens a few weeks before his death. As I have already stated, Wemyss Reid, the well-known man of letters, who died three or four years ago, d-escrib'sd in an article, written long before the Druce case wa6 ever heard of, how, passing through* Kensington Gardens, he saw Dickens talking with, great earnestness to a young lady. And, further, there is the very curious fact that in the novel on which Dickens was engaged when the hand of Death interrupted him — namely, " The Mystery of Edwin Drood " — there is a man with a dual personality ; there 15 a mock funeral ; there is the reappearance of the man who is supposed to have been dead ; in short, either the Druce case would seem to have been founded on the book of Dickens or the book of Dickens on the personality and events which make up the Druce case. — Dame Rumour. — As I say, then, I have no doubt that the body of T. C. Druce was found the other day, and that the identity of him and the Duke of Portland has been quite clearly disproved ; and yet I feel that we do not know all the history of the Duke of Portland. He seems, indeed, to have attracted the attention of the novelist from an early period. He figures in a French romance. He seems to have .stood for Dickens. I have read other tales, alfeo. in which there i 6 a discreet reference to him. Why this extraordinary obsession with regard to this man? Even people much less on the look-out for the mysterious and the enigmatic in life than novelists were ready to either invent or accept legends about him at an early period. One of the most striking facts brought out by Mr Atherle^v-Jones, who conducted his weak case with great skill, when he was cross-examining^the nurse who attended T. -'C. Druce on his deathbed, was her avowal that these curious j reports about the Duke and T. C. Druce were heard of by her soon after the death of T. C. Druce. WhyJ one must ask again. Mr Druce was not an extraordinary person in any way. He was a prosperous London tradesman, living in one of the best -known of London streets, and carrying on a business which is as familiar to most Londoners as Madame Tussaud's. On the other hand, the Duke of Portland was a , British nobleman in a conspicuous position, a man of vast wealth, with two great houses, known to all mankind. .Why, then, this mystery, and suggestion of mystery, which began immediately after the death of T. 0. Druce, and has persisted till now, nearly half a century after ? — Human Fallibility. — Tlie mystery took in several persons, it is clear, who* had good opportunities of knowing the real truth — Mr Marks, for instance, who firmly believed in the story of lead put in the coffin, and of a sham funeral from Baker street T. C Druce was buried from his house m Hendon, where he died. Mr Marks is a man, I am told, of ample, indeed, large, means, and there can be no suggestion that he had any reason in giving the evidence he did, except that he believed it to be true. Nay, the mystery of T. C. Diuce does not end even with the opening of his coffin. There are contradiction* there on all bides. It 6hows what a fallible thing human testimony is. It was sworn that the coffin was of polished oak ; it turna out to have been of wood, covered with cloth. There is even a greater mystery about the appearance of the body. The beard had been described as stubby and short ; the beard on the body in the coffin was long. Is the explanation, then,' that the beard had grown after death.' Here one finds oneself confronted with a mystery which science apparently has not yet solved. —Was the Scientist Wrong?— Professor Pepper laid it down in nis evidence that hair can grow only for a day or so after death, and, therefore, to but a very short length. But I find in the newspapers several stories to the contrary. Mr William Arthur Jones, for "nstance, who is now a retired surgeon at j Camberwell, relates that when he was in practice in the year 1881. in Bedmineter, j a body was exhumed owing to a suspicion of poison. "My principal, Dr Walter Edgar Lloyd," he" goes on, " attended the case." And this is what happened: , "Deceased at the time of death was cleansha\en, but at the time of his exhumation (three months later) was found to have grown a beard." There is. again, the curious case of General Morland. The story is told by Marbot, the author of the famous "Memoirs," and Marbot, it is notorious, now and then told taradiddles. But the story is that Napoleon ordered that the body should be conveyed to Paris, so as to have a funeral worthy of the bravery and exploits of the dead General. Then the story proceeds: " JSo conveyance being available, the body was sent to France in a caefcs of rum. which was put in a cellar. The monument was never erected, and the forgotten hero remained in his cask till after the fall of Napoleon, wlren decay caused the cask to buist. Thsn it was found that the rum had caused General Morland's moustaches to grow w long that they reached his feet/ —The Wife of Rossetti.— But the moot remarkable caso of all is that of the v ife of Dante Gi'biiel Ros£<?tti. You know all about that wondrous creature who fiynies to largely in. all the menioiis t ind literature of the pie-Raphael-lte school to which Rossetti belonged. Even i»cro-s the cold print of the pages through which her figure flits you can real.se .something of her dazzling and distujbiiiji ji' rs-onaliU — as in the case of j Helen of Troy, you can dimly feel that >

fascination which made her adored by so many and such different men. Miss Siddell, as she was, became Rossetti's wife ; but long before she had conquered many hearts by the witchery of her smile, her face, her figure, and : Ruskin was so infatuated by her that , he .forgave . Roesetti . everything which, .he' had .;a, right/-: «r thought he had a right, to^resent. -Of all the glories of her almost d^vin-a beauty, . the greatest was her, hair — that Titian, red which, the pre-Raphaelite school, partly perhaps under her influence, transformed from a defect, as it was considered in my boyhood and in my country, into woman's- -> chief glory and adornment. It isv that . beautiful crown of hair that formed the. final chapter in her tragic story and that of her husband. — Rossetti'6 Mental Death.— After some years of marriage the beautiful creature died. From that hour onwards Rossetti never lived again. Counted by the calendar, there were years of interval between his -death and hers ; counted by the beats of tine heart^— whether fast with the throb of vigorous life, radiant happiness, and ardent hope, or felow, languid, 'aborious with the pace of those who are weary and broken — counted by heart-beats, it was ever enduring night afterwards to the broken man; darkness, black as Tiidnight at first, softened, a 6 happens even with tlae worst sorrows, to twmght in time, but never again the full blaze of noon on a summer's day. In the agony of his grief in the first hours of bereavement, Rossetti resolved that everything he cherished should die with the thing he loved most, and his poems, inspired by her beauty and presence, were buried in the same coffin. And then came the pressure of friends, who knew of the rich treasures of thought and expression that were in these poems, with the final result that an application was' m«de to the Home Secretary for leave to exhume the bedy. The rest of the story is told by Hall Came in his reminiscences of Rossetti. The exhumation took place in Highgate Cemetery, and by torch-light in the darkness of night ; and then it was found that the beautiful golden tresses of the corpse (her hair that lay along her back was yellow, like ripe corn) hadi grown after death and filled the coffin, being entangled with the MS. so that the book had to be cut away before it could be released. This, then, is a sufficient explanation of the difference between the beard of T. C» Brace as found in his coffin and as described, during life, by the witnesses who attended him in his last illness. — Lord George Bentinck. — Again I l^turn to the point : Why was there always so much readiness to believe' any story about the Duke of Portland? I dare say seme of my readers may have heard one of the most widespread of these legends — the one which has also ' figured in several stories. Perhaps it will bi remembered that the brother of the Duke was Lord George Bentinck. To students of the politics of the middle of the reign of the late Queen, Lord George Bentinck is a very familiar name ; he is especially familiar to those who hare studied the career of Disraeli. It was he who, whan Sir Robert I*eel deserted Protection in 1846 and carried Freetrade, headed the great Tory revolt; and by adding the weight of his great name enabled Disraeli to array the oountry gentlemen and to make them the body by which Peel was ruined and Disraeli was ultimately made. Bentinck was the titular head, Disraeli the real head of the squirearchy ; and there was little doubt that Bentinck, if he had lived, would have held high, office in the Tory Mini&try when it came to be formed. Just 'as he was at the height of his fame, and in all the glory of his splendid manhood, Bentiuck was found dead in his brother's park ; and thus passed out of the full blaze of active and glorious living as though some mysterious ancl malignant hand had stretched forth to day him. As a matter of fact, that was what people began to say then, and have continued to say since. There was really, I- think, no mystery whatever about Lord George Bentinck's death. Accustomed all h!s days to an open-air life ; the greatest plunger of his time on the racecourse, and the i greatest authority ; co fond of fox-hunt- ! ing that often he appeared in the House of Commons 1 for a division with a black overcoat covering, but not- quite concealing, the red coat in which he had returned' hastily from the day's exciting sport, Bentinck suddenly found himself called upon to take a leading part in the House 1 of Commons. I — The Effect of Work in the Commons. — With no natural aptitude for the work, entirely without previous training, but, at the same time, dreadfully in earnest, the poor fellow fagged in the enervating atmosphere of the House of Commons aQ through the long hours of the day and the night ; was so excited that he was unable °to eat, and, beginning the evening with a cup of tea and a small bite of toast, never ate anything until the House was U p_which might be 3, 4, or 5 o'clock in the morning. It was no wonder the life killed him in a short time. I have no doubt that the verdict— which was that he died of heart disease then — was quite correct ; except that perhaps a more accurate version would have been that the man died from exchanging the breezy,- life of the squire for the overwork of the politician in the close atmdsphere and the exciting incidents of the House of Commons. But the story was not accepted then, nor was it ever accepted by some people. The other story which obtained, credence was that he and his brother, the Duke of Portland, were in love with the same woman ; that they met in WeSbeck Park and had a furious quarrel ; that in the quarrel the Duke struck his brother and killed him, or helped to kill him ; and that his long retirement and all his subsequent eccentricities were to be attributed! to remorse over this deed. As I say, I don't think there is a word, of ta"uth in

the story ; but then I understand why this * and other legends grow up. —The Real Story of the Duke.— For the real story of the Duke of Portland is sufficiently curious in itself. Here is a ttian who is a•' dtoke ; who had previously been a member of the House of Commons ; who belongs to White' 6 and aill the other prominent clubs of London ;' .Who is, therefore, a conspicuous personage in the eyes of the world, and entitled to take has' place' anywhere j' and suddenly — for HO' reason that the world knew — he throws it all up. - If he had been a meditevai Catholic he possibly would, like Charles V', have retired into a monastery, there in silence ; ltd solitude to do penance for the sins of his youth. As it was, he became as much lost to the world as if fee were in a cloister ; and apnarentily he spent most of his time^ in devising means ** by which .he should escape not merely the attention, but even the sight of his fellow-men. Welbeck Park, as we all know, has beneath it a whole town, almost as if it were a spot taken from the catacombs of Rome. In Harsourt House, in London, there w-as. a great .gate and a courtyard, which isolated the house of the Duke almost as much from the public gaze and from public sight as if it were a castle on the Rhine which was isolated by a drawbridge, and nestling on a dark and inaccessible mountain top. Of all the duties of his great station — of all the social possibilities or amusements that i were open to him — of all the mighty and throbbing life of the busy nation to which he belonged — of that vast metropolis, a considerable portion of whose most valuable and beautiful space he owned, — of all that he formed no part ; took no heed ; he was "utque cadaver" — as a corpse — as the Jesuit fathers are said- to be in their strict and renowned order. It is a strange story, and the key to the enigma has not yet been found. Was it that he had soifie loathsome disease — leprosy as wa§_ suggested m the Druce trial ; or some dark story ; or was it merely one of those oases where great wealth descending through many generations ends in one degenerate, cursed by the form of insanity which- lies over the fairest prospects of fortune and. station, aaad makes the peer or the millionaire a more pitiful object than the beggar or the street Arab .that whistles past him in Eis rase?