Historical Siftings
Romances of History. By H. Greenhough. Smith. (George Newnes. 2s.) ROMANCE and mystery always exercise their spell, especially when the romance really occurred, and the mystery goes still unsolved. Of the two books before us, Mr. Greenhough Smith's is by far the better told. He has precisely the style for his subjects, concise,' graphic, conirincing. All of his sketches live.
As a matter of fact, history, of course, is not quite so apposite and rounded as the editor of the Strand Magazine would have us suppose. Take his " Madame Tallien," for instance. Well, the fall of Robespierre and of the Terror was due really to more causes than the beauty of Madame and the fury of Tallien at finding her condemned. And Bruslart ? The story of. the Chevalier, with his menace of assassination always hanging over Napoleon's head, is vividly told, especially with that final touch of the Chevalier's being made Governor of Corsica while Napoleon was at' Elba ; a further proof, were any needed, of the treachery and meanness of the Powers to the fallen Emperor. But that' Napoleon stood in personal fear of Bruslart—why, he was no Cromwell, with hidden shirt of mail We think of " L'Hornme," spurring back from Valladolid to 'Paris with but one aide, whose horse he lashed to keep up the break- neck pace, or calmly drawing up Parisian theatre regulations among the ruins of Moscow, or meditatively whistling his " Malbrouck " while his tortured host struggled past him in the streets of Leipzig, or routing Blucher at the head of his conscript boys in the .lightning campaign of 1814 ; and Bruslart is simply .not in the picture. All the same, it is a sidelight. So is the ghastly sketch of Couthon, with crippled • form and cherub faCe, quickening five-fold the pace of the guilloty So is " Casanova," except tfrat only the roguery
and quick-change of the attractive rascal are given.. Mrs. Grundy frowned on the rest, and really Casanova is useful as a painter of " moeurs." William Lithgow deserved to be recalled to memory, and we are left wondering at the iron constitution of our forebears. Nerves they could not have known. Altogether, this little book merits attention, not least from those who would learn the crisp, economical style in which such work should be done : we very warmly recommend it to our readers.
We cannot give such praise to Mr. Thompson's collection of Mysteries of History. A few of them have the zest of novelty, but several are well-worn themes, and some have little or no mystery about them. Cagliostro and the Chevalier d'Eon have been discussed again and again ; the tragedy of
• gumnor Place has been practically disposed of ; Sir Walter Scott's dates, in Kenilworth, were early detected as all wrong, designedly so, of course. Leicester may have been guilty of many crimes, and the report of the inquest in this matter is missing, but (Mr. Thompson does not mention this) by the record on his tomb Antony Foster appears to have lived and died a respectable member of the com- munity. The early chapters on historical poisonings are • jejune : Henry I., John, James I., his son Henry, Charles II. and Charles IX. of France have long ceased to worry our suspicions ; it is hard to see why poor Mary Tudor was intro- duced at all ; and as for the Duke of Clarence, of malmsey fame, the salient and outrageous fact, missed by Mr. Thompson, is the lurid glare it throws on the savagery of the Yorkist princes, who murdered their nearest ldth and kin without mercy, a trait they handed on to the Tudors. The sketches of real interest, since they prove the endless gullibility of mankind, concern lesser game. There is Mary Tort, of the village of Godliman, who in 1726 claimed to have given birth to seventeen rabbits, and, what was more, persuaded the Anatomist to King George II. of the truth of her statement, She -became-the. talk of_ the _town, _and. litr, „room_ in Lacy's Baguio in London was thronged by- fashionable ladies for days before the cheat was -detected.- After this we are , not surprised at the Count de St. Germain; -who, however, like CagliostiO, probably did possess scientific knowledge in advance of his time—we should guess, in the manufacture Of artificial jewels—and lived and died a rich man. Then ihere was Dr. Graham, pioneer of Universal Pills, but, it must also be confessed, also of real magnetic treatment and some common-sense laws of health, but otherwise a very impudent and rather salacious impostor. Finally, there was Mr. John St. John Long, with his liniment ; he contrived to kill two unfortunate beings, however, but not his own reputation for skill and probity, as his monument at Kensal Green bears witness.
On the whole, this is a disheartening book. So many mysteries of real distinction await Mr. Thompson's attention -=-the true cause of the destruction of the Templar, and their alleged alliance with the Assassins ; the eegar patronage of the Grail Legend by the House of Anjou, and its use in their perpetual conflict with the Papacy ; much later on, the Cowrie Conspiracy, the Man in the Iron Mask, and the total disappearance of James de la Cloche, eldest son of Charles II.—a problem which intrigued Lord Acton and Andrew Lang. Again, who killed Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey ? What became of James H.'s crown jewels ? Who betrayed to the English Government the terms of the secret treaty between Napoleon and the Tsar, agreed to by themselves in privacy on the raft at Tilsit ? What really became of Louis XVII. ? Was Louis Philippe or the "Countess of Newborough the child of the Due d'Orleans ? And so on. To some of these problems there can possibly never be an answer, but their discussion would seem to be better worth while than the rather aimless tracking of bygone and insignificant adventurers. That is, if one wants to rake up the dustbin of history.
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