Yet Chapman could make the husband of Tamyra (so he names Mon the Dame de soreau) stab her again and again on the stage, and have her tortured by his servants on the stage, till she consents to write, in her blood, a letter summoning Bussy to a fatal tryst, where murderers await him. The go-between in the amour is a friar, and when he dies, his ghost, Umbra Friar, trots to Bussy with a message. In the sequel, "The Revenge," when Monsoreau is slain, the ghosts of Bussy, Chatillon, and the Duke and Cardinal de Guise dance about his dead body, to the unspeakable terror and amazement of the observers, for the Duke and Cardinal are supposed to be in perfect health. As a matter of fact, both have just been assassinated; as the Rev. James Melville writes,-"God was pleased to glorify Himself greatly by the sticking of the Duke of Guise." Even Chapman was rather too free with his horrors and his ghosts. Dryden found, in his "Bussy d'Ambois," "the sense of one line expanded prodigiously into ten; and, to sum up all, incorrect English, and a hideous 1 Centre of the earth. mingle of false poetry and true nonsense: or at best a scantling of wit, which lay gasping for life, and groaning beneath a heap of rubbish. A famous modern poet used to sacrifice every year a Statius to Virgil's manes; and I have indignation enough to burn a d'Ambois annually to the memory of Jonson." painted in the hues of life; but the painter, an exiled king, uses subtle poisons which do for that bad Tyrant; while the ghost of the dead lady like the Egyptian Ka, attends comes and goes, and finally, the corpse back to the M. Jusserand is more hu- sepulchre. This plot is of manely minded— the nightmare's brood; but here is one of many poetic passages, and many another has doubtless perished in the fifty plays at least which Mrs Barnes offered up to Shakespeare's shade : "Yet, sir, there is a date set to all THE LIGHTER SIDE OF MY OFFICIAL LIFE. BY SIR ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B. V. FIGHTING THE DYNAMITARDS. I HAVE recorded how, as the result of a prolonged struggle, and at the cost of dismissing two of its members, the great see-saw Government of the eighties adopted a new Irish policy one Tuesday afternoon, and how & chance incident which occurred upon the following Saturday led to a complete reversal of that deliberate and grave decision. During position was a delicate one, for, being in the public service, I could not well make my private engagements a ground for refusing to undertake public duties. The remuneration offered me was liberal, and it was a pleasure to work with him. But his tenure of the post was brief; for when Lord Wolseley's Egyptian expedition was launched, a longing for military duty took possession of him, and he left the Castle. the eighty years that had elapsed since the Union, Westminster had been content to The story of the eventful draw upon the old Irish enact- years that followed is matter ments framed in College Green, of history, and I am not writwhenever the Irish got out of ing history. I have special hand and needed special legis- reasons, moreover, for dealing lation to restrain them. But lightly with that story. This now a new Coercion Act was much I would say, that while devised, such as even the Irish the principal events of the Home Rule Parliament had Fenian dynamite campaign of never dreamed of. And special a quarter of a century ago are measures were adopted to ad- known, even to the generation minister it. An "Under Secre- that has grown up since then, taryship for Police and Crime" very few people appreciate the was established at Dublin labours by which that campaign Castle, and Colonel (now was crushed and its emissaries General Sir Henry) Bracken- brought to justice. There is bury was appointed to the but one way by which crime. office. In due course he apcan be suppressed, and that is pealed to me to represent his by coercion, for every criminal department in London. I statute is a "Coercion Act." twice refused in the most And while in dealing with definite way to accept his over- crime in Ireland the Legistures; but at last, under press- lature allows itself to be fooled ure from Sir William Har- by sentimental objections and court, I had to comply. claptrap, no drivel of that My kind gets a hearing when duties, it sensibly lessened my crime in England is in ques- pleasure in discharging them. tion. And so, when the dyna- I had neither responsibility miters began their fiendish for, nor sympathy with, the work, "ordinary law" was dis- policy of scare and panic carded, and a most extraord- that marked the years of Sir inary statute-Sir William George Trevelyan's term of Harcourt's "Explosive Sub- office as Chief Secretary. Not stances Act, 1883" was only were he and the Viceroy hurried through Parliament, thus victimised, but Mrs C. S. with the result that the crime Roundell has told how she and against which it was aimed Lady Spencer, when driving was soon stamped out. through Dublin, were panied by an A.D.C. with a loaded revolver, and protected by an armed escort. Even when the Invincibles were on the prowl, these ladies might have driven, or even walked, alone through any street in Dublin. I knew all that was doing over there; but I kept to my own duties in London, and held my peace. But for the English Coercion Act very few of the dynamiters could have been convicted. But for the Irish Coercion Act the Phoenix Park murderers would all have escaped the gallows. The English Act remains in force, and we have had no dynamiting ever since. These Irish Acts are allowed to lapse, and the outrage campaign is from time to time resumed. I had no part whatever in the Dublin prosecutions. They were admirably conducted, and the chief credit for their success was due to my brother, the late Sir Samuel Lee Anderson, then Acting Crown Solicitor at the Castle, and Mr J. A. Curran, now a County Court Judge, but then a Dublin Police Magistrate, who conducted an inquiry under a clause of the Act which authorised a Court to take evidence upon oath without the presence of any person charged with crime. I may here add the interesting fact that the first clue to the guilty men was a chance remark, dropped by one of the witnesses, about "a car with a white horse." Although Colonel Brackenbury's leaving Ireland involved no immediate change in my accom My work at Whitehall was many-sided. I continued to discharge my functions on the Prison Commission to the full satisfaction of my official chief in that department. I was retained by the Irish Government to look after their interests in London; and I had also a retaining fee from the Secretary of State in relation to political crime generally. Taking my Civil Service salary into account, my remuneration was reasonably adequate. But it was not easily earned; and when the dynamite campaign began, my position was by no means a sinecure. I was in daily communication with Dublin Castle, and I kept up a correspondence with our consuls in New York and other American cities, as well as with Le Caron and my other American informants. And afternoon I was again sumnever a week passed without my having to meet London informants, sometimes at my residence, and sometimes at out-of-the-way places,-for of course they never came to Whitehall. A glance at my old diaries reminds me of many an arduous and anxious day's work. But I am not so egotistical as to suppose the details would be of interest to others. I will give one day's engagements, however, as a specimen. On coming out of church one Sunday morning (18th February 1883) I found a police constable in uniform, with a hansom cab, awaiting me. He had been sent to fetch me to a conference at Sir William Harcourt's house. That a gentleman should be arrested on leaving church on a Sunday morning and driven to the lock-up in a hansom is a rare event, and this was evidently the view taken by those of the onlookers who did not know who I was. The Irish Government had called for the arrest of the wife of Frank Byrne, the League official who had proIvided the knives knives for the murderers of Cavendish and Burke; and Sir William, 88 was his wont, summoned every one who could say anything bearing on the case. The Under Secretary of State, Howard Vincent, and myself were caught, and responded. After our consultation, Vincent and I drove down to Westminster and made the needed arrangements. Later in the moned to Scotland Yard, the woman and her sister-in-law having been brought in. Then, after tea at the Savile Club, I made for Chelsea, where I had promised to address a meeting. After supper that evening I felt that I had done a fair day's work, and I sat down to enjoy my arm-chair till bedtime. But about half-past eleven o'clock one of my satellites arrived to tell me that another of the League women had come from Dublin, with money from the League Treasurer to enable the fugitive criminals of the League, who were then in France, to escape to America. I drove to Grosvenor Square, and having knocked up Howard Vincent I put the case in his hands. But he coaxed me into relieving him of the job, and letting him go back to bed. So on I went to Scotland Yard, empowered to represent him for the night. Coursing hares or shooting birds is fool's-play compared with work of this sort, and I was so keen that I went out with the officers whom I entrusted with the case. But when I got home again at 3 A.M. I had taken nothing except the most uncommon catarrh I ever had in my life. As I afterwards ascertained, my information was perfectly accurate. The woman was in the house we were watching. But she slept there, instead of returning to her hotel as she had intended to do. Had she come out during the night, we should have seized that money. |