Eighteenth Century Waifs

Sixthly. Because Milton was not in affluence[20 - Edward Philips or Phillips, in his life of Milton, attached to ‘Letters of State, written by Mr. John Milton,’ &c., London, 1694, (p. 43), says: ‘He is said to have dyed worth £1,500 in Money (a considerable Estate, all things considered), besides Household Goods; for he sustained such losses as might well have broke any person less frugal and temperate than himself; no less than £2,000 which he had put for Security and Improvement into the Excise Office, but, neglecting to recal it in time, could never after get it out, with all the Power and Interest he had in the Great ones of those Times; besides another great Sum by mismanagement and for want of good advice.’]– expired in an emaciated state, in a cold month, and was interred by direction of his widow. An expensive outward coffin of lead, therefore, was needless, and unlikely to have been provided by a rapacious woman who oppressed her husband’s children while he was living, and cheated them after he was dead.

Seventhly. Because it is improbable that the circumstance of Milton’s having been deposited under the desk should, if true, have been so effectually concealed from the whole train of his biographers. It was, nevertheless, produced as an ancient and well-known tradition, as soon as the parishioners of Cripplegate were aware that such an incident was gaped for by antiquarian appetence, and would be swallowed by antiquarian credulity. How happened it that Bishop Newton, who urged similar inquiries concerning Milton above forty years ago in the same parish, could obtain no such information?[21 - Thomas Newton, Bishop of Bristol, thus writes in his life of Milton, prefixed to his edition of ‘Paradise Lost,’ London, 1749: ‘His body was decently interred near that of his father (who had died very aged about the year 1647) in the chancel of the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate; and all his great and learned friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the common people, paid their last respects in attending it to the grave. Mr. Fenton, in his short but elegant account of the life of Milton, speaking of our author’s having no monument, says that “he desired a friend to inquire at St. Giles’s Church, where the sexton showed him a small monument, which he said was supposed to be Milton’s; but the inscription had never been legible since he was employed in that office, which he has possessed about forty years. This sure could never have happened in so short a space of time, unless the epitaph had been industriously erased; and that supposition, says Mr. Fenton, carries with it so much inhumanity that I think we ought to believe it was not erected to his memory.” It is evident that it was not erected to his memory, and that the sexton was mistaken. For Mr. Toland, in his account of the life of Milton, says that he was buried in the chancel of St. Giles’s Church, “where the piety of his admirers will shortly erect a monument becoming his worth, and the encouragement of letters in King William’s reign.” This plainly implies that no monument was erected to him at that time, and this was written in 1698, and Mr. Fenton’s account was first published, I think, in 1725; so that not above twenty-seven years intervened from the one account to the other; and consequently the sexton, who it is said was possessed of his office about forty years, must have been mistaken, and the monument must have been designed for some other person, and not for Milton.’]

Eighthly. Because Mr. Laming (see Mr. Neve’s pamphlet, second edition, p. 19) observes that the ‘sludge’ at the bottom of the coffin ‘emitted a nauseous smell.’ But, had this corpse been as old as that of Milton, it must have been disarmed of its power to offend, nor would have supplied the least effluvium to disgust the nostrils of our delicate inquirer into the secrets of the grave. The last remark will seem to militate against a foregoing one. The whole difficulty, however, may be solved by a resolution not to believe a single word said on such an occasion by any of those who invaded the presumptive sepulchre of Milton. The man who can handle pawned stays, breeches, and petticoats without disgust may be supposed to have his organs of smelling in no very high state of perfection.

Ninthly. Because we have not been told by Wood, Philips, Richardson, Toland, etc., that Nature, among her other partialities to Milton, had indulged him with an uncommon share of teeth. And yet above a hundred have been sold as the furniture of his mouth by the conscientious worthies who assisted in the plunder of his supposed carcase, and finally submitted it to every insult that brutal vulgarity could devise and express. Thanks to fortune, however, his corpse has hitherto been violated but by proxy! May his genuine reliques (if aught of him remains unmingled with common earth) continue to elude research, at least while the present overseers of the poor of Cripplegate are in office. Hard, indeed, would have been the fate of the author of ‘Paradise Lost’ to have received shelter in a chancel, that a hundred and sixteen years after his interment his domus ultima might be ransacked by two of the lowest human beings, a retailer of spirituous liquors, and a man who lends sixpences to beggars on such despicable securities as tattered bed-gowns, cankered porridge-pots, and rusty gridirons.[22 - Between the creditable trades of pawnbroker and dram-seller there is a strict alliance. As Hogarth observes, the money lent by Mr. Gripe is immediately conveyed to the shop of Mr. Killman, who, in return for the produce of rags, distributes poison under the specious name of cordials. See Hogarth’s celebrated print called Gin Lane.]Cape saxa manu, cape robora, pastor! But an Ecclesiastical Court may yet have cognisance of this more than savage transaction. It will then be determined whether our tombs are our own, or may be robbed with impunity by the little tyrants of a workhouse.

‘If charnel-houses, and our graves, must send
Those that we bury back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites.’

It should be added that our Pawnbroker, Gin-seller, and Company, by deranging the contents of their ideal Milton’s coffin, by carrying away his lower jaw, ribs, and right hand – and by employing one bone as an instrument to batter the rest – by tearing the shroud and winding-sheet to pieces, &c., &c., had annihilated all such further evidence as might have been collected from a skilful and complete examination of these nameless fragments of mortality. So far, indeed, were they mutilated that, had they been genuine, we could not have said with Horace,

‘Invenies etiam disjecti membra Poetæ.’

Who, after a perusal of the foregoing remarks (which are founded on circumstantial truth), will congratulate the parishioners of St. Giles, Cripplegate, on their discovery and treatment of the imaginary dust of Milton? His favourite, Shakespeare, most fortunately reposes at a secure distance from the paws of Messieurs Laming and Fountain, who, otherwise, might have provoked the vengeance imprecated by our great dramatic poet on the remover of his bones.

From the preceding censures, however, Mr. Cole (Churchwarden), and Messrs. Strong and Ascough (Vestry and Parish Clerks), should, in the most distinguished manner, be exempted. Throughout the whole of this extraordinary business, they conducted themselves with the strictest decency and propriety. It should also be confessed, by those whom curiosity has since attracted to the place of Milton’s supposed disinterment, that the politeness of the same parish officers could only be exceeded by their respect for our illustrious author’s memory, and their concern at the complicated indignity which his nominal ashes have sustained.’

Now it was hardly likely that Mr. Neve, with the extremely plausible case that he had, would sit still and see his pet theory knocked on the head, so he issued a second edition of his pamphlet with this

POSTSCRIPT

As some reports have been circulated, and some anonymous papers have appeared, since the publication of this pamphlet, with intent to induce a belief that the corpse mentioned in it is that of a woman, and as the curiosity of the public now calls for a second impression of it, an opportunity is offered of relating a few circumstances which have happened since the 14th of August, and which, in some degree, may confirm the opinion that the corpse is that of Milton.

On Monday, the 16th, I called upon the overseer, Mr. Fountain, when he told me that the parish officers had then seen a surgeon who, on Wednesday the 4th, had got through a window into the church, and who had, upon inspection, pronounced the corpse to be that of a woman. I thought it very improbable that a surgeon should creep through a window, who could go through a door for a few half-pence; but I no otherwise expressed my doubts of the truth of the information than by asking for the surgeon’s address. I was answered ‘that the gentleman begged not to have it known, that he might not be interrupted by enquiries.’ A trifling relic was, nevertheless, at the same time withholden, which I had expected to receive through Mr. Fountain’s hands; by which it appeared that those in possession of them were, still tenacious of the spoils of the coffin, although they affected to be convinced they were not those of Milton. These contradictions, however, I reserved for the test of an inquiry elsewhere.

In the course of that week I was informed that some gentlemen had, on Tuesday, the 17th, prevailed on the churchwardens to suffer a second disinterment of the coffin, which had taken place on that day. On Saturday, the 21st, I waited on Mr. Strong, who told me that he had been present at such second disinterment, and that he had then sent for an experienced surgeon of the neighbourhood, who, upon inspection and examination of the corpse, had pronounced it to be that of a man. I was also informed, on that day, the 21st, by a principal person of the parish, whose information cannot be suspected, that the parish officers had agreed among themselves that, from my frequent visits and inquiries, I must have an intention of delivering some account of the transaction to the world; and that, therefore, to stop the narrative from going forth, they must invent some story of a surgeon’s inspection on the 4th, and of his declaration that the corpse was that of a woman. From this information it was easy to judge what would be the fate of any personal application to the parish officers, with intent to obtain a restitution of what had been taken from the coffin I, therefore, on Wednesday, the 25th, addressed the following letter to Mr. Strong: —

‘Dear Sir,

‘The reflection of a few moments, after I left you on Saturday, clearly showed me that the probability of the coffin in question being Milton’s was not at all weakened, either by the dates, or the number of persons on the Smiths’ monument; but that it was rather confirmed by the latter circumstance. By the evidence which you told me was given by the surgeon, called in on Tuesday, the 17th, the corpse is that of a male; it is certainly not that of a man of eighty-five; if, therefore, it be one of the earlier buried Smiths, all the later coffins of that family should appear, but not one of them is found. I, then, suppose the monument to have been put there because the flat pillar, after the pulpit was removed, offered a convenient situation for it, and “near this place” to be open, as it is in almost every case where it appears, to very liberal interpretation.

‘It is, therefore, to be believed that the unworthy treatment, on the 4th, was offered to the corpse of Milton. Knowing what I know, I must not be silent. It is a very unpleasant story to relate; but, as it has fallen to my task, I will not shrink from it. I respect nothing in this world more than truth, and the memory of Milton; and to swerve in a tittle from the first would offend the latter. I shall give the plain and simple narrative, as delivered by the parties themselves. If it sit heavy on any of their shoulders, it is a burthen of their own taking up, and their own backs must bear it. They are all, as I find, very fond of deriving honour to themselves from Milton, as their parishioner; perhaps the mode, which I have hinted, is the only one which they have now left themselves of proving an equal desire to do honour to him. If I had thought that, in personally proposing to the parish officers a general search for, and collection of, all the spoils, and to put them, together with the mangled corpse and old coffin, into a new leaden one, I should have been attended to, I would have taken that method; but, when I found such impertinent inventions as setting up a fabulous surgeon to creep in at a window practised, I felt that so low an attempt at derision would ensure that, whatever I should afterwards propose, would be equally derided, and I had then left no other means than to call in the public opinion in aid of my own, and to hope that we should, at length, see the bones of an honest man, and the first scholar and poet our country can boast, restored to their sepulchre.

‘The narrative will appear, I believe, either to-morrow or on Friday; whenever it does, your withers are unwrung, and Mr. Cole has shown himself an upright churchwarden.

‘I cannot conclude without returning you many thanks for your great civilities, and am, &c.’

The corpse was found entirely mutilated by those who disinterred it on the 17th; almost all the ribs, the lower jaw, and one of the hands gone. Of all those who saw the body on Wednesday, the 4th, and on Thursday, the 5th, there is not one person who discovered a single hair of any other colour than light brown, although both Mr. Laming and Mr. Ellis lifted up the head, and although the considerable quantity of hair which Mr. Taylor took was from the top of the head, and that which Ellis took was from behind it; yet, from the accounts of those who saw it on the 17th, it appears that the hair on the back of the head was found of dark brown, nearly approaching to black, although all the front hair remaining was of the same light brown as that taken on the 4th. It does not belong to me either to account for or to prove the fact.

On Wednesday, September the 1st, I waited on Mr. Dyson, who was the gentleman sent for on the 17th, to examine the corpse. I asked him simply, whether, from what had then appeared before him, he judged it to be male or female? His answer was that, having examined the pelvis and the skull, he judged the corpse to be that of a man. I asked what was the shape of the head? He said that the forehead was high and erect, though the top of the head was flat; and added that the skull was of that shape and flatness at the top which, differing from those of blacks, is observed to be common and almost peculiar to persons of very comprehensive intellects. I am a stranger to this sort of knowledge, but the opinion is a strong confirmation that, from all the premises before him, he judged the head to be that of Milton. On a paper, which he showed me, enclosing a bit of the hair, he had written ‘Milton’s hair.’

Mr. Dyson is a surgeon, who received his professional education under the late Dr. Hunter, is in partnership with Mr. Price, in Fore Street, where the church stands, is of easy access, and his affability can be exceeded only by his skill in an extensive line of practice.

Mr. Taylor, too, who is a surgeon of considerable practice and eminence in his county, judged the corpse, on the 4th, to be that of a male.

A man, also, who has for many years acted as grave-digger in that parish, and who was present on the 17th, decided, upon first sight of the skull, that it was male; with as little hesitation, he pronounced another, which had been thrown out of the ground in digging, to be that of a woman. Decisions obviously the result of practical, rather than of scientific knowledge; for, being asked his reasons, he could give none, but that observation had taught him to distinguish such subjects. Yet this latter sort of evidence is not to be too hastily rejected; it may not be understood by everybody, but to anyone acquainted with those who are eminently skilled in judging of the genuineness of ancient coins, it will be perfectly intelligible. In that difficult and useful art, the eye of a proficient decides at once; a novice, however, who should inquire for the reasons of such decision, would seldom receive a further answer than that the decision itself is the result of experience and observation, and that the eye can be instructed only by long familiarity with the subject; yet all numismatic knowledge rests upon this sort of judgment.

After these evidences, what proofs are there, or what probable presumptions, that the corpse is that of a woman?

It was necessary to relate these facts, not only as they belonged to the subject, but lest, from the reports and papers above mentioned, I might, otherwise, seem to have given either an unfaithful or a partial statement of the evidences before me; whereas now it will clearly be seen what facts appeared on the first disinterment, which preceded, and what are to be attributed to the second, which succeeded the date of the narrative.

I have now added every circumstance which has hitherto come to my knowledge relative to this extraordinary transaction, and conclude with this declaration, that I should be very glad if any person would, from facts, give me reason to believe that the corpse in question is rather that of Elizabeth Smith, whose name I know only from her monument, than that of John Milton.

    P. N.’

‘8th of September, 1790.’

THE TRUE STORY OF EUGENE ARAM

The only knowledge which very many people possess of the life and crime of Eugene Aram has been derived from the popular romance bearing his name, written by the late Lord Lytton. And this nobleman, influenced by his individual bias, has so woven fiction with a small modicum of fact, as to render the story, as a history of a celebrated crime, totally unreliable. Stripped of the gloss Lord Lytton has given it, and revealed in its bare nakedness, it shows Eugene Aram in a very different light from the solitary scholar, surrounded by books, with high, romantic aspirations and noble thoughts, winning the love of a pure and lovely girl; it shows us instead a poor country school-master, clever, but self-taught, married to a common woman, whose very faith he doubted, struggling with poverty, and heavily weighed down with several children; it paints him as a man whose companions were sordid and dishonest, whilst he himself was a liar, a thief, and a murderer, a selfish man who scrupled not to leave wife and children to shift for themselves, a man untrustworthy in his relations of life.

Eugenius, or Eugene Aram was born in the year 1704,[23 - Probably in the month of September, as the entry of his baptism in the registry of the chapelry of Middlesmoor, in Netherdale, says ‘Eugenius Aram, son of Peter Aram, baptized the 2nd of October.’] at Ramsgill, a little village in Netherdale, Yorkshire, and his father was a gardener, as he says, of great abilities in botany, and an excellent draughtsman, who served Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, and, afterwards, Sir Edward Blackett, of Newby, and Sir John Ingilby, of Ripley. When he was five or six years of age, the family removed to Bondgate, near Ripon, his father having purchased a little property there. Here he was sent to school, and was taught in a purely elementary manner to be capable of reading the New Testament, and this was all the education his parents gave him, with the exception of about a month’s schooling some long time afterwards with the Rev. Mr. Alcock of Burnsal.

When about thirteen or fourteen, he joined his father at Newby, till the death of Sir Edward Blackett, and, his father having several books on mathematics, and the boy being of a studious turn of mind, he mastered their contents, and laid the foundation of his future scholarship. When about sixteen years of age, he went to London to be in the counting-house of Mr. Christopher Blackett as bookkeeper; but he had not been there more than a year or two when he caught the small-pox, and, on his recovery, went home into Yorkshire. His native air soon restored him to health, and he studied hard at poetry, history, and antiquities. He thus fitted himself for keeping a school, which he opened in Netherdale, and continued there for many years teaching and studying. There he married, as he says, ‘unfortunately enough for me, for the misconduct of the wife which that place afforded me has procured for me this place, this prosecution, this infamy, and this sentence.’

During these years he read the Latin and Greek authors, and obtained such a name for scholarship that he was invited to Knaresborough to keep a school there. He removed thither in the year 1734, and continued there until about six weeks after the murder of Daniel Clark. In the meantime he had mastered Hebrew, and when he went to London he got a situation to teach Latin, and writing, at a school in Piccadilly, kept by a Monsieur Painblanc, who not only gave him a salary, but taught him French. There he remained over two years, then went to Hays as a writing-master, after which he wandered from situation to situation, at one time earning his living by copying for a law-stationer. At last, somehow, he found himself an usher at the Free School at Lynn, where he lived until he was arrested for the murder of Daniel Clark.

This man was a shoemaker at Knaresborough, and was an intimate visitor at Aram’s house – too intimate, indeed, Aram thought, with his wife, hence the reference to his wife previously quoted. He was a man of bad character, and was more than suspected of having, in company of another vagabond named Houseman, murdered a Jew boy, who travelled the country for one Levi as a pedlar, carrying a box containing watches and jewellery. The poor lad was decoyed to a place called Thistle Hill, where he was robbed, murdered, and buried. This was about the year 1744, and his bones were not found until 1758.

Richard Houseman, who was born the same year as Aram, was a near neighbour of the latter’s – in fact, he lived next door, and his occupation was that of a heckler of flax, when he gave out to the women of the village to spin for him. But, according to his own statement, he was a most unscrupulous black-guard.

Another intimate of Aram’s was a publican, named Terry, but he only played a subsidiary part in the drama, and nothing was ever brought home to him.

In January, 1745, Clark married a woman with a small fortune of about two hundred pounds, and, immediately afterwards, this little nest of rogues contrived and carried out the following swindle. Clark, as he was known to have married a woman of some little money, was to obtain goods of any description from whomsoever would part with them on credit; these goods were to be deposited with, and hidden by, Aram and Houseman, and, after plundering all that was possible, Clark was to decamp, and leave his young wife to do the best she could. This was the scheme in which the noble and refined Eugene Aram of Lord Lytton was to, and did, bear his full part.

Velvet from one man, leather from another, whips from a third, table and bed linen from a fourth, money lent by a fifth – all was fish that came to their net; and, when obtained, they were hidden on the premises either of Aram or Houseman, or else in a place called St. Robert’s Cave, which was situated in a field adjoining the Nid, a river near Knaresborough. When this source was thoroughly exploited, a new scheme was hit on by this ‘long firm.’ Clark should pretend to be about to give a great wedding-feast, and he went about gaily, borrowing silver tankards, salvers, salts, spoons, &c., from whoever would lend them. Indeed, so multifarious were his perquisitions, that, according to one contemporary account, he got, among other goods, the following: ‘three silver tankards, four silver pints, one silver milk-pot, one ring set with an emerald, and two brilliant diamonds, another with three rose diamonds, a third with an amethyst in the shape of a heart, and six plain rings, eight watches, two snuff-boxes, Chambers’ Dictionary, two vols. folio, Pope’s “Homer,” six vols., bound.’

Having got all that could be got, it was now high time that Clark should disappear. He was last seen on the early morning of the 8th February, 1745, and from that time until August 1, 1758, nothing was heard of him. He was supposed to have gone away with all his booty – and yet not all of it, for suspicion was aroused that both Aram and Houseman, from their intimacy with Clark, were accomplices in his frauds. And so it clearly proved, for, on Aram’s house being searched, several articles were found the produce of their joint roguery, and in his garden were found buried, cambric and other goods, wrapped in coarse canvas. Still, neither he, nor Houseman, nor Terry were prosecuted,[24 - Though no warrants were issued against them, Aram was arrested for debt, in order to keep him; yet he immediately discharged this debt – not only so, he paid off a mortgage on his property at Bondgate. Suspicious facts, considering he was, notably, a poor man.] but Aram thought it prudent to change his residence; so one fine day he left his wife and family, and wandered forth. We have seen the roving life he led, restless, and always changing his abode; yet, during those thirteen years of shifting exile, it must be said, to his credit, that no breath of scandal attached to him; he was studious, somewhat morose, yet he was so liked by the boys at the grammar-school at Lynn, that, when he was taken thence by the officers of justice, they cried at losing him.

Whilst at Lynn, he was recognised in June, 1758, by a horse-dealer, and this recognition eventually led to his apprehension; for, during that summer, a labourer, digging for stone or gravel at a place called Thistle Hill, near Knaresborough, found, at the depth of two feet, a skeleton, which appeared to have been buried doubled up. The remembrance of Clark’s disappearance was at once awakened, and the body was set down as being his.

A country town has a keen recollection of anything which has occurred disturbing its equal pace, and the connection of Aram and Houseman with Clark was duly remembered. Aram was away, but Houseman still lived among them, and he was ordered by the coroner to attend the inquest. The principal witness was Anna Aram, Eugene’s wife, and she had frequently, since her husband’s departure, dropped hints of her suspicion that Clark had been murdered. Her evidence is clear. She said that Daniel Clark was an intimate acquaintance of her husband’s, and that they had frequent transactions together before the 8th of February, 1744-5, and that Richard Houseman was often with them; particularly that, on the 7th of February, 1744-5, about six o’clock in the evening, Aram came home when she was washing in the kitchen, upon which he directed her to put out the fire, and make one above stairs; she accordingly did so. About two o’clock in the morning of the 8th of February, Aram, Clark, and Houseman came to Aram’s house, and went upstairs to the room where she was. They stayed about an hour. Her husband asked her for a handkerchief for Dickey (meaning Richard Houseman) to tie about his head; she accordingly lent him one. Then Clark said, ‘It will soon be morning, and we must get off.’ After which Aram, Houseman, and Clark all went out together; that, upon Clark’s going out, she observed him take a sack or wallet upon his back, which he carried along with him; whither they went she could not tell. That about five o’clock the same morning her husband and Houseman returned, but Clark did not come with them. Her husband came upstairs, and desired to have a candle that he might make a fire below. To which she objected, and said, ‘There was no occasion for two fires, as there was a good one in the room above, where she then was.’ To which Aram, her husband, answered, ‘Dickey’ (meaning Richard Houseman) ‘was below, and did not choose to come upstairs.’ Upon which she asked (Clark not returning with them), ‘What had they done with Daniel?’ To this her husband gave her no answer, but desired her to go to bed, which she refused to do, and told him, ‘They had been doing something bad.’ Then Aram went down with the candle.

She, being desirous to know what her husband and Houseman were doing, and being about to go downstairs, she heard Houseman say to Aram,

‘She is coming.’

Her husband replied, ‘We’ll not let her.’

Houseman then said, ‘If she does, she’ll tell.’

‘What can she tell?’ replied Aram. ‘Poor simple thing! she knows nothing.’

To which Houseman said, ‘If she tells that I am here, ‘twill be enough.’

Her husband then said, ‘I will hold the door to prevent her from coming.’