THE KIDNAPP’D EARL

“Detector of crime and chicane I may be, sir; but,” said Dr. Sam: Johnson in his resonant emphatick voice, “but, sir, I am no catchpoll!”

We sat at our ease over breakfast in Dr. Sam: Johnson’s snug chambers in Inner Temple Lane. The apartment we sat in was equipped with furnishings that were like their proprietor, old but stout. On the plain walnut-tree table our repast was set out, to which Dr. Johnson had done full justice, having imbibed fully thirteen cups of tea. His chair pushed back, he sat now, in his plain snuff-coloured full-skirted coat, his old-fashioned square-toed shoes without buckles, his little brown scratch-wig perched exiguously above his strong-cut countenance with its look of an antient statue, replete, gently smiling.

How I rejoiced to be here, on such comfortable terms with the Great Cham of Literature! I had but recently come up to London, an eager Scots lad of twenty-two, my heart set on winning my way into the friendship of this famous man whose noble writings I so much admired; and lo! here I sat at his breakfast table!

Nay more, not a month since I had been privileged to observe in Bayfield Court the workings of his mighty intellect in an affair of triple murder locked in. To this event I now alluded.

BOSWELL: You may be no catchpoll, sir, yet you handed over the Bayfield Court murderer to the watch.

JOHNSON: Yes, sir, I did so. If murder is done, as it were, under my nose, then the killer must pay, and I will see that he is detected. The puzzle engages the intellect, the solution calls upon the ingenuity; but the killer, by his unhappy fate, touches the heart. It is no light matter.

But, sir, (he went on) I take no delight in affairs of blood. To look into deeds of violence is to look into the heart of human misery. It gives an awful solemn warning: There but for the grace of GOD goes Sam: Johnson; but it does not raise my curiosity nor afford me amusement as do lesser deeds of eccentricity and chicanery.

But most of all, sir, it is my pleasure to right wrongs. The world is full of chicanery, some of it harmless, but too much of it designed to cheat the hapless. Such chicanery I will detect and baffle if I can.

BOSWELL: Then, sir, you must feel strongly drawn to the plight of the Kidnapped Earl.

JOHNSON: Why, sir, I have seen some such catch-phrase bandied about in the publick prints, but as to its meaning I am not instructed.

BOSWELL: The Kidnapped Earl, sir, as I read by the papers, is the rightful Earl of Angleby, who was kidnapped as a boy by his wicked Uncle Richard, and shipped to the Colonies for a bond-slave, that his uncle, the next heir, might slip into the Earldom; which he has done, and enjoys it till now undisturbed. Is not that a tale of chicanery indeed?

JOHNSON: It is so, sir, but on whose part?

BOSWELL: Why, sir, wicked Uncle Richard.

JOHNSON: May be, sir. Or maybe not. There have been false claimants before now. Let the courts decide between them.

Certain people of importance arriving at this moment, no more was said of the Kidnapped Earl for that time.

It was ever thus at No. 1 Inner Temple Lane. Rarely did I have him to myself. He seemed to be considered as a kind of publick oracle, whom everybody thought they had the right to visit and consult.

Thus it fell out that one midday in June, as we sat in converse together, Frank Barber, his Jamaican black boy, announced a trio of visitors, who presented themselves thus:

“Your servant, Mr. Johnson, Dougal MacArcher, advocate, yours to command.” The speaker executed a ceremonious obeisance, a wiry personage of middle stature, clad in modish gold-laced sage-coloured brocade, his green eyes alert under tawny brows, his composed countenance lent a touch of the whimsical by a definitely turned-up nose.

“I present my young friends: Lady Lalage Fitzcharles, the Duke’s daughter of Westermark—”

The Duke’s daughter dimpled and dropped a curtsey. I observed her dark curls simply dressed, her direct hazel eyes full of life and fire, her short upper lip quirked in a smile, and I longed to be a knight-errant for her.

Her knight-errant was already making his bow, a tall young man wearing his blond curls simply tied at the nape, whose far-seeing blue eyes and comely features were given distinction by a superbly high Roman nose.

“—and my friend James Ansley, who would be Earl of Angleby if right would take place.”

The Kidnapped Earl! I listened with all my ears as he burst impetuously into speech.

“Knowing, Mr. Johnson, your wisdom and willingness to help, I make bold to enlist your aid.”

“You shall have it, sir. Pray be seated and let me know the nature of your difficulty.”

Frank set out chairs, and reluctantly withdrew. James Ansley took up his tale.

ANSLEY: In a word, my difficulty is this: Am I a bastard?

JOHNSON: Nay, sir, how can I tell? Let us have your story in order.

ANSLEY: Then thus it is. I was born at Dalmain in County Wexford, so much is certain. My father, Lord Eltham, was next heir to the old Earl of Angleby, and my mother was Moll Barfield, the Duke’s daughter of Bredingham. At birth I was put out to nurse to Jiggy Landry the kitchen maid. I never knew my mother, for my father, who was a captious man, put her to the door before I came home from Jiggy.

JOHNSON: Put her to the door!

MACARCHER: For adultery, he said. Thence flow our difficulties.

ANSLEY: Well, sir, at four I was brought home from Jiggy’s, and bred up in the great house. My father made much of me, bragging it about that I was his true-born son and next heir to the Earldom. I had a little hat with a feather, and a fine pony named Hannover, and lived in clover. But all too soon my fortunes changed. My father went up to Dublin, and took a mistress, who did not fancy me, and so worked upon him, that I was soon turned out of doors to fend for myself in the streets.

LADY LALAGE: Alack, inhuman father!

ANSLEY (smiling): I slept under bulks and in doorways, I cadged my scram where I could. ‘Twas not a bad life for a sturdy gossoon. But then my father died, thoughtlessly as he had lived, and made no provision for me. My Uncle Richard at once seized his goods and his papers, and smoothly slipped into his estate. But it irked him to see me ragged in the streets, and hear people muttering that he had stolen my birthright, so he put his rapparees on my trail, and in short, one day they cornered me and hustled me aboard ship for America, there to be sold as a bond-slave. I was fourteen years in servitude, often running away, as often brought back to serve a lengthened term. But at last I got clear away, and made for the port. There I found His Majesty’s fireship Dragon fitting for sea, and ‘listed aboard her. Oh, sir, we did prodigies at the taking of the Havannah! But a shipmate knew me for old Angleby’s heir, and hailed me as the new Earl. The officers took up my cause, fitted me out, obtained my discharge, and shipped me home to wrest my Earldom from my wicked uncle.

JOHNSON: One foremast hand against the world! What could you hope for?

ANSLEY: At first I was all at sea. My kinfolk would not countenance me. But by the goodness of Providence I found a friend to support me, a man of law, a man of substance, named Dougal MacArcher. Behold, sir, the best friend a man ever had!

MACARCHER (smiling): Never deserved a man more! Well, sir, we have matters in hand. We have gathered witnesses in Ireland, Jiggy Landry and the rest, who were to the fore at milady’s lying-in, we have even the pandours who kidnapped the lad, to say it was done at his wicked uncle’s bidding.

JOHNSON: What says wicken uncle to all this?

MACARCHER: He says the lad is only his brother’s bastard by the kitchen wench, and he did him a service, forsooth, in sending him to America and thus saving him from the gallows in Dublin! BOSWELL (hotly): A mighty service truly!

MACARCHER: And meanwhile he goes about to do away with him.

JOHNSON: Do away with him!

MACARCHER: He sets on him blunderbusmen and assassins. He rides him down with his coach and six. At Newmarket race-meeting the juggernaut coachman pursues him all over the course—

JOHNSON: Pretty proceedings for an Earl, truly!

MACARCHER: But we have baffled him, and still shall do. Our cause is on the calendar this very Trinity term, and I doubt not we shall strip the black Earl of his ill-gotten honours!

JOHNSON: I congratulate you, sir. It hardly appears you have need of my counsel.

MACARCHER: Why, sir, I do not think we do. But James has taken a foolish notion—

ANSLEY: How, foolish? Here am I, a rough foremast hand—

MACARCHER: Nay, dear boy, under my tutelage you are taking a nice polish—polite literature, the play, the sights of the town—

ANSLEY: I say a rough foremast hand. And yet I have won my heart’s desire, Lady Lalage has consented to be mine. (The girl reached him a white hand, and he took it gently.) Now this cannot be, that the bastard of a serving-wench shall sully the line of the noble Dukes of Westermark. Unless I can know for certain that I am no bastard, I cannot do this thing. I will drop my suit and bid my lady farewell, and go back to the sea.

LADY LALAGE: No, James! I will not be dropped!

ANSLEY: I will go back to the sea. Well, Mr. Johnson, what do you say? Can you help me to certainty?

JOHNSON: Sir, I will be plain with you. Your story may be true. But were I to set up for the heir to an Earldom, I would invent just such a tale, a romantick story of trepanning and servitude and heroism before the Havannah and attempts at assassination—

ANSLEY (stiffly): It is true, sir.

JOHNSON: Then the court will so decide. My counsel is this, sir, that you await the issue before you take to the sea.

LADY LALAGE: James, I beg you—

MACARCHER: James, you cannot thus reduce all my effort and expense to a cypher—

BOSWELL: Do, sir, be perswaded—

ANSLEY: I will wait.

MACARCHER: Brave boy!

ANSLEY: Three days.

On the evening following our conference with the Kidnapped Earl, my learned companion carried me across the Thames to Vauxhall Gardens, whither all the fashionable world was wont to resort in summer to hear the nightingale sing. Part of a plan (I wondered) to give this rustical Scot “a fine polish” such as Mr. MacArcher was giving his rough sailor? Or just the nostalgia for nightingales that comes over Londoners in June?

I leaned the more to the former theory when in the modish throng I glimpsed none other than Dougal MacArcher himself with his sailor in tow, clearly in process of polishing.

Whether for polish or pleasure, we were in gallant frame as we enjoyed the gardens, Johnson ponderous in his mighty wig of state fresh-powdered, I with my bloom-coloured coat setting off, as I fancied, my neat frame and alert countenance. We strolled in the verdant allees, admired Roubiliac’s statue of Handel while listening to his musick, took a syllabub, heard the nightingales sing, and came away by moonlight well pleased with our entertainment.

It was our intent on this bright moonlit night to stroll down to the river and so go home by water. But barely had we turned a corner, when the air was rent with the clash of steel and the oaths of combatants.

“An affair of honour!” I cried eagerly.

“Say rather a general brawl,” said Johnson, pausing to observe the melee.

By the bright moonlight I made out two paladins fighting back to back, set upon by a quartet of ill-looking rapparees. The shorter paladin was a nimble and deft swordsman. His tall ally used his sword like a cutlass, swinging and slashing in wild sweeps. I looked again, and saw that the cutlass-wielder was able seaman James Ansley, and the duellist was Dougal MacArcher.

While I was still staring, my intrepid friend had taken in the situation, and with instant resolution had gripped his stout oaken stick and waded into the fray. I drew my sword to second him, but there was no need, for in less time than it takes to tell it, the embattled scholar had laid about the four rapparees with his mighty stick, cracking the crown of one of them, sending flying the weapon of the second, knocking the breath out of the third, and collaring the fourth as his comrades took to their heels.

“What’s the meaning of this, fellow?” he demanded, shaking his captive as a mastiff might shake a rat.

“Unhand me, old poot!” shrilled his victim, “or it will be the worse for you, for I am the Earl’s man!”

“What Earl? Of Angleby perhaps?”

“He. So look to it, old square-toes, and don’t put your nose in his fist!”

“And where is the noble Earl? Nearby, no doubt?”

“Yonder he sits in his coach.”

“Be off with you!” cried his captor, propelling him none too gently in the opposite direction.

Shaking off the thanks of our friends, he strode directly to where a coach stood against a clump of trees.

“A word with you, my Lord.”

A face came scowling out of the window into the moonlight, dusky yellow of hue, thin and deeply furrowed with down-turning lines, dark bushy brows scowling over little snapping black eyes—no wonder Dougal MacArcher had called him the Black Earl!

“What’s the meaning of this,” he snarled, “that you interfere with my servants in the performance of their duties?”

“Pray say, my Lord,” rejoined Johnson calmly, “whether you consider one of their duties to be assassinating your nephew?”

At this the Black Earl fell a-cursing: “A rogue, a bastard, a scoundrel! An imposter, my brother’s by-blow, that seeks to rob his own kinsman!”

“If he is indeed your brother’s by-blow, my Lord,” replied Johnson, “and not the true Earl, the law will soon discover it. You need not set assassins on him. I must warn you, sir, by these violent proceedings you betray yourself, that you know your cause is bad.”

“No man’s cause is bad,” sneered the Black Earl, “who has ten thousand pounds a year.”

“Of another man’s money.”

“What’s that to you?” snapped the Earl. “I warn you, old fustylugs, take your thick nose out of my business, or ’twill be the worse for you. Who do you think you are, to bandy words with an Earl?”

“I am Sam: Johnson.”

“Save us, the lexicographer! Will you word me to death? I defy words, and be d-mned to you!”

“Then have deeds. Be sure, my Lord, I will do my best endeavour to see that James Ansley is enabled to prove his legitimacy!”

“Bah! I’ll parley no longer. Drive on, coachman!”

The juggernaut coachman snapped his whip, and the equipage started with a jerk so reckless I barely stepped back in time.

During this colloquy, the rest of our party had been busy setting themselves to rights, sheathing their weapons, staunching a superficial scratch or two—but not too busy to take in every word spoken. James Ansley was jubilant.

“Now, sir,” he cried, “you know my uncle. Am I a bastard?”

“I have sworn to prove that you are not,” said Johnson drily. “You must assist me. Pray come to Inner Temple Lane in the morning betimes, and bring all your papers—”

“Alack, sir, we have no papers. All are in the hands of the Black Earl.”

“Bring what you can, but come. You too, Mr. Boswell.”

With this, by common consent we began to escort our friends to the river, and so made our way home by water with no further incident.

Life at Inner Temple Lane began unwontedly early the next day. The tea things were cleared when the Ansley party presented themselves, Lady Lalage among them.

“I grieved so, Mr. Johnson,” said she, “that by reason of other concerns I could not be with James to hear the nightingale sing, and I grieve the more now I know what passed, for my presence might have prevented it.”

“You might have come to harm, milady, for the Black Earl’s bully-huffs respect neither man, woman nor beast. But we’ll be up with them yet! Come, gentlemen, your papers.”

It was a thin sheaf that Mr. MacArcher proffered, laying them out on the walnut-tree table one after one, with a commentary.

“The affidavit of Jiggy Landry that James Ansley, her nursing, is Milady Eltham’s son. Her cousin Paddy, that he was the groom sent gallop-ping for the midwife. Her sister Biddy, that she was the scullery maid that fetched hot water, and saw the babe born of Lady Eltham with her own eyes …”

Johnson shook his head.

“Alack, sirs, what odds that the whole Landry connection will not lie to make their kinsman an Earl? Where is the midwife?”

“Not found, sir.”

“Lady Eltham’s physician?”

“Long since dead.”

“The clergyman who christened the heir?”

“Dead too. ’Tis over twenty-five years ago.”

“The parish register, then?”

“Nothing in it, ’twas but ill kept.”

“We must find better evidence, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, frowning. “Come, a family resemblance? Does James Ansley resemble his father?”

“His father is dead this twenty years,” said Mr. MacArcher.

“There’s no hope there,” said James Ansley with a smile. “My father and my uncle were two of a kind, little, black and loud; and you will not say I resemble my uncle?”

“Heaven forfend!” cried Lady Lalage.

“Then, sir, your mother?”

“Folks that knew her have thought to see a resemblance; but she is gone, how to prove it?”

“Come, my friends,” said Dr. Johnson, rising decisively, “let us go.”

“Go? Whither?”

“To call upon your mother’s kin.”

Shepherded by Dr. Johnson, our little party ascended a hackney coach, clattered westward, and descended at Westminster Abbey. There our guide led us to an ornate monument, and paused before it. On it we beheld the deceased, clad in a marble toga, kneeling before his own cenotaph, regarding without surprise a mixed entourage of mourners and angels: “Sacred to the Memory of JOHN BARFIELD, first Duke of BREDINGHAM.”

“Your grandfather, Mr. Ansley.”

Eagerly we scanned the marble lineaments, a handsome face enough, but more Greek than Roman. Try as we would, we could not see in it anything of James Ansley.

“I fear, sir,” said Johnson, “that the Duke your grandfather affords us no assistance. Well, come, follow me.”

He hailed a passing verger, who pointed us the way.

“’Tis a main narrow stair for the lady,” he offered, dubiously regarding milady’s modish draperies.

“No matter, I’ll climb any stair,” cried Lady Lalage, “if justice for James is at the top.” She reached him her hand.

It was a narrow stair most like a ladder, behind the panels of Henry the Seventh’s chapel, and it led to a dusty chamber above. There we found an equally dusty old verger in charge, and ranged about the walls loomed the dusky visages of personages richly clad. It was like being surrounded by ghosts.

At once the old verger began as if by rote to recite:

“Pray step in, sirs and madam, and attend me. You must know, milady and gentlemen all, that in a former age it was the custom to exhibit the deceased on a catafalque at his obsequies. But sometimes it would not do, for corruption, you take me, sir, and a waxen effigy came to be substituted. When the custom fell out of use, the effigies were tumbled together in this attick, and they have only recently been rediscovered, set to rights, and put on shew. (pointing) King Charles the Second—”

Kingly in his royal robes, a full black periwig above a swarthy waxen countenance.

“Queen Anne—”

A sweet face, a robe studded with glass gems.

“Her Grace the Duchess of Bredingham—”

At her we looked with quickened attention, but read nothing in her regular features.

“Milady Duchess favoured the old ways, as you see, and most especially when her son, the second Duke, died on his travels in Italy, she took the greatest care that the effigy on his catafalque should be a true likeness in every respect. Yonder he lies, the second Duke of Bredingham, exactly as he was in life—”

Recumbent, we had overlooked him. There he lay on his catafalque in his ducal robes—James Ansley to the life! Someone gasped, and Lady Lalage threw her arms impulsively around the claimant’s neck.

“Now we can marry!” she cried.

“Past doubt this Duke is my uncle,” said young Ansley slowly. “Now we can marry, my love.”

They clung oblivious, while the rest of us stared at the waxen image. There were the blond curls, the tawny brows and lashes meticulously formed of real human hair in two carefully chosen shades of pale brown, the sensitive mouth, the well-formed chin, most convincing the superbly high Roman nose. Dr. Johnson had found his proof. We fee’d the verger lavishly, and came away rejoicing.

For some ten days thereafter, I neglected my respected friend’s company, my time being taken up in raking with Mr. Wilkes and the wits, and—alas that I must say it!—dallying with low wenches. But on a warm July day, in better frame, I called again in Inner Temple Lane.

There I found Dr. Johnson sitting over the teapot with the Kidnapped Earl and his company, in high good humour.

“Welcome, Mr. Boswell,” said he. “You come in good time, for we have need of you.”

“The Ansley cause comes up at the King’s Bench on Monday,” exclaimed Dougal MacArcher exultantly. “The Black Earl’s time of reckoning has come!”

“My good friends here would have me go down to Westminster Hall to watch the proceedings,” said Dr. Johnson, “but you know, sir, this is quite contrary to my way of life—”

I knew it well, for the sturdy philosopher would scarce rise before noon, or go abroad before four of the clock.

“And so I have selected you, Mr. Boswell, to be my deputy, for I hardly suppose you will miss this entertainment.”

“Not likely, sir, for I count myself fortunate to be able to see this great cause tried before I proceed to my law studies in Utrecht.”

“And in recompense, Mr. Boswell, you shall dine with me daily at the Mitre and report the day’s proceedings.”

“All’s to a wish!” cried Lady Lalage, James Ansley wrung my hand, and so the plan was concerted.

Thus it came about that the next week, towards evening, Sam: Johnson and James Boswell sat at a table at the Mitre over a cut off the joint and a glass, and spoke of the Kidnapped Earl.

“A great day in the court for the Ansley cause!” I reported. “You can picture, sir, the solemn scene at the King’s Bench. On the bench sit three judges, gowned and periwigged, a little fidgety one, a big somnolent one, and in the middle a judge of godlike mien—”

“Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, Mr. Boswell, note him well.”

“—and the jury is in the box, and at their long table sit the lawyers in their black gowns and white bands, and the crowd is everywhere, crammed to the walls. In the forefront sit the litigants, the old Earl and the ‘young Earl,’ the cynosure of all eyes. Now the crier calls order, and Dougal MacArcher rises to open his friend’s case. How eloquently he pictures the plight of the friendless boy, inhumanly put out of his heritage by his wicked uncle Richard! Ladies weep. Even James Ansley has a tear in his eye. Only the Black Earl sits sneering.”

“And then, sir?”

“Then, sir, MacArcher and his juniors begin calling their witnesses. A score of honest Irish folk appear. They swear to my Lady’s pregnancy and the birth of the heir. Some say they were present at the birth. Many good souls remember how they drank the heir’s health at the christening.

“Then come others of the household, to tell of how my Lady left Dalmain under a cloud, how the child came home from nurse at Jiggy Landry’s, and was handsomely attired, made much of, and presented to all and sundry as the old Earl’s heir.”

“Why sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “this is all to the good.”

“But what emotion in court, sir, when Lord Eltham’s serving-folk tell how the boy was turned out into the streets of Dublin! And even the pandours who kidnapped the boy were there to tell of it, and say it was at the behest of wicked Uncle Richard! ‘You lie!’ bawls Uncle Richard, and is rebuked by the judge. Last comes a sailorman who met James Ansley in the backwoods of Pennsylvania, clad in skins, and knows him now for the same man. The plaintiff rests.

“In a word, sir, the tide is high for James Ansley. The spectators, even the judges, look on him with compassion, and when the court rises, the claimant is cheered to the echo, and the Black Earl is hissed to his coach!”

“So far so good; let us see what the morrow will bring,” says Dr. Johnson, and calls for the reckoning.

“Well, sir, how goes James Ansley’s cause?” enquired Dr. Johnson next day over a mighty dish of collops at the Mitre.

“Alack, sir, the tide runs counter. The Black Earl has had his day. Dougal MacArcher had brought Jiggy and the rest of the under servants to attest James Ansley’s birth. Now come all the upper servants to swear for the Earl there was no such birth. So say the butler and my Lord’s valet, and worst of all my Lady’s own confidential woman, she avers with vehemence that Lady Eltham never had a child. So say the Ansley kin to a man, and certain it is, the late Earl of Angleby never knew Lord Eltham had an heir. Much harm is done to the Ansley cause. When the defence rested, the crowd was beginning to look askance at James Ansley, What is to be done?”

“The truth must be made visible,” said my friend thoughtfully, pushing back his plate and rising.

I presented myself at Westminster Hall early the next morning, with a sense of impending crisis. This was the day appointed for the claimant’s rebuttal witnesses. Would they prevail?

Again the spacious chamber was packed to the doors when to the crier’s piercing “Oyez!” the judges in their velvet-trimmed gowns paced to the bench. On one side James Ansley in his mulberry brocade sat smiling, Lady Lalage’s hand in his. On the other side, the old Earl bent his black brows and twisted his thin lip in his accustomed sneer. At the long table before the bar, like a flock of blackbirds, sat the lawyers, leaders and juniors in a row. Dougal MacArcher at one end sat on the edge of his chair, his green eyes snapping, ready for the fray. At the other end Earl Richard’s advocate sat solid, Serjeant Grimthorpe, a lowering mastiff of a man whose hectoring bull’s roar had discomposed many an Ansley witness.

I too was on the edge of my seat when Dougal MacArcher sprang to his feet and began to call his rebuttal witnesses. Someone called the butler a liar. Someone else called the valet a liar. Dougal MacArcher spun them along mechanically, his air of excited expectancy seeming to look beyond them. Soon an attendant handed him a folded billet. He took a single look, and dismissed his witness half heard.

“And now!” he cried in ringing tones, “now, my Lords, I call into court Edmund Barfield, second Duke of Bredingham, Lady Eltham’s brother and own uncle to James Ansley!”

Instantly pandemonium burst forth, everyone shouting at once. In the din Dr. Sam: Johnson came marching up the aisle, and the wax-work Duke seemed to march with him, supported on the one side by Dr. Johnson, and on the other by Frank Barber, who rolled his dark eyes in terror, yet strode manfully forward.

“You cannot call a dead man into court!” the Earl’s lawyer was bellowing. At the same moment Earl Richard, squinting at the waxen face, started up and began to bawl: “You cannot call James Ansley, he is an interested party, he is incompetent!”

“Sit down, you fool!—uh, my Lord—” hissed Sergeant Grimthorpe furiously, “you give your cause away, this is not James Ansley, but a wax-work of his uncle—uh, that is—(aloud with a roar) I submit, my Lords, they cannot call a wax-work into court!”

“My learned friend is quite correct, my Lords,” said Dougal MacArcher smoothly, well pleased with his effect. “I withdraw the witness, and I call Samuel Johnson!”

Johnson was already on the stand, supporting the waxen Duke at his side. He took the oath with measured and solemn sonority. In emphatick tones, while the packed court-room stared at his waxen companion, he proceeded to account for the history of the Ducal effigy, so carefully crafted to be an exact likeness of my Lady Eltham’s brother.

“James Ansley, stand up!”

At Dougal MacArcher’s bidding the tall blond young man rose in his place.

“Come forward.” The claimant stood on the stand beside the figure of his uncle. The likeness was inescapable.

“Now, my Lords and gentlemen of the jury,” cried Dougal MacArcher,” if we take the nobleman’s robe and place it upon James Ansley’s shoulders (doing so with a flourish), and the coronet upon his head—behold the rightful Earl of Angleby!”

The crowd broke into irrepressible applause. No protests from the bar, no repression from the bench, could quell it. It was all over. The lawyers’ closing arguments, the judges’ summing up, unheard, were hastily cut short. The jury rushed through their verdict:

“We find for the Plaintiff!”

They assessed costs against the usurping Earl, but nobody heard it for cheering.

Cheers were still ringing in our ears, the hearty handshake of the new Earl still tingled on our palms, Lady Lalage’s kisses still burned on my cheek, when at last my friend and I drew breath at the Mitre.

“And thus was the truth made visible,” observed Dr. Johnson with a smile.

“It was well played, sir,” I replied, “but pray, sir, tell me one thing: How did you know that there was a portrait of Duke Bredingham among the Westminster wax-works?”

JOHNSON: By reading, sir, how else? There’s a book newly published, how the wax-works are found and put to rights and may be seen for sixpence, and a list of them added.

BOSWELL: And how did you manage to spirit the waxen Earl from his appointed home in the Abbey?

JOHNSON: With the utmost simplicity, sir, I subpoenaed it.

BOSWELL: What, my Lord Chief Justice issued a subpoena for such a toy?

JOHNSON: Well, no, sir. But I can make a writ as impressive as any Lord Chief Justice in the land.

BOSWELL: But your writ will not run.

JOHNSON: Did the honest verger know that? He looked with big eyes at the inky flourishes and the waxen seals, and hastened to give over the Earl, catafalque and all. Nay, he lent a hand to transfer it from his attick to the cart I had provided. Thus Frank and I carted the noble Duke like a malefactor to the court, and the rest you know.

BOSWELL: So James Ansley has come into his patrimony.

JOHNSON: His patrimony? With his blond hair and high nose, James Ansley is certainly his uncle’s nephew and his mother’s son. But when you think of the Ansley cause, think of this: ’Tis a wise child that knows his own father!

[The notorious cause of Annesley versus Anglesey was tried at Dublin in November, 1743. In this story I tell it substantially as it happened, only simplifying some of its intolerable complexities and changing the date and the locale to permit the involvement of Johnson and Boswell.

The Kidnapped Earl won his suit. But real life is seldom so neat, or so just, as fiction. Richard, Earl of Anglesey, may or may not have been a usurper, but he was wicked enough. He was accused of being a dog-stealer and an amateur highwayman, and he was certainly a triple bigamist. He was skilled at infragrant legal chicanery, and managed with one dodge or another to delay judgment so long that when James Annesley died twenty years later, the case was still in the courts. Swiftly afterwards died his two young sons, James Annesley’s line died with them, and the rightful heir who was left was—wicked Uncle Richard! It makes one wonder whether the Black Earl was not as quick with a poison dose as with a kidnapping and a juggernaut coach and six.

Dr. Johnson’s prowess with his oaken stick is not exaggerated. Boswell in the Life of Johnson gives many examples of his utter fearlessness and physical might, and the routing of the Earl’s rapperees is based on one of them.

At the time of this story, Sam: Johnson was not yet “Dr. Johnson.” His first doctorate came to him in 1765 from Trinity College, Dublin. But it would be awkward not to call him by the name we all know, “Dr. Sam: Johnson;” which I have accordingly used in the text.

The wax-work Duke is still to be seen at Westminster Abbey, along with his royal companions, but now you need not climb a back stair to Henry the Seventh’s attic to see him, for he has found a more suitable home in a room off the cloister. There he lies in state in his robe and coronet, James Annesley to the life: which you may prove to yourself if you will compare him with the engraved portrait of James Annesley which forms the frontispiece of the small quarto edition of the trial (London: R. Walker, 1744).

For a full-scale account of the affair of the Kidnapped Earl, you will have to wait for my book, The Annesley Trials, now in preparation.]