Part 8

Now, I am never frightened at high prices. I asked my friend to return to France and buy it for me. Two days passed. Then I received the news that I was again too late. It was plain that Salomé was playing hide and seek with me, and placing my head on a charger. After two months in England I went to Paris. I had hardly arrived before the collector who last purchased _Salomé_ offered to sell it. I asked him to bring it immediately to my hotel. With my nerves on edge, I kept telling myself that this time she should not escape me. Now, the collector in question was supposed to be a judge of autographs. He arrived and took the manuscript from its case. I fairly grabbed it from him, fearing that the evil Salomé would sprout wings and fly out of the window. I opened the cover to the first page, looked at it, turned the second, then the third. Quickly I closed it and gave it back to him. A silence followed during which he regarded me in amazement.

“No, thank you,” I said; “I am looking for Salomé in the flesh, not a will-o’-the-wisp. Your manuscript is a forgery!”

It was plain this poor fellow had been deceived. He walked up and down my room, tearing at his hair in the best French manner, for he had given a good sum for this clever fabrication. I, too, was deeply disappointed, after tracking over Europe for it. Like the villain in the play, Salomé still evaded me.

In Philadelphia a year later I received a cable from a firm of auctioneers in Paris, offering me the original manuscript of _Salomé_ once more. I naturally paid no attention to the offer, thinking it another forgery. I was tired of the wiles of this wicked woman. I had come to the conclusion that this work was not, by some weaving of the fates, for the house of Rosenbach. No more fool’s errands for me.

A few weeks after, when dining with a well-known American collector in New York, he said to me:

“Doctor, I have something which will open even your eyes. I have _Salomé_!”

Naturally, I could not suppress a cynical laugh. “Another forgery?” I smilingly inquired.

After dinner we went to his library, and he pointed very proudly to two old copy books on the table. The moment I looked at the pages I knew that at last I held the original in my hands. How envious I was! But I now realized this manuscript could never be mine. I felt truly heartbroken. My friend, seeing I was not exactly elated over his treasure, but rather downcast, asked the reason. I related the whole story of my chase.

With great generosity he replied, with the air of a sultan presenting a favorite slave, “Doctor, I don’t want to stand in your way. If you want her, she is yours.” He told me its history as far as he knew it; the manuscript had been purchased by Pierre Louÿs, the eminent French poet. It was he who had bought it directly from the shop in Paris when I first tried to obtain it twenty years before. It is far more precious to-day than it was then. Not only is it the greatest work from the pen of Oscar Wilde but it is the one work of his that has been translated into all languages. It has also been used as the libretto by Richard Strauss for his startling and beautiful opera.

The up-to-date literary forger always keeps his eye upon the market. Genuine letters of certain famous, or infamous, men and women will always command high prices. Yet the styles in collecting change as in everything else. One decade there may be a sudden craze for Byron letters; the next, autograph letters or documents pertaining to Keats or Shelley are frantically sought.

So it goes. One cycle begins as another cycle ends. Therefore, forgers’ productions often swarm into the market when the popularity of an autograph is on the crest of the wave. There are certain historical characters whose autographs will always sell at top prices. With this in mind, one of the greatest hoaxes ever planned was, for a time, put over by a French forger a few years after the middle of the nineteenth century. Vrain Lucas was his name, and his guileless customer was a noted mathematician, Michel Chasles. I first knew of Lucas’s wretched forgeries through hearing my uncle Moses tell of them; in a way, it was rather humorous, for when he told me the story he became as enraged as though Lucas had taken him in, rather than Chasles.

Vrain Lucas was a middle-aged man of fair education and rather well read. By his own confession he had manufactured more than twenty-five thousand spurious autographs, many of which he sold to Chasles over a period of eight years. During that time Chasles had doubted his word only once. Lucas immediately offered to buy back everything he had sold him, and thus Chasles’s faith was restored.

This charlatan, Lucas, must have had a certain hypnotic influence over Chasles, plus the assurance and the courage of Old Nick himself. Chasles’s belief in him, however, proved Lucas’s undoing. For when he sold him two letters from Charles V to Rabelais, Chasles, in his excitement and delight, presented them to the Academy of Belgium. The letters for a time were believed to be genuine. Then Lucas came again to Chasles, this time with letters from Pascal to Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton, in which the writer proved that he, and not Newton, had discovered the law of gravitation.

You can imagine how deeply moved was Chasles, the naïve mathematician. He rushed with them to the French Academy of Science, and at once the scientific world was stirred into a commotion. At the height of this agitation Sir David Brewster came forward and announced that the letters must be from the pen of an impostor, proving conclusively at the same time that Newton was a mere child of ten when these pretended messages of Pascal were written. Thus began the beginning of the end for the forger.

Certain testimony given by Chasles at Lucas’s trial before a tribunal of the Seine, in 1870, is almost unbelievable. It seems ridiculous to me that any man, especially a collector, could have been so simple and gullible as was Chasles. He spent 140,000 francs, a lot of money in those days, for a list of autograph letters that is too good to pass over lightly. Although Monsieur Lucas supplied his customer with the important names of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, including Boccaccio, Cervantes, Dante, Racine, Shakespeare, and Spinoza, he likewise delved into the remote past and produced letters from Abélard, Alcibiades, Attila, Julius Cæsar, Charlemagne, Ovid, Pliny, Plutarch, and Pompey!

Lucas was careful enough to mix an ink for his forgeries which, when dry, gave the appearance of age. Then he treated the completed masterpieces in such a way as to make them look worn and of great age. But his cleverness was only half-witted! He had the audacity not only to write these ancient epistles on paper from local mills, which showed the watermarks of Angoulême, but most daringly inscribed them in modern French!

The late Simon Gratz, in his delightful and authoritative volume, _A Book about Autographs_, gives translations of several of these shameless fabrications. Here is the letter which Chasles believed Cleopatra wrote to Julius Cæsar:--

Cleopatra, Queen, to her very beloved Julius Cæsar, Emperor.

MY VERY BELOVED:--

Our son Cæsarion is well. I hope that he will soon be able to support the travel from here to Marseilles, where I need to send him to study, as much for the good air one breathes there as for the fine things which are taught. I beg you will tell me how long you will still remain in that country, for I want myself to take our son there and see you on this occasion. This is to tell you, my very beloved, the pleasure I feel when I am near you, and meanwhile I pray the gods to have you in their guard.

The XI March year of Rome VCCIX

CLEOPATRA

Think with what pious glee Monsieur Chasles read the following priceless letter from Lazarus, the resuscitated, to Saint Peter!

MY DEAR FRIEND PETRUS:--

You tell me you have noticed in the writings of Cæsar and in those of Cicero that one of the most important parts of the Druids’ religion consists in sacrificing savage men. It is true they take in an erroneous sense this principle, that men can only appreciate the life God gave them by offering Him the life of a man. They have continued that inhuman and bloody practice until the time of Cicero. This is why he says they soil and profane their temple and altars by offering there human victims, and here Cicero is right in insulting a worship so barbarous, saying it is a strange thing that to satisfy for what they owe to their religion they must first dishonor it by some murder. They cannot be religious without being homicides. The infamy of this horrible maxim has reflected on all the Gauls, even if it has been practiced only in some places. But the arms and the conquest of the Romans have wiped out this infamy and I do not believe that it is practiced anywhere now. Amen.

This X August XLVII

LAZARUS

Lucas’s interpretation of Biblical characters was rather unusual. Perhaps it was this quality, which so fascinated his generous customer, that caused him to be blind to obvious discrepancies. Here is rather a quaint letter purporting to be from Mary Magdalene to Lazarus:--

MY VERY BELOVED BROTHER:--

That which you tell us of Petrus, the Apostle of our meek Jesus, gives us hope that soon we shall see him here and I dispose myself to receive him well. Our sister Martha also rejoices of it. Her health is very tottering and I fear her passing away. This is why I recommend her to your good prayers. The good girls who have come to place themselves under our guidance are admirable for us and make us the most amiable caresses. It is enough said, my very beloved brother, that our sojourn in these countries of the Gaul pleases us much, that we have no desire to leave it, also none of our friends suggest it. Do you not think that those Gauls who were thought barbarian nations are not at all so, and judging only by what we have learned it must be from these that the light of science started. I have a great desire to see you and beg our Lord may have you in favor.

This X June XLVI

MAGDALENE

In this fourth epistle, written by Alexander the Great, Lucas, the true Frenchman, does not forget once more to let words of flattery for France--Gaul--drip from the pen of the King of Macedonia. This letter follows:--

Alexander Rex to his very beloved Aristotle, Greeting.

MY BELOVED:--

I am not satisfied because you have made public certain of your books which you had to keep under the seal of secrecy, for it is a profanation of their value; and no more render them public without my consent. As to what you asked of me, to travel to the country of the Gauls in order to learn the sciences of the Druids, of whom Pythagoras made so fine a eulogy, not only do I permit you but I entreat you to go for the good of my people, as you are not ignorant in what esteem I hold the nation which I consider as the one that carries the light in the world. I salute you.

This XX of the Kalends of May, year of the CV Olympiad

ALEXANDER

Old Chasles got all that was coming to him, and the 140,000 francs that he spent on the Lucas inventions were as nothing compared with the great joy the world in general, and antiquarians in particular, have experienced in reading these altogether amusing epistles.

Being sometimes called a pirate myself, I have always been interested in reading about them. I remember reveling in _Treasure Island_, soon after it appeared in 1883. But instead of the pieces of eight and flashing gems which Stevenson conjured up for the boyish mind, I substituted, in my youthful imagination, rare books. This seems far-fetched, yet it is absolutely true. Instead of Long John Silver’s doubloons and sequins, I put in their place first editions and manuscripts. They were more to me, then and now, than all the treasure of the Indies. And yet, in the first years of my passion for them, I rarely gave thought to forgeries. I had that superb reliance upon instinct which is a part and parcel of youth. I felt that if there were forgeries about I could sniff them as a dog follows a scent. So I was not really interested in forgers and their works until I read in a book for the first time an account of William Henry Ireland, the greatest fabricator of them all.

Ireland was a youthful scamp, less than eighteen years old, who in 1795 pulled the leg of almost the entire literary world with his “discovery” of many Shakespearean manuscripts. He was the son of an engraver in London, and doubtless inherited the facile fingers which brought him his peculiar fame. Ireland senior reverenced all relics of antiquity, and especially those which were connected with the memory of Shakespeare. He was almost a fanatic on this subject and gave his son to understand that his greatest desire would be satisfied the day that he was lucky enough to find an autograph manuscript of the Bard of Avon. I’ve had that feeling myself. After being dragged hither and yon by his father, who searched every nook and cranny where Shakespeare was supposed to have stayed, the filial William Henry decided upon a course of his own to make his father completely happy.

He was apprenticed at the time to an attorney, and it was a part of his daily work to study ancient documents, such as leases and wills. He sometimes read in books the histories of various estates in Great Britain, and occasionally a facsimile of Shakespeare’s signature was printed in them. One day he came across some unused parchment at the end of an old rent roll. His imagination began to work, I suppose, as he studied the Shakespeare facsimile before him, and the echoes of old deeds, with their quaint phrases, doubtless rang in his ears. Thus he set about practising the penmanship of an earlier era. Finding that he wrote with amazing ease, he immediately made up a lease between William Shakespeare and John Heminge, with one Michael Fraser and Elizabeth, his wife. When the ink was sufficiently dried he took it home to his father, who at the sight of it nearly dropped dead with joy. And so began young Ireland’s notorious performances.

After finding further facsimiles of signatures of the Elizabethan period, he invented, with the most appalling facility, all sorts of letters and poems. Naturally, his father and others asked where he had found these remarkable manuscripts, whereupon he made up a more or less logical story. He said he had met a gentleman of fortune, whose name he had sworn not to tell, in a coffeehouse in London, and that in the course of conversation they had discovered each other’s love for things antique. The new acquaintance then mentioned having in his possession a collection of old deeds and papers tied in bundles. The boy told of his delight at being asked to inspect them; and how he had gone to his friend’s house and searched through them. Much to their mutual joy, he had discovered one old paper which clearly established his friend’s right to a certain property which had been the subject of litigation for a long time. This friend, he went on to explain, first swore him to secrecy, then presented him with as many of these ancient manuscripts as he wished to have.

It is not difficult to understand why William Henry’s father accepted his boy’s story so easily. Remember, those were the days of stern virtues. A son brought up to respect his parents was expected to tell the truth. When the elder Ireland, being a man of substantial reputation, showed the manuscripts to his friends and repeated his son’s story, it was accepted. Spurred on by his apparent success in deceiving his father and many visitors, the young forger began to lose his head and daily grew more daring. Under cover of secrecy, in a lonely room where he was apprenticed, he had the temerity not only to forge Shakespeare’s signature to documents but to invent an autograph confession of faith for him. This met with success, and he proceeded to compose love lyrics in the form of letters to Anne Hathaway, signed with the name of the great poet.

Here is one of them, in which he inclosed a lock of “thye Willys” hair. It is addressed to Anna Hatherrewaye, and reads as follows:--

DEARESSTE ANNA:--

As thou haste alwaye founde mee toe mye Worde moste trewe soe thou shalt see I have stryctlye kepte mye promyse I praye you perfume thys mye poore Locke withe thye balmye Eysses forre thenne indeede shalle Kynges themmeselves bowe ande pay homage toe itte I doe assure thee no rude hande hathe knottedde itte thye Willys alone hathe done the worke Neytherre the gyldedde bawble thatte envyronnes the heade of Majestye noe norre honourres moste weyghtye wulde give mee halfe the joye as didde thysse mye lyttle worke forre thee The feelinge thatte dydde neareste approache untoe itte was thatte whiche commethe nygheste untoe God meeke and Gentle Charytye forre thatte Virrtue O Anna doe I love doe I cheryshe thee inne mye hearte forre thou arte ass a talle Cedarre stretchynge forthe its branches ande succourynge smaller Plants fromme nyppynge Winneterre orr the boysterouse Wyndes Farewelle toe Morrowe bye tymes I wille see thee tille thenne Adewe sweete Love

Thyne everre

WM SHAKSPEARE

ANNA HATHERREWAYE

Sometime later he made an almost entire transcript of _Lear_, and a few leaves from _Hamlet_, too! In _Hamblette_, as he quaintly called it, he boldly introduced variations in the text, which many of the most learned men of the time read without doubting their authenticity. Boswell, Doctor Johnson’s famous biographer, called at the Ireland home one day, inspected the manuscripts, then knelt down before them, enthusiastically kissing a paper here and there as he thanked God for letting him live to see them.

However, there was one doubting Thomas, who refused to believe, almost from the beginning of the “discoveries,” that there was an iota of truth concerning their origin. His name was Edmund Malone. He was the one literary critic who did not make a fool of himself at any time during a controversy which later developed to a furious pitch, and resulted in a full published confession from Ireland.

Young Ireland’s final burst of inspiration led him to write a pretended play of Shakespeare, entitled _Vortigern and Rowena_. This was the straw which eventually broke the camel’s back, but not until Sheridan had produced it, with two of the foremost players of the day, John Philip Kemble and Mrs. Jordan, appearing in the leading rôles.

Ireland appealed to me, not because he was a forger but because of a certain further cleverness. When he was discovered and his misdeeds revealed to a curious world, there suddenly sprang up a great demand to behold the handiwork of this delectable young villain. People in England, and collectors and curio seekers everywhere, wanted to own specimens of his fraudulent but interesting papers. They were so much in demand that he was kept busy from morning to night making forgeries of his own forgeries.

The sudden demand was not for Shakespeare’s own letter to Anne Hathaway but for Ireland’s original imaginary manuscript. What, then, could the poor fellow do? He just had to sit himself down and ply his trade as long as his supply of old paper and precious ink held out.

It was these humorous and at the same time dramatic facts which touched my imagination as a collector. I wanted Ireland’s original forgeries, not his double and triple fabrications. I naturally wanted the original manuscript of _Vortigern_, the one the lovely Mrs. Jordan had reverently held in her adoring--and adorable--hands. I thought I knew where they were--in the collection of the Marquis of Blandford, to whom they were sold many years ago. Imagine my surprise when I purchased the library of Marsden J. Perry, of Providence, to discover in his world-famed collection the actual forgeries not only of _Vortigern_ but of _King Lear_ and _Hamlet_ as well. Here were the original documents which had deceived some of the choicest minds in England. Looking further, I also found the first draft of Ireland’s confession. I have the actual drafts with which Richard Brinsley Sheridan was so delighted; the very pages from which Kemble studied the part of Vortigern, and before which Boswell knelt, “a tumbler of warm brandy and water” at his side.

Ireland was not the first spectacular forger of tender years. In his confession he speaks of having been influenced by reading of Thomas Chatterton’s career. Chatterton was an English youth who kept the literary world titillating twenty-five years earlier. It is a strange thing, this psychologic kink which sometimes forms in the brains of very young men. Why they should risk bringing the world about their ears through impersonating the famous dead, when they have brains and originality of their own, no one knows.

Poor Chatterton! His is the only great genius which has come to light through the art of forgery. He began writing when he was sixteen, and almost from the beginning produced some of the finest poetry in the history of eighteenth-century literature. Perhaps he was unhappily shy, as boys often are at that age; or he may have suffered from some gloomy mental obsession. His manner of screening his identity when these remarkable poems first appeared has caused many a student to pause and wonder.

Chatterton’s first writings appeared with an accompanying explanation. He said his father had found them years before in an ancient chest belonging to the Church of St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol. The verses were supposed to have been composed by Thomas Rowley, a monk who had lived in that neighborhood during the fifteenth century. Chatterton, according to his story, had merely copied them. At first, this story was accepted, while critics praised the undeniable beauty of the lines. Then some contemporary littérateur called attention to the incorrect usage of Anglo-Saxon words of Rowley’s day, and suspicion hovered over Chatterton. It was soon charged that Chatterton had written the poems of Rowley, using a certain dictionary from which he chose Anglo-Saxon words in order to create the atmosphere and flavor of antiquity.

Among his critics were Horace Walpole and his two poet friends, Mason and Gray. The boy was accused of downright forgery when it was further noted that the poem which Chatterton brought out as the “Battle of Hastings wrote by Turgot the Monk, in the tenth century, and translated by Thomas Rowlie,” was wrongly dated. This bit of carelessness on Chatterton’s part increased the hue and cry of ridicule. The Battle of Hastings, as every English schoolboy knew, did not take place until the eleventh century! And here the poetic Turgot was relating its history one century before it happened. The goading of Walpole and his acolytes finally drove Chatterton to commit suicide when he was only eighteen years of age.

What a loss it was to England!

Walpole, seated in his comfortable library at Strawberry Hill, surrounded by his precious books and his precious ladies, recognized Chatterton’s works as forgeries, but did not recognize his superb genius. A few of the inspired lines of Chatterton’s poems are worth all the famous letters which Walpole so elegantly wrote for a large public, including himself. Although we wade with zest in the delightful mud stream that, with its scandal and veiled allusions, runs so naughtily through Walpole’s correspondence, we can never forgive his treatment of poor Chatterton.