THE TICHBORNE CA - SE
• By Lord 'Maughani -
Lord Maugham's masterly account of The Tichborne Case (Iiodder and Stoughton, 15s.), which for the seven years from 1867 to 1874 intrigued and",exelted . the .13ritisk Worthy of a great lawyer. In this compact and most readable - volume he reteIls-;-- froth-the 19,000 pages of the -shorthand notes of the two trials;:the-.story of Arthur Orton's imper- sonation of Roger Charles Tichborne, who was drowned in the ' Bella ' off Jlio.:de Janeiro in 1854. No detective novel has a more complex and absorbing plot. The ,Claimant, an illiterate Wapping butcher ivhO had Wandered to -Chili and Australia, pretended , to be a cultured ,Stonyhilist and Cam- bridge man, who had had a commission in the Guards. Orton could hardly have imposed on the most stupid. of dupes .for long had not the Widowed mother professed to recognise him.. The half crazed Lady Tichborne, I bitterly jealous of her younger son who had succeeded to "the !baronetcy and, after' his death, of her grandson' and her daughter-in-laW, •_.was in truth the compelling factor in the Whole Miserable iiiipostiire,_ though she died: before the first trial began.•-•• Lord -Mtiugliam's comments on -the-,. mismanagement of the long-prOtracted- • actions are shrewd and temperate : But he .points out that in the trial of Thomas Castro or Arthur Orton for Perjury, which! in 1873-74 lasted for 16-6 days, Hawkins had to convince a jury of the utter falsity of a story in which millions of English people believed. Ballantine, who had appeared for the claimant in the civil action, says in his memories that, had Orton had a saner advocate than the unhappy Dr. Kenealy, the jury would have been discharged as unable to agree. Human, credulity has never been more painfully manifested than in this Tichborne case.
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