Sir Jasper Carew: His Life and Experience

At first, he could do no more than sit at an open window that looked over the sea, enjoying, with dreamy languor, the calm influences of a solitude so thoroughly unbroken. To an overwrought and excited mind, this interval of quiet was a priceless luxury; and far from experiencing weariness in his lonely life, the days glided past unnoticed.

Raper was not of a nature to obtrude himself on any one; and as my father neither sought nor needed a companion, they continued to live beneath the same roof almost without meeting. While, therefore, there was the most scrupulous attention to all my father’s wants, and a watchfulness that seemed even to anticipate a wish on his part, his privacy was never invaded nor disturbed. A few words each morning between Raper and himself provided for all the arrangements of the day, and there ended their intercourse.

Leaving him, therefore, in the indulgence of this placid existence, I must now turn to another scene, where very different actors and interests were engaged.

The death of Barry Rutledge had created the most intense excitement, not alone in Dublin, but throughout the country generally. He was almost universally known. His acquaintanceship embraced men of every shade of opinion, and of all parties; and if his character did not suggest any feelings of strong attachment or regard, there were social qualities about him which, at least, attracted admiration, and made him welcome in society.

Such men are often regretted by the world more deeply than is their due. Their amusing faculties are frequently traced back to some imaginary excellence in their natures, and there mingles with the sorrow for their loss a sort of tender compassion for the fate of abilities misapplied, and high gifts wasted. This was exactly the case here. Many who did not rank amongst his intimates while he lived, now affected to deplore his death most deeply; and there was a degree of sympathy felt, or assumed to be felt, for his fate, widely disproportioned to his claims upon real regard.

The manner of his death still remained a profound mystery. The verdict of the coroner’s jury was simply to the effect that “he had died of wounds inflicted by a person or persons unknown,” but without an attempt at explanation. The witnesses examined deposed to very little more than the state in which the body was found, and the prints of footsteps discovered in its vicinity. These, indeed, and other marks about the spot seemed to indicate that a struggle had taken place; but a strange and unaccountable apathy prevailed as to all investigation, and the public was left to the very vaguest of speculations as they appeared from time to time in the columns of the newspapers.

Amongst those who accompanied Rutledge into the street there was a singular discrepancy of opinion, some averring that they heard him called on by his name, and others equally positive in asserting that the provocation was uttered only in the emphatic monosyllable, “a lie.” They were all men of standing and position in the world; they were persons of indisputable honor; and yet, strange to say, upon a simple matter of fact which had occupied but a few seconds, they could not be brought to anything like agreement. The most positive of all in maintaining his opinion was a Colonel Vereker, who persisted in alleging that he stood side by side with Rutledge the whole time he was speaking; that he could swear not only to the words used by the unknown speaker, but that he would go so far as to say, that such was the impression made upon his senses that he could detect the voice were he ever to hear it again.

This assertion, at first uttered in the small circle of intimacy, at last grew to be talked of abroad, and many were of opinion it would one day or other give the clew to this mysterious affair. As to Vereker himself, he felt that he was to a certain extent pledged to the proof of what he had maintained so persistently. His opinions had gained currency, and were discussed by the press, which, in the dearth of other topics of interest, devoted a large portion of their columns to commentary on this event.

Any one now looking back to the pages of the Dublin “Express” or “Falkner” of that date will scarcely fail to find that each day contributed some new and ingenious suggestion as to the manner of Rutledge’s death. Some of these were arrayed with great details and the most minute arrangement of circumstances; others were constructed of materials the least probable and likely. Every view had, however, its peculiar advocates, and it was curious to see to what violence was carried the war of controversy upon the subject.

By the publicity which accompanies such events as these, the ends of justice are mainly sustained and aided. Discussion suggests inquiry, and by degrees the general mind is turned with zeal to an investigation which, under ordinary circumstances, had only occupied the attention of the authorities.

To any one who has not witnessed a similar movement of popular anxiety, it would be difficult to believe how completely this topic engrossed the thoughts of the capital; and through every grade of society the same intense desire prevailed to unravel this mystery. Amongst the many facts adduced, was one which attracted a large share of speculation, and this was the track of footsteps from the very opposite corner of the “Green” to the fatal spot, and their issue at the little wicket gate of which we have already spoken. These traces were made by a large foot, and were unmistakably those of a heavy man, wearing boots such as were usually worn by gentlemen. One peculiarity of them, too, was, that the heels were studded with large nails, rarely worn save by the peasantry. A shoemaker who served on the inquest was heard to remark that a very few country gentlemen still persisted in having their boots thus provided, and that he himself had only one such customer, for whom he had just finished a new pair that were then ready to be sent home.

The remark attracted attention, and led to an examination of the boots, which, strange to say, were found exactly to correspond with the tracks in the clay. This fact, coupled with another, that the person for whom they were made, and who had been impatient to obtain them, had not even called at the shop or made any inquiry since the night of Rutledge’s death, was of so suspicious a nature, that the boots were taken possession of by the authorities, and the maker strictly enjoined to the most guarded secrecy as to the name of him by whom they were ordered.

With every precaution to secure secrecy, the story of the boots got noised about, and letters poured forth in print to show that the custom of wearing such heels as were described was by no means so limited as was at first assumed. In the very thick of discussion on this subject, there came a post letter one evening to the bootmaker’s house, requesting him to send the boots lately ordered by an old customer, J. C, to the “Blue Balls,” at Clontarf, addressed, “George J. Grogan, Esq.”

The shopkeeper, on receiving this epistle, immediately communicated it to the authorities, who could not fail to see in it another circumstance of deep suspicion. From the first moment of having learned his name, they had prosecuted the most active inquiries, and learned that he had actually been in town the evening of Rutledge’s death, and suddenly taken his departure on the morning after. The entire of the preceding evening, too, he had been absent from his hotel, to which he returned late at night, and instead of retiring to bed, immediately occupied himself with preparations for his departure.

As the individual was one well known, and occupying a prominent position in society, it was deemed to be a step requiring the very gravest deliberation in what manner to proceed. His political opinions, and even his personal conduct, being strongly opposed to the Government, rather increased than diminished this difficulty, since the Liberal papers would be sure to lay hold of any proceedings as a gross insult to the national party.

The advice of the law officers, however, overruled all these objections; a number of circumstances appeared to concur to inculpate him, and it was decided on issuing a warrant for his arrest at the place which he had named as his address.

Secrecy was now no longer practicable; and to the astonishment of all Dublin was it announced in the morning papers that Mr. Curtis was arrested the preceding night, on a judge’s warrant, charged with the murder of Barry Rutledge.

Terrible as such an accusation must always sound, there is something doubly appalling when uttered against one whose rank in society would seem to exempt him from the temptations of such guilt. The natural revulsion to credit a like imputation is, of course, considerable; but, notwithstanding this, there were circumstances in Curtis’s character and habits that went far to render the allegation not devoid of probability. He was a rash, impetuous, and revengeful man, always involved in pecuniary difficulties, and rarely exempt from some personal altercation. Harassed by law, disappointed, and, as he himself thought, persecuted by the Government, his life was a continual conflict. Though not without those who recognized in him traits of warm-hearted and generous devotion, the number of these diminished as he grew older, and, by the casualties of the world, he lived to fancy himself the last of a bygone generation far superior in every gift and attribute to that which succeeded it.

When arrested, and charged with the crime of wilful murder, so far from experiencing the indignant astonishment such an allegation might naturally lead to, he only accepted it as another instance of the unrelenting hate with which the Government, or, as he styled it, “the Castle,” had, through his life long, pursued him.

“Who is it,” cried he, with sarcastic bitterness, “that I have murdered?”

“You are charged with being accessory to the death of Mr. Barry Rutledge, sir,” said the other.

“Barry Rutledge! – the Court-jester, the Castle-mimic, the tale-bearer of the Viceroy’s household, the hireling scoffer at honest men, and the cringing supplicant of bad ones. The man who crushed such a reptile would have deserved well of his country, if it were not that the breed is too large to be extirpated.”

“Take care what you say, Mr. Curtis,” said the other, respectfully; “your words may be used to your disadvantage.”

“Take care what I say! Who are you speaking to, sirrah? Is the caution given to Joe Curtis? Is it to the man that has braved your power and laughed at your Acts of Parliament these fifty years? Are you going to teach me discretion now? Hark ye, my man, tell your employers not to puzzle their heads with plots and schemes about a conviction; they need neither bribe a witness, corrupt a judge, nor pack a jury. Familiar as such good actions are to them, their task will still be easier here. Tell them this; and tell them also that the score they must one day be prepared to settle would be lighter if Joe Curtis was the last man they had sent innocently to the scaffold.”

As though he had disburdened his mind by this bitter speech, Curtis never again adverted to the dreadful accusation against him. He was committed to Newgate; and while treated with a certain deference to his position in life, he never relaxed in the stern and unbending resolve neither to accept any favor, nor even avail himself of the ordinary means of legal defence.

“Prison diet and a straw mattress!” cried he; “such you cannot deny me; and they will be the extent of the favors I’ll receive at your hands.”

As the day fixed for the trial approached, the popular excitement rose to a high degree. Curtis was not a favorite even with his own party; his temper was sour, and his disposition unconciliatory; so that even by the Liberal press, his name was mentioned with little sympathy or regard. Besides this feeling, there was another, and a far more dangerous one, then abroad. The lower classes had been of late reflected on severely for the crimes which disgraced the county calendars, and the opportunity of retaliating against the gentry, by a case which involved one of their order, was not to be neglected. While, therefore, the daily papers accumulated a variety of strange and seemingly convincing circumstances, the street literature did not scruple to go further, and Curtis was the theme of many a ballad, wherein his guilt was depicted in all the glowing colors of verse.

It is one of the gravest inconveniences which accompany the liberty of free discussion that an accused man is put upon his trial before the bar of public opinion, and his guilt or innocence pronounced upon, long before he takes his place in presence of his real judges; and although, in the main, popular opinion is rarely wrong, still there are moments of rash enthusiasm, periods of misguided zeal or unbridled bigotry, in which such decisions are highly perilous. Too frequently, also, will circumstances quite foreign to the matter at issue be found to influence the opinions expressed upon it.

So far had the popular verdict gone against the accused in the present case that there was a considerable time spent on the morning of the trial, before a jury could be empanelled which should not include any one who had already pronounced strongly on the case.

Curtis, as I have mentioned, declined all means of defence; he thought, or affected to think, that every member of the bar was open to Government corruption, and that as the whole was an organized plot for his destruction, resistance was perfectly vain and useless. When asked, therefore, to whom he had intrusted his case, he advanced to the front of the dock, and said: “Gentlemen of the jury, the disagreeable duties you are sworn to discharge shall not be protracted by anything on my part. Whatever falsehoods the counsel for the Crown may advance, and the witnesses swear to, shall meet neither denial nor refutation from me. The Castle scoundrels shall play the whole game themselves, and whenever you agree ‘what ‘s to pay,’ I ‘ll settle the score without flinching.”

This extraordinary address, uttered in a tone of half-savage jocularity, excited a strange mixture of emotion in those who heard it, which ultimately ended in half-subdued laughter throughout the court, repressing which at once, the judge gravely reprimanded the prisoner for the aspersions he had thrown on the administration of justice, and appointed one of the most distinguished members of the bar to conduct his defence.

It was late in the day when the Crown counsel rose to open his case. His address was calm and dispassionate. It was divested of what might seem to be any ungenerous allusion to the peculiar character or temperament of the accused, but it promised an amount of circumstantial evidence which, were the credit of the witnesses to stand unimpeached, would be almost impossible to reconcile with anything short of the guilt of the prisoner in the dock.

“We shall show you, gentlemen of the jury,” said he, “first of all that there was a manifest motive for this crime, – at least, what to a man of the prisoner’s temper and passions might adequately represent a motive. We shall produce evidence before you to prove his arrival secretly in Dublin, where he lodged in an obscure and little-frequented locality, avoiding all occasion of recognition, and passing under an assumed name. We shall show you that on each evening he was accustomed to visit an acquaintance – a solicitor, whom we shall produce on the table – whose house is situated at the very opposite end of the city; returning from which, it was his habit to pass through Stephen’s Green, and that he took this path on the night of the murder, having parted from his friend a little before midnight. We shall next show you that the traces of the footsteps correspond exactly with his boots, even to certain peculiarities in their make. And, lastly, we shall prove his immediate and secret departure from the capital on this very night in question; his retirement to a distant part of the country, where he remained till within a few days previous to his arrest.

“Such are the brief outlines of a case, the details of which will comprise a vast number of circumstances, – slight, perhaps, and trivial individually, but which, taken collectively, and considered in regard to their bearing on the matter before us, will make up a mass of evidence that the most sceptical cannot reject.

“Although it may not be usual to advert to the line of conduct which the prisoner has adopted, in refusing to name a counsel for his defence, I cannot avoid warning the jury that such a course may bear an interpretation very remote from that which at first sight it seems to convey. He would wish you to accept this position as the strongest evidence of innocence; as if, relying on the justice of his cause, he requires neither guidance nor counsel!

“It will be for you, gentlemen, to determine if the evidence placed before you admit of such a construction; or whether, on the contrary, it be not of such a nature that would foil the skill of the craftiest advocate to shake, and be more effectually rebutted by a general and vague denial, than by any systematic endeavors to impeach.

“You are not, therefore, to accept this rejection of aid as by any means a proof of conscious innocence. Far from it. The more correct reading might show it to be the crafty policy of a man who throughout his whole life has been as remarkable for self-reliance as for secrecy; who, confiding in his own skill to direct him in the most difficult circumstances, places far more reliance on his personal adroitness than upon the most practised advocacy; and whose depreciatory estimate of mankind is but the gloomy reflection of a burdened conscience.”

It was so late when the counsel had concluded that the court adjourned its proceedings till the following morning; and the vast assembly which thronged the building dispersed, deeply impressed with the weighty charge against the prisoner, and with far less of sympathy than is usually accorded to those who stand in like predicament.

CHAPTER XVI. AN UNLOOKED-FOR DISCLOSURE

On the second day of the trial, the court-house was even more densely crowded than on the first. The rank and station which the accused had held in society, as well as the mysterious character of the case itself, had invested the event with an uncommon interest; and long before the doors were opened, a vast concourse filled the streets, amidst which were to be seen the equipages of many of the first people of the country.

Scarcely had the judges taken their places, when every seat in the court was occupied, – the larger proportion of which displayed the rank and beauty of the capital, who now thronged to the spot, all animated with the most eager curiosity, and speculating on the result in a spirit which, whatever anxiety it involved, as certainly evinced little real sympathy for the fate of the prisoner. The bold, defiant tone which Curtis had always assumed in the world had made him but few friends, even with his own party; his sneering, caustic manner had rendered him unpopular; few could escape his censures, – none his sarcasms. It would, indeed, have been difficult to discover one for whom less personal interest was felt than for the individual who that morning stood erect in the dock, and with a calm but stern expression regarded the bench and the jury-box.

As the court continued to fill, Curtis threw his eyes here and there over the crowded assemblage, but in no wise disconcerted by the universal gaze of which he was the object. On the contrary, he nodded familiarly to some acquaintances at a distance; and, recognizing one whom he knew well in the gallery over his head, he called out, —

“How are you, Ruxton? Let me advise you to change your bootmaker, or I would n’t say that the Crown lawyers won’t put you, one day, where I stand now!”

The laugh which followed this sally was scarcely repressed, when the trial began. The first witness produced was a certain Joseph Martin, the solicitor at whose house Curtis had passed the evening on which the murder was committed. His evidence, of course, could throw little or no light upon the event, and merely went to establish the fact that Curtis had stayed with him till nigh midnight, and left him about that hour to proceed to his home. When questioned as to the prisoner’s manner and general bearing during that evening, he replied that he could detect nothing strange or unusual in it; that he talked pretty much as he always did, and upon the same topics.

“Did he allude to the Government, or to any of its officials?” was then asked; and, before a reply could be given, Curtis cried out, —

“Yes. I told Martin that if the scoundrels who rule us should only continue their present game, nobody could regret the ruin of a country that was a disgrace to live in. Did n’t I say that?”

“I must remind you, sir,” interposed the judge, gravely, “how seriously such conduct as this is calculated to prejudice the character of your defence.”

“Defence! my Lord,” broke in Curtis, “when did I ever think of a defence? The gentlemen of the jury have heard me more plainly than your Lordship. I told them, as I now tell you, that innocence is no protection to a man when hunted down by legal bloodhounds; that – ”

“I must enforce silence upon you, sir, if I cannot induce caution,” said the judge, solemnly; “you may despise your own safety, but you must respect this court.”

“You ‘ll find that even a more difficult lesson to teach me, my Lord. I can remember some eight-and-forty years of what is called the administration of justice in Ireland. I am old enough to remember when you hanged a priest who married a Protestant, and disbarred the lawyer that defended him.”

“Be silent, sir,” said the judge, in a voice of command; and with difficulty was Curtis induced to obey the admonition.

As the trial proceeded, it was remarked that Colonel Vereker was seen in close communication with one of the Crown lawyers, who soon afterwards begged to tender him as a witness for the prosecution. The proposal itself and the object it contained were made the subject of a very animated discussion; and although the testimony offered seemed of the greatest importance, the court decided that it was of a kind which, according to the strict rules of evidence, could not be received.

“Then you may rely upon it, gentlemen of the jury,” cried Curtis, “it is favorable to me.”

“Let me assure you, sir, to the contrary,” said the judge, mildly, “and that it is with a jealous regard for your interest we have agreed not to accept this evidence.”

“And have you had no respect for poor Vereker, my Lord? He looks as if he really would like to tell the truth for once in his life.”

“If Colonel Vereker’s evidence cannot be admitted upon this point, my Lord,” said the Crown lawyer, “there is yet another, in which it is all-essential. He was one of those who stood beside Rutledge on the balcony when the words were uttered which attracted his notice. The tone of voice, and the manner in which they were uttered, made a deep impression upon him, and he is fully persuaded that they were spoken by the prisoner in the dock.”

“Let us listen to him about that,” said Curtis, who now bestowed a more marked attention to the course of the proceeding. Vereker was immediately sworn, and his examination began. He detailed with great clearness the circumstances which preceded the fatal event, and the nature of the conversation on the balcony, till he came to that part where the interruption from the street took place. “There,” he said, “I cannot trust my memory as to the words employed by Rutledge, although I am confident as to the phrase used in rejoinder, and equally certain as to the voice of him who uttered it.”

“You mean to say,” said the judge, “that you have recognized that voice as belonging to the prisoner.”

“I mean to say, my Lord, that were I to hear him utter the same words in an excited tone, I should be able to swear to them.”

“That’s a lie!” cried Curtis.

“These were the words, and that the voice, my Lord,” said Vereker; and as he spoke, a deep murmur of agitated feeling rang through the crowded court.

“By Heaven!” cried Curtis, in a tone of passionate excitement, “I hold my life as cheaply as any man; but I cannot see it taken away by the breath of a false witness: let me interrogate this man.” In vain was it that the practised counsel appointed to conduct his case interposed, and entreated of him to be silent. To no purpose did they beg of him to leave in their hands the difficult game of cross-examination. He rejected their advice as haughtily as he had refused their services, and at once addressed himself to the critical task.