The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-05-06
 THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT.
A Portrait by One Who Knew Him.

l am Slncefely ODllged 10 you LOT al- lowing me to call on you, but let us un- derstand each other and let me be frank, I wished to see you, not because l believe in you, but because l think that you are one of the most extraordi- nary men who have ever lived. Still ] must not forget the courtesy due to host. Am I to address you as Sir Rog- CT Tichborne or as Arthur Orton, or am I to assume that you are neither|' It was with these words that l intro- duced myself year or so ago to "The Claimant" He evidently liked this bluntness, shook my hand warmly, laughed very good-naturedly, but with rather sad expression, and motioned brought this on myself by the great mistake of my life; but, tell me, did you believe in me before signed that con- fession in The People'?" I replied frankly that I did not, and thinking that this would be a good opportunity of getting him to talk about himself, ] said, "Will you let me tell you what seemed to me the points most conciu- sive against you in the trial?" He said Certainly, shall be most inter- ested to hear" Well, the first was | the utter obliteration from your mem | ory of all that it had been proved Rog- CT Tichborne had learned from his tutor and at Stonyhurst; the second was your going off to Mapping on the first night. of your arrival in London, and J the third was your denial that you had l ever been at Lloyd's rooms, when it | ,oI, ,1 ! searched the books there" His replies were very pertinent and ingenious. He said, Will you believe me when I say that these things are as strange to me, 1 to whom they actually happened, as l they can be to you? I could never un- I derstand how it was that I So complete | ly lost my memory, which is ordinarily l very good one. It was perhaps due l to my having delirium tremens two or | three times (for in those days I was | terribly addicted to drink), and to the l levers I had in the bush. But as for l the visit to Mapping, it was perfectly i natural, and nothing was so unfairly | represented in all my trial. The facts 1 were these: l landed at about four o'clock in the afternoon of Christmas
 
 I in Manchester Square, where I had some dinner about five, and having nothing to do that evening for my mother, whom I expected to meet had not arrived), I thought I couldn't do better than keep promise had made to Orton that I would call on his peo- pie and tell them how he was doing, be- | cause I knew I should have no time to do this later on when business began. So took four-wheeler and went off, and that was the reason I went to Mapping on the night of my arrival. l As for visiting Lloyd's, I can only say that I have absolutely no recollection of having been there, and at the present moment do not even know where l Lloyd's is."
 He talked in a low tone, without em- phasis and with a curious half-indiffer- ence alternating with certain furtive- 1 ly observant attention to the impress sion he was making. His voice was soft and caressing, his accent singu- | lar mixture of affected refinement and natural vulgarity, some of his words being minced and drawled in an over- l done attempt to mimicthe fine gentle man, and some, like 'ouse" and putt | for "put'D, betraying less cultivated associations. The twofold life which he had led was thus plainly indicated. His features were very striking, and l produced quite different impression from that given by the public portraits. His massive face, and head with its long and abundant white hair, gave him an almost noble appearance. The forehead, nose, chin and jaw were any, thing but plebeian. What spoiled his head were the ears, the lobes of which were most remarkable being long, fab- billy pendulant and fiat His eyes were large and prominent, not shifty, but not always easily and straightly meet ing you they had a curious aslkance look sometimes which, combined with twitching and down. pulled thick black eyelashes, was not, at such moments, captivating. Taken as a whole, and seen in repose, there was nothing in his features to indicate the qualities which have made his name infamous. He talked with the utmost freedom of his life and his experience. In his youth, he said, he had no pretension to any virtue and had been a perfect roue: he | would drink two bottles of brandy at a sitting and stick at nothing. His anec- dotes, whether true or not, were as en- tertaining as endless. Strange though it may seem, he gave me the idea of a man who was naturally frank, simple and straightforward, and who had by no means either the temper or the