The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse (18 page)

As well as dealing with those involved in the financial running of the company, Amanda was also required to assist those who were preparing the Druce case for court. These included the rarely seen and permanently preoccupied solicitor, Edmund Kimber, along with a smooth-talking man called Kenneth Henderson. Henderson was a journalist who told Amanda that he was a great-grandson of T. C. Druce through his beloved daughter Fanny. He was managing editor of a publication called
The Idler
, which had produced a number of pamphlets advertising the Druce case. He showed several of these to Amanda. One, entitled
The Druce
–Portland Case,
was on sale to the public for sixpence, and had gone through dozens of impressions. It featured on its cover portraits of the 6th Duke of Portland and George Hollamby, accompanied by the caption, ‘Which is the Duke?’ It also displayed a photograph of Welbeck Abbey next to one of an Australian settler slab hut.
The
Idler
pamphlets included contributions from an anonymous member of the Cavendish-Bentinck family, who – Henderson told Amanda – supported the Druce claim and would, when the time came, make their support known. These contributions were mysteriously attributed to ‘one who knows’. If Amanda had needed convincing about the validity of the Druce claim (which was doubtful, as she already fervently believed in it), the pamphlets fully persuaded her. Who, she reasoned, could question such plain and convincing evidence that Druce and the duke were one and the same?

For a start, there was the uncanny likeness between the photograph of T. C. Druce and the photograph alleged to be a portrait of the 5th Duke, which had been shown to prospective investors. (A number of persons to whom T. C. Druce was unknown, on being presented with several photographs, picked out that of T. C. Druce as the duke; a number of persons to whom the 5th Duke was unknown picked out a photograph of him as T. C. Druce.) Then there were the mannerisms. Those who knew T. C. Druce or the duke all agreed on the unapproachable and haughty manner of both men. Furthermore, the two men shared certain physical infirmities: the 5th Duke suffered from a skin disease that gave him a jaundiced appearance. T. C. Druce, likewise, presented a jaundiced complexion, and a number of his children and grandchildren were allegedly afflicted with the same skin condition. Druce and the duke were both also described as being about five feet nine inches in height, sturdily built and weighing about thirteen stone.

The two men also shared marked peculiarities of diet and habit. Both T. C. Druce and the 5th Duke were known to be abstemious with regard to alcohol and tobacco, were modest eaters, had an objection to butcher’s meat, and a partiality for fish and chicken. Other unusual traits common to the two men included: a tendency to secrecy and reserve, together with a determined refusal to discuss their past or family background; a passion for subterranean wanderings; the wearing of wigs; methodical habits; unexpected appearances and disappearances for long periods of time; a desire to avoid sunlight (on account of the skin complaint); dislike of being personally addressed; and massive wealth. There was also the proximity in age between the two: Druce’s given birth date, 1793, was just seven years before that of the 5th Duke, in 1800.

But in Amanda’s eyes, the most convincing evidence for Druce and the duke being one and the same person was what appeared to be the virtually exact correspondence of the presence in public life of T. C. Druce with the disappearance from it of the duke, and vice versa. Thus from 1816 to 1818, T. C. Druce’s name appeared in parish registers at Bury St Edmunds, as overseer of the poor. Family evidence showed that, during this period, his wife Elizabeth Crickmer lived with him in comfort and luxury, in the fine house on Great Market. This period would have corresponded with the 5th Duke’s education, of which one would have expected to find records at a public school or university. But no record was given of him being educated at any college or other institution.

Then, suddenly, the name of T. C. Druce completely vanished from the records at Bury. In early 1820 Elizabeth was to be found living alone in a house rated at only £2 per year,
having to be excused payments of 2 shillings annual poor rate owing to her poverty. Corresponding with the complete disappearance of T. C. Druce, however, abundant records of the 5th Duke appeared. In 1819 he was gazetted as an army officer, various records showing subsequent promotions. From 1824 to 1826 he sat as Member of Parliament for King’s Lynn; and up to 1835, biographical accounts of the duke’s brothers referred to him being associated with them.

But then, from 1835 onwards, all reference to the 5th Duke in public records seemed mysteriously to disappear. In 1854 the 4th Duke died, and the dukedom devolved on his surviving eldest son; and yet in
The
Times
obituary of the 4th Duke, no reference was made to his heir. The funeral of the 4th Duke was attended by every male relation, except his successor. And at several social gatherings in 1846 attended by male members of the Bentinck family, the 5th Duke (then Marquess of Titchfield) was remarkably absent. In 1851 a Corn Exchange was opened at Worksop, the market town nearest Welbeck; the ducal family attended the event, all except the Marquess of Titchfield. On the other hand, this blank period in the duke’s life corresponded with the time when T. C. Druce opened the Baker Street Bazaar and began his meteoric rise through the furniture business. It was the time of his setting up home with Annie May, starting his second family, and becoming a prosperous and well-known – albeit reclusive – figure in the London business world.

Then, in 1864, after Druce had ostensibly died, the 5th Duke suddenly reappeared in the records as mysteriously as he had vanished in the 1830s. This was the point at which he moved permanently from Cavendish House in London to Welbeck Abbey, and commenced the extensive tunnelling operations for which he was to become notorious. From now on, in fact, records relating to the 5th Duke were plentiful: right up to his death in 1879, and his discreet burial in Kensal Green.

In the course of her duties at the Druce office, Amanda also met some of the key witnesses in the case. They included an elderly and dignified gentleman with a stoop and a drooping white handlebar moustache, by the name of Robert Caldwell. Caldwell told Amanda the same story as he was subsequently to give in court. He informed her that he was a retired accountant, now seventy-one years of age. He had been born in Ireland, although he was now a naturalized American citizen and lived in New York. He had left Ireland in 1857 at the age of twenty-one, and had travelled via England as far afield as New Zealand and India, seeking a cure for an unsightly affliction from which he suffered – a condition then known as a ‘bulbous nose’ (and today known by the rather more technical term of ‘rhinophyma’).
*4

After a long and fruitless search for an effective treatment for his condition, Caldwell told Amanda that he had finally been cured of his ailment by a captain of the British Army in India, of the 3rd Foot Regiment, by the name of Arthur Wellesley Joyce. He had then returned to England, where he demonstrated his cure to the eminent English physician, Sir Morrell Mackenzie. Impressed, Sir Morrell had introduced Caldwell to the 5th Duke of Portland, who suffered from a similar condition. Those events took place around 1864. Caldwell proceeded to treat the duke for his affliction, curing him in about sixty days. Over that period, he was paid handsomely in cash by the duke, and visited him both at Welbeck Abbey – where he saw the celebrated underground ballroom and picture gallery – and at the Baker Street Bazaar. Throughout his time with the duke, Caldwell told Amanda, it was manifestly clear to him that his Grace had a double identity as the furniture salesman, T. C. Druce. He had even seen the duke don a false beard when he visited him as ‘Druce’ at the Baker Street Bazaar. As the duke, he was always clean-shaven. Caldwell had also met T. C. Druce’s/the duke’s wife and children, at the Baker Street premises.

The final part of Robert Caldwell’s story, however, had Amanda reeling in shock. In December 1864, he told her, he had been approached by the duke, who informed him that he wished to do away with his dual persona by ‘killing off’ his alter ego of Druce. To this end, the duke asked Caldwell to have a coffin made – or rather a box like a coffin, only not so tapered at the end – and to fill it with lead. This, claimed Caldwell, he duly did, with the aid of an old man and a carpenter, purchasing 200 pounds of lead and screwing it down in the coffin. He subsequently organized the mock funeral of T. C. Druce on 31 December: a splendid affair with many coaches. That was the last that Caldwell saw of the duke or of T. C. Druce; he remained in England for five or six years, finally emigrating to New York in 1871. He had contacted George Hollamby from the United States, he said, after reading about the case early in February 1907, in the newspaper the
New York World
.

Another key witness who was frequently to be seen about the Druce office was a dark-haired and sharp-featured lady from New Zealand, about fifty years of age, by the name of Miss Mary Robinson. She was always smartly turned out, with a neat, feathered toque perched upon her head, and normally accompanied by her ‘lady companion’, a younger and rather pretty lady called Miss O’Neill. Like Robert Caldwell, Miss Robinson told Amanda substantially the same story that she would later tell the court. She said that her father had been the owner, in the 1850s, of a tobacco plantation in Richmond, Virginia. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, she was still a child. For her own safety, she left her homeland to come to England and stay with an aunt, arriving in August 1861. It was at this point in time that she began to keep a diary. While staying with her aunt in Tunbridge Wells, Miss Robinson had met Mr Druce as a guest at her aunt’s house. He had told her, she recollected, that he lived in Nottingham, and kept tame foxes running about the woods on his estate.

About the middle of 1864, Miss Robinson told Amanda, she had returned to the United States. Here she had met the eminent author Charles Dickens, touring Boston in May 1868. Dickens, who according to Miss Robinson knew T. C. Druce, had suggested to her that she return to England, to act as Druce’s ‘outside correspondent’ – a form of assistant or secretary, it appeared. It was Charles Dickens, Miss Robinson claimed, who told her that T. C. Druce of the Baker Street Bazaar also lived at Welbeck Abbey and was, in reality, the 5th Duke of Portland. Acting on Dickens’ suggestion, Miss Robinson had taken lodgings near Welbeck Abbey, staying with a family called Pearce at a house called ‘Lady Hill’. Here, she had sent and received confidential letters on behalf of the duke – posting letters from him at the Post Office, and receiving letters intended for him at the Pearces’ home, under the pseudonym of ‘Madame Tussaud’. Much of the duke’s clandestine correspondence that she fielded appeared to be with a mysterious Dutchman, by the name of ‘Van Aish’. Throughout the time of her acquaintance with the duke, Miss Robinson declared, she had always addressed him as ‘Druce’. The last she had seen of him was in late 1879, just before he died.

The third – and most enigmatic – of the Druce witnesses was a solemn and mysterious old lady in her seventies, who always appeared veiled in black (she had, for this reason, been dubbed ‘the Veiled Lady’ by Herbert Druce’s lawyers, Freshfields). Mrs Margaret Jane Louisa Hamilton was quiet, well educated and had very good manners. It was she who had persuaded Sir Francis Jeune, president of the probate division, to grant preliminary ‘letters of request’ to Anna Maria Druce for the opening of the Druce vault back in 1898; and for many, it was her non-appearance at the subsequent trial of the matter before Mr Justice Barnes, that had been the principal reason for Anna Maria’s dismal failure at that hearing.

Mrs Hamilton told Amanda that she had been born in Rome and was the daughter of Robert Lennox Stuart, an aristo-cratic and bohemian gentleman. Stuart had been a cousin and close friend of the 5th Duke, and his go-between in some of his amorous liaisons. Indeed, the duke had been her godparent. Her father, she said, had taken her more than once to Welbeck Abbey, where she became a favourite of the duke (then Marquess of Titchfield), and learned from him that he was also T. C. Druce of Baker Street. After that, she had seen the duke in disguise as T. C. Druce at the Baker Street Bazaar, and had been told by her father of the duke’s intention to destroy his alter ago by the pretended death of Druce, a mock funeral, and the burial of an empty coffin. She had recognized Druce at the bazaar from a photograph her father had given her of him, when she first came to London as a young girl, about the year 1844.

Mrs Hamilton recalled a number of vivid instances of clashes between T. C. Druce and his second wife Annie May, as a result of his double life. On one occasion, for example, Annie May had been audacious enough to embroider a ducal coronet on the corners of her handkerchiefs. This act had enraged the duke/Druce, who promptly snipped off the corners and threw them in the fire. She also remembered the many shadowy lady friends of T. C. Druce, including a mysterious Frenchwoman by the name of ‘Madame Eloise’, the object of a number of secret assignations.

Such, in essence, was the heart of the case that T. C. Druce was the 5th Duke of Portland. It now remained only for George Hollamby and Thomas Coburn to decide how they were to frame their claim. This was a subject of lively debate in company committee meetings. The position was complicated by the fact that the 4th Duke of Portland had taken care to protect the position of his daughters, so often left penniless under the traditional rules of primogeniture. Under the terms of the 4th Duke’s will, the English provincial estates of the family (including Welbeck Abbey) followed the title, and were limited to the male heir. These estates therefore devolved, on the death of the 5th Duke without an apparent male heir, on his distant cousin William, who became the 6th Duke. However, a hugely valuable portion of the 4th Duke’s properties – the London estate, which included vast swathes of Marylebone – was settled on the 4th Duke’s issue, his four daughters succeeding (to equal quarter shares) in default of male heirs. Thus when the 5th Duke died, ostensibly unmarried, the Marylebone estates devolved on to his four sisters. The eldest sister, Lady Harriet, was unmarried; the next, Lady Ossington, was married but childless; the youngest was unmarried and predeceased the 5th Duke. The third sister was Lady Lucy, who in 1828 had married Charles Ellis, the 6th Baron Howard de Walden. It was her heirs, therefore, who inherited the priceless parcel of a large part of north-central London.