“Very like.”
“A forger would have taken care to make both figures ‘2’ look alike. None of us signs a name or writes a line in the same way twice. A perfect forgery may be too consistent, too perfect, as if it has been drawn rather than written. Here you will see in the first line Byron has written, ”There is a Tide…” The letter T in both cases has a loop at either end of its cross-piece. Each letter in the line has a gap before the next one. That is almost too consistent, a cause for suspicion. By the fourth line, however, the poet’s pen is flowing freely, rather than hesitating. Every T is joined to the following letter, lacking the loops but sprouting a confidant tail.”
“And that is all?”
“Far from it, old fellow. However, Lord Byron is the most forged of all the English poets. The appetite for new discoveries is insatiable. In 1872, Schultess-Young foisted on the world two sets of Byron letters said to have belonged to his aunts. They were obvious impostures and the manuscripts were not available for inspection. Nineteen others in his book were examined in manuscript and proved to be the work of De Gibler, who called himself Major Byron and claimed to be the poet’s natural son. He had been exposed long before because the paper on which the letters were written was watermarked ten years after the writer’s death!”
Holmes was in his element among so much high-class dishonesty. He sat down at the writing table and adjusted the range of the magnifying lens.
“When a manuscript is examined closely, it is possible to see minute breaks in the line, where the writer has lifted pen from paper. In a genuine copy, as here, there are relatively few places where the pen has been lifted. A forger of modest talents will stop more often, in order to compare his copying with the original. There may also be signs of counterfeiting, when a letter in a word has been patched, as they call it, to make it a more accurate imitation, leaving a feathery appearance.”
“And by such clues forgery is detected?”
“Among many others. A true craftsman, of course, will know what I am looking for and will take care to provide me with it. Indeed, a counterfeiter who practices an author’s script for long enough can produce a flowing imitation. In that case we must use other methods of detection. Perhaps the date of ink or paper, sometimes the provenance of the work. I think we may assume that this is a genuine page of Byron’s manuscript.”
He examined a letter of some kind and then chuckled as he quoted two lines of Don Juan.
‘This note was written upon gilt-edged paper,
With a neat little crow quill, slight and new!’
We need have no doubt about these two pages. They have been known as a forgery for almost eighty years.”
I looked over his shoulder at the narrow page of script, the paper yellowed and the ink rusty. I read the first words, which looked mighty like Byron’s hand that had written Don Juan. “Once More, My Dearest…”
Holmes smiled.
“It poses as a letter from Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb. Unfortunately it was forged by Lady Caroline Lamb herself in 1813 as a means of stealing his portrait. The story is well known. She was insane with love of him, the man whom she called mad, bad and dangerous to know! She forged this letter in his handwriting, authorising her to go to his publisher John Murray and demand the famous Newstead miniature of the poet. She got the portrait and he got her letter back from Murray.”
Under Lady Lamb’s copy of his signature, the poet had written, “This letter was forged in my name by Lady Caroline Lamb,” and he had signed the postscript.
“The two Byron signatures are very much alike.”
“Lady Lamb might have made a competent forger in time. However, look at the letter ‘t’ again. In Byron’s hand the cross-stroke extends over the next two letters. She extends it still further. It is a fatal mistake, when forging, to exaggerate such foibles. She also varies her style twice by adding a strong up-stroke before the main down-stroke of the ’t.’ That is a grave error. A writer who makes a ‘t’ with a strong down-stroke may embellish it but will hardly precede it with a strong up-stroke. The up-strokes of normal script are light, whereas the downstrokes are strong. Where the pressure of a nib is of uniform strength throughout, as it is here, you may suspect facsimile copying or forgery. In short, however like the two scripts may appear to be, Lady Caroline Lamb’s effort raises too many questions to be acceptable.”
“I low did such a document come into Jeffery Aspern’s hands?”
“It must be from Byron. No doubt on the occasion, a few days before his death, when he bequeathed such treasures to his friends before leaving Venice for Greece.”
Despite Aspern’s reputation as the recipient of a rich horde of Byron’s correspondence, a good many documents in the leather box were questionable. There was a further forgery, if one can call printed material by that name, again the work of Lady Caroline Lamb. It had been published in 1819, purporting to be a new canto of the poet’s Don Juan. Holmes read the opening line.
“‘I’m sick of fame-I’m gorged with it-so full…’ Heaven preserve us, Watson! It does not even sound like Byron!”
Then he paused. He had put aside this pastiche and was looking at a sheaf of papers that were clipped unevenly together. His face was grave and yet his features were tense with excitement.
“And here, I believe, is the legend of Lord Byron in the United States! For a good many years before going to fight for Greece against the Turks, it was said that he had determined to make a life for himself as Europe’s ambassador to the New World. Who better than an American poet like Jeffery Aspern to receive his confession?”
He ran his eyes down a sheet of wizened paper, its ink once again rusted by time. Then he passed it to me. I read it with astonishment and a chill in the spine at the thought that I was holding a sheet of paper which the greatest of the romantics once held and that I must be one of only three or four people to read these lines since Jeffrey Aspem had received them from Byron all those years ago.
Ravenna, April 25, 1821
My dear Aspern,
So you and Murray would have me write a modern epic! You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. But what would you say to my hero’s visit to your own country? “Don Juan in the New World ”? When anything occurs in it to betray my ignorance of your native Virginia, pray revenge yourself upon the manuscript as freely as you like. If you can observe that condition, let our man take a turn in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson.
Upon the Virgin land is Juan set
A place of beauteous slaves and tropic morals.
(I don’t much wonder that Bob Southey funked it
Or that his women had a score of quarrels.)
Juan lay fast in Venus’ toils, whose jet
And agile limbs wore little else but corals.
Pillowed he lay, on skin as hot as Hades,
Treasured by those who sported like true ladies.
Sing, Muse, of Coleridge and the Susquehanna,
(I won’t sing Southey since he came in first).
Who knows, from Philadelphia to Savannah,
Which of Juan’s conquests would have pleased ‘em worst?
Both Senate’s wives and maiden queen Susannah
Juan’s nocturnal catalogue rehearsed.
O Lords of Golden Horn, stand ye in wonder
To see our hero steal your Sultan’s thunder!
Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer?
Could you not take a run here with Miss B.-or alone if
need be?
Yours ever & truly,
Byron.
I read it again and stood in disbelief. If this meant what it said, the portmanteau in front of us contained an “American epic,” written by Byron while still in Venice but corrected by Jeffery Aspern to give it the authenticity of Virginia and Georgia. Who could forge such a thing? Not Augustus Howell-but Aspern himself!