“Precisely as it would do in a genuine document.”
“It is a forgery. You may depend upon that.”
“What of the ink?”
“It would not be iron-gall, of course, this is merely blue-black made with indigo and that alters far less.”
“Then ink and penmanship appear to stand examination?”
“One moment.”
He began to check through a bundle of these octavo manuscripts and then set several of them aside. The pages were of a size usual in correspondence. They were far less yellowed than the Byron samples.
I noticed several rough drafts of letters, the hand identical to Savonarola but with crossing out and insertion. I saw a first draft of a letter from Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett. It came from their courtship in 1846, while she lay a prisoner and an invalid in her father’s house. I cannot betray the secrets of that correspondence, when letters passed between them every day. I will just say that it was full of reverence for his “Dearest Ba,” as she signed herself in replies that called down heaven’s blessings upon him.
It was monstrous to think that such intimate memorials of their devotion were destined to pass under the auctioneer’s hammer, merely to gratify the greed and curiosity of the public. Who knows what had already been hoarded in sale-rooms across the world in anticipation of this? Holmes turned to me.
“I think we must have young Mr Browning here. I shall have him sent for.”
He went to inform our guardian, Angelo Fiori’s cousin, and gave instructions for Pen Browning’s immediate attendance. While we were waiting for him, Holmes took from beside him a neat black attaché case, no more than eighteen inches by ten. He unclipped it and took out the polished steel components of Monsieur Nachet’s Combined Simple and Compound Microscope. This was the most powerful instrument of its kind. Yet it could be dismantled or assembled in a few seconds thanks to a milled head on its tubular stem, by which the body of the microscope might later be detached and the dismembered instrument packed away neatly in its case.
From his bag, he also retrieved a metal right-angle set-square. I cannot count the number of times I had witnessed the scene which followed, usually at the work-table in Baker Street. Holmes, tall and gaunt, sat with his long back curved, gazing into the mysterious world of the powerful microscopic lens. One by one, he took the papers he had selected, all of them adorned by the strong neat lines of Robert Browning’s script. After scrutiny, he set each page down carefully with its lower left-hand corner in the angle of his set-square. At first he frowned and then his face cleared. When he had examined the last of them, he straightened up and turned in his chair.
“I believe we have the rascal, Watson! Empty every cupboard. Collect every book from every shelf. I believe they will tell us whatever else we need to know.”
I began to remove books by the armful and stacked them on the bare table. As I did so. Holmes took them one by one, trying each of his chosen documents against the blank fly-leaves of the volumes. Or rather, he tried them in many cases where the fly-leaf would have been-had it not been cut out! Someone had used the blank leaves as writing-paper-but might not that have been Robert Browning? Presently, Holmes put the manuscripts aside and subjected the books themselves to the lens. Each was opened and exposed to its powerful scrutiny.
He did not choose a particular page but opened each volume at random. I noticed the earliest printing of Lord Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur in an edition of 1842, Mrs Browning’s Sonnets of 1847 and her Runaway Slave of 1849, Robert Browning’s Cleon and The Statue and the Bust both published in 1855, as well as Sir Galahad by William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Sister Helen, both having been issued in 1857. He looked closely at the first few but dismissed the rest with hardly a glance.
7
It was while Holmes was still examining this collection of rare editions, with the exclamations of a man who has been proved right after all, that Pen Browning arrived alone. He looked with some surprise at the tubular steel of Monsieur Nachet’s compound microscope. Holmes swung round but without getting up.
“Mr Browning! Pray be seated!” He indicated one of the straw-bottomed chairs. “First I will tell you what you already know. You and your parents’ reputations have been in great danger, since their secrets and confidences have somehow been distributed to the auction houses of the world. I believe we may now say that the danger of blackmail or embarrassment is past.”
For the first time in our acquaintance, the young man smiled.
“I am truly your debtor, Mr Holmes, if that is so.”
“I have no doubt that it is. First, however, you must indulge me by answering a few questions.”
“I will gladly do that.”
“Very good. You remember nothing of your mother’s “Reading Sonnets” of 1847 because the edition would have been issued long before you were born.”
“I know that my father had doubts about publishing the poems at all, even after they had been given to the world in 1850. He said to me several times that people should not wear their hearts upon their sleeves for daws to peck at. He said it again when it was suggested that his letters to my mother during their courtship-and hers to him-should be published after his death.”
“Very interesting. Now I must ask you one question that is most important. I beg that you will consider carefully before you answer.”
“Indeed I will.”
“When your father made a fair copy of a poem, and while the ink was still wet, did he use a sand-box to dry the ink in the old fashioned method? Or did he use blotting-paper as many people have done for the past thirty or forty years?”
Pen Browning looked surprised but the answer came readily enough.
“Neither. My grandfather had held a post in the Bank of England and had used a brass sand-box, shaking fine sand on to the ink and then shaking it off again. In Florence, we still had the brass box. I played with it as a child. It was never used otherwise.”
“And blotting-paper?”
“When I was a little boy I sat with my father while he made fair copies of his poems. He never used blotting-paper, for fear that it would cause a smudge and that he must begin again. I do not recall that he ever possessed any. Indeed, he said that a poet must be like a medieval scribe and set out his pages in the sun to dry. That was easily done in Italy.”
Holmes handed him the manuscript of Savonarola.
“Would you look at that, please. It is dated 1855. Is it your father’s?”
“It appears like his writing. I do not know the poem. It may well be his.”
“Would you look at the last lines and tell me what you see?”
“Nothing. Unless that they are dimmer than the rest. He would not have allowed that in a fair copy.”
“Would he not?”
“The appearance of a poem was a work of art to him, like a painting. He was very particular about the look of it.”
“But the person who wrote this was not particular, was he? Moreover your father did not use blotting-paper, as you say. This page was written out complete and then blotted. The upper lines of ink had dried and darkened progressively by then. The later lines were still wet and the ink was drawn away, leaving them dimmer.”
“Is that all?”
“No, Mr Browning, it is not nearly all. Under microscopic examination, it is possible to see that the fainter letters are also feathered in their outline from the pressure of being blotted. There is even a microscopic wisp of what appears to be white blotting paper.”