Arthur and George (52 page)

It had been a cold and unseasonal Whitsun. A Millionaire’s Son had been Killed in a Motor Racing Tragedy while Driving his 200 H.P. Car. Foreign Princes had arrived in Madrid for a Royal Christening. Wine Growers had Rioted in Béziers, where the Town Hall had been Sacked and Burnt by Peasants. But there was nothing—there had now been nothing for years—about Miss Hickman the Lady Doctor.

Sir Arthur offered to fund any libel suit George cared to bring against Captain Anson, the Home Secretary, or members of the Gladstone Committee, either separately or jointly. George, while renewing his expressions of gratitude, politely declined. Such redress as he had just obtained had been achieved thanks to Sir Arthur’s commitment, hard work, logic, and love of making a noise. But noise, George thought, was not the best solution to everything. Heat did not always produce light, and noise did not always produce locomotion. The
Daily Telegraph
was calling for a public inquiry into all aspects of the case; this, in George’s view, was what they should now be pressing for. The newspaper had also launched a monetary appeal on his behalf.

Arthur, meanwhile, continued his campaign. No one had taken up his offer to demonstrate
in half an hour
that George Edalji could not have written the letters—not even Gladstone, who had publicly asserted the contrary. So Arthur would demonstrate the matter to Gladstone, the Committee, Anson, Gurrin and all readers of the
Daily Telegraph.
He devoted three lengthy articles to the matter, with copious holographic illustration. He demonstrated how the letters were obviously written by someone of
an entirely different class
to Edalji,
a foul-mouthed boor, a blackguard,
someone with
neither grammar nor decency.
He further declared himself personally slighted by the Gladstone Committee, given that in their Report
there is not a word which leads me to think that my evidence was considered.
In the matter of Edalji’s eyesight, the Committee quoted the opinion of
some unnamed prison doctor
while ignoring the views of fifteen experts,
some of them the first oculists in the country,
which he had submitted. The members of the Committee had merely added themselves to
that long line of policemen, officials and politicians
who owed a
very abject apology
to
this ill-used man.
But until such an apology was offered, and reparation made,
no mutual daubings of complimentary whitewash will ever get them clean.

Throughout May and June there were constant questions in Parliament. Sir Gilbert Parker asked if there were any precedent for compensation not being paid to someone wrongly convicted and subsequently granted a free pardon. Mr. Gladstone: “I know of no analagous case.” Mr. Ashley asked if the Home Secretary considered George Edalji to be innocent. Mr. Gladstone: “I can hardly think that is a proper Question to ask me. It is a matter of opinion.” Mr. Pike Pease asked what character Mr. Edalji had borne in prison. Mr. Gladstone: “His prison character was good.” Mr. Mitchell-Thompson asked the Home Secretary to set up a new inquiry to consider the matter of the handwriting. Mr. Gladstone declined. Captain Craig asked for any notes taken during the trial for the use of the Court to be laid before Parliament. Mr. Gladstone declined. Mr. F. E. Smith asked if it was the case that Mr. Edalji would have received compensation had it not been for the doubt as to his authorship of the letters. Mr. Gladstone: “I am afraid I am unable to answer that question.” Mr. Ashley asked why this man had been released if his innocence was not completely established. Mr. Gladstone: “That is a Question which really does not concern me. The release was consequent on a decision by my predecessor, with which, however, I agree.” Mr. Harmood-Banner asked for details of similar outrages against farmstock committed while George Edalji was in prison. Mr. Gladstone replied that there had been three in the Great Wyrley neighbourhood, in September 1903, November 1903 and March 1904. Mr. F. E. Smith asked in how many cases over the last twenty years compensation had been paid after convictions had been shown to be unsatisfactory, and what amounts were involved. Mr. Gladstone replied that there had been twelve such cases in the previous twenty years, two involving substantial sums: “In one case the sum of £5,000 was paid, and in the other the sum of £1,600 was divided between two persons. In the remaining ten cases the compensation paid varied from £1 to £40.” Mr. Pike Pease asked if free pardons were granted in all these cases. Mr. Gladstone: “I am not sure.” Captain Faber asked for all police reports and communications addressed to the Home Office on the subject of the Edalji Case to be printed. Mr. Gladstone declined. And finally, on 27th June, Mr. Vincent Kennedy asked: “Is Edalji being thus treated because he is not an Englishman?” In the words of
Hansard:
“[No answer was returned.]”

Arthur continued to receive anonymous letters and abusive cards, the letters in coarse yellow envelopes gummed up with stamp paper. They were postmarked London NW, but the creases in the documents indicated to him that they may have been carried under cover, or possibly in somebody’s pocket—that of a railway guard, for instance—from the Midlands to London for posting. He offered a reward of £20 to anyone who helped trace them back to their writer.

Arthur requested further interviews with the Home Secretary and his Under Secretary Mr. Blackwell. In the
Daily Telegraph
he described being treated with
courtesy
but also with a
chilly want of sympathy.
Further, they took
an obvious side with impeached officialdom
and made him feel a
hostile atmosphere
around him. There was to be no rise in temperature, no change in atmosphere; the officials regretted that henceforth they would be too occupied with the business of state to afford Sir Arthur Conan Doyle any more of their time.

The Incorporated Law Society voted to restore George Edalji to its Rolls.

The
Daily Telegraph
paid out the contents of its appeal fund, which amounted to some £300.

Thereafter, with no new events, no disputes, no libel suits, no government action, no further Questions in Parliament, no public inquiry, no apology and no compensation, there was little for the Press to report.

Jean says to Arthur, “There is one more thing we can do for your friend.”

“What is that, my dear?”

“We can invite him to our wedding.”

Arthur is rather confused by this suggestion. “But I thought we had decided that only our families and our closest friends would be present?”

“That is the wedding itself, Arthur. Afterwards there is the reception.”

The unofficial Englishman looks at his unofficial fiancée. “Did anyone ever tell you that apart from being the most adorable of women, you are also pre-eminently wise, and much more able to see what is right and necessary than the poor oaf you will be taking as a husband?”

“I shall be at your side, Arthur, always at your side. And therefore looking in the same direction. Whatever that direction may prove to be.”

George
&
Arthur

As the summer began to pass, as conversation turned to cricket or the Indian crisis, as Scotland Yard no longer required monthly confirmation by registered post of George’s address, as the Home Office remained silent, as even the indefatigable Mr. Yelverton failed to come up with a new stratagem, as George was informed that an office awaited him at 2 Mecklenburgh Street until such time as he found his own premises, as Sir Arthur’s communications diminished to brief notes of encouragement or rage, as his father returned more full-mindedly to parish work, as his mother judged it safe to leave her elder son and only daughter in one another’s care, as Captain the Honourable George Anson failed to announce any renewed investigation into the Great Wyrley Outrages despite their now having no official author, as George learned to read a newspaper again without one eye constantly snagging at a mention of his name, as yet another animal was mutilated in the Wyrley district, as interest nevertheless dribbled away and even the anonymous letter writer grew weary of his abuse, George realized that the final, official verdict on his case had been given, and was unlikely ever to be changed.

Innocent yet guilty: so said the Gladstone Committee, and so said the British Government through its Home Secretary. Innocent yet guilty. Innocent yet wrong-headed and malicious. Innocent yet indulging in impish mischief. Innocent yet deliberately seeking to interfere with the proper investigations of the police. Innocent yet bringing his troubles upon himself. Innocent yet undeserving of compensation. Innocent yet undeserving of an apology. Innocent yet fully deserving of three years’ penal servitude.

But that was not the only verdict. Much of the Press had been on his side: the
Daily Telegraph
had called the Committee’s and the Home Secretary’s position
weak, illogical and inconclusive.
The public’s attitude, as far as he could gauge it, was that he
never once had fair play.
The legal profession, in great numbers, had supported him. And finally, one of the greatest writers of the age had loudly and continually asserted his innocence. Would these verdicts in time come to outweigh the official one?

George also sought to take a wider view of his own case, and the lessons it contained. If you could not expect the police to be more efficient, or witnesses more honest, then you must at least improve the tribunals where their words were tested. A case like his should never have been conducted by a Chairman with no legal training; you would have to improve the qualifications of those on the bench. And even if the Quarter Sessions and the Assize Courts could be made to function better, there must still be recourse to finer and wiser legal minds: in other words, to a court of appeal. It was an absurdity that the only way to overturn a wrongful conviction such as his was by petitioning the Home Secretary, that petition to arrive with hundreds—no, thousands—of others each year, most of them from manifestly guilty occupants of His Majesty’s prisons, who had little better to occupy their time with than confecting memorials for the Home Office. Obviously, futile and frivolous appeals to any new Court should be weeded out; but where there had been a serious dispute of law or fact, or where the conduct of the lower court had been prejudicial or incompetent, then a higher court must reconsider the case.

George’s father had hinted to him on various occasions that his sufferings had a higher purpose to them. George had never wanted to be a martyr, and still saw no Christian explanation of his travails. But the Beck Case and the Edalji Case had between them produced great stirrings among his profession, and it was entirely possible that he might turn out to have been a kind of martyr after all, if of a simpler, more practical kind—a legal martyr whose sufferings brought about progress in the administration of justice. Nothing, in George’s view, could possibly make up for the years stolen in Lewes and Portland, and the year of limbo following his release; and yet, might it not be some consolation if this terrible fracture in his life led to some ultimate good for his profession?

Cautiously, as if aware of the sin of pride, George began to imagine a legal textbook written a hundred years thence. “The Court of Appeal was originally set up as the result of numerous miscarriages of justice which aroused public discontent. Not the least of these was the Edalji case, whose details need no longer concern us, but whose victim, it should be noted in passing, was the author of
Railway Law for the ‘Man in the Train,’
one of the first works to clarify this often confusing subject, and a book which is still referred to . . .” There were worse fates, George decided, than to be a footnote in legal history.

One morning, a tall oblong card arrived for him. It was printed in silver copperplate hand:

George was touched beyond expression. He set the card on his mantelpiece, and replied immediately. The Incorporated Law Society had readmitted him to the Rolls, and now Sir Arthur had readmitted him to human society. Not that he had any social ambitions—not to such high reaches anyway; but he recognized the invitation as a noble and symbolic gesture to one who just a year previously had been keeping himself sane in Portland Gaol with the novels of Tobias Smollett. George thought for a long time as to what might be a suitable wedding present, and eventually decided on well-bound, one-volume editions of Shakespeare and Tennyson.

Arthur is determined to throw any damn reporters off the scent. There is no announcement of where he and Jean are to be married; his wedding-eve dinner at The Gaiety is a discreet affair; and at St. Margaret’s Westminster the striped awning is put out at the very last minute. Only a few passers-by gather at this drowsy, sun-dusted corner beside the Abbey to see who might be getting married on a discreet Wednesday rather than an ostentatious Saturday.

Arthur wears a frock coat and white waistcoat, with a large white gardenia in his buttonhole. His brother Innes, on special leave from autumn manoeuvres, makes a nervous best man. Cyril Angell, husband of Arthur’s youngest sister Dodo, will officiate. The Mam, whose seventieth birthday has recently been celebrated, wears grey brocade; Connie and Willie are there, and Lottie and Ida and Kingsley and Mary. Arthur’s dream of gathering his family around him under one roof has never come to pass; but here, for a brief while, they are all assembled. And for once Mr. Waller is not of the party.