Trial Of Mary Blandy Part 3

Walpole barely exaggerates the wholesale legal butcheries by which the streets of London were then disgraced. "Many cartloads of our fellow-creatures are once in six weeks carried to slaughter," says Henry Fielding, in his _Enquiry_ (1751); and well has Mr. Whibley described the period as "Newgate's golden age." As for Tyburn Tree, we read in its _Annals_, for example, "1752. July 13. Eleven executed at Tyburn."

We can only glance at one or two further instances of the diffusion of "Blandy's fatal fame." None of the varied forms of the _Newgate Calendar_--that criminous _Who's Who?_--fails to accord her suitable if inaccurate notice. With other letter-writers of the time than the genial Horace the case forms a topical subject. James Granger reports to a reverend correspondent that "the princ.i.p.al subject of conversation in these parts is the tragical affair transacted at Henley.... It is supposed, as there is no direct and absolute proof that she was guilty, and her friends are rich and have great interest, that she will escape punishment." To Mrs. Delany, writing the day after the execution, the popular heroine "appeared very guilty by her trial," but we learn that Lady Huntingdon had written a letter to Miss Blandy after her conviction. On 22nd April, 1752, Miss Talbot writes to Mrs. Carter, who thought Mary had been "too severely judged," that "her hardiness in guilt" was shocking to think of. "Let me tell you one fact that young Goosetree, the lawyer, told to the Bishop of Gloucester," she writes, with reference to Miss Blandy's repeated statement that she never believed her father a rich man. "This Goosetree visited her in jail as an old acquaintance. She expressed to him great amazement at her father's being no richer, and said she had no notion but he must have been worth 10,000. Mr. Goosetree prudently told her the less she said about that the better, and she never said it afterwards, but the contrary." Miss Talbot adds that certain letters in Lord Macclesfield's hands "falsify others of her affirmations." By 5th May, 1753, Mrs. Delany writes, "We are now very full of talk about Eliza Canning."

As time goes on the tragedy of Henley, though gradually becoming a tradition, is still susceptible of current allusion. John Wilkes, writing from Bath to his daughter on 3rd January, 1779, regarding a lady of their acquaintance who proposed to keep house for a certain doctor, remarks "that he is sure it could not have lasted long, for she would have poisoned him, as Miss Blandy did her father, and forged a will in her own favour"; but Tate Wilkinson, in his _Memoirs_, observes, "Elizabeth Canning, Mary Squires, the gipsy, and Miss Blandy were such universal topics in 1752 that you would have supposed it the business of mankind to talk only of them; yet now, in 1790, ask a young man of twenty-five or thirty a question relative to these extraordinary personages, and he will be puzzled to answer, and will say, 'What mean you by enquiring? I do not understand you,'" So quickly had the "smarts" of the new generation forgotten the "fair Blandy" of their fathers' toasts. To make an end of such quotations, which might indefinitely be multiplied, we shall only refer the reader to Lady Russell's _Three Generations of Fascinating Women_ (London: 1901), for good reading _pa.s.sim_, and with special reference to her account of the interest taken in the case by Lady Ailesbury of Park Place, who "was related to the instigator of the crime," and, believing in Mary's innocence, used all her influence to obtain a pardon. To Mr. Horace Bleackley's brilliant study of the case we have already in the Preface referred.

It may, in closing, be worth while to remind the student of such matters that the year with which we have had so much concern was in other respects an important one in the annals of crime. On 14th May, 1752, the "Red Fox," Glenure, fell by an a.s.sa.s.sin's bullet in the wood of Lettermore, which fact resulted in the hanging of a guiltless gentleman and, in after years, more happily inspired an immortal tale; while on 1st January, 1753, occurred the disappearance of Elizabeth Canning, that bewildering damsel whose mission it was to baffle her contemporaries and to set at nought the skill of subsequent inquirers.

Well, we have learned all that history and tradition has to tell us about Mary Blandy; but what do we really know of that sombre soul that sinned and suffered and pa.s.sed to its appointed place so long ago? A few "facts," some "circ.u.mstances"--which, if we may believe the dictum of Mr. Baron Legge, cannot lie; and yet she remains for us dark and inscrutable as in her portrait, where she sits calmly in her cell, preparing her false _Account_ for the misleading of future generations. Like her French "parallel," Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers, like that other Madeleine of Scottish fame, she leaves us but a catalogue of ambiguous acts; her secret is still her own.

If only she had been the creature of some great novelist's fancy, how intimately should we then have known all that is hidden from us now; imagine her made visible for us through the exquisite medium of Mr. Henry James's incomparable art--the subtle individual threads all cunningly combined, the pattern wondrously wrought, the colours delicately and exactly shaded, until, in the rich texture of the finished tapestry, the figure of the woman as she lived stood perfectly revealed.

Leading Dates In the Blandy Case.

1744.

22 May--Marriage of Cranstoun and Anne Murray.

1745.

19 February--Birth of their daughter.

1746.

August--Cranstoun meets Mary Blandy at Lord Mark Kerr's.

October--Mrs. Cranstoun takes proceedings in Commissary Court.

1747.

August--Second meeting of Cranstoun and Mary. Cranstoun visits the Blandys and stays six months.

1748.

January--Cranstoun returns to London.

1 March--Cranstoun's marriage upheld by the Commissary Court.

May--Mrs. Blandy's illness at Turville Court. Cranstoun pays a second six-months' visit to the Blandys.

December--Cranstoun's regiment "broke" at Southampton. He returns to London.

1749.

March--Mrs. Blandy and Mary visit Mr. Sergeant Stevens in Doctors'

Commons.

28 September--Mrs. Blandy taken ill after her return home.

30 September--Death of Mrs. Blandy.

1750.

August--Cranstoun returns to Henley. Puts powder in Mr. Blandy's tea.

October--Cranstoun professes to hear nocturnal music, &c.

November--Cranstoun leaves Henley for the last time.

1751.

April--Cranstoun writes from Scotland to Mary that he has seen Mrs.

Morgan and will send powder with pebbles.

June--Powder and pebbles received by Mary, with directions to put the powder in tea. Mr. Blandy becomes unwell. Gunnell and Emmet ill after drinking his tea.

18 July--Cranstoun writes to Mary suggesting she should put the powder in gruel.

4 August--Gunnell makes gruel in pan by Mary's orders.

5 August--Mary seen stirring gruel in pantry. Mr. Blandy taken seriously ill in the night.

6 August--Mr. Norton, the apothecary, called in. Gruel warmed for Mr. Blandy's supper.

7 August--Emmet eats what was left the night before, and is taken ill. Mary orders the remains of the gruel to be warmed. Gunnell and Binfield notice white sediment in pan and lock it up.

8 August--Gunnell and Binfield take pan to Mrs. Mounteney, who delivers it to Mr. Norton.

9 August--Mr. Stevens, of Fawley, arrives and hears suspicions.

10 August--Gunnell tells Mr. Blandy of suspicions. Mary burns papers and packet. Dr. Addington called in.

11 August--Pan and packet given to Dr. Addington. He warns Mary.

Her letter to Cranstoun intercepted.

12 August--Last interview between Mary and her father.

13 August--Mr. Blandy worse. Dr. Lewis called in. Mary confined to her room.

14 August--Death of Mr. Blandy. Mary attempts to bribe Harmon and Binfield to effect her escape.

15 August--Flight of Mary. Coroner's inquest. Mary apprehended.

17 August--Mary removed to Oxford Castle.

4 September--Cranstoun escapes to Calais.