THE PHANTOM DUKE
By Edgar Saltus
OYEZ: There is a case, presently to be heard, which, whether founded on fiction or founded on fact, is too good to be true. That is its merit and also its demerit. Known as the Matter of Druce et al., it consists in the contention of an unknown lady that a well-known duchy belongs to her son. The details follow hereinafter. Before considering them, it is worth noting that not since the great days of "The Terrible Temptation" and the still greater days of the Tichborne trial has England produced anything with which, for sheer deviltry, they can be compared.
As a story, we prefer it to "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." We prefer it even to "Lost Sir Massingbird." The latter, published three decades ago, concerned a most audacious baronet who, after various vilenesses, vanished in a paragraph and reappeared as a skeleton in the trunk of a tree.
It was a good story, but it might have been better. For that, though, there is an excuse.
Payn, the author of it, labored, in common with all other makers of fiction, under a curse. Readers refuse to allow a novelist to deal with anything but the probable. The refusal is unrighteous. It is worse; it is stupid. The surprises of life transcend those of reason. The probable is always the imaginary. It is the improbable that occurs. The Matter of Druce is a case in point. In Payn's story there was a vanishing baronet. Here is a vanishing peer, a real dead duke. The audaciousness and various villainies of Sir Massingbird become nursery pranks beside the satanic episodes of his grand masquerade. What is a skeleton in the trunk of a tree beside a coffin with old iron in it? What is a wicked baronet who takes to flight beside a wickeder duke who takes to trade? The baronet contented himself with disappearing. He had to. The limits of a three-volume novel prevented him from doing worse. Unhandicapped by any such nonsense, the duke not merely disappeared: he disappeared into a furniture dealer, had himself die and be buried, and, reappearing, frightened his shop-folk out of their wits.
A story such as that has three charms. It combines the dramatic, the devilish and the delicious. Like "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," the adventures which it discloses are too enchanting to have actually occurred. For if they did occur, where is the shilling shocker that surpasses them? And yet, if they did not, what an imagination the plaintiff must possess! Considered as a romance, the story knocks everything else into a cocked hat. Considered as a case, the Tichborne suit doesn't hold a candle to it. In the latter the widow of a gentleman recognized a butcher as her dead son. In the present instance, the daughter-in-law of a tradesman recognizes a dead duke as the grandfather of her child. There is a story with material enough in it for a circulating library. It revolves, too, precisely as it should, about a murder. It has the great merit, also, of explaining that which no one has understood. It elucidates a mystery, and, incidentally, a crime. On the subterranean gardens of Welbeck Abbey it turns a Welsbach light. What novel could do more?
