The Handwriting of Junius Professionally Investigated by Mr. Charles Chabot, Expert, With Preface and Collateral Evidence

THE English are marvellous for magnificence. The perfecting of accomplishment is a devotion in which they believe correspondently with the Thirty-nine Articles. They absorb India, Africa, North America,— omitting the United States, which were too much English, — as if they had simply to open their mouths, when it is the law of the rest of things to pass down. A sickly, thin person, called Speke, walks across Africa to secure the head of the White Nile; another, fat as the elephants he shoots (name of Baker), stamps his Herculean boots upon the head of the Blue Nile ; Professor Tyndall cuts a chain of ice-steps to the top of Mont Blanc, to read his thermometer there; Franklin freezes for four years, and dies in his attempt to force a passage through the polar ice, where nothing could ever be got by going, but an amazing exhibition of English pluck.

It was reserved for the Honorable Edward Twistleton, one of these Englishmen, to solve that dense enigma, the authorship of the Junius letters. He employed experts for the practical part of this grand enterprise, the conception being his own. Consider the boldness, the cost, of this unexpected feat ; design so lavish, result so commanding. As every one reads the Junius letters, and as all know they are the vitalized essence of political mustard and pepper, their merit as gas-pipes of inflammatory literature needs no comment.

Sir Philip Francis was born in 1740, and died in 1818, On the 21st of January, 1769, a letter signed “Junius” appeared in the “ Public Advertiser ” of London, a gazette printed by Mr. Henry Sampson Woodfall. This is the first of the letters recognized and published in the Junius correspondence, in the original edition. For one hundred years from that date, — to January, 1869, — the literary world enjoyed controversy on the subject

In March, 1868, Mr. Twistleton consulted Mr. Chabot of London, an expert, as to whether a copy of certain anonymous verses could be proved to be in the handwriting of Sir Philip Francis. The gist was, not if Francis did or did not handwrite the verses, but whether his having done so was or was not susceptible of proof.

As material for this, Mr. Twistleton got from Mr. Merivale, who with Mr. Parker wrote “The Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis” (1867), a letter-book, in which were forty-two letters of Francis to his brotherin-law, Mr. Macrabie, and his wife, written from 1767 to 1771, inclusive. Mr. Chabot, from this letter-book, decided that Francis did not handwrite the verses, and, provided collaterally with other letters, concluded that they were handwritten by Mr. Richard Tilghmans, Francis’s cousin and familiar friend (Francis being their composer). The proof of these facts was so complete, and Mr. Chabot did his work so satisfactorily, that Mr. Twistleton, with English heroism, determined to employ such scrupulous fidelity in that quæstio vexata, the authorship of Junius. He had no thought of making this inquiry, previous to his trial of Chabot in the sifting of the anonymous verses. As materials to this, he then collected the various original letters and documents left by Junius, and which we will denote briefly.

There were, then, three letters from Junius to Mr. Grenville (b. 1712, d. 1770), with an essay on the “ Auction Duty,” written in 1768, and two letters to Lord Chatham, the first dated “ London, January, 1768,” and the second, “London, January, 1772.” Then come the sixty-three private letters of Junius to Woodfall, the printer, and a letter signed “ Vindex,” with extracts from the Dedication and Preface of the original edition of the letters. Junius gave his property in these to Woodfall, for the trials and troubles he had in Using, typically, the stings of a political wasp ; Junius himself being sure “not to survive ” if detected.

This mass of document, with the original letters of Francis before described, were furnished to Mr. Chabot, and fifty-two other specimens of handwriting of eighteen different persons, who had been upheld by almost as many critical authorities as the authors, or handwriters, of Junius.

It seems to some as if the Junius controversy had been settled, and the authorship assigned to Francis. So far from this, from the year 1840 to 1868 no less than nine persons, men of good acumen in some directions, ignored Francis wholly, as Junius, and set up others in his place. These persons are Sir Charles Grey, Mr. Britton, the late Mr. Dilke (formerly of the Athenæum), Mr. Cramp, Mr. Coulson, Mr. W. J. Smith (editor of the “ Grenville Papers ”), Mr. Massey, Mr. Jelinger Symons, and Mr. Hayward (the well-known translator of Faust). As we must allude very briefly to the specifications against Francis, we may say they are mostly of two sorts. A number of people believe that he never could have written Junius, his mental material not being fine enough for this first-class diatribization. Thus, Mr. Charles Butler (b. 1750, d. 1832) was willing to allow that Francis might possibly have copied the letters of Junius. Lord Brougham, again, took the same view with Butler about the copying ; but he considered the denial of Francis as to the authorship conclusive, as Sir Philip passed as an honest man. The other class of objections, in which Mr. Dilke, Mr. Hayward, and so many coincide, is, that nothing is more fallacious than the foundation for authorship on a decision springing from the comparison and expertizing of handwriting. And some accomplished flounderers in the Junius controversy just throw out of the question the handwriting altogether, this being the chief fact in the deciding of it.

Mr. John Taylor, in the year 1818, had published in the second edition of his book, “Junius Identified,” the rationale of the settlement of this controversy. This summary Mr. Twistleton has reprinted in this wonderful quarto, the wonder of which is, that it contains a perfect photolithographic fac-simile of each one of the letters and other pieces of writing of Junius and Francis, making two hundred and sixty-seven plates, besides twenty-four beautiful comparative plates, finished in the same luxurious manner as the chief leading resemblances found in the handwritings of Junius and of Francis. The first letter in this work contains more words of Junius than all previous autographs of his ever printed. Besides these, here are fac-similes of the letter and verses which are so important to this controversy, making no less than two hundred and ninety-four plates, each just as good as if it was an autograph ; and, to be added, more than a thousand illustrations of great beauty and nicety by Mr. Chabot, in woodcuts.

A word on the “ Anonymous Note. ” This note is simply the burlesque statement that a copy of verses enclosed with it had been found by the writer, and by him forwarded to the person for whom “they were doubtless intended,” a certain Miss Giles. This was in December, 1770, when Miss Giles, then in Bath, received this delectation from Sir Philip Francis (then plain Philip) ; and it is written in the assumed hand in which the letters to Mr. Grenville are written, in 1768, and to Chatham and Woodfall, in 1770, etc., that is, in the hand of Junius. This one fact is enough to prove Francis the handwriter of Junius. It is certain that Miss Giles received this note, that she knew it was from Francis, that the original was preserved by her, that it is the same here photolithographed ; and an expert shows clearly, and beyond the least doubt, that the same person who wrote the Junius letters also wrote this. So, it may be rightly affirmed, the proper use of this one Junian note in the year 1770, a hundred years ago, would have convicted Francis.

A word on the general form of these letters. Here observe the salutation, the date, the signature. And what we have to say of Sir Philip Francis as a penman, we say now. He accomplished with the pen what no other ever did ; he made for himself a handwriting as good as his own native hand ; he wrote it just as well, sometimes rather better; and he was a fine and original penman. He did a miracle with his pen. So fine, so excellent, is the manuscript he invented for the imaginary Junius, that Mr. Twistleton and Mr. Chabot are really themselves deceived with it, and talk in the same breath of the handwriting of Junius and Francis, as if the one was just as real as the other. Hence the value and importance of this book as a digest of handwriting. If you look at a page of the good-natured letters from Francis to his brother-in-law, Mr. Macrabie, and then at one of his editorial notes to Woodfall (proving him to be their author, if primogenital fussiness can prove anything that way), you will say, if of the Dilke and Hayward branch, no one human hand could have written those two pages. Now glance again at the form. In all these letters — with two or three exceptions, in every letter that Sir Philip Francis or Junius ever wrote —a full stop follows the salutation, the “ Sir.,” at the head of the letter. This is a point that few writers use in this place. Both Junius and Francis put the note of place and time at the top of the letter; the whole is written in one line ; the name of place comes first, with a stop after it, the day of the month with a stop after it, the name of the month with another, and the name of the year with another stop. The name of the month is written in full; thus, the whole : — th

“London, 20. October. 1768.”

These ten points are repeated in all the Junius and Francis letters. Notice the raising of the th, as in the above date, directly over the figures, which is another repetitive conformity. Mr. Twistleton examined more than three thousand letters, without finding one instance of the combination of these peculiarities. Here are sixty letters thus conformed. Again, Francis invariably signs his initial, “ C,” in the Junius letters, between two semi-vertical dashes. This precise form occurs in several of the Francis letters. On one occasion, after “ Junius Identified ” was published, Sir Philip was at a country-house with Mr. William Blake, who, in talking with him about Byron’s getting up of the “ Giaour,” and finding that Francis disliked it, handed him the book at the passage, “ He who hath bent him o’er the dead.” Francis read the lines, wrote down a series of words from the poem, ending with “nothingless” and “changeless,” added below them “senseless” and then rapidly subscribed his initials between two semi-vertical dashes. “ Pray will you allow me to ask you, Sir Philip,” said Blake, “do you always sign your initials in that manner?” Sir Philip merely answered, gruffly, “ I know what you mean, sir,” and walked away. This was in the year 1817, forty-eight years after the 3d of May, 1769, the date of his first letter in these fac-similes, in which initials are thus signed. It was a home-thrust, as Sir Philip honestly denied the authorship of Junius to the last. His answer to the saying of Rogers is well known. “There is a question, Sir Philip,” said Rogers, “which I should much like to ask, if you will allow me.” — “You had better not, sir,” answered Francis, “At your peril, sir.”Again, Lady Holland once asking him if he was Junius, his answer was, “Madam, do you mean to insult me ? ” And he says, in one of his letters to Woodfall, “ I should not survive three days, if I should be discovered.”

In addition to these congruities, Mr. Chabot has identified a letter from Junius to Woodfall, and an original from Francis of nearly the same date, as written on the same kind of paper, with the device of the water-mark, the initials of the maker, and the water-lines and the color of the ink the same.

Passing to the comparison of words and letters in Junius and Francis, it is true that every letter used by Francis appears in Junius, and, with two exceptions, every letter used by Junius appears in Francis. Note this last congruity ; this is its explanation. When a man teaches himself to write in a feigned hand, the peculiarities he invents to disguise his own writing imperceptibly to himself find their way back into his original hand. So it is with Francis, remarkably.

In the first place, let us notice the style generally, and which constitutes the chief success of the feigned hand. The notorious peculiarities of Francis’s writing are a great slope to the letters, a strong bearing on the pen, a large, round, legible hand, and the running of words together. As Junius, he tries to throw out these features ; makes the down strokes far more upright, and rounds them ; contracts the size of the words to one half, and sometimes less ; uses a fine pen, a delicate touch ; and, by more or less insisting on these distinctions, makes the Junian style. There occurs in all writers a variety in the formation of words and letters. And, as well as on the Junius letters, Mr. Chabot has reported at great length on the writing of Lady Temple and others, who are upheld as the handwriters of Junius. We allude to this here, because the absence of much variety in the formation of letters is the extinguisher that drops cumulative oblivion upon the Junian claims of Lady Temple, Sir George Grenville, Dr. Wilmot, Mr. Edmund Burke, Lord Lyttleton, Charles Lloyd, Delolme, Captain Charles Lee, Mrs. Dayroke (the supposed amanuensis of my Lord Chesterfield), et hoc pecus omne in this connection.

No writer could be better furnished in the blind variety of letter formation than Francis. He was an easy, running writer, though a martinet on dates ; his pen is a sport and a spurt ; he thrusts along with it as if it was an electric bristle ; turns his letter is upside down, converts r into i, and runs riot among the small letters at the heads of words by twisting them to capitals, etc. The small letter r is a vivid treasure to his pirouetting shaft ; he produces no less than thirteen distinct, well-established sorts of r’s out of this one bedocked martyr. Thus, he has a well-marked shoulder to the right, an undefined shoulder to the right, an arched shoulder to the right, an undefined shoulder to the left, a tall r with a part, a left shoulder, an undefined left shoulder with a curledup stroke, a well-defined shoulder to the left, a largely developed shoulder to the left, the shoulder to the left, a looped shoulder to the left, a distinct shoulder to the left, no shoulder at all, or r converted into i (without the dot), the upper part angular, the lower part round, and again, no shoulder, the upper and lower turns both angular. See the variety in a single letter ! Such epistolary snails as Lady Temple never made more than one crab r in their uniform track. Francis not only has this variety in forming letters, he has many varieties in their isolation. Thus, he leaves s mostly standing by itself; and when it is followed by the letter h, as in “should" and “shall,” he never loops the h. He inflicts a penalism on the unfortunate i, by isolating it, and making it as small as possible ; and when he means to be sharp, he turns it upside down, and instead of a dot has a grave accent over it ; and, lastly, he is constantly leaving it out. As to the m and n and l, that he docks and snubs and curtails, the poor creatures deserve our pity ; and we fear Mr. Penultimate Chabot must have snuffled for them. For such virtuous liquids as these to be docked of their up - strokes, as experts call it, is about the worst piece of docking; and Francis never seems content with prying a and s and other such either above or below the line, lifting them up or knocking them down till the poor murdered alphabet should cry twenty-four times, and more (consider those double-shouldered double r’s), peccavi, “ I will come down.”

But the main point, the pith and marrow of this circus of alphabetical varieties, is, that Sir Philip, not content with holding them in his own hand, carries them over into his letters of Junius. There they all are ; there are all the thirteen r’s ; all their shoulders, round or sloping ; all the isolated i’s and s’s, upside down or right side up ; all the crucified liquids ; all the terminal pigtails, the medial squabs, initiatory flat-heads, and horizontal double-benders. It seems few things are so difficult as for a writer to distinguish the peculiarities of his own scrawl. Consider the case of Francis ; as he says, “I shall not survive three days, if I am discovered.”Yet so inveterate do the habits of writing become, that, as ChiefJustice Campbell says, the evidence to prove that Francis is the handwriter of the Junius letters is strong enough to convict a man of murder. So unconscious is he of his numberless variations, and that he has carried each and every of them into his Junius letters, that he only makes about four positive changes in all his letters for the feigned hand. These are g, y, h, and d. In g and y he carries the down-stroke with a small turn into a dot, omitting the loop, or the straight down-stroke of his own hand. To the h he fixes a sprawling loop ; yet he is so careless and ignorant of his own variations, that all his Junian h’s that follow s have no loop at all, but are straight as Abraham, like his own. As to the Junian d, he makes a forced alteration by carrying the up-stroke out of all proportion, and turning the curl at the bottom into a stiff right angle.

There are minor variations ; these are the gist; and it should have been said that he tries to begin his Junian sentences with a small letter in place of a capital, and sometimes hits, but as often misses. As to capital letters, there is no essential difference between Francis and Junius. Such is the condition of the letters in the two hands. There is no difference really worth noting in the formation of letters, except such as proves directly its introduction from design. The first letter to Lord Chatham is by far the most guardedly done, Francis having been the private secretary of Chatham the year before he came of age, and, of course, fearing the master’s eye.

The agreement in spelling of Francis and Junius is severely rich, neither of them fearing Johnson. Francis has compleat, pacquet, risque, endeavor, inhance, ingross, masque, stile, enquire, encrease, untill, and more, and these are his familiar, hand-inthe-pocket spelling. And behold ! Junius has precisely the same, goes the same path, and swallows the parquet at every risque in his masque. Twins are not born who run wild with such orthographic dislocations as pacquet in their Siamese unity. There is my Lady Temple, who, although we admire Mr. Twistleton, has been rather impaled by him in this controversy, with her slow, pragmatic, one-sided shoulders to her r's, and her small comfort in the embrace of capitals. Poor thing 1 she cannot put a big b to Brussels ; she spells it brussels ; and she has her til and wch and cod and allways. She has mostly but one full stop in her letters, — at the end. She begins each sentence with a small letter, and her notes, in their general style, resemble some of Junius’s. It is barely possible Francis had seen them, and wished to give an impression, by an imitation, that his were written by Lord Temple. Chabot appears to have overlooked this.

Examine the opening of a note by Lady Temple, written in 1772: “the house sat late the opposition differ’d amongst themselves and the last was triumphant, there was some good speaking ” That is it, verbatim ; she did generously squeeze in one comma. Who can believe that this quiet gentlewoman, nice and old-maidish as she was, wrote the fidgety notes, filled with life and death, to Woodfall? Let us add two points omitted : the one, as to the division of words at the end of a line. Francis was so fine a penman, calculated his words so well, by running them together and spacing, that in forty-three letters of his there are but thirteen divisions ; in each case a colon is used, instead of a hyphen, to make the connection. In the seventy letters and documents of Junius there is but one such division, and here a colon is used. In Tilghman’s four letters there are twenty-four divisions ; he too uses the colon, and was, no doubt unconsciously, an imitator of his friend and patron, Francis. The other point is, as to running words together. This is equally common with Junius and Francis. In the letter of Junius to Lord Barrington, May, 1772, there are sixty-nine connections of this kind, —two, three, and four words run together. In a letter to Woodfall, of November, 1769, nineteen lines long, there are twenty-three such connections. In Francis’s letter to Macrabie, of February, 1770, there are forty-two such connections. These are average instances, and Mr. Chabot has not, we think, specified them.

We should have spoken previously of the fac-similes of proof-sheets of the Junius letters in this volume, and in one of which the date, “29. July. 1769,” is in the natural hand of Francis. In the others the Francis hand in the correction is erased, and the feigned hand substituted. But with a glass Francis’s natural hand can be easily read through the erasure, according to Mr. Chabot.

This book is the first treatise on variations in handwriting, treated by an expert, and, apart from its use in the burial of a literary controversy, proves in the strongest light the value of experience in the handwriting line. Experts will no longer be food for jests. The long war over the Junius letters should now end. No doubt can exist that Sir Philip Francis wrote those letters, and was their only author. As he wrote to Woodfall, he was the sole depositary of his secret ; and he said, also, it would perish with him. But it survived, and is now open to every mind.