E. PRINCESS OLIVE
The story of Mrs. Olive Serres, as nature
made it, was one thing; it was quite another
as she made it for herself. The result,
before the story was completely told, was a
third; and, compared with the other, one of transcendent
importance. Altogether her efforts,
whatsoever they were and crowned never so effectively,
showed a triumph in its way of the
thaumaturgic art of lying; but like all structures
built on sand it collapsed eventually. In the plain
version—nature’s—the facts were simply as follows.
She, and a brother of no importance, were
the children of a house painter living in Warwick,
one Robert Wilmot, and of Anna Maria his wife.
Having been born in 1772 she was under age
when in 1791 she was married, the ceremony therefore
requiring licence supported by bond and affidavit.
Her husband was John Thomas Serres
who ten years later was appointed marine painter
to King George III. Mr. and Mrs. Serres were
separated in 1804 after the birth of two daughters,
the elder of whom, born in 1797, became in 1822
the wife of Antony Thomas Ryves a portrait
painter—whom she divorced in 1847. Mrs. A. T.
Ryves twelve years later filed a petition praying
that the marriage of her mother, made in 1791,
might be declared valid and she herself the legitimate
issue of that marriage. The case was heard
in 1861, Mrs. Ryves conducting it in person.
Having produced sufficient evidence of the marriage
and the birth, and there being no opposition,
the Court almost as a matter of course pronounced
the decree asked for. In this case no complications
in the way of birth or marriage of Mrs. Serres
were touched on.
Robert Wilmot, the house-painter, had an elder
brother James who became a Fellow of Trinity
College, Oxford, and went into the Church, taking
his degree of Doctor of Divinity. Through his
College he was presented in 1781 to the living of
Barton-on-the-heath, Warwickshire. The Statutes
of his College contained a prohibition against
marriage whilst a Fellow. James Wilmot D. D.
died in 1807 leaving his property between the two
children of Robert, after life-use by his brother.
James and Robert Wilmot had a sister Olive, who
was born in 1728 and married in 1754 to William
Payne with issue one daughter, Olivia, born in
1759. Robert Wilmot died in 1812.
Out of these rough materials Mrs. Olive Serres
set herself in due course to construct and carry out,
as time and opportunity allowed, and as occasions
presented themselves and developed, a fraudulent
romance in real life and action. She was, however,
a very clever woman and in certain ways—as was
afterwards proved by her literary and artistic work—well
dowered by nature for the task—crooked
though it was—which she set for herself. Her
ability was shown not only by what she could do
and did at this time of her life, but by the manner
in which she developed her natural gifts as time
went on. In the sum of her working life, in which
the perspective of days becomes merged in that of
years, she touched on many subjects, not always of
an ordinary kind, which shewed often that she was
of conspicuous ability, having become accomplished
in several branches of art. She was a painter of
sufficient merit to have exhibited her work in the
Royal Academy in 1794 and to be appointed landscape-painter
to the Prince of Wales in 1806. She
was a novelist, a press writer, an occasional poet
and in many ways of a ready pen. She was skilled
in some forms of occultism, and could cast horoscopes;
she wrote, in addition to a pamphlet on the
same subject, a book on the writings of Junius,
claiming to have discovered the identity of the
author—none other than James Wilmot D. D.
She wrote learnedly on disguised handwriting. In
fact she touched on the many phases of literary
effort which come within the scope of those who
live by the work of their brains. Perhaps, indeed,
it was her facility as a writer that helped to lead
her astray; for in her practical draughtsmanship
and in her brain teeming with romantic ideas she found a means of availing herself of opportunities
suggested by her reckless ambition. Doubtless the
cramped and unpoetic life of her humble condition
in the house-painter’s home in Warwick made her
fret and chafe under its natural restraint. But
when she saw her way to an effective scheme of enlarging
her self-importance she acted with extraordinary
daring and resource. As is usual with such
natures, when moral restraints have been abandoned,
the pendulum swung to its opposite. As
she had been lowly she determined to be proud; and
having fixed on her objective began to elaborate a
consistent scheme, utilising the facts of her own
surroundings as the foundation of her imposture.
She probably realised early that there must be a
base somewhere, and so proceeded to manufacture
or arrange for herself a new identity into which
the demonstrable facts of her actual life could be
wrought. At the same time she manifestly realised
that in a similar way fact and intention must
be interwoven throughout the whole of her contemplated
creation. Accordingly she created for
herself a new
milieu which she supported by forged
documents of so clever a conceit and such excellent
workmanship, that they misled all who investigated
them, until they came within the purview of the
great lawyers of the day whose knowledge, logical
power, skill and determination were arrayed
against her. By a sort of intellectual metabolism
she changed the identities and conditions of her
own relations whom I have mentioned, always taking
care that her story held together in essential
possibilities, and making use of the abnormalities
of those whose prototypes she introduced into fictional
life.
The changes made in her world of new conditions
were mainly as follows: Her uncle, the
Reverend James, who as a man of learning and
dignity was accustomed to high-class society, and
as a preacher of eminence occasionally in touch with
Crown and Court, became her father; and she herself
the child of a secret marriage with a great lady
whose personal rank and condition would reflect
importance on her daughter. But proof, or alleged
proof, of some kind would be necessary and there
were too many persons at present living whose
testimony would be available for her undoing. So
her uncle James shifted his place and became her
grandfather. To this the circumstances of his
earlier life gave credibility in two ways; firstly because
they allowed of his having made a secret
marriage, since he was forbidden to marry by the
statutes of his college, and secondly because they
gave a reasonable excuse for concealing his marriage
and the birth of a child, publicity regarding
which would have cost him his livelihood.
At this point the story began to grow logically,
and the whole scheme to expand cohesively. Her
genius as a writer of fiction was being proved; and
with the strengthening of the intellectual nature came the atrophy of the moral. She began to look
higher; and the seeds of imagination took root in
her vanity till the madness latent in her nature
turned wishes into beliefs and beliefs into facts.
As she was imagining on her own behoof, why not
imagine beneficially? This all took time, so that
when she was well prepared for her venture things
had moved on in the nation and the world as well
as in her fictitious romance. Manifestly she could
not make a start on her venture until the possibility
vanished of witnesses from the inner circle of her
own family being brought against her; so that she
could not safely begin machinations for some time.
She determined however to be ready when occasion
should serve. In the meantime she had to lead two
lives. Outwardly she was Olive Serres, daughter
of Robert Wilmot born in 1772 and married in
1791, and mother of two daughters. Inwardly
she was the same woman with the same birth, marriage
and motherhood, but of different descent being
(imaginatively) grand-daughter of her (real)
uncle the Rev. James Wilmot D. D. The gaps in
the imaginary descent having been thus filled up as
made and provided in her own mind, she felt more
safe. Her uncle—so ran her fiction—had early
in his college life met and become friends with
Count Stanislaus Poniatowski who later became by
election King of Poland. Count Poniatowski had
a sister—whom the ingenious Olive dubbed “Princess
of Poland”—who became the wife of her uncle (now her grandfather) James. To them was born,
in 1750, a daughter Olive, the marriage being kept
secret for family reasons, and the child for the
same reason being passed off as the offspring of
Robert the housepainter. This child Olive, according
to the fiction, met His Royal Highness Henry
Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, brother of the
King, George III. They fell in love with each
other and were privately married—by the Rev.
James Wilmot D. D.—on 4 March 1767. They
had issue one daughter, Olive, born at Warwick 3
April 1772. After living with her for four years
the Duke of Cumberland deserted his wife, who
was then pregnant, and in 1771 married—bigamously,
it was alleged—Lady Anne Horton, sister
of Colonel Luttrell, daughter of Lord Irnham, and
widow of Andrew Horton of Catton, Derbyshire.
The (alleged) Royal Duchess died in France in
1774, and the Duke in 1790.
Thus fact and fiction were arrayed together in a
very cunning way. The birth of Olive Wilmot
(afterwards Serres) in 1772 was proved by a genuine
registry. Likewise that of her daughter Mrs.
Ryves. For all the rest the certificates were
forged. Moreover there was proof of another
Olive Wilmot whose existence, supported by genuine
registration, might avert suspicion; since it
would be difficult to prove after a lapse of time that
the Olive Wilmot born at Warwick in 1772 daughter
of Robert (the house-painter), was not the granddaughter of James (the Doctor of Divinity).
In case of necessity the real date (1759) of the
birth of Olive Wilmot sister of the Rev. James
could easily be altered to the fictitious date of the
birth of “Princess” Olive born 1750.
It was only in 1817 that Mrs. Serres began to
take active measures for carrying her imposture
into action; and in the process she made some tentative
efforts which afterwards made difficulty for
her. At first she sent out a story, through a
memorial to George III, that she was daughter of
the Duke of Cumberland by Mrs. Payne, wife of
Captain Payne and sister of James Wilmot D. D.
This she amended later in the same year by alleging
that she was a natural daughter of the Duke
by the sister of Doctor Wilmot, whom he had seduced
under promise of marriage. It was not till
after the deaths of George III and the Duke of
Kent in 1820, that the story took its third and final
form.
It should be noticed that care was taken not to
clash with laws already in existence or to run
counter to generally received facts. In 1772 was
passed the Royal Marriage Act (12 George III
Cap. 11) which nullified any marriage contracted
with anyone in the succession to the Crown to which
the Monarch had not given his sanction. Therefore
Mrs. Serres had fixed the (alleged) marriage
of (the alleged) Olive Wilmot with the Duke of
Cumberland as in 1767—five years earlier—so that
the Act could not be brought forward as a bar to
its validity. Up to 1772 such marriages could take
place legally. Indeed there was actually a case in
existence—the Duke of Gloucester (another
brother of the King) having married the dowager
Countess of Waldegrave. It was of common repute
that this marriage was the motive of the
King’s resolve to have the Royal Marriage Act
added to the Statute book. At the main trial it
was alleged by Counsel, in making the petitioner’s
claim, that the King (George III) was aware of
the Duke of Cumberland’s marriage with Olive
Wilmot, although it was not known to the public,
and that when he heard of his marriage with Lady
Anne Horton he was very angry and would not allow
them to come to Court.
The various allegations of Mrs. Serres as to her
mother’s marriage were not treated seriously for a
long time but they were so persisted in that it became
necessary to have some denial in evidence.
Accordingly a law-case was entered. One which
became a
cause célèbre. It began in 1866—just
about a hundred years from the time of the alleged
marriage. With such a long gap the difficulties
of disproving Mrs. Serres’ allegations were much
increased. But there was no help for it; reasons
of State forbade the acceptance or even the doubt
of such a claim. The really important point was
that if by any chance the claimant should win, the
Succession would be endangered.
The presiding judge was the Lord Chief Justice,
Lord Cockburn. With him sat Lord Chief Baron
Pollock and the Judge Ordinary Sir James Wilde.
There was a special jury. The case took the form
of one in the English Probate Court made under
the “Legitimacy Declaration Act.” In this case,
Mrs. Ryves, daughter of Mrs. Serres, was the petitioner.
Associated with her in the claim was her
son, who, however, is of no interest in the matter
and need not be considered. The petition stated
that Mrs. Ryves was the legitimate daughter of one
John Thomas Serres and Olive his wife, the said
Olive being, whilst living, a natural-born subject
and the legitimate daughter of Henry Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland and Olive Wilmot, his wife.
That the said Olive Wilmot, born in 1750, was lawfully
married to His Royal Highness Henry Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland, fourth son of Frederick
Prince of Wales (thus being grandson of
George II and brother of King George III), on
4 March 1767, at the house of Thomas, Lord
Archer, in Grosvenor Square, London, the marriage
being performed by the Rev. James Wilmot
D. D., father of the said Olive Wilmot. That a
child, Olive, was born to them on 3 April 1772, who
in 1791 was married to John Thomas Serres. And
so on in accordance with the (alleged) facts above
given.
The strange position was that even if the petitioner
should win her main case she would prove
her own illegitimacy. For granting that the alleged
Olive Serres should have been legally married
to the Duke of Cumberland, the Royal Marriage
Act, passed five years later, forbade the
union of the child of such a marriage, except with
the sanction of the reigning monarch.
In the making of the claim of Mrs. Ryves a
grave matter appeared—one which rendered it absolutely
necessary that the case should be heard in
the most formal and adequate way and settled once
for all. The matter was one affecting the legality
of the marriage of George III, and so touching
the legitimacy of his son afterwards George IV, his
son afterwards William IV and his son the Duke
of Kent, father of Queen Victoria—and so debarring
them and all their descendants from the Crown
of England. The points of contact were in documents
insidiously though not overtly produced and
the preparation of which showed much constructive
skill in the world of fiction. Amongst the many
documents put in evidence by the Counsel for Mrs.
Ryves were two certificates of the (alleged) marriage
between Olive Wilmot and the Duke of Cumberland.
On the back of each of these alleged certificates
was written what purported to be a certificate
of the marriage of George III to Hannah
Lightfoot performed in 1759 by J. Wilmot. The
wording of the documents varied slightly.
It was thus that the claim of Mrs. Ryves and her
son became linked up with the present and future
destinies of England. These alleged documents
too, brought the Attorney General upon the scene.
There were two reasons for this. Firstly the action
had to be taken against the Crown in the matter
of form; secondly in such a case with the possibility
of such vast issues it was absolutely necessary that
every position should be carefully guarded, every
allegation jealously examined. In each case the
Attorney General was the proper official to act.
The Case of the Petitioners was prepared with
extraordinary care. There were amongst the documents
produced, numbering over seventy, some
containing amongst them forty-three signatures of
Dr. Wilmot, sixteen of Lord Chatham, twelve of
Mr. Dunning (afterwards the 1st Baron Ashburton),
twelve of George III, thirty-two of Lord
Warwick and eighteen of H.R.H., the Duke of
Kent, the father of Queen Victoria. Their counsel
stated that although these documents had been
repeatedly brought to the notice of the successive
Ministers of the Crown, it had never been suggested
until that day that they were forgeries.
This latter statement was traversed in Court by the
Lord Chief Baron, who called attention to a debate
on the subject in the House of Commons in which
they were denounced as forgeries.
In addition to those documents already quoted
were the following certificates:
“The marriage of these parties was this
day duly solemnized at Kew Chapel, according
to the rites and ceremonies of the
Church of England, by myself.
“J. Wilmot.”
“George P.”
“Hannah.”
Witness to this marriage
“W. Pitt.”
“Anne Taylor.”
May 27, 1759.
* * * * *
April 17, 1759
“This is to Certify that the marriage of
these parties (George, Prince of Wales,
to Hannah Lightfoot) was duly solemnized
this day, according to the rites and
ceremonies of the Church of England, at
their residence at Peckham, by myself.
“J. Wilmot.”
“George Guelph.”
“Hannah Lightfoot.”
Witness to the marriage of these parties,—
“William Pitt.”
“Anne Taylor.”
* * * * *
“I hereby Certify that George, Prince
of Wales, married Hannah Wheeler alias
Lightfoot, April 17, 1759, but from finding
the latter to be her right name I
solemnized the union of the said parties a
second time May the 27th, 1759, as the
Certificate affixed to this paper will confirm.
“J. Wilmot.
Witness (Torn)”
* * * * *
The case for the Crown was strongly supported.
Not only did the Attorney-General, Sir Roundell
Palmer (afterwards Lord Chancellor and First
Earl of Selborne) appear himself, but he was supported
by the Solicitor-General, the Queen’s Advocate,
Mr. Hannen and Mr. R. Bourke. The Attorney-General
made the defence himself. At the
outset it was difficult to know where to begin, for
everywhere undoubted and unchallenged facts were
interwoven with the structure of the case; and of all
the weaknesses and foibles of the important persons
mentioned, full advantage was taken. The marriage
of the Duke of Gloucester to Lady Waldegrave
had made him unpopular in every way, and
he was at the time a
persona ingrata at Court.
There had been rumours of scandal about the King
(when Prince of Wales) and the “Fair Quaker,”
Hannah Lightfoot. The anonymity of the author
of the celebrated “Letters of Junius,” which attacked
the King so unmercifully, lent plausibility
to any story which might account for it. The case
of Mrs. Ryves, tried in 1861, in which her own
legitimacy had been proved and in which indisputable
documents had been used, was taken as a
proof of her
bona fides.
Mrs. Ryves herself was in the box for nearly the
whole of three days, during which she bore herself
firmly, refusing even to sit down when the presiding
judge courteously extended that privilege to
her. She was then, by her own statement, over
seventy years of age. In the course of her evidence
a Memorial to George IV was produced,
written by her mother, Mrs. Serres, in which the
word offspring was spelled “orfspring”; in commenting
on which the Attorney-General produced
a congratulatory Ode to the Prince Regent on his
birthday in 1812, by the same author, in which occurred
the line:
“Hail valued heir orfspring of Heaven’s smile.”
Similar eccentric orthography was found in other
autograph papers of Mrs. Serres.
The Attorney-General, in opposing the claim,
alleged that the whole story of the Duke of Cumberland’s
marriage to Olive Wilmot was a concoction
from beginning to end, and said that the mere
statement of the Petitioner’s case was sufficient to
stamp its true character. That its folly and absurdity
were equal to its audacity; in every stage
it exposed itself to conviction by the simplest tests.
He added that the Petitioner might have dwelt so
long upon documents produced and fabricated by
others, that, with her memory impaired by old age,
the principle of veracity might have been poisoned,
and the offices of imagination and memory confounded
to such an extent that she really believed
that things had been done and said in her presence
which were in fact entirely imaginary. No part
of her story was corroborated by a single authentic
document, or by a single extrinsic fact. The
forgery, falsehood and fraud of the case were
proved in many ways. The explanations were as
false and feeble as the story itself. “I cannot of
course,” he said, “lay bare the whole history of the
concoction of these extraordinary documents, but
there are circumstances which indicate that they
were concocted by Mrs. Serres herself.”
Having commented on some other matters
spoken of, but regarding which no evidence was adduced,
he proceeded to speak of the alleged wife
of Joseph Wilmot D. D., the Polish Princess, sister
of Count Poniatowski, afterwards elected King
of Poland (1764), who was the mother of his
charming daughter, Olive. “The truth is,” said
Sir Roundell, “that both the Polish Princess and
the charming daughter were pure myths; no such
persons ever existed—they were as entirely creatures
of the imagination as Shakespeare’s Ferdinand
and Miranda.”
As to the documents produced by the Petitioners
he remarked:
“What sort of documents were those which were produced?
The internal evidence proved that they were the most ridiculous,
absurd, preposterous series of forgeries that the perverted
ingenuity of man ever invented ... they were all
written on little scraps and slips of paper, such as no human
being would ever have used for the purpose of recording
transactions of this kind, and it would be proved that in every
one of these pieces of paper the watermark of date was wanting.”
This was but a new variant of the remark
made by the Lord Chief Justice, just after the putting-in
of the alleged marriage Certificate of the
Prince of Wales and Hannah Lightfoot:
“The Court is, as I understand, asked solemnly to declare,
on the strength of two certificates, coming I know not whence,
written on two scraps of paper, that the marriage, the only
marriage of George III which the world believes to have
taken place, between His Majesty and Queen Charlotte, was
an invalid marriage, and consequently that all the Sovereigns
who have sat on the throne since his death, including Her
present Majesty, were not entitled to sit on the throne. That
is the conclusion which the Court is asked to come to upon
these two rubbishy pieces of paper, one signed ‘George P.,’
and the other ‘George Guelph.’ I believe them to be gross
and rank forgeries. The Court has no difficulty in coming to
the conclusion, even assuming that the signatures had that
character of genuineness which they have not, that what is
asserted in these documents has not the slightest foundation
in fact.”
With this view the Lord Chief Baron and the
Judge-Ordinary entirely concurred, the former adding:
“... the declarations of Hannah Lightfoot, if there
ever was such a person, cannot be received in evidence on the
faith of these documents ... the only issues for the
jury are the issues in the cause and this is not an issue in
the cause, but an incidental issue.... I think that these
documents, which the Lord Chief Justice has treated with all
the respect which properly belongs to them, are not genuine.”
Before the Attorney General had finished the
statement of his case, he was interrupted by the
foreman of the jury, who said that the jury were
unanimously of opinion that there was no necessity
to hear any further evidence as they were convinced
that the signatures of the documents were not genuine.
On this the Lord Chief Justice said:
“You share the opinion which my learned brothers and I
have entertained for a long time; that every one of the documents
is spurious.”
As the Counsel for the Petitioners had “felt it his
duty to make some observations to the jury before
they delivered their verdict,” and had made them,
the Lord Chief Justice summed up. Towards the
conclusion of his summing-up he said, in speaking
of the various conflicting stories put forth by Mrs.
Serres:
“In each of the claims which she made at different times,
she appealed to documents in her possession by which they
were supported. What was the irresistible inference? Why,
that documents were from time to time prepared to meet the
form which her claims from time to time assumed.”
The jury, without hesitation, found that they
were not satisfied “that Olive Serres, the mother of
Mrs. Ryves, was the legitimate daughter of Henry
Frederick Duke of Cumberland and Olive his wife;
and they were not satisfied that Henry Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland, was lawfully married to
Olive Wilmot on the 4th of March 1767....”
The case of Mrs. Serres is an instance of how a
person, otherwise comparatively harmless but afflicted
with vanity and egotism, may be led away
into evil courses, from which, had she realised their
full iniquity, she might have shrunk. The only
thing outside the case we have been considering,
was that she separated from her husband; which indeed
was an affliction rather than a crime. She had
been married for thirteen years and had borne two
children, but so far as we know no impropriety was
ever alleged against her. One of her daughters remained
her constant companion till her twenty-second
year and through her long life held her and
her memory in filial devotion and respect. The
forethought, labour and invention which she devoted
to the fraud, if properly and honestly used,
might have won for her a noteworthy place in the
history of her time. But as it was, she frittered
away in criminal work her good opportunities and
great talents, and ended her life within the rules
of the King’s Bench.
Article by Bram Stoker
Compiled from sources in the public domain.
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It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915
