Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur OrtonAnonymous
History
Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton
Anonymous
Impostors and imposture -- Biography
few men were more liked in the regiment than Roger Tichborne,
affectionately nicknamed among them "Teesh." In 1852 the Carabineers
came over to England, and were quartered at Canterbury. They expected
then to be sent to India, but the order was countermanded, and Roger
saw himself doomed apparently to a life of inaction. There is a letter
of Roger's among the mass of correspondence which he kept up at this
period of his life, in which he notices the fact that his mother still
dwelt upon her old idea of providing him with a wife in the shape of
one of those Italian princesses of which he had heard so much, and
with whom he had always been threatened. But Roger was by this time in
love with his cousin, and his love was by no means happy. Roger had
been for years visiting at Tichborne before he had ever seen his
cousin Kate there. He had met her long before when he came over as a
child from Paris on a visit, but Miss Doughty was too young at that
time to have retained much impression of the little dark-haired French
boy, who could hardly have said "Good morning, cousin," in her native
tongue. When Roger was twenty years of age, they met for a few days at
Bath, where both had come on the melancholy duty of taking leave of Mr.
Seymour, then lying dangerously ill and near his death. Then they
parted again; Roger went to Tichborne for a long stay, but Miss
Doughty returned to school at the convent at Taunton. In the Midsummer
holidays, however, they once more met at the house in Hampshire, and
for six weeks the young cousins saw each other daily. Then Miss
Doughty went away to Scotland with her parents; and the youth took
upon himself the pleasant duty of going to see the party take their
departure from St. Katherine's Wharf. October found the party again
assembled at Tichborne Park; and there Roger took farewell of uncle,
aunt, and cousin, to go to Ireland and join his regiment; and Miss
Doughty, whose schooldays were not yet ended, went down to a convent
at Newhall, in Essex. When Roger got a short leave of absence, his
first thought was to visit his uncle and aunt, who had so affectionate
a regard for him. There was a summer visit to Upton, in Dorsetshire,
for a week, when Miss Doughty happened to be there; and there was a
visit to Tichborne in January 1850, when there were great festivities,
for Roger then attained his majority; again the cousins took farewell,
and met no more for eighteen months. No wonder Roger loved Tichborne,
with all its associations. In that well-ordered and affectionate
household he found a tranquillity and happiness to which he had been a
stranger in his own home. In his correspondence with his father and
mother at this time there were no lack of tokens of a loving son; but
no one was more sensible than Roger of the miseries of that life which
he had led up to the day when he came away to pursue his studies at
the Jesuit College, and to learn to be an Englishman. But there was
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