Histoires de suspension.. sans suspense (3, 1ère partie)

La mort mystérieuse de Peter Anthony Motteux

Chaste, yet not cold ; and sprightly, yet not wild ;

Tho' gentle, strong, and tho' compulsive, mild :

Fond Nature's Paradox, that cools and warms,

Cheers without Sleep and, tho' a Med'cine, charms.

Né à Rouen et huguenot, Peter Anthony Le Motteux (1663-1718) est contraint de se réfugier en Angleterre (où vit son parrain) à la révocation de l'Édit de Nantes (1685), comme les deux tiers de la congrégation calviniste de Haute Normandie.  À Londres il étudie les langues étrangères, celle de sa patrie d'adoption devient comme une seconde langue maternelle, il se fait traducteur. 
Six ans après son arrivée, il fonde le Gentleman's Journal, un mensuel dont il est le rédacteur en chef, qui fut distribué pendant près de trois ans et  joua un rôle important dans l'histoire du journalisme. On y lit des articles consacrés à la poésie et aux informations, et des commentaires sur l'actualité. Sa devise, le prodesse et delectare ("instruire et distraire") de Horace (Ars poetica), sera reprise par le quasi-homonyme Gentleman's Magazine (1731), première occurrence du mot "magazine". 

Peter Anthony traduit dans un très bel anglais à partir du français et de l'espagnol. Le Tiers Livre de Rabelais est ainsi publié pour la première fois en anglais en 1693. 

But whence art thou inspir'd, and Thou alone

To flourish in an Idiom, not thine own?

It moves our wonder, that a foreign Guest

Shou'd over-match the most, and match the best.

John Dryden

 
Hormis les traductions, Motteux écrit des prologues, des épilogues, un poème sur le thé (the Spectator) et plusieurs pièces de théâtre à succès, comme Love’s Jest, représentée en 1696. Il produit une des meilleures traductions en anglais de Don Quichotte (History of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha). Son journal encense Shakespeare et séduit la clientèle féminine en mettant l'accent sur le contenu littéraire comme base de conversations. Cette idée sera reprise plus tard par le Spectator et le Female Spectator.  

La littérature, toutefois, ne nourrit pas son homme. Peter Anthony ouvre un magasin d'objets artisanaux et d'œuvres d'art provenant des Indes tout en travaillant à la poste principale de Londres. De judicieuses spéculations lui assurent une grande aise financière.

Peter Anthony Le Motteux se maria deux fois, eut sept enfants et n'en mourut pas moins dans une maison mal famée dans d'étranges circonstances. Il allait avoir 55 ans. Quelques données biographiques ici.

G. A. Pellegrini, P.A. Le Motteux en famille

 

 

L'auteur de la chronique parue en septembre 1991 dans l'American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, le docteur William B. Ober (1920-93), était un humaniste, un historien et un histopathologiste.

 

The Man in the Scarlet Cloak (l'homme à la cape écarlate) 

 

Curiosity is supposed to have killed the cat, but the word has a bivalent lexical history. ln any case, it is a desirable trait in a medical examiner. lt need not be, to use its cliché adjective, idle. Curiosity may lead some physicians to perform experiments, but it usually leads me to the reference shelf and the library. One often comes up with nuggets of information, sometimes gold, sometimes pyrites, but a penchant for rummaging in the dust bins of literary biography sometimes leads to the unraveling of a medico-legal puzzle. I cannot recall precisely what motivated me to look into what I naively supposed was the collaboration between Sir Thomas Urquhart and Peter Anthony Motteux in the translation of Rabelais' Gargantuaand Pantagruel, but my initial question was how a man with an obviously Scottish patronymic came to collaborate with someone whose name was obviously French. I was speedily disabused. There was no collaboration. Urquhart (1611-1660) died three years before Motteux (1663-1718) was born, yet their translation of Rabelais has held the field for almost 300 years.

Sir Thomas Urquhart

One cannot pass lightly over Urquhart whose literary career was idiosyncratic. Son of landed gentry in the Scottish Highlands, he attended King's College, Aberdeen, entering at the tender age of 11. He did not take a degree, but he learned enough Latin and Greek "to serve as a basis for the recondite and eccentric erudition he so abundantly displayed in his published works". He traveled widely on the Continent and accumulated an extensive library. A staunch royalist, he was knighted by Charles I in 1631 and served as a colonel at the battle of Worcester (165 1), where Cromwell defeated the royal party and Urquhart was captured and lost his library. Just why he brought his library to the battlefield is not clear. but perhaps he could not bear to be parted from his books. (A more prudent bibliophile would not have risked them.)

Words and language fascinated Urquhart. Typical of his original writings is The Ekskubalouron (16-52), an introduction to a Universal Language that he invented; its advantages included 11 cases in the declension of nouns, 11 genders, 10 tenses, seven moods, four voices, 12 parts of speech, and an alphabet with 25 consonants and 10 vowels- Titles to his other books-7/re Trissotetras (16,15), Pantochronocanon (1652) and Logopandecteision (1653)-reveal his penchant for amalgamating Greek roots into neologisms. 

illustré par G. Doré, traduit par P.A. Motteux

Professor Roe comments that translations of masterpieces rarely become classics in their own right. It only happens when, "by a happy coincidence, the original author and the translator chance to be kindred spirits". Urquhart shared with Rabelais not only a relish for words and language, but also a taste for obscure knowledge, eccentric erudition, scorn for superstition, and an insatiable curiosity. ln 1653 he published his translation of Book I of Gargantua and Pantagruel and Book II the following year. An 18th-century legend is that he died in 1660 in a fit of excessive laughter on being told that Charles II had been restored to the throne-se non èver, èben trovato. At his death, Book III was in manuscript. but not readied for publication.

 

With the preceding biographical and historical preamble, the real subjects of this essay can be introduced. It is the manner of Motteux's death that excites one's forensic interest. The Encyclopedia Britannica tells us tersely that "he died in a London brothel on Feb. 18, 1718. Murder was suspected but those accused were acquitted." The DNB provides  an expanded account. We learn that the scene was at Star Court in Butcher's Row where he went with a woman named Mary Roberts after a stopover at White's chocolate house. Soon after midnight, apothecary was summoned, who pronounced him dead. Mary Roberts claimed that Motteux had been taken ill in the coach and never spoke after they reached the house. Mrs. Motteux offered a reward of ten guineas to the coachman if he would state in what condition her husband had been when he set him down. A coroner's inquest was held, a verdict of willful murder returned, and the persons in custody were remanded to be tried at the Old Bailey on April 23.  Their defense was that Motteux had had a fit' and the prisoners were all acquitted.

 

Robert Cunningham's biography of Motteux adds a few details. He provides a chronology, reprinting Mrs Motteux's advertisement from the Daily Courant of March 15, a royal proclamation dated March 24, and notes that on March 31 the coroner's inquest returned not only an indictment for murder, but also for robbery, alleging that the defendants had robbed Motteux of eight guineas. The defendants were Elizabeth Simmerton, the madam of the house, Elizabeth Shepherd, her daughter by a former marriage, described as a "plyer," Mary Roberts and Elizabeth Williams,  likewise "plyers," and Edward Williams, described  as a bully, that is bouncer. No charge was filed against Percival Hutchinson, another bully. Cunningham also quotes an undated, unsigned marginal note in the British Library's copy of Gildon's Lives of the Poets that reads :

"Mr. M-----x is suppos'd to have been strangled by whores, who forgot to cut the cord. They had ty'ed abt his neck to provoke venery."

 

This suggests assisted autoerotic asphyxia as in the 1791 case of Frantisek Koczwara, and it becomes essential to examine the account of the trial. 

Witnesses' testimony was not recorded verbatim, but the substance of their evidence is given in summary form. The Crown had been diligent in accumulating evidence and was able to trace Motteux's movements on the fatal evening with some precision. Mary Dowty, a neighbor, deposed that she had seen Motteux at five o'clock in the after-noon standing at the door of his house wearing a dark coat and counting some coins which she believed to be guineas. She estimated that there were 20 or more coins. Her evidence was supported by Mary Brown, who also saw him at his door, and she estimated the number of coins to be not less than 30. 

The guinea was a distinctive gold coin, 25 mm in diameter, worth 21 shillings. The only coin that it could possibly have been confused with was the French louis d'or, about the same size and value. Motteux might have acquired some French coins in a business transaction, but the presumption is that they were guineas. Peter Motteux, the older son, stated that his father owned a dark cloth coat lined with orange Mantua silk (subsequently described by other witnesses as scarlet) and that on the evening in question his father went out to purchase tickets for a ball at White's chocolate house. A neighbor, Mr Serjeant, testified that he had accompanied Motteux as far as the Royal Exchange and that they had parted company as the clock struck seven.  

Mr Arthur, a waiter at White's, gave evidence that Motteux came in at about nine o'clock, had some refreshments, and asked for change of a guinea, saying that he had not more than two shillings in silver. He also stated that, while Motteux was so engagedn a coachman entered and enquired for "the gentleman in the scarlet cloak". He also testified that he was told that there was a woman in the coach, but, though he did not see her, her presence was confirmed by some chairmen at the door. Mrs Stanley of the Red-Lyon alehouse near White's deposed that a coachman came in, ordered a pint of beer, and said that he had been waiting about two hours for a gentleman in a scarlet cloak who had gone into White's. He returned later and ordered a quartern of brandy. This was confirmed by William Gibbs, the barman who brought the brandy to the gentleman in the scarlet cloak who was accompanied by a woman. 
 

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