Another
day and another graveyard. Greyfriars
Kirkyard is probably the most famous graveyard in Edinburgh. This was once due to the enduring story of
Greyfriars Bobby, the little dog who sat on his master’s grave for years after
he had died. Now it is the Harry Potter
franchise that attracts visitor after visitor to this wonderfully gothic place.
I used to
work near to Greyfriars and at lunchtimes would often wander around the
graveyard to clear my head. Many of the
graves and tombs here are steeped in the history of Edinburgh, and page after
page could, and has, been written about their occupants. There is the tomb of George ‘Bloody’
Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate who in the late 17th Century was
responsible for the prosecution and execution of many of the Covenanters. There is the grave of Captain John Porteous,
who was lynched by an angry mob after ordering his men in the City Guard to
shoot into a crowd of townsfolk rioting after a public hanging. Then there is the grave of William
McGonagall, the poet who wrote some of the worst poetry known to man. Here is a little extract from his best known
work, ‘The Tay Bridge Disaster’ -
‘…Twas
about seven o’clock at night,
And the
wind it blew with all its might,
And the
rain came pouring down,
And the
dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the
Demon of the air seem’d to say –
I’ll blow
down the Bridge of Tay…’
Great
stuff!
However,
the gravestone that drew my attention on one of my previous wanderings here was
a simple and unadorned one for another poet and author, Franz Hedrich. I had never heard of him, so did a little
research and found that in the 1880s he was involved in a scandal that shocked
the literary world. His story is as
follows…
Franz
Hedrich was born in Bohemia (present day Czech Republic) in 1823. As an aspiring poet and author in his youth,
he moved in various literary circles and in the 1840s became a close friend of
the poet and author Alfred Meissner.
Hedrich also dabbled in politics and was at one point elected to the
Frankfurt National Assembly as the leader of one of the parties on the extreme
left. He was then arrested and exiled
for his political views.
In the
1850s Hedrich moved to Munich and would often spend his summers with
Meissner. During this time, according to
Hedrich, Meissner came to rely on him to review and rewrite much of his new
work and this eventually culminated in Hedrich writing several of Meissner’s
novels for him, as his ghost-writer. It
would, however, appear that Hedrich was unhappy with this as Meissner had
promised that the work would appear in their joint names. He also felt that Meissner was pocketing most
of the money and ‘awarding him only a trifle.’
In 1871,
in Switzerland, Hedrich married Janet Barron of Edinburgh. He then lived with her in Switzerland, France
and in Scotland. Janet appears to have
been quite wealthy, having inherited a large amount of money after the death of
her parents. Whether this played any
part in Hedrich falling for her we will never know, however being a man who
enjoyed the finer things in life he quickly squandered much of her fortune. Running low on money, he then began to
blackmail Meissner threatening to let the world know that he had written the
novels. It would seem that through this
he obtained substantial sums of money from Meissner for several years. Then in 1885, Meissner could take no more and
made a suicide attempt by slashing his own throat. He survived this but died shortly afterwards
of sepsis. On his death bed he told his
brother in law, Robert Byr, that Hedrich ‘was hunting me like a tiger. He claimed the fortune of my children. He was my evil genius during all my life, and
I was his prisoner, so that nothing but death remains for me to escape his
bondage.’
A few
years after Meissner’s death, a collection of his works was published and
included various novels that Hedrich had written. This seems to have annoyed Hedrich and
resulted in him writing a pamphlet that was then published by the Berlin firm
O. Janke. The same firm who had published
Meissner’s work. In this pamphlet
Hedrich claimed authorship of most of Meissner’s novels and stated that for
almost thirty years Meissner had been claiming to be the author of books that
he, Hedrich, had written. To provide
proof of his claims he included copies of letters from Meissner and these
showed beyond doubt that Hedrich had indeed written several novels attributed
to Meissner. Hedrich also pointed out
that in several of the novels he had used a simple type of cryptogram to encode
the words ‘Autor Hedrich’ to show he was the author of the work.
Robert
Byr, Meissner’s brother in law, then made a reply to Hedrich’s
accusations. He stated that Meissner had
claimed authorship and tried to sell a single novel written by Hedrich. This
deed had caused him such remorse that he had then committed suicide. Byr also claimed that Hedrich was only a
collaborator in some of Meissner’s novels.
The two men had arranged this collaboration as Meissner’s name was well
known, and novels appearing under his name would command a greater price than
those appearing under Hedrich’s.
On viewing
the evidence that Hedrich produced, it was accepted by the literary world that
he had indeed written several of the novels appearing under Meissner’s name,
and had collaborated on others. However,
it was also found that he had overstated his case and claimed authorship of
some novels that were purely Meissner’s work.
Hedrich
did not fare well in this scandal. He
was seen by many as being dishonourable, and too ready to denounce someone who
had been his close friend in order to make money. A leading literary magazine of the time wrote
of him that - ‘Hedrich had dragged Meissner in the mire…but he has degraded
himself beneath the notice of respectable men in doing it.’
Hedrich
spent his later years living in the West End of Edinburgh with his wife. He died on 31 October 1895.
Well,
back to my walk around Greyfriars on what was a miserable and cold February
day. A day so grey that the sun seemed
to have lost its way. A day so damp that
even the stone of the tombs around me seemed to ooze out dark, cold water. A perfect day for a walk around the
graveyard, as there was no-one else stupid enough to come out in this
weather. A perfect day for being
unobserved in leaving a Skulferatu in a tree just across from the grave of
Franz Hedrich.
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –
Latitude
55.946205
Longitude
-3.192669
I used the
following sources for information on the Hedrich & Meissner scandal –
Renfrewshire Independent (Births, Marriages and
Deaths)
Published 14 January 1871
The Scotsman (Alfred Meissner and Franz
Hedrich)
Published 22 November 1889
The New York Times (A Literary Scandal)
Published 18 December 1889
The Publisher’s Weekly (Page 27)
New York
Published 12 July 1890.
Wikipedia articles on Franz Hedrich
& Alfred Meissner
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