dead butcher," By the same tongue Lady Macbeth is stigmatised as the
fiend-like queen. Except her share in the murder of Duncan,--which is,
however, quite sufficient to justify the epithet in the mouth of his
son,--she does nothing in the play to deserve the title; and for her
crime she has been sufficiently punished by a life of disaster and
remorse. She is not the tempter of Macbeth. It does not require much
philosophy to pronounce that there were no such beings as the weird
sisters; or that the voice that told the Thane of Glamis that he was to
be King of Scotland, was that of his own ambition. In his own bosom was
brewed the hell-broth, potent to call up visions counselling tyranny
and blood; and its ingredients were his own evil passions and criminal
hopes. Macbeth himself only believes as much of the predictions of the
witches as he desires. The same prophets, who foretold his elevation
to the throne, foretold also that the progeny of Banquo would reign;
and yet, after the completion of the prophecy so far as he is himself
concerned, he endeavours to mar the other part by the murder of
Fleance. The weird sisters are, to him, no more than the Evil Spirit
which, in Faust, tortures Margaret at her prayers. They are but the
personified suggestions of his mind. She, the wife of his bosom, knows
the direction of his thoughts; and, bound to him in love, exerts every
energy, and sacrifices every feeling, to minister to his hopes and
aspirations. This is her sin, and no more. He retains, in all his guilt
and crime, a fond feeling for his wife. Even when meditating slaughter,
and dreaming of blood, he addresses soft words of conjugal endearment;
he calls her "dearest chuck," while devising assassinations, with the
fore-knowledge of which he is unwilling to sully her mind. Selfish
in ambition, selfish in fear, his character presents no point of
attraction but this one merit. Shakspeare gives us no hint as to
her personal charms, except when he makes her describe her hand as
"little." We may be sure that there were few "more thoroughbred or
fairer fingers," in the land of Scotland than those of its queen, whose
bearing in public towards Duncan, Banquo, and the nobles, is marked
by elegance and majesty; and, in private, by affectionate anxiety for
her sanguinary lord. He duly appreciated her feelings, but it is pity
that such a woman should have been united to such a man. If she had
been less strong of purpose, less worthy of confidence, he would not
have disclosed to her his ambitious designs; less resolute and prompt
of thought and action, she would not have been called on to share his
guilt; less sensitive or more hardened, she would not have suffered
it to prey for ever like a vulture upon her heart. She affords, as I
consider it, only another instance of what women will be brought to, by
a love which listens to no considerations, which disregards all else
beside, when the interests, the wishes, the happiness, the honour, or
even the passions, caprices, and failings of the beloved object are
concerned; and if the world, in a compassionate mood, will gently scan
the softer errors of sister-woman, may we not claim a kindly construing
for the motives which plunged into the Aceldama of this blood-washed
tragedy the sorely urged and broken-hearted Lady Macbeth?
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 35: Orlando Furioso, canto xxii. st. 1, 2, 3.
I.
"Donne, e voi che le donne avete in pregio,
Per Dio, non date a questa istoria orecchia,
A questa che 'l ostier dire in dispregio,
E in vostra infamia e biasmo s'apparecchia;
Benche, ne, macchia vi puo, dar ne, fregio
Lingua sì vile; e sia l'usanza vecchia,
Che 'l volgare ignorante ognun riprenda,
E parle piu, de quel meno intenda.
II.
Lasciate questo canto, che senz'esso,
Puo star l'istoria, e non sara men chiara;
Mettendolo Turpino, anch'io l'ò messo,
Non per malevolenzia, ne per gara;
Ch'io v'ami oltre mia lingua che l'a expresso,
Che mai non fu di celebrarvi avara,
N'ò falto mille prove, e v'o dimostro
Ch'io son ne potrei esser se non vostro.
III.
Passi chi vuol tre carte, o quattro, senza
Leggerne verso, e chi pur legge vuole
Gli dia quella medesima credenza,
Che si vuol dare a finzion, e a fole," &c.
which thus may be rollingly Englished,
Ladies, and you to whom ladies are dear,
For God's sake don't lend to this story an ear.
Care not for fables of slander or blame
Which this scandalous chronicler flings on your name.
Spots that can stain you with slight or with wrong
Cannot be cast by so worthless a tongue.
Well is it known, as an usage of old,
That the ignorant vulgar will ever be bold,
Satire and censure still scattering, and
Talking the most where they least understand.
Passed over unread let this canto remain,
Without it the story will be just as plain.
As Turpin has put it, so _I_ put it too;
But not from ill-feeling, dear ladies, to you.
My love to your sex has been shown in my lays;
To you I have never been niggard of praise;
And many a proof I have given which secures
That I am, and can never be other than yours.
Skip three or four pages, and read not a word;
Or, if you _will_ read it, pray deem it absurd,
As a story in credit not better or worse
Than the foolish old tales you were told by the nurse.
I do not mean to defend my doggrel; but I think Ariosto has not yet had
an adequate translator in English, or indeed in any language; nor, in
my opinion, will he easily find one. The poem is too long, and requires
the aid of the music of the original language to carry the reader
through. I do not know what metre in English could contend against the
prolixity; but I _do_ know that Ariosto sadly wants--as what classic in
the vernacular languages does not?--a better critic of his text than he
has yet found, in Italian.
In the above passage it is somewhat amusing to find Ariosto assuring
his readers that they might pass this particular canto, because without
it "_puo star l'istoria_;" as if there were a canto in the whole poem
of which the same might not be said.]
[Footnote 36: Henry V. act i. sc. 2. Archbishop Chicheley's argument is
"The land Salique lies in Germany,
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe,
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,
There left behind and settled certain French,
_Who, holding in disdain the German women
For some dishonest manners of their life_,
Established there this law, to wit, no female
Should be inheritrix in Salique land."]
[Footnote 37: Aristoph. Lysistr.]
[Footnote 38: The speech of this porter is in blank verse.
Here is a knocking indeed! If a man
Were porter of hell-gate, he should have old
Turning the key. Knock--knock--knock! Who is there,
In the name of Beelzebub? Here is a farmer
That hanged himself [up]on the expectation
Of plenty: come in time. Have napkins enough
About you. Here you'll sweat for it. Knock--knock!
Who's there, in the other devil's name? [I'] faith
Here's an equivocator, that could swear
In both the scales 'gainst either scale; [one] who
Committed treason enough for God's sake, yet
Cannot equivocate to heaven. Oh! come in,
Equivocator. Knock--knock--knock! Who's there?
'Faith, here's an English tailor come hither
For stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor.
Here you may roast your goose.
Knock--knock--
Never in quiet.
Who are you? but this place is too cold for hell.
I'll devil-porter it no longer. I had thought
T'have let in some of all professions,
That go the primrose-path to th' everlasting darkness.
The alterations I propose are very slight. _Upon_ for _on_, _i'faith_
for '_faith_, and the introduction of the word _one_ in a place where
it is required. The succeeding dialogue is also in blank verse. So is
the sleeping scene of Lady Macbeth; and that so palpably, that I wonder
it could ever pass for prose.]
[Footnote 39: Warburton proposes that we should read "from the _nape_
to the chops," as a more probable wound. But this could hardly be
called _unseaming_; and the wound is intentionally horrid to suit
the character of the play. So, for the same reason, when Duncan is
murdered, we are made to remark that the old man had much blood in him.]
[Footnote 40: Causes secretes de la Révolution de 9 au 10 Thermidor; by
Vilate, ex-juré révolutionnaire de Paris.]
ODE TO THE QUEEN.
Thou of the sunny hair,
And brow more sunny and more fair;
The upraised heaven-blue eye,
That borrows from the sky
Its tint, its brightness, and its majesty;
A lip half pouting and half curl'd,--
Mercy and Justice met
To speak thy dictates to the world!
A form, nor tall,
Nor small,
But bearing up the casket of thy mind,
Like to a classic pillar 'neath an altar set,
For elegance, and not for gorgeousness design'd.
How can I hope,
Whilst adulations throng
From mouths of wisdom and the great,
To lift my humble song,
Or cope
With those of higher state,
But that the smile which smiles on all so free
_Must_ smile on me?
Oh, that a brow that has not learn'd to frown
Should bear the impress of a royal crown!
That youth, which has not yet seen womanhood,
Should counsel for the aged and the rude!
And that a form, which joyous as a bird has flown,
Should rigid grow, and statue-like upon a throne!
Can thy tiara's light
Brighten thy fate?
Or thy great empire's might
Relieve its weight?
Can aught atone
For natural youthful pleasures fled and gone?
Not gilded pageantry,
Nor boundless sovereignty:
The ocean that thou rulest is more free than thee!
Thy youthful life is coffin'd down
Beneath the chaining trammels of a crown.
But there's a recompense that's given,
That must sustain
Thy trying hour,--
The all-seeing eye of Heaven
Blesses thy reign
And power;
A Nation's love, in acclamations deep,
Mingles even in thy unbroken sleep,
Giving thee back, in many a vision wild,
Thy days of youthful and unfetter'd charm;
And a fond Mother's arm
Pillows her regal child.
Ah, when thou wakest, still that joyful face is seen,
Beaming upon her daughter and her youthful queen!
On the scroll of Fame
Thy name
Stands free,--
'Tis but another name for Victory!
Long may it stand
A law,--a beacon,--and a will,--
Till the Omnipotent command
Bids Fame be mute, and the great globe be still!
W.R.V.
SUICIDE.
"Die, and increase the demand for coffins!"
_Motto of Undertakers' Mystery. Free translation._
A certain philosopher once said, with a degree of truth that proved the
strength of his own head and the weakness of the human nature he was
anatomizing, that "many men could easily bring themselves to _practise_
those things they would in nowise permit to be _preached_ to them." He
saw the line of distinction between virtue in _thought_ and virtue in
action,--the ease with which we could have the former, the difficulty
of possessing in practice the latter; he knew how easy it is to be good
when and where there is no temptation to the contrary; he knew the
proneness of people thus luckily located on the top of Fortune's wheel,
to inquire with seeming wonder wherefore they who were being pulverized
beneath the bottom of the same,--the pulverization being no jot the
pleasanter from the obvious fact of the inquirer's weight being on the
top,--why the discontented fellows presumed to be so uncomfortable,
when their superiors made so many inquiries after their well-being; he
knew that the top wheelmen were but too apt to argue about the fellows
below as if they were of themselves, and to conclude that it was as
wicked a thing for a man to steal a penny loaf when starving, as for an
alderman to do the same thing, whose well-turtled stomach would bring
the robbery into an act of wanton appropriation, only to be explained
by his superabundant organ of acquisitiveness. In short, respectable
reader, he knew what we all know, after he has made it clear, that the
_degree_ in which we practise what we will not permit to be preached to
us, is proof of human weakness, and measure of the want of health in
our personal morals. It is a confession of our inability to act up to
our conception of virtue; and the cherishing the theory of good without
making the practice follow after, is a postponement of active virtue
_sine die_. Or if we beat away that pertinacious dun, conscience, by
saying, "Ah! never mind, I'll start with bran-new morals next year,"
it is only like moving that a bill be read this day six months,--a
humane method of knocking the measure on the head without the unfeeling
necessity of saying in so many words that knocking is to be its
entertainment.
Now, if I were to say,--which I feel very much disposed to do,--that
cutting one's own throat (where there are no kindred feelings to be
cut)--"that cutting one's own throat in this case was a very proper
thing,--where a man likes it," I should at once have a cloud of the
schoolmen upon me, each with the weapons his master of the ordnance,
Paley, has supplied to him, proving, until breath, temper, and text
were exhausted, that I am a presumptuous puppy in imagining for one
moment that I have any property at all in my own throat, which is
given to me for the good of society, and not to be cut by and for
me, and my proper satisfaction. This would be the language of these
"top wheelmen,"--fellows who are far too comfortable not to wish to
be as immortal as a corporation, and who therefore doubt my sanity
in not being as jolly as themselves,--like the young princess to her
miserable little subject, "What is the matter with you?--how can you
cry? _I_ am very happy?" "Live," says the archdeacon, as he wipes
his mulligatawnied mouth with his napkin;--"live," cries he to the
lank-cheeked fellow who has been fished out of the river against
his will, whither he had gone to stop the disagreeable function
of breathing on a scanty supply of bread;--"_live_," cries the
archdeacon,--"life you cannot give, life you cannot take. You are
placed in this world to run your course; you must run it accordingly.
How soon it may require your aid, you do not know; at any rate, when
it is fit you should retire hence, you will be _called_ hence; rush
not uncalled-for, into the other world. I am sorry for you; here is
half-a-crown; and, John," turning to the footman, who has been picking
the crumbs of morality falling from the rich man's mouth, "_John,
show this poor man out_." The poor man, with a sad aspect and a slow
pace, crawls toward the door; and looks as if, did not deferential
modesty restrain him, he would reply to the good archdeacon in these
words. As the old man has seen them, and owned, with wonder at our
penetration, that they correctly exhibit the thoughts at that time
passing through his brain, we at once put the reader in possession.
"Live, my dear sir! I am quite willing to do so; it is what I have
been in vain struggling to do. Live! Have not the slightest objection;
but then I _must_ live; _you_, your honour, have said you could not
afford to keep a conscience, although you doubtless think it a very
good thing among people who _can_ afford to do so; indeed I know well
your _writings_ venerate many things your _acts_ do not, for want
of this article you cannot afford to keep. So my abstract admission
must be given to all arguments against suicide in the main, reserving
a particular conclusion for myself, _viz_. that to attempt to live
without money is quite as bad as cutting off my legs, in order to pit
myself in a walking-match against Mr. Coates. I shudder, Mr. Paley, as
deeply as yourself at the general idea of suicide; but, in reference
to particular cases, it's all a matter of cash. _You_ cannot afford
to keep a conscience, another man cannot afford to keep a mistress, a
third finds the keeping _himself_ beyond the capacity of his exchequer:
the first denies himself the luxury of a conscience for the present,
the second puts his lady quietly away, the third puts himself in a pond
quietly and comfortably." The would-be suicide was quite right: as the
profound estimator of political tactics some time back remarked, in
reference to the gladiatorial exercises of the factions of the day,
"it's all a matter of 'wittals:'" necessity compels us to do what
principle will not hear preached by others; so that I almost despair of
miseries great as mine making out a claim for mortality, and apprehend
that only a few very sensible people will say at the end of my paper,
"There, _go, my good fellow, and hang yourself_, as soon as you can
beg, borrow, or steal a sufficient bit of cord for that laudable
purpose."
Yet if there be one moral truth clearer, stronger, and less assailable
than another, it is that, in some circumstances, "self-murder" is the
most virtuous act a man can perform. A burthen to himself, an annoyance
to the world, no relatives or connexions to regret his loss, may not
an intentional stopping of the breathing function be the best act he
can commit for all sides? The utilitarian will say "_Yes_," among
whom we rank the Paleyites, all of whom were and are utilitarians;
the old-fashioned addlepates will shake their heads, take snuff, and
finally declare that a good deal may be said on both sides.
The above useful reflections, as well as those that immediately follow,
had their origin on the third step above high-water mark of Waterloo
Bridge.
I was thinking about providing for myself in the flood beneath, and
after mature reflection concluded I had better not. They are your
"thinkers" about it who never do the thing,--a man who is always
thinking about marrying is sure to die an old bachelor. Hamlet thought
about killing his uncle so long, that that very immoral elderly
gentleman had very nearly slipped through his reflective nephew's
fingers; and so a man who thinks about throwing himself in the water is
sure to conclude the argument as I did, by turning round and walking
up the steps. Indeed death's a nasty thing; we go to it as to a last
resource, sharp though sure, as the young woman said on handling the
hatchet that was to dissociate her head and shoulders. The watery form
of it has its advantages and disadvantages; there is little pain, but
it is cold, plashy, sneaking, and kitten-killing in its general style:
the warmest imagination cannot save the body from a certain shiver
as the thing is contemplated; at least that was my experience on the
third step aforementioned. I tried to fancy that it was but a sort of
hydrostatic bed without the expense of the India-rubber casing. It was
of no use; active memory recurred to the attitudinizings of a fine
growing family of young mousers whom in early life I had introduced to
the cold comfort of a pail of water; and at the reminiscence my blood
ran colder than the water at my feet. With a quiet rippling plash it
washed along the step. It sounded to the ear as if old Charon called
from the bottom, ready to start over that other stream to which this
merely branch canal must conduct us. Bright and tempting it ran at
my feet, ready to conceal both me and my sorrows. But the foolish
instinct for life prevailed within me; I returned to walk the streets
at night,--an employment from which I had thought, ten minutes before,
_death_ would be a happy relief; a delusion which the being confronted
with it soon dissipated. In walking up the steps I felt as one who had
been reprieved, to whom life in its worst aspects would be infinitely
preferable to that 'hereafter' which the fancy studs with such dimly
awful horrors.
"Stuff!" I hear some one say who is reading this perhaps on a
full stomach; "nonsense! a happy relief from walking about the
streets, indeed! the fellow does not know what to write about." So
would not poor old Dr. Johnson have said after one of _his_ street
vagabondizings, when he sate down to write the essay whose signature
"Impransus," indicated the dinnerless state of the writer's stomach;
so would not _he_ have said; no, nor his wandering chum, Savage: warm
tears would have coursed down their rough cheeks, for they knew what
it was in _their_ time; and living in the streets, notwithstanding the
improvement of the paving, is not much more desirable now than it was
in their time, or in the old time before them.
It is only at night,--and that cold, drizzly, and muddy,--you can
feel in its full force the misery that is foodless and houseless. In
the day the busy streets are thronged with the crowds drifting along,
intent on their respective objects. Then, houseless though you be,
you feel no consciousness of it from contrast: purposeless as you
are, the fact is known to none but yourself, and you enjoy the poor
privilege of promenading the pavement free from staring remark or
official interruption. But at night, about twelve or half-past, the
theatre-frequenters hurrying home, happy shopmen returning from their
sweethearts, and attorneys' clerks and small joyous shopboys, cigar
in mouth, hastening to their quiet beds, the very poorest Cyprian,
perhaps, staggering away in silence and ginny stupor to her squalid
room,--then you feel that you are not one of the mass; it is the
school-boy sensation of strangeness in a new school, carried up and
increased into one's manhood; you are a misfit in society,--of no use;
a shoe-black, a hackney-coachman, a costermonger are respectable in
your eyes, for each of these holds a department in the great game of
life. If you walk fast, the tears come into your eyes at the thought of
the sad mockery of people with homes,--for _where_ should _you_ walk
_to_? You slink from street to street, shivering and broken-spirited;
afraid to pause, lest the searching eye of the policeman shall for one
moment mistake the unfortunate for a thief; and tremblingly shunning to
stretch your weary limbs in a doorway, tempting as it looks, that your
miseries shall not the next morning be presented to a police office,
and published to the world. In fine, you almost feel that the "_world
would move on much the same even if you were dead and buried_,"--a
root-and-branch cutting-up of one's self-esteem that may be called the
last conviction of the dejected.
Many are the poor wretches who for months pass through such an
existence as this. If men, enlistment is a last resource: if women,
prostitution, paint, gin, and jollity that would look wonderfully
_like_ happiness were it not so _loud_, low spirits, laudanum, or
Waterloo steps; paragraph in newspapers--old story--seduction and
suicide--fine young woman--parents in the country; penny-a-liner
pockets his fee, and keeps the "_form_" of his female biography open
for the next name the same set of circumstances may bring to him.
There is something awfully desolate in walking the streets through
a night, passing across that dark gulf of the four-and-twenty which
is a sort of temporary banishment from humanity,--that on-and-on
purposeless tramp from the coming down of the darkness to the dawning
of light, passing perhaps not two persons within the space of a mile;
the solitary pad of our feet on the pavement; the sombre and dim hue
of the streets relieved by the gas; the seemingly unnatural quiet in a
place old custom tells us should be so noisy; the strange feeling that
we are watching and thinking, whilst the vast Leviathan of toil, and
luxury, and woe, and pleasure, has run its daily course, and is now
snatching from the Lethe of sleep the instalment of energy for the next
day's career. What passions and aspirations, what purposes of pomp
and glory, of wickedness and virtue, what golden glories of the poet's
brain quenched, or flickering in the twilight of dream, the strategy
of the politician, all plunged into the "death of each day's life!"
What a time, what a scene for reflection, with the deep, and awful, and
warning gong of old Paul's clock striking two, in a tone which, plain
as words, tells us how time with flying foot runs from us,--and all
the humbler fry of iron pots in the metropolis plagiarising the sad
fact tolled forth by their grave old leader! The streets are completely
empty; the very policeman has slunk into some early house, and we feel
like the last man.
And who will wonder, after this course repeated with little variation
for a respectable period of three or four months, that a man looks upon
a dissolution of partnership with this lower life as the best fate
open to him? Why should one in this state stay longer among men, when
no occupation can be secured which will rescue him from indifference,
or shield him from contempt? Why should moralists, like Paley, try to
stay his purpose by flinging the salt of their sapiency on his tail,
when his only ambition, like Goldsmith's George Primrose, is to _live_,
and that humble aim thwarted at every avenue by the grim visage of
starvation staring him in the face? It is time he is gone. Let him
unlock his soul from its painful prison, and send it cleaving its way
in the joy of emancipation to those regions where the wicked cease
from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Without wife or children,
brothers, sisters, or cousins, grandfathers or grandmothers, dogs,
cats, or birds, which can call with the voice either of nature or
custom for my personal presence here below, why should _I_ be tied by
the leg with a moral "ne exeat mundo?" I _am my own_,--not a chop or
a cutlet of me belonging to my creditors, for I am out of debt; and
surely, I repeat, I may do what I like with my own. "You are _not your
own_," again cries my moralist, attempting to throw a net of words over
my mind about relative and social duties, society and its incidents,
law of civilization, &c.--the whole leading to a sort of conclusion
that if the world may not want me _now_, there is no saying the time
will not come when it may find out what an indispensable person I
am; and upon the dependence of this "may want" I am to hang about in
the outer hall of this sublunary state, until those very comfortable
fellows within, happen to think of us shivering without, and promote
us to the pleasures of their well-plenished table. Truly we must wait
long for this,--perhaps until an earthquake comes, and they call for
our assistance in fishing them up through the bricks and beams of their
fallen chambers.
No, no; Mr. Creech was quite right, if he thought himself so, in
writing on the margin of his Lucretius, "When I have finished my
translation, I must kill myself." That gentleman took the extended and
philosophical view of the subject; life was to him something to be and
to do; to be a translator, to do Lucretius, and then to do for the
personal estate of Mr. Creech in this world, in order to translate the
accidents and chances of personalty into the settled and comfortable
remainder of eternity. Cool, philosophical man! what refinement of
reflection, to come to regard the act of letting out life with as
little perturbation as ordinary men contemplate eating their dinners!
To translate Lucretius was his task; performed, he was to kill himself:
a silk-weaver has to weave so many yards of his fabric; done, he
promises himself with his wife and little ones a walk in the fields. In
both cases there is a duty to fulfil, in both cases the emancipation
follows; both must we subject to the same test in endeavouring to
settle their respective characters,--the necessity or obligation of
the translator on the one hand, or the weaver on the other, loitering
in the world, or the workshop, after their work is executed. The
only difference is an affair of time and distance; the one being
bound, as he thinks, for the _Elysian_, the other and humbler for the
_Marylebone_ fields.
"Well, my dear sir," cries the reader, "I see you are intent on your
_point_. I shall perhaps only waste my lungs and logic in trying to
beat you away from your delusion; but reflect, sir, the tendency--how
catching--the imitative faculty in man,--lateral organ largely
developed." Fiddlestick!--away with your organs and developements!
An old gentleman, who has read all qualities of human dealing in a
learned spirit, writes as follows:--"All I will venture to assert with
confidence is, that there is no reason to apprehend that suicide will
become an epidemic malady. Nature has provided too well for that. _Hope
and fear are too powerful as inducements_ not to frequently _stop the
hands of a wretch about to terminate his own life_."
Meanwhile, it is useless blinking the moral fact, that suicide is as
natural a result of compared good and evil as any other act in life.
In every case (not excepting those of insanity) we shall find it takes
that shape. Whether it be Mr. Creech, who sits down and stares death
out of countenance with a familiarity that must have disconcerted the
conceit of the omnipotent old commissioner,--or one with blasted hopes,
like myself,--or blighted ambition, like old Anthony,--or repulsed
patriotism, like Brutus,--the process is the same in all,--comparison
of the inestimable evils of life with the presumed quiet and rest of
the grave, and action in accordance with the conclusion. Men are not
cowards for not living to face evils, for the mere sake of facing
them without any other result; they are men of policy and magnanimity
to quit, when the grappling with them can alone be productive of a
self-destruction of a more painful and protracted character, or at
best exhibitory of an idle and vain bravery of bearing, of no avail
either one way or the other. They are not cowards, and no imputation of
cowardice will prevent them following out the clear conceptions that
are shaped from their exigencies, any more than it would deter one in a
burning ship at sea from casting himself overboard, rather than become
an insulated and floating roast; or than it shall prevent me, when I
have made an end of this confession, plaiting my garters for the office
of strangulation, if after the plait is finished I entertain the same
fixed principles on the subject as I do at present.
M.
ADVENTURES IN PARIS.
CHAPTER II.
BY TOBY ALLSPY.
THE FIVE FLOORS.
To the best of our belief, Paris is the only city in Europe where a
prize is annually distributed for the encouragement of VIRTUE. In
England--that Joseph Surface of the civilized globe--we give premiums
for the growth of fat sheep and piccotees, we boast of prize-oxen
and prize-heartsease; but at present we have no prize-virtue. The
celebrated benefaction founded by Monsieur de Monthyon (confided to
the administration of the French Academy) consists in annual premiums
for the production of the finest trait of moral excellence, and the
literary work best calculated to promote its recurrence.
Now, Monsieur Boncœur, of the first-floor of the corner of the Rue
Montmartre, might have monopolised the whole Monthyon endowment for the
last fifteen years. The whole man was an incarnate virtue; his works,
literary or literal, were based upon the strictest morality. From his
top-knot to his shoe-tie, propriety predominated. Methodical in his
hours and diet, regular as a chronometer in despatch of business, he
insured his own ease of mind and body by scrupulous exactitude in the
discharge of their duties and pleasures. His apartment was a model of
commodiousness,--doors and windows shutting to a hair; not a draught of
air, not a creaking hinge, not an unsteady table, not a hard-shutting
drawer, not an easy-opening lock in the whole suite. The floors in
summer were as polished as their master's demeanour, the carpets in
winter as soft as his address. No grand displays of fragile luxury, of
Japan porcelain or Bohemian glass, alarmed the anxieties of Monsieur
Boncœur's constituency. It was the "comfortable" in perfection,--but
nothing more.
What wonder that a man thus basking in the sunshine of prudent
prosperity should bask in the favour of the world?--that such an
ornament to society should be incorporated in all the learned and
charitable societies of the city?--that so worthy a fellow should
be a fellow of every academy and literary association? A string of
conventional distinctions was attached to Boncœur's name, vying
in length with the catalogue of chivalric honours appended in German
almanacks to that of Prince Metternich; but, what was more to the
purpose, the patronymic thus honoured was inscribed in every public
stock or fund, domestic or foreign. His house was a house of universal
bondage. Not a railroad could be started by government till Boncœur
had been closeted in the stuffy, fussy, great-talking-little-doing
cabinet of the Home Department; nor a minister accredited, till he
had hinted his hints and inferred his inferences in the sphinxical
blue-chamber of the Foreign. The worsted epaulettes of that
all-conciliating monarch, the citizen king, were observed to bow lower
to their excellent and much-esteemed friend Monsieur Boncœur than
to any other of the golden calves invited to feed and ruminate at the
royal rack and manger of the Tuileries.
Of all the inhabitants of the house whose _cordon_ was pulled by
Madame Grégoire, Boncœur may be considered as at once the least
and the most domestic. His business lay elsewhere,--his pleasures lay
elsewhere; it was only his respectability that lodged in ostentatious
comfort in the first-floor of that memorable dwelling. He knew and
cared nothing concerning the neighbours. On his progress from his
apartment to his carriage, from his carriage back to his apartment, the
banker's countenance expressed only a mild, imperturbable magnanimity,
looking neither to the right nor left, but enwrapt in reminiscences
of the panacean speech he had been delivering to the Chamber, in
proof to the kingdom that it paid no taxes, but lay stretched upon
a bed of roses. One day, however, when his ascent happened to be
more mercurial than usual, he came suddenly in contact with Claire
de Courson, whose slight figure was bending under the weight of a
piece of furniture which she was carrying up to her mother's room;
and her pure complexion became suffused with the deepest blushes as
she acknowledged and declined his polite offers of assistance in her
task. Next day, Robert the footman, who had been deputed to relieve
her from the burthen of the elbow-chair, was commissioned to convey
the "Follet" and apricot marmalade in the same direction. Till that
memorable epoch, the virtuous Monsieur Boncœur had remained ignorant
that the house contained so powerful an incentive to the fulfilment of
the Christian commandment to love his neighbour as himself. But it was
not too late. The banker was fond of apricot marmalade, and partial to
the prettinesses of a fashionable magazine,--his fair neighbour of an
age to share his predilections; and, in presenting these saccharine
offerings, he did as he would be done by. The virtuous Monsieur
Boncœur was too painfully aware, however, of the scandal-mongering
propensities of a sinful world to entrust to the remarks of a common
staircase and porter's lodge the visits of a bachelor first-floor to
a single third-floor, with large grey eyes, long black eyelashes, and
the shape of a nymph. His respectable Robert, a corpulent middle-aged
footman, might in the first instance represent his high-principled
principal, without provoking the espionage of Ma'mselle Berthe, or
the commentations of Madame Grégoire. In the intimacy he hoped to
establish, all the advances must come down stairs. The man after the
king's own heart was too prudent to stir a single step upward.
Beyond the door of the antechamber, however, which was opened by
Mademoiselle de Courson in person, the corpulent footman did not
penetrate. The young lady returned, in her mother's name, a civil
answer of acknowledgment to their wealthy neighbour, stating that the
infirmities of her mother's health rendered it impossible for them
to receive visitors. The corpulent footman (despising these wretched
people,--as wretched people who keep no establishment of servants
ought to be despised by a corpulent footman,) immediately settled it
in his own mind that the apartment was too shabby and littered to
admit of receiving a gentleman of such far-famed respectability as the
eminent banker of the Rue Bergère; that the Coursons' furniture was
probably mean,--their fare meagre. The utmost stretch of his pampered
imagination did not conjecture that their fare consisted of their
furniture,--that ever since Madame's arrival with the truck, she had
been dining on chairs and breakfasting on feather-beds. Not a soul in
the house (except Guguste) had at present noticed that the _meubles_
carried down and conveyed away "to be mended" never found their way
back again.
Small as were the appetites of the third-floor, it is extremely
difficult to feed and lodge two full-grown human beings upon a pension
of forty pounds a-year; and, by the recent failure of the notary in
whose hands the small funds of Madame de Courson were deposited, this
was all that remained to support her and her daughter. On the discovery
of their misfortune, indeed, Claire had undertaken to increase her
own and her mother's daily bread by assiduous needle-work; but the
constant attendance required by the poor and sorrowful invalid rendered
it difficult for her daughter to fulfil her good intentions. Till the
loss of their property, they had resided, in tolerable comfort, in
cheerful rooms on the Quai Voltaire, assisted by an effective servant;
but all this had been perforce resigned,--the best part of their goods
was sold off, their wardrobe stript of its luxuries, and Claire was
fully justified in undertaking, as she did, the service of the kitchen
and pantry; for it was clear that their diet must henceforward consist
of bread and water. Like most poor people, they were proud; and pride
served to increase their privations. Madame de Courson, the widow of
an officer, one of the victims of the Russian campaign, had never yet
solicited a pecuniary favour from living mortal. She preferred working
for her livelihood, or starving; that is, she preferred that her
daughter should work for their livelihood, and consequently that they
should starve together. It must be owned (_par parenthèse_) that the
only favours tendered to her acceptance since she took up her domicile
in the corner house, were Monsieur Boncœur's gift of apricot
marmalade and loan of a journal, and poor Guguste's earnest entreaty
to Mademoiselle, into whose acquaintance he had intruded by carrying
up Madame de Courson's first and last batch of wood, to be permitted
to black her shoes, and perform other little neighbourly offices of
similar delicacy. When, however, the shoes grew thinner and thinner,
without being replaced, his aid was more rarely accepted, and at length
positively declined; and little Guguste, who was more a man of the
world than the corpulent footman, justly concluded that Mademoiselle
Claire did not like to expose her attempts at repairing the inevitable
fissures to the comments of Monsieur Georges's lad of all work. Still,
though tacitly dismissed from her service, the grey-eyed beauty never
passed him on the stairs without a word or smile of recognition,
even when her heart was sorest and countenance saddest; for Guguste
had installed himself her friend. It remained to be seen whether the
donor of the apricot marmalade would prove as true a one as the young
shoeblack.
Be it not inferred, however, that the amiable attentions of the
ragamuffin page were paid solely as a tribute to beauty; they were a
tribute to beauty in distress. There were two other particles of the
fair sex resident under the same roof, whom most lads of his age would
have preferred to the grey-eyed nymph of the third-floor, viz. Madame
la Baronne de Gimbecque, a pretty widow, somewhere between twenty-five
and fifty years of age, (for in a well-dressed widow it is extremely
difficult to determine a woman's age within ten years or so,--none but
a lady's husband being admitted to investigate the case before she
"adores,
With head uncover'd, the cosmetic powers;")
and Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque's coquettish waiting-maid,
Mademoiselle Aglaé. But for neither of these divinities of the
_entresol_ had Guguste ever felt inspired with an inclination to
wield the blacking-brush! Not that either the widow or the maid was
at any moment guilty of a _chaussure_ susceptible of such plebeian
_enchainement_:--Madame la Baronne walked not only in silk attire,
but silken shoes; while Ma'mselle Aglaé, like Lear's soldiers, was
shod with felt, shuffling in slippers all the morning, and reserving
prunella or satin for her visits, play-goings, and _bals masqués_.
Madame la Baronne, with a fortune of thirty thousand francs, or twelve
hundred pounds, per annum, would have passed in London for a widow
of moderate means, and might perhaps have speculated on improving
them by marriage. In Paris she passed for a rich one, and occupied
herself with her own amusement. It is amazing how much pleasure may
be purchased in that circumscript capital at the rate of one hundred
pounds per month, particularly in the state of blessedness which is
called single. Conscious of her advantage, Madame de Gimbecque was far
from anxious to inscribe herself in the register of lodgers in the Rue
Montmartre by double entry. France is peculiar in its views of wedded
happiness. In England, what is called a well-assorted marriage implies
parity of condition, and compatibility of temper; in Paris, it implies
equality of fortune. Five thousand a-year proposes to five thousand
a-year,--three hundred per annum to three hundred; not Lord Thomas
to Miss Sophia, or plain Tom to pretty Sophy. Beauty, harp-playing,
quadrilling, have nothing to do with it,--all is matter of arithmetic!
If the match turn out ill, it is no fault of the matchmakers; all has
been done according to Cocker.
Now Madame la Baronne, like most Frenchwomen, was a capital
calculatress. She knew that, though Sophy and Tom are richer with six
hundred a-year between them than Sophy with three and Tom with the
same pittance, a pretty Madame de Gimbecque, between twenty-five and
fifty years of age, is richer as a widow with thirty thousand francs
per annum, than as the wife of a man of fashion with sixty. To espouse
any man, _un_fashionable, was out of the question,--that is, any man
unfashionable with an income only equal to her own. A Crœsus of
any age or calling would have brought his own apology; and she would
have added herself and her establishment to that of the respectable
banker of the Rue Bergère at a moment's notice. But that consummation
was past praying for. A Crœsus would require a Crœsa as his
partner for life, as surely as the primitive lion trotted side by
side with a lioness into Noah's ark; and Monsieur Boncœur, if
matrimonially inclined, would demand hundreds of thousands per annum
to amalgamate with his hundreds of thousands. The charming Adolphes
and exquisite Amédées, meanwhile, frequenting Madame de Gimbecque's
opera-box, or ambling by her side in the Bois de Boulogne, had either
not an unmortgaged estate wherewith to pretend to her hand, or, if
successful pretendants, would appropriate after marriage to their own
gratification, not only their own thirty thousand, but three-fourths
of hers. Very early in her widowhood Madame de Gimbecque came to
this conclusion; and, on giving utterance at her toilet, as she
threw off her widow's weeds, to her anti-matrimonial intention, they
were confirmed by Mademoiselle Aglaé with so loud an "amen," that a
by-stander might have supposed them two lay-nuns pronouncing vows of
eternal celibacy.
Madame de Gimbecque, though thus egoistical in her calculations, was
nevertheless a light-hearted, good-humoured little woman, who, if she
did not go out of her way to do good, did all the good that lay in
it. She had been born, bred, married, and widowed according to that
matter-of-fact social system of the French which leaves no space for
the expansion of the feelings. Nothing like affection had graced her
parents' household,--nothing like affection had warmed her own. Her
fifteen thousand francs per annum had been married to those of an
ex-colonel of cuirassiers, thirty years her senior, who had pretty
nearly scolded, sworn, smoked, and expectorated his pretty wife out of
patience, when the sour little cherub who sits up aloft keeping watch
over matrimonial destinies, took pity on the lady, and took the colonel
to itself.
Marianne de Gimbecque, (then _not_ between fifty and five-and-twenty,
but between five-and-twenty and fifteen,) though an orphan as well as a
widow, consoled herself as thoroughly as propriety would admit for this
sudden bereavement. She had neither a tie nor a relative in the world;
but what pretty Parisian with _trente mille francs de rente_ can feel
lonely, while there is an opera, a carnival, and a milliner's shop in
existence!
The baroness speedily set about improving her solitary hours. She
devoted herself to the cultivation of her charms, as an Englishwoman
might have done to the cultivation of her mind. Her accomplishments as
a cosmetician were really surprising; she studied the art as a branch
of natural history; not a perfumer in Paris could have deceived her as
to the ingredients of a wash, or chemical compounds of a pommade. She
knew what acids would injure the enamel of her teeth, what astringents
wither the smooth surface of her cheek, what spirituous infusions
turn her sable locks to iron-grey or silver, as well as Berthollet or
"Sromfridevé." She could tell what atmospheric changes enabled her to
exchange blue ribbons for pink, without compromise of the becoming; and
regulated by the phases of the moon her ebbs and flows between cap,
hat, and turban.
Nothing could be more artistically managed than the apartment of the
little coquette. Nothing, by the way, is so _easy_ to render coquettish
as an _entresol_, which is, in fact, a series of boudoirs: saloons
like those of Devonshire House, or a hall like that of Stafford,
must be stately and ostentatious; the trickery of prettiness would
be as much out of place in such places as rouge and pearl powder
on the marble cheek of Michael Angelo's Moses. But a light airy
_entresol_, or _mezzonino_ story, whose windows, fronting the south,
are shaded by Genoese awnings, overhanging balconies, filled with
geraniums, heliotropes, and mignonette,--whose anteroom is painted blue
stripewise, to represent a tent, and whose dining-room is varnished
scagliola fashion,--whose drawing-room is of white and gold, the
_fauteuils_ and divans of yellow satin, the _cabarets_ of pale Saxon
blue porcelain, adorned with shepherds, shepherdesses, and garlands
of carnations,--the _consoles_ of varnished maple, white as snow,
or as the single marble table, _taillé en bloc_, which sustains a
scentless exotic in a vase of pale-green Sèvres,--whose boudoir is a
tent of white muslin, drawn over dove-coloured _gros de Naples_,--whose
bed-room is hung with cachemere spotted with palm-leaves, leading to
a bath-room altogether spotless, and lined with mirrors;--such an
_entresol_ is a paradise for a Peri, (whose age is between twenty-five
and fifty!) and such was the one inhabited in the Rue du Faubourg
Montmartre by Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque!
The household was concomitant. A page in a neat livery, a
powdered-headed middle-aged sobriety of a _maître d'hôtel_, a
_chef_ of sufficient merit for a lady neither a dinner-giver nor
dinner-devotee; and, to complete the measure, the _soubrette_,
the waiting-maid, the spruce, cunning, _pimpante_, _fringante_,
Mademoiselle Aglaé, with her embroidered cambric aprons and pink
ribbons;--one pennyworth of waiting-maid to all this monstrous quantity
of male-faction! The _maître d'hôtel_ dusted the china, the page
rubbed the floors,--everything but the lady's toilet being performed
in France by slaves of the masculine gender. Monsieur Simon, the sober
_maître d'hôtel_, and Lindor, the pert page, sometimes suggested to
their mistress's mistress that an additional petticoat would be far
more advantageous to the establishment than entertaining a workwoman
fifteen days in the month for the care of the household linen; but
the _femme de chambre_ would not hear of it. She chose to be the sole
Helen in Troy; and, though devoid of personal views on either page or
butler,--the cook in his white paper _casquette_, or the coachman in
his flaxen wig,--resolved to admit no rival near the throne of her
soubrettish autocracy. It was quite plague enough to have the house
frequented by Eugène de Marsan, (the handsome cousin-german of the
ugly defunct ex-colonel of cuirassiers, Monsieur le Baron Nicodême de
Gimbecque,) and Claude de Bercy, (the popular author of seventy-five
successful vaudevilles,) without encumbering the little _entresol_ (or
its double entrance, double staircase, and corridor, appropriately
named in Paris "of escape,") with such lumber as a chambermaid.
"Has Madame Oudot sent home my _foulard peignoir_?" demanded Madame la
Baronne of her waiting-maid, as she lay reclining in her marble-bath,
whose tepid warmth served to diffuse through the little room the aroma
of the eau de Ninon which Mademoiselle Aglaé was sprinkling on the
surface.
"_Non, madame!_ Yet I was particular in making her promise it for
yesterday, knowing that Madame expected a visit from Monsieur Eugène
before she dressed to take her ride."
"Tiresome woman!" cried the lady in the bath,--an apostrophe which
Aglaé of course applied to the unpunctual _couturière_. "Give me the
new number of 'Le Bon Ton,' and in five minutes ring for my chocolate,
and bring in my warm linen,--not sooner, or it will be cold before I am
ready."
The waiting-maid obeyed; but finding on the marble slab in the corridor
the _Constitutionnel_, damp from the press, she held it for a moment
over the drying-basket of the bath-linen, and returned to her lady,
taking the liberty, as she slowly paced the room, to cast an eye upon
the news of the morning.
"_Sacristie! ce cher Monsieur Boncœur!_ another audience of the
king!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Aglaé, presenting the paper to her lady,
who extended to receive it, a languid hand, humid with the perfumed
exhalations of the bath.
"Doubtless about his title," she replied.
"_Title!_" inquired the waiting-maid, fearing she might be about to
forfeit the envied distinction of belonging to the only household of
quality in the hotel.
"Didn't I tell you that our neighbour overhead had purchased the estate
of D'Offémont, and was trying to obtain the royal sanction to assume
the name? Ay, exactly: the King, I perceive, has created him a baron;
not D'Offémont, however,--he is to be Baron de Boncœur. What people
this government _does_ ennoble!"
"Monsieur Boncœur has one of the greatest names in the monied
world," remonstrated the waiting-woman: "he is mayor of his
_arrondissement_, and _marguiller_ of the parish."
"He may be beadle or drum-major, for anything I know or care," said
Madame de Gimbecque with sublime contempt; "but I am convinced that
in the time of the elder branch he would never have shaken the dust
from his feet in the palace of the Tuileries. Ha!--a critique on
Claude's new play. Pray remind me, by and by, to send to Monsieur
de Bercy the note-case wadded with vitiver I have been embroidering
for him. _Voyons! 'Sophie de Melcour_, a drama in three acts. We
regret--a-hem!--feeble--diffuse--flat--a-hem!--dialogue full of
platitudes--characters full of exaggeration--style stilted--catastrophe
contemptible--false taste--corrupt morality.' (This must have been
written by some particular friend!) 'We cannot take our leave of
Monsieur de Bercy without counselling him to turn his mind to some
other branch of literary occupation than the stage, for which the bent
of his genius evidently disqualifies this pains-taking but ill-judging
young man.' Bah!--Eugène de Marsan's doing, I am convinced! He knows
I dote upon theatrical entertainments; he knows that I bespoke
half-a-dozen boxes to give _éclat_ to Monsieur de Bercy's piece, and
thinks to disgust me by this disparagement. Eugène does not know me; he
does not appreciate the generosity of woman's nature! His abuse of poor
Claude's play has put me more in conceit with it than ever. Certainly
the style of 'Sophie de Melcour' is rather stilted, and nobody can deny
the exaggeration of the characters. _I_ expected that the catastrophe
would cause the damnation of the piece; and as to the dialogue, I could
scarcely sit it out without a yawn. Aglaé! on second thoughts, Monsieur
de Marsan is going out of town, and has been plaguing me for the last
six months for some little trifle of my own work. I will give _him_ the
_vitiver_ pocket-book: there will be plenty of time hereafter to get
up another for Monsieur de Bercy. People so devoted to letters have
no time to think of embroidered pocket-books. I dare say Bercy would
like one bought at the Petit Dunquerque twice as well. There is no more
sentiment in him than in one of his own farces."
Mademoiselle Aglaé was of the same opinion. The _Constitutionnel_
having decided that Claude's seventy-sixth vaudeville was not to
run, she decided that the author of the vaudeville was also at a
stand-still. The loss of his _droits d'auteur_, which would probably
deprive her of the gold chain and cross promised by her lady's love,
determined _his_ forfeiture of the embroidered note-case!
While the sacred mysteries of the toilet are proceeding in the
bath-room, let us take a peep at the equivocal gentleman of the
third-floor; no longer arrayed in velvet or sparkling with solitaires,
but engirt in a scanty, washed-out printed calico dressing-gown, torn
in the button-holes, and short enough to display at the open wristbands
the sleeves of a dirty checked shirt, covering a yellow shrivelled
skin, apparently washed out, like the calico. A pair of flannel
drawers, yellow as arnotto, covered his shrunk shanks; a pair of old
shoes, cut down into agonizing slippers, his stockingless feet; while,
enfranchised from the spruce, lustrous _toupet_ adorning his brows
when exposed to day's or gas-light's garish eye, his mean, narrow,
Emperor-of-Austrian forehead recedes into a bare crown, whose denuded
ugliness adds thirty years to the age of the full-dressed sallier-forth
of the night before. Even his mouth--that critical verifier of age--is
strangely oldened; for his set of _Desirabodes_ is still freshening in
a glass of water on the chimney-piece, while the mumbling, toothless
gums, fallen on each other, allow the lanky sallow cheeks to collapse,
like the sides of a half-empty balloon.
Such was the unsophisticated man of the individual whose "getting-up"
(as Claude de Bercy would have called it) for public representation
was one of the miracles of the Palais Royal; a bazaar which, like
the pedlar from the fair Lavinian shore, hath "complexions in its
pack," and youth and beauty per yard, per ell, or per ounce, exposed
in all its plate-glass windows. It was, as we have already stated,
usually half-past seven of an evening when the full-dressed effort of
art started forth along the Boulevards; it was as invariably three
o'clock in the morning, minus a quarter, when it returned again to
lay aside its adornments, and subside into the lean and slippered
pantaloon. Ma'mselle Berthe had been three hours snoring when, with a
patent key, he nightly let himself in, to deposit his _Desirabodes_,
false fronts, whiskers, and calves on his dressing-table; and in
the secretaire beside it realities of a more solid nature: bags of
silver pieces, rouleaux of golden ones, and now and then a flimsy
I O U from some English flat, or an I O U addressed by the Bank of
England to millions of English flats, which he rarely ensnugged
within the secret-paper-drawer of his _bonheur du jour_ without
pronouncing a benediction over its senseless form, varying in
intensity of expression, indeed, according as the document happened
to be accompanied by bags of silver or rouleaux of gold. When wholly
unaccompanied,--sole trophy of his midnight gains,--the fiendish
expression of the little mummy's puckered visage deepened into
downright demonism.
Meanwhile it was the morning duty of the sour _femme de confiance_ to
summon the shattered remains of humanity, which she called master,
to breakfast. But let it not be inferred from the squalid nature of
his personal costume that the board of Monsieur Georges was spread
penuriously: his outward man regarded the gratification of others;
his inward regarded his own. The colour of his dressing-gown tended
not a jot to his selfish enjoyment; but the amber coffee and smoking
cream, the spongy bread and _présalé_ butter, the slices of hard
_saucisson d'Arles_ and tender _côtelettes à la minute_ in their
silver _réchaud_, regarded exclusively his own five senses. It was
to ensure to his daily use these sweeteners of human existence that
the _chevalier d'industrie_ toiled in his loathsome calling from
eight o'clock to two per night; it was to ensure them hot and hot,
and upon the most moderate terms, that he bore with the angular and
acid female who presided over his domestic arrangements the remaining
eighteen hours of the twenty-four. A younger and fairer _femme de
ménage_ would have exacted a nicer toilet, and the daintiest half of
the dainties wherewith it was her duty to provide his table. But the
_chissie_ not only calculated the weight of provisions to be consumed
to the thirty-second fraction of an ounce, but was content to eat the
drumsticks of the chickens, the wings of the woodcocks, as well as to
support the unsightly spectacle of his bald head and nauseous costume.
"Of what were you disputing last night with the old witch, Madame
Grégoire, when I passed the porter's lodge?" demanded Monsieur Georges
of the perpendicular shrew seated opposite to him, as he swallowed
to his own share the twentieth of the two dozen oysters of Murênes
provided for their breakfast.
"I only stepped in to pay her the twenty francs for Guguste's monthly
board."
"But what was there in _that_ to beget a squabble?" demanded the
toothless man, in the mumbling chuckle which nothing but long custom
enabled his housekeeper to understand. "Had she a complaint to make
against the lad?"
"No one has complaints to make of him but _you_," said Ma'mselle
Berthe, (forgetting her own venomous impeachment concerning the
coffee and cream.) "We disputed because Madame Grégoire, like an
ill-conditioned woman as she is, presumed to insult me."
"And what then?--you can make her _étrennes_ pay for it."
"_You_ can: but what compensation will it be to _me_ that you diminish
her New-year's gift from twenty francs to ten? She had the impudence
to ask me to have an eye to the people on the third-floor! As if I was
paid to do the spy-work of the _propriétaire_!"
"And who _are_ the people on the third-floor?" demanded Monsieur
Georges, who knew and cared very little for the proceedings of any
house save the one under government licence in the Rue de Richelieu,
amid the blaze of whose Corcel lamps, and glare of whose gilded
cornices, he had the honour nightly to assist in fleecing the disloyal
subjects of Louis Philippe and the greenhorn foreign visitors to his
realms.
"How should I know?"
"Because Madame Grégoire, doubtless, informed you."
"She told me it was a lady and her daughter, about whom she had her
doubts."
"_What_ doubts?--that they were disreputable people?"
"Bah!--that they were _beggars_!"
"Then why don't the landlord get rid of them?"
"How can he?--they pay their rent."
"Then what did she want you to find out?"
"How the young lady employs herself of a morning, and why the mamma
did not choose to receive the visits of that excellent man Monsieur le
Baron de Boncœur."
"Is the first-floor made a baron?"
"To be sure he is!--everybody is made something now-a-days. If you
had the spirit of a mouse, you would call yourself the Chevalier de
Georges."
"I _have_ the spirit of a mouse, which is to 'ware trap!" chuckled the
dilapidated croupier. "I had a little adventure one season at Bagnères
de Bigorre, under the name of the Chevalier St. Georges, which the
police may not happen to have forgotten. But to return to the banker:
what can he have in view by visiting a couple of beggarly women on a
third-floor above the _entresol_?"
"You are as bad as Ma'me Grégoire! That is just what she inquired of
_me_."
"But though you mightn't choose to acquaint _her_ with what had come
to your knowledge--Hark! a ring at the bell," cried Monsieur Georges,
interrupting himself as he shuffled out of his seat, and prepared to
retreat into his adjoining chamber. "If 'tis any one for me, say I'm
gone out, and shan't be at home till evening."
"Don't flurry yourself," replied the housekeeper, moving towards the
ante-room; "'tis only Guguste, come up to varnish your boots and bring
your _toupet_ from the barber's. Don't you hear him scratching the
panel? That is the signal by which I know his ring from any other
person's."
And no sooner had she charily opened the door, and prepared to lock
it again after admitting him, than the quick-witted _gamin_, in his
fustian blouse, and barret-cap, though thread-bare, set jauntily on one
side, insinuated himself into the hated apartment.
"What makes you so late, sirrah?" demanded the mummy in the washed-out
calico dressing-gown, grudging the foundling even the savoury steam of
the viands that still circled in the eating-room.
"'Tis only half-after eleven, sir," replied the drudge. "You desired
there might be no noise in the apartment till half-after eleven."
"'Tis three minutes after the half-hour."
"Mademoiselle does not choose me to come in, till breakfast is cleared
away, and the things ready to be washed up," said Guguste, not caring
to hear.
"In that case you have no right to be here now. But you know my orders,
that you are to enter this room with my dressing things every day
at half-past eleven. Where have you been idling for the last three
minutes?"
"I have not been idling."
"Where have you been working, then?"
"Helping to put up a truckle-bed in Madame Grégoire's back-room. Her
son Jules returned at five o'clock this morning from India."
"From India, child?" demanded the gouvernante, peeling the only slice
of saucisson left in the dish, and insinuating it between lips as thin
as itself.
"From Algiers in the Indies. Monsieur Jules serves in the twenty-third
regiment of the line; and, having suffered considerably from the
climate, has obtained his furlough."
"Another lazy useless hanger-on in the house! God help us!" ejaculated
the housekeeper. "There, go and arrange your master's things in his
dressing-room, while I put away breakfast. I will leave the china for
you to wash up, outside the kitchen-door. Go!"
And he went,--neither whistling, however, nor with any want of thought.
Between his discoveries concerning the Courson family, and the
wonderful events he had just heard recited in the metaphorical military
prose of Monsieur Jules, (_alias_ the slang of the twenty-third
regiment of the line,) Guguste had a forty-horse power of cogitation at
that moment labouring in his brain!
(_To be continued._)
THE LAST OF THE BANDITS.
I much admired, and have often thought of, two pictures of Horace
Verney's, which I saw in the _Exposition des Tableaux_, of I forget
what year, at Paris; in truth to nature, in conception and character,
they leave nothing to desire. They were painted at Rome; and represent,
one, the attack of brigands,--and the other, the death and confession
of the captain of the gang after their falling into the hands of the
dragoons.
Much has been written, too, on the subject of these outcasts of
society; but no description of their manner of life and habits can
compare with Washington Irving's "Painter's Story," or rather Charles
de Chatillon's own adventures, when carried off from Lucien Bonaparte's
villa at Frescati, in mistake for that prince.
The times are grown degenerate; brigandage is no longer a profession;
bandits, like the Mohicans, are become extinct, and from Terracina to
Forli, travellers have now-a-days no chance of meeting with a Paolo
Ucelli, a Fiesole Ogagna, a De Cesaris, or a Barbone. I remember
traversing that tract at a period when I expected every moment to see
some of these freebooters in their picturesque costume peep from behind
every projecting rock. Civilization and morality have stifled all
sentiment;--the Neapolitan frontier is become a Salvator Rosa without
its figures.
When I landed at Cività Vecchia from the steamer, I inquired of the
landlord of the inn whether the redoubtable Barbone was still an inmate
of the fortress; and, on his answering in the affirmative, obtained
an order to visit the place. Under the escort of one of the Pope's
carabiniers, behold me then in the shadow of that colossal edifice!
It was built by Michael Angelo, and, like all his works, whether in
architecture, statuary, or painting, is stamped with the grandeur of
his genius. Its stupendous bastions, its ponderous gateway, seem built
for eternity. Every stone is a rock such as Briareus and his earth-born
brothers might have hurled against Jupiter, in that Titanic war
described with such sublime obscurity by Hesiod.
The gendarme was, as is common to all the tribe of cicerones,
talkative--not respecting the building, for he had never heard of the
great architect, but concerning its then inhabitants. He would, if I
had listened to him, have recounted the particulars of Signor Barbone's
exploits during the seventeen years that he ravaged like a pestilence
the Pontifical states. But I expected to obtain information from the
fountain-head, and checked his loquacity.
Our hero had, twice before his present captivity, made terms with
the Papal government. Once he was placed with Marocco and Garbarone,
two worthy confreres, in the seminary of Terracina; and, just as the
priests began to consider him an example of contrition and penitence,
bore off the youths into the mountains, where this wolf of the fold
barbarously murdered all those whose fathers would not, or could not,
pay the exorbitant ransom demanded.
One only of the prisoners escaped the proscription, and the
circumstance is a curious one. They were bound two and two, and after
great privations and fatigues,--for they were dragged into fastnesses
almost inaccessible,--an order was given for their execution. One
had already fallen by the stiletto, when his companion invoked Sant'
Antonio, the patron saint of brigands, and that name saved him. It is a
hint worth knowing. Should any future Barbone arise, remember to call
upon Saint Anthony!
Barbone afterwards became keeper of the château of St. Angelo, the
great prison at Rome; but quickly relapsed into his old practices, the
last of which exceeded in ferocity the rest.
Not far from Forli, an Englishman of distinction, whose name I will not
mention, was stopped on his way to Rome. They plundered the father, and
carried off the daughter. On reaching his destination he put a price on
Barbone's head; but one morning a box arrived, which, instead of his,
contained that of the daughter!
The revolting recollection of this ruffian's cruelty made me pause as
I stood in the portal and thought of that of the Inferno, for which
it would have been no bad model; and thought, too, of the giants who
guarded it, whose arms, as they wildly brandished them, looked in
the distance like the vans of windmills (the original, by the by, of
Cervantes'). They would have been in excellent keeping with the place.
For a moment, I say, I hesitated about entering; but curiosity got the
better of terror, and I resolved to visit the Bagno, a name which in
the month of August it well merited.
In the court-yard were walking several of the brigands who belonged to
their monarch's train,--his satellites; but I did not stop to address
them. I desired my conductor to show me to the head-quarters of the
general, in the interior of the prison.
I found there a great many cells or holes, not unresembling
dog-kennels, arched and formed in the massive walls; and, among the
rest, the den of the Cacus. He was lying at full length on the floor,
which might be eight or ten feet in length; and behind him, almost hid
in shade, was crouching another brigand, leaning on his elbows, and
stooping low. He was taking his siesta. This bandit was, I afterwards
found, Barbone's prime-minister. They were inseparable--the tiger and
his jackal, or rather, perhaps, wolf.
Barbone raised himself on one arm at my approach, and eyed me with all
the hauteur of a prince. He was dressed like the rest, in the usual
uniform,--cap, jacket, and coarse trowsers. He by no means corresponded
in appearance with one of Horace Verney's brigands. He was a man of a
middle height, corpulent in his person, with a countenance that showed
no trace of crime: his features were handsome and regular; and his
hair, long, black, and curly, hung over his shoulders. He certainly set
all Lavater's theories at defiance. As to his head, I leave that to the
phrenologists.
He seemed little inclined to enter into conversation; and, fettered as
he was, I should have felt as little disposed to trust myself in his
den as in that of a bloodhound. However, perceiving that I did not go
away, and stood at the entrance, he at last had the courtesy to come
forth. I, too, was inclined to address him civilly, with the hope of
knowing something of his history and character; so I said to him,
"You are the famous Barbone, of whom I have heard so much, and long
wished to see?"
"_Gasparoni, a servirlo_," said he.
The reply made me smile, for I doubted not he would have served me, if
set at liberty, in his own peculiar way.
"You smile," said he; "perhaps you are come to mock me?" He folded his
arms, and looked at me sternly.
"I had no such intention," I replied. "You call yourself Gasparoni. I
thought your name had been Barbone?"
"So they styled me," he answered, "from the long beard which I formerly
wore."
"Pray may I ask you how you happened to be taken?" I observed
inquiringly.
"_Preso!_" said he contemptuously; "I was never taken. Not all the
troops in the Pontifical states could have taken me. None but eagles
could have reached our resorts. There we wanted for nothing, besiege
us as they might. The peasants were our friends, and brought us plenty
of provisions. We annihilated party after party that they sent against
us, till the soldiers would fight no longer. Many of them entered our
band, which at one time consisted of nearly one hundred. But I got
tired of that savage life. In the summer months it was well enough; but
to brave the winter among the mountains,--to sleep on the snows with
nothing but our mantles to shelter us,--to be deprived of our wives and
children,--not to be able to dispose of our booty without great risk,
so that even money was often of no use to us! I could point out where
many a napoleon and doppia d'oro is buried. And yet," said he after a
pause, "that life, with all its privations and miseries, is preferable
to confinement in a prison. Oh! you cannot fancy what the want of
liberty is to us mountaineers!--to rot in a dungeon,--not to have the
free use of our limbs!" Here he clanked his chains.
After this harangue, which he delivered with great volubility, he
folded his arms again, _à la Napoleon_, and a gloom came over him. He
seemed to be lost in thought.
"You have said," I observed, "that you were never taken. How then came
you here?"
"Here!" he said with emphasis; "I was trepanned--betrayed! The Pope
broke his faith; my confessor, his sacred word. I was promised
pardon,--full pardon for myself and my brave brothers. We were
betrayed--sold; and yet we live in hopes that the holy father will
redeem his promise."
"Yes," thought I; "if he _had_ done you justice, you would not be here."
"Your name," I said flatteringly, "is well known in Europe. You are the
Napoleon of bandits, and worthy of being classed with De Cesaris."
"De Cesaris," said he contemptuously, "_era un miserabile!_ He took
a poor painter for a prince. Ha! ha! Gasparoni would not have made
such a blunder." Here he laughed again with a consciousness of
superiority. "The fool, too," said he, "to allow the artist to paint
his portrait!--it was like a man's putting his name on a stiletto, and
leaving it as evidence against himself."
"Perhaps," said I, "like him, you have no objection to the world's
knowing something of your story. Charles de Chatillon has immortalized
him; he is become an historical character."
"I have no such ambition," said he. "It matters little what the world
thinks of me; but you shall have my history, if you have any curiosity
to know it."
"The greatest," I replied.
"It is a short one," observed the bandit.
"I am the son of Rinalda, better known in the Roman annals than I
am. She was cruelly injured. Deprived of her lover, Peronti, whom
they made a priest, she took a hatred to all mankind--a just one, and
taught me to revenge her wrongs on the whole human species; brought
me up to brigandage as a profession,--and as good a one as any other,
and as honourable! I went very early into the mountains, and joined
a band of brave fellows, which, on the death of their captain, I was
unanimously chosen to command. Chosen from my merit, I governed them
by opinion. They knew that I was brave and prudent. I had many times
an opportunity of showing that I had all the qualities that constitute
a good general: had I commanded an army, like Napoleon, I should have
been as invincible. Once we were besieged in the upper ranges of the
Abruzzi by a company of Austrians, at the time those _maledetti tyranni
d'Italia_ had possession of Naples. We were enclosed on three sides
by the troops, and on the other was a precipice of many hundred feet,
that plunged, without a shelf or ledge of rock, into the plain. I was
at that time detached with nine of my companions; but such was the
nature of the crag on which we bivouacked,--so narrow the access to it,
that only one person could mount the pass at a time. This our enemies
knew, for they lost several men in making a reconnaissance. But our
provisions failed us, and we were on the point of giving ourselves up,
for fear of starvation, when I discovered an eagle's eyrie, and, to the
wonder of our foes, contrived, by plundering it of hares and kids, to
support nature for many days. At last the eaglets flew; and then our
distress returned, and with it the thought of surrender.
"I recollected, however, that opposite to where a single sentinel
had been posted there was a chasm--a fissure--a deep ravine, the
top of which was covered with wood; and one dark night, leading my
little band, I crawled on hands and knees without being perceived,
and poniarded the vidette:--he fell without a groan! We then, after
overcoming incredible dangers, reached the brink of the abyss. My troop
eyed the gulph with terror. It was narrow; but at the bottom roared
a mountain torrent, that from its immeasurable depth looked like a
silver thread. I came provided with a rope, to which, when we dare not
go down into the plain, we are in the habit of attaching a basket,
which we lower to the peasants for provisions; to this rope I adjusted
a heavy dagger, and hurled it across the chasm. By good fortune, it
got entangled at the first throw among the brushwood, and stuck fast
between two of the branches. Having drawn it tight, I fastened it
to a tree on our side of the ravine. My companions watched me with
anxiety, wondering what next I was about to do. I spoke not a word,
but suspended myself over the abyss; and, hand over hand, reached the
opposite bank in safety. All followed me, and with like success, save
one, whose strength or courage failed him: he unhappily sunk into the
boiling gulph, but he was dead long before he reached it; so that his
sufferings were less than had he been taken by the Tedeschi. What a
supper we made that night! and how soundly we slept! That night--that
sleep repaid all our toils!
"Great was the astonishment of our foes when they found we had escaped
their snares; and you may by that escape form some notion of the
pleasures of a brigand's life.
"But this was not the only time we were near falling into the power
of the soldiery. In all my seventeen years of service we were never
betrayed but once. You know that one of the great trades in our
mountains is that of Carbonari. The wood is of no value but to make
charcoal, which principally goes into the markets of Rome and Naples.
We always kept on good terms with these gentry. One night we were
incautiously--contrary to our usual practice--drinking with them,
without having placed a single sentinel, when we found ourselves
attacked by an armed party,--not, however, before I heard their arms
rattling in the branches; so that we had time to seize our muskets.
They were much more numerous than ourselves, but they paid dear for
their attack: I killed four with my own hand. I was wounded; but that
is nothing--I am full of wounds: look here, and here, and here! The
Carbonari fled; but we surprised them afterwards. Who can escape from
those intent on revenge!--a time always comes, or soon or late. So with
them. We retaliated--terribly retaliated; not a man escaped! Not that I
lifted a hand against them,--none ever fell by Gasparoni but in action."
As he said this, his stature seemed to grow; and it was clear that he
thought himself a hero. He waited, expecting, no doubt, that I should
express my admiration of his exploits; but I remembered the last, and
said to him,
"You forget the daughter of the Englishman--her head----"
"_Questo Inglese era un impertinente_," replied he. "Why did he not
send the ransom? He knew, or ought to have known, the laws of brigands;
we could not have spared her life had we wished it. No; it would have
been an act of injustice--of gross partiality."
Here some of the brigands, who had heard his words, came up, and by
their gestures gave confirmation of their general's words.
"And who among the band," I inquired, "was the executioner; for, like
Louis XI, I suppose you had your Tristan?"
He pointed to the back of the cave, and called Geronymo, the figure
whom I had first observed. He came forward.
"_Son quì!_" said the man with a hoarse guttural voice, that might have
been mistaken for the howl of a wolf.
I looked at him attentively, and not without a sense of horror and
disgust. His long and bony, yet athletic form, might have served as a
model for a gladiator, for the muscles protruded like one of Michael
Angelo's anatomical figures: his cadaverous sallow countenance pale
with crime,--his eyes deep sunk, and overhung by thick bushy eyebrows,
and emitting a gloomy light as within caverns,--his thin and straight
upper lip, with the lower underhung like that of a dog-fish, fitted him
well for the bourreau of Signor Gasparoni.
"So you were the executioner of the Englishman's daughter, Geronymo,
eh?" I inquired.
"_Si, signor_," said he, with a grin of satisfaction, that betrayed a
pride of office, and a superiority over his fellows.
"_Era molto bella!_" observed one of the bandits behind me.
I looked over my shoulder. The wretch who spoke was a little corpulent
man, and reminded me of one of Rubens' satyrs. There was a most
revolting leer on his countenance, which suggested to my mind not her
death,--which was a mercy,--but the miserable fate that preceded it. I
remembered the story of the peasant girl in the Tales of a Traveller,
and shuddered.
Turning round again to that iron-visaged wretch, Geronymo, I said to
him,
"Have you no remorse, Geronymo, for all the murders you have committed?"
"Remorse!" he replied, as though he did not understand the meaning
of the word: "ought not a good soldier to obey the word of command?
Whenever the captain said '_Amazza!_' _amazzava_."
"_Avete amazzato molte?_" I asked.
"_Si, signor, moltissime_," he replied, with the greatest nonchalance.
His eye lighted up, as he spoke, with a gloomy joy.
I turned from him as from a basilisk, and almost thought I heard the
death-rattle of one of his victims.
As I was about to leave the Bagno, I met a capuchin, their confessor.
It was the same who had persuaded Gasparoni to deliver himself up to
the Roman authorities. I took him aside, and entered into conversation
with him. He was a man advanced in age, and of a physiognomy such
as I have observed to be common to almost all ecclesiastics in
Italy,--heavy, dull, and unmeaning. He told me that Gasparoni and
most of his band were very religious, and went regularly to mass and
confession. He added, that he had petitioned the holy father for their
liberation, and that he had no doubt, if released, that they would now
make good subjects.
"The Pope," I observed, "knows them too well by past experience to
trust such wretches at large again."
What tales might not this man reveal! but I found he was disinclined to
be communicative, and in a hurry to commence his duties. I wished him
therefore a _buon giorno_.
When we have voluntarily shut ourselves up in a Bagno with its unhappy
inmates, it seems as though the return to liberty was interdicted to
us,--that we are the victims to some snare, and that the iron gates
of the prison are actually closed on us for ever. But a moment's
reflection dissipates the fearful illusion, and we abandon ourselves,
as Lucretius describes those who behold a storm at a distance, to the
pleasure derived from our own security; or as we do when leaning over
the parapet of a precipice. But, at the same time, I rushed through
the open doors like a captive on being delivered from his chains, and,
having emerged from the gloomy gateway, breathed more freely, inhaled
with a new delight the sea-breeze, and stood watching the sun sink
slowly through the vaporous atmosphere till it had totally disappeared
below the waters. Then I returned to my inn, reflecting that I had
perhaps just seen the last of the bandits. And yet the scene I had
witnessed left no impression behind it such as I had expected; it
furnished no stores to feed the imagination or to awaken the enthusiasm
of art. The poetry of banditism has perished in the citadel of Cività
Vecchia.
THE GLORIES OF GOOD HUMOUR.
BY GODFREY GOODFELLOW.
"Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus."--HOR.
What a charming thing good humour is! How superexcellent and
inestimable a quality, or character, or attribute of the mind! Yes, I
unhesitatingly declare there is nothing like it. It is the only true
key to the casket of happiness, the real source of all this world's
enjoyments, the potent mithridate of misery, the balm of life, the
care-dispelling Nepenthe, the rich restoring heavenly elixir drawn by
wisdom from the alembic of content.
The good-humoured man is the only true philosopher. He alone knows
how to enjoy life. He is wiser far than all the grave _Saturnine_
star-gazers and moralists in the world. Is he not? Why, of what use
is all our philosophy if it does not enable a man to be merry and
live happy? Psha! to give way to grief, to allow the mind to succumb
to despondency, is certainly to exhibit our poor humanity in one of
the most ridiculous positions in which it could be placed. Diogenes,
domiciled in a tub, cuts rather a curious figure amidst the sages of
antiquity; and so do a host of others: but, certainly, Heraclitus in
tears exhibits the weakness of human nature more glaringly than any of
them. Grieving, forsooth! Why, 'tis just as if a man, plunging into the
sea, should tie a stone about his neck in order to enable him to swim
the better. Grieving is indeed a bad sort of a safety-jacket in a "sea
of troubles." No: give me the good-humoured man; the fine, gay, jovial
fellow, whom no disasters can depress; the true minion of merriment and
fun, whom no sorrows can sadden; the genuine votary of "heart-easing
mirth," whose mind, like the lark at sunrise, is ever cheerful and gay;
"Whose wit can brighten up a winter's day,
And chase the splenetic dull hours away."
Give me such a man; his philosophy is worth all the dogmas, and rules,
and precepts, that ever were expounded in the Academe, the Porch, or
the Lycæum.
What should I be now--or, rather, _where_ should I be--but for my
good humour? Alas! perhaps sailing the Styx in company with Charon;
or, not having the ferry money, wandering disconsolate upon the
banks, (for it is only the good-humoured, such as Menippus, that can
manage to get over passage-free.) But here I am now, a fine, fat,
rubicund fellow,--and all, I say it unhesitatingly, owing to my good
humour. Good humour, thou hast indeed been to me a true, and kind,
and trusty benefactress! Oh! thou fair, and sweet, and lovely thing,
in whatever form thou holdest communion with mortals: whether thou
art an immaterial essence that blends at will with our mortal bodies
or whether thou art something more loving and palpable,--that light,
blithe, blue-eyed maid,
"Whom lovely Venus at a birth,
With two sister graces more,
To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;"
or whether a wild spirit, a lovely Ariel of the air, thou transfusest
thyself into all the beautiful things of this world,--the green fields,
and the silvery streams, and the sunny skies,--and then, rich with the
sheen of their loveliness, comest into the presence-chamber of the
mind, fixest thyself in the great senate of the senses, cheering and
gladdening all their emotions!--whatever thou art, good humour,--be
thou a bodiless essence, a lovely maid, a lively spirit, or any
other modification of the mysterious and the beautiful, I love thee;
love thee as dearly as ever Orpheus loved his Eurydice, Petrarch his
Laura, or Waller his Sacharissa. Thou art the harbinger of comfort,
the inductress of joy, the dove that bringest to mortals the olive of
happiness and peace. Without thee what were life?--a dull, dreary,
uninteresting scene,--a bare, bleak, barren, joyless, empyreanless----
Stop--stop--stop--stop!--halloo, Pegasus! where the devil are you going
to? Soho! softly; not quite so high if you please; much as you admire
good humour, do, pray! stay a little nearer to the confines of this
"visible diurnal sphere."
"Who are you? where do you come from? You have no right to be dealing
out such fulsome panegyrics about good humour."
Yes, but I have, though; I am universally acknowledged to be the
most good-humoured man on town. The pure blood of the Allwits, the
Easymirths, and the Goodfellows, flows in my veins. I am heir to a
large property in Merryland, and my residence is at Jollity Hall,
a picturesque, romantic spot in the county of Greatlaughtershire.
I intend to start at the next general election for the borough of
Gaybright; when I shall bring in such a measure of reform as shall
astonish all our modern menders of constitutions.
I have every right, then, to descant upon the merits of good humour;
and I do so the rather because men do not sufficiently appreciate them.
Now I fully agree with Dr. Johnson in thinking that "good humour is the
quality to which everything in this life owes its power of pleasing."
It is the one great source from which spring all those innumerable
streams of enjoyment that intersect, and refresh, and beautify the
social and moral world. It is, like Fame, "the spur that the clear
spirit doth raise" above the fogs, and the damps, and the vapours that
so often hang over and darken this sublunary scene. It is the grand
moral alkali that completely neutralizes the corrosive acerbity of
all this world's cares and sorrows. It is a pure heavenly sunshine
illumining the chambers of the soul; a coal from heaven's own golden
hearth, that warms into a congenial and ever-during glow all the best
and kindliest emotions of our nature.
How different, indeed, would be the condition of the world if a system
of good humour were universally established! For what is it but the
absence of good humour that is the cause of almost all the troubles of
life? All the wars that have desolated the world spring from no other
origin. Kings and rulers wanting good humour have fallen out, and whole
nations have been set at loggerheads:
"Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi."
Now, if good humour universally influenced the actions of men, there
would be none of these things; war would be at an end. General Evans
might then attend to his parliamentary duties. The "mailed Mars" might
"on his altar sit," but it would not be "up to the ears in blood." He
might lay by his lance, and commence smoking the calumet of peace.
Again, we should have no need of that noisy, brawling, troublesome
class of men yclept lawyers,--for it is plainly from the absence of
good humour that all the litigation in the world takes its rise. The
gentlemen of the long robe might then leave _silk gowns_ to their
ladies, and transfer their pleading to some other court than a court
of law. At all events, the world would be freed from their forensic
displays, for men would be on such _good terms_ with each other that
there would be no need of _law terms_ to set them right. And also,
under a general system of good humour, we should be freed from all
the turmoil and contention of politics. Tithes, and church-rates, and
corporation bills, would no longer afford such scope for violent and
angry declamation. Would not this be glorious? As for our physicians,
they might shut up shop, for there is no such admirable conservative
of the constitution as good humour,--it being generally admitted that
all diseases take their rise from the prevalence of _bad_ humour in
the blood. These disciples of Galen, then,--these knights of the
lancet,--might become philosophers, and study physics instead of
physic; or they might devote themselves to analyse the faculties of the
mind, and thus, instead of physicians, become metaphysicians.
But, indeed, the ramifications are so numerous, that it would not be
easy to follow out and describe all the innumerable advantages that
would result from the establishment of an universal system of good
humour.
And thus we are enabled at once to explain what the poets have meant by
the Golden Age. It was plainly nothing else than the reign of universal
good humour. The proof is quite obvious. Gold is the most excellent
of metals,--good humour is the most excellent of the qualities of the
mind; and therefore, the analogy being so striking, the poets at once
styled this happy period the Golden Age. And hence it is evident that
good humour is the only true philosopher's stone.
"This is the charm by sages often told,
Converting all it touches into gold.
Content can soothe, where'er by Fortune placed:
Can rear a garden in the desert waste."
In this passage "content" is only another name for good humour. Cease,
then, ye followers of the Hermetic art, cease toiling over your
crucibles; good humour is the true moral alchemy that will really
enrich and ameliorate mankind.
This, then, is the reform bill which I intend to introduce as soon
as I have the honour of a seat in the house; a bill for striking
out, arranging, devising, and establishing some plan by which good
humour may be reduced to a system; so that henceforward it will be the
cardinal principle of life,--the rule by which all the actions of men
shall be guided, regulated, and directed. Let me but pass this; and
then, my country! thy happiness is secured. Let us hear no more about
the ballot, and universal suffrage, and all those Utopian schemes of
our modern speculators. Let us have no more hunting after a visionary
political optimism; good humour is the only one thing necessary to
bring all our civil institutions to a state of complete perfection.
"Give me," said Archimedes, "a point in extra-mundane space, and I
will remove the solid earth from its foundations." "Give me," say
I, "good humour, and I will uproot all miseries, and contentions,
and quarrellings from the world." Away with all the nostrums of our
moralists and philosophers!--good humour is the one sole, infallible
panacea for all the ills of life. Misfortunes may lower, and
disappointments may assail; but still the mind of the good-humoured
man, like a Delos emerging from the deep, rises buoyant above them all.
Hurrah, then, for an eternal, cloudless, bright, jovial, unsubduable
good humour! Let us have nothing but good humour! Let a cheerful smile
be for ever playing upon the happy faces of our lovely wives; let our
children be born in good humour, and in good humour let them grow up;
let the girls be taught to smile with their mother's smile, and the
boys after the manner of their father; and thus we shall be taking the
best way to establish and consolidate one vast, wide, universal empire
of love, happiness, and joy!
SONG OF THE MODERN TIME.
Oh how the world has alter'd since some fifty years ago,
When coats and shoes would _really_ serve to keep out rain and snow;
But double soles and broadcloth,--oh, dear me! how very low
To talk of such old-fashion'd things, when every one must know
That we are well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!
We all meet now at midnight's hour, and form a glitt'ring throng,
Where lovely angels walk quadrilles, and ne'er do l'Eté wrong,
Where Eastern scents all fresh and sweet, from Rowland's, float along,
And the name of a good old country-dance would sound like a Chinese
gong
In the ears of well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!
Young ladies now of sage sixteen must give their friends a rout,
And teach the cook and housemaid how to "hand the things about;"
And they must pull Ma's bedstead down, and hurry, scout, and flout,
To have a fine refreshment-room, and lay a supper out
Like well-bred, dashing gentlefolks all of the modern time!
And beardless boys, all brag and noise, must do "the thing that's
right,"--
That is,--they'll drink champagne and punch, and keep it up all night;
They'll shout and swear, till, sallying forth at peep of morning's
light,
They knock down some old woman just to show how well they fight,
Like brave young English gentlemen all of the modern time!
At the good old hours of twelve and one our grandsires used to dine,
And quaff their horns of nut-brown ale, and eat roast-beef and chine;
But we must have our silver forks, ragouts, and foreign wine,
And not sit down till five or six if we mean to cut a shine,
Like dashing, well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!
Our daughters now at ten years old must learn to squall and strum,
And study shakes and quavers under Signor Fee-fo-fum;
They'll play concertos, sing bravuras, rattle, scream, and thrum,
Till you almost wish that you were deaf, and they, poor things! were
dumb;
But they must be like young gentlefolks all of the modern time!
Our sons must jabber Latin verbs, and talk of a Greek root,
Before they've left off pinafores, cakes, lollipops, and fruit;
They all have splendid talents that the desk and bar will suit,
Each darling boy would scorn to be "a low mechanic brute;"
They must be well-bred college youths all of the modern time!
But bills will come at Christmas-tide, alas, alack-a-day!
The creditors may call again, "Papa's not in the way;
"He's out of town; but, certainly, next week he'll call and pay;"
And then his name's in the Gazette! and this I mean to say
Oft winds up many gentlefolks all of the modern time!
CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS IN LONDON EIGHTY YEARS AGO.
EARL FERRERS.
The sensation created in London by that which has now become no
ordinary spectacle,--two public executions in the course of the
last few months,--naturally leads the observant mind to contemplate
the march of intellect in this great metropolis with respect to the
shedding of human blood by judicial authority. It may be interesting to
the general reader to lay before him the reflections thus suggested,
together with some curious and minute descriptions of scenes witnessed
within the last century.
The practice of _Sus per Col_, as described in legal abbreviations,
or hanging, is the only mode of putting to death ("pressing to death"
excepted) known to the law of England for all felonies short of high
or petty treason. In cases of conspiracy against the state, traitors
of rank were indulged with the privilege of being beheaded; but meaner
offenders, besides other inflictions, were to suffer on the gallows.
This distinction necessarily caused the punishment to be regarded as
very ungenteel, if an expression of levity may be allowed; and, in
consequence, no respectable person, or, at any rate, only here and
there one, would choose to be hanged. Earl Ferrers, who was convicted
of the murder of his steward in the reign of George the Second,
petitioned that he might die by the axe. This was refused. "He has
done," said the old king, "de act of de bad man, and he shall die de
death of de bad man." The feeling of the monarch was good, but it was
rather odd that a king should seem to think the punishment of treason,
called by judges "the highest crime known to the law," an ennobling
indulgence which ought not to be extended to a simple murderer.
One luxury, however, Lord Ferrers is reported to have secured for
the last hour of his life,--a silken rope; but a more important
deviation from the common mode, so far as abridgement of bodily pain
is concerned, was made on that occasion, for then it was that what is
now familiarly called the "drop" was first used. Till that period, to
draw a cart from beneath the culprit, or to throw him from a ladder,
by turning it round, after he had ascended to a certain height for the
halter to be adjusted, had been the practice; but for the wretched peer
a scaffold was prepared, part of the floor of which was raised eighteen
inches above the rest, which, on the signal of death being given,
became flat. The contrivance, however, did not very well succeed,
according to the narrative left us by Lord Orford; which, from the
remarkable circumstances it details of that memorable exit, and of the
usages which then prevailed, is worth transcribing.
The crime for which the nobleman suffered was a most cruel murder. He
had been through life a very depraved character. It was doubted if this
were the only homicide he had committed; he had separated from his
wife, and ill-used his mistress. He, however, met his fate with great
firmness. "On the last morning," says Lord Orford in a letter, "he
dressed himself in his wedding clothes, and said he thought this, at
least, as good an occasion for putting them on, as that for which they
were first made." The account proceeds: "Even an awful procession of
above two hours, with that mixture of pageantry, shame, and ignominy,
nay, and of delay, could not dismount his resolution. He set out from
the Tower at nine, amidst thousands of spectators. First went a string
of constables; then one of the sheriffs, in his chariot and six, the
horses dressed with ribands; next, Lord Ferrers, in his own landau
and six, his coachman crying all the way,--guards at each side; the
other sheriff's chariot followed empty, with a mourning coach and six,
a hearse, and the Horse-guards. Observe, that the empty chariot was
that of the other sheriff, who was in the coach with the prisoner, and
who was Vaillant the French bookseller in the Strand. How (exclaims
Lord Orford to his correspondent) will you decypher all these strange
circumstances? A bookseller, in robes and in mourning, sitting as a
magistrate by the side of the earl; and, in the evening, everybody
going to Vaillant's shop to hear the particulars. I wrote to him,
as he serves me, for the account; but he intends to print it. Lord
Ferrers, at first, talked on indifferent matters; and, observing the
prodigious confluence of people, (the blind was drawn up on his side,)
he remarked, 'they never saw a lord hanged, and perhaps will never see
another,' One of the dragoons was thrown, by his horse's leg entangling
in the hind wheel: Lord Ferrers expressed much concern, and said, 'I
hope there will be no death to-day but mine;' and was pleased when
Vaillant told him the man was not hurt. Vaillant made excuses to him
for performing the duties of his office in person. 'For that,' said
the earl, 'I am much obliged to you: I feared the disagreeableness
of the duty might make you depute your under-sheriff. As you are so
good as to execute it yourself, I am persuaded the dreadful business
will be conducted with more expedition.' The Chaplain of the Tower,
who sat backwards, then thought it his turn to speak, and began to
talk on religion; but Lord Ferrers received it impatiently. However,
the chaplain persevered; and said, he wished to bring his lordship
to some confession, or acknowledgment of contrition, for a crime so
repugnant to the laws of God and man, and wished him to endeavour to do
whatever could be done in so short a time. The earl replied, 'he had
done everything he proposed to do, with regard to God and man; and, as
to discourses on religion, you and I, sir,' said he to the clergyman,
'shall probably not agree on that subject. The passage is very short;
you will not have time to convince me, nor I to refute you; it cannot
be ended before we arrive.' The clergyman still insisted, and urged
that, at least, the world would expect some satisfaction. Lord Ferrers
replied, with some impatience, 'Sir, what have I to do with the world?
I am going to pay a forfeit life, which my country has thought proper
to take from me; what do I care now what the world thinks of me? But,
sir, since you do desire some confession, I will confess one thing to
you; I do believe there is a God. As to modes of worship, we had better
not talk on them. I always thought Lord Bolingbroke in the wrong to
publish his notions on religion: I will not fall into the same error.'
The chaplain, seeing that it was in vain to make any more attempts,
contented himself with representing to him, that it would be expected
from one of his calling, and that even decency required, that some
prayer should be used on the scaffold, and asked his leave, at least,
to repeat the Lord's Prayer there. Lord Ferrers replied, 'I always
thought it a good prayer; you may use it if you please.'
"While these speeches were passing, the procession was stopped by the
crowd. The earl said he was dry, and wished for some wine-and-water.
The sheriff said, he was sorry to be obliged to refuse him. By late
regulations they were enjoined not to let prisoners drink on their
way from the place of imprisonment to that of execution, as great
indecencies had been formerly committed by the lower species of
criminals getting drunk; 'and though,' said he, 'my lord, I might
think myself excusable in overlooking this order, out of regard to a
person of your lordship's rank, yet there is another reason, which I am
sure will weigh with you,--your lordship is sensible of the greatness
of the crowd: we must draw up to some tavern; the confluence would
be so great, that it would delay the expedition which your lordship
seems so much to desire.' He replied he was satisfied, adding, 'Then
I must be content with this;' and he took some pigtail tobacco out of
his pocket. As they went on, a letter was thrown into his coach; it
was from his mistress, to tell him that it was impossible, from the
crowd, for her to get round to the spot where he had appointed her
to meet and take leave of him, but that she was in a hackney-coach
of such a number. He begged Vaillant to order his officers to try to
get the hackney-coach up to his. 'My lord,' said Vaillant, 'you have
behaved so well hitherto, that I think it is pity to venture unmanning
yourself,' He was struck, and was satisfied without seeing her. As they
drew nigh, he said, 'I perceive we are almost arrived: it is time to
do what little more I have to do; and then, taking out his watch, gave
it to Vaillant, desiring him to accept it as a mark of his gratitude
for his kind behaviour; adding, 'It is scarce worth your acceptance,
but I have nothing else; it is a stopwatch, and a pretty accurate
one.' He gave five guineas to the chaplain, and took out as much for
the executioner. Then giving Vaillant a pocket-book, he begged him to
deliver it to Mrs. Clifford, his mistress, with what it contained, and
with his most tender regards; saying, 'The key of it is to the watch,
but I am persuaded you are too much a gentleman to open it' He destined
the remainder of the money in his purse to the same person, and with
the same tender regards.
"When they came to Tyburn, his coach was detained some minutes by the
conflux of people; but, as soon as the door was opened, he stepped
out readily, and mounted the scaffold. It was hung with black by the
undertaker, and at the expense of his family. Under the gallows was a
new-invented stage, to be struck from under him. He showed no kind of
fear or discomposure, only just looking at the gallows with a slight
motion of dissatisfaction. He said little, kneeled for a moment to
the prayer, said 'Lord have mercy upon me, and forgive me my errors!'
and immediately mounted the upper stage. He had come pinioned with
a black sash, and was unwilling to have his hands tied, or his face
covered, but was persuaded to both. When the rope was put round his
neck, he turned pale, but recovered his countenance instantly; and was
but seven minutes from leaving the coach, before the signal was given
for striking the stage. As the machine was new, they were not ready at
it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had time, by
their bungling, to raise his cap; but the executioner pulled it down
again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was soon out of pain, and
quite dead in four minutes. He desired not to be stripped and exposed;
and Vaillant promised him, though his outer clothes must be taken off,
that his shirt should not. This decency ended with him: the sheriffs
fell to eating and drinking on the scaffold, and helped up one of
their friends to drink with them, while he was still hanging, which
he did for above an hour, and then was conveyed back with the same
pomp to Surgeons' Hall, to be dissected. The executioners fought for
the rope; and the one who lost it, cried. The mob tore off the black
cloth as relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and
admiration, as they well might, for sure no exit was ever made with
more sensible resolution and with less ostentation."
The contrivance above described has caused the cart to fall into
general disuse on such occasions. The change, however, was not
suddenly effected. For many years after the death of Lord Ferrers,
the triangular gallows at Tyburn maintained its ground, and, on
execution-days, the cart passed from Newgate up Giltspur-street, and
through Smithfield to Cow-lane; Skinner-street had not then been built,
and the crooked lane which turned down by St. Sepulchre's church, as
well as Ozier-lane, did not offer sufficient width to admit of the
cavalcade passing by either of them with convenience to Holborn-hill.
For centuries the prevailing opinion had been, that executions ought
to take place at a distance from the crowded part of the city.
Anciently malefactors were put to death at _The Elms_ in Smithfield,
or rather, between Smithfield and Turnmill-street. But when the houses
had increased, so as to encroach on the space which had long been
kept open there, it was thought expedient to carry those appointed
to die, farther off; and a spot was fixed upon, which received the
name of Tyburn, near the beginning of Tottenham-court-road.[41] When
Holborn had been built up to St Giles's, a farther removal was deemed
necessary, and these tragic scenes were carried from one end of
Oxford-street to the other,--from the beginning of Tottenham-court-road
to the Tyburn of the present day.
But at length, in the reign of George the Third, it was judged better
to abandon the parade so long kept up, and to execute the sentence of
death in the immediate vicinity of Newgate. This alteration, though
many reasons may be urged in its favour, was not universally approved.
There were those who apprehended that, in a constitutional point
of view, it was dangerous to abate the publicity which had so long
attached to the consummation of the last severity of the law. Mr. Horne
Tooke was of the number. To hang a felon at the door of his prison, he
considered, "the next thing to putting him to death within the walls,"
and directly approximating towards secret executions.
By degrees, however, the public mind got perfectly reconciled to the
change. Much expense and confusion were spared; and the idle were no
longer indulged in a disgusting holiday, to witness a spectacle in but
too many instances known to produce anything but the impression which
might have been desired. The rabble went to the mournful scene as to a
public entertainment. The procession to Tyburn, with the prayers and
other ceremonies there, occupied a large portion of the day, which many
of the spectators closed in dissipation, outrage, and robbery.
Instead of carrying the condemned three miles, and executing the
culprits from a cart, an apparatus was now erected close to Newgate;
and the awful ceremony, no longer made the business of many hours, was
regularly performed at eight o'clock in the morning, and every vestige
of the deplorable scene put away between nine and ten. Some of the
first executions witnessed at Newgate were most unlike those which
have been seen of late years, even before the late king ascended the
throne. Not fewer than eighteen or twenty persons were conducted to the
scaffold on the same day; and the gallows originally set up in the Old
Bailey was so contrived that three cross-beams could be used, and the
sufferers were, by this contrivance, disposed in as many rows.
By degrees these spectacles grew less frequent, and the numbers hurried
into eternity on each occasion were fewer. The execution of five or six
persons on one day became an uncommon sight, and seldom more than two
or three suffered together.
This comparatively small sacrifice of life did not make the Old Bailey
less attractive on a hanging-day than Tyburn had formerly been, though
the rabble were constantly dismissed shortly after the clock struck
nine.
About the beginning of the present century, a notorious highwayman of
the name of Clark, with five other malefactors, submitted to the last
severity of man together. I went before the day had dawned, and very
shortly after the preparations had commenced, to the Old Bailey. The
spectacle then presented was most picturesque; and to me, whatever
it might be to others, most extraordinary. Wooden posts made in a
triangular form with rails, and a rod of iron issuing from the tops to
pass through holes prepared in strong bars of timber, which they were
to sustain, were lying about in every direction. Lighted torches were
carried by the workmen and their assistants, the bars being first laid
along the ground, nearly on or over the spot where they were to be set
up to keep off the crowd, while the preparations went forward for the
work of death. The body of the drop had previously been brought out.
This did not take to pieces, but was kept, as at present, standing in
the yard attached to the prison; and, being placed on wheels, was--I
might say is, as executions have not wholly ceased,--drawn out at a
very early hour. It was curious to notice the interest, the levity, the
indifference, which prevailed in the different groups drawn together
as the awful hour approached, according to the various humours of the
individuals who composed them. When the cross-beam of the gallows was
raised to its place, it was gazed on with great eagerness. As each
rail was fixed, to mark the boundary of the space to be kept clear, a
mass of men and boys, with here and there a female, ranged themselves
close to it. The constables were occasionally seen struggling through
the human wall thus formed, and showing their authority--the staff
of office, to prove their right to be there; a form by no means
unnecessary, as many of them were only to be known by that sign, as in
truth they were almost impostors, having only assumed the character
in which they appeared, for the day, being engaged by the respectable
tradesmen really serving the office, to save them the time that would
be consumed, or to spare feelings that must be wounded, if they
appeared _in propriâ personâ_.
The scaffold was established at the Debtors'-door, in the widest part
of the Old Bailey; and the bar which was placed as above described
extended from the further side of the scaffold, to a few feet south of
the governor's house. The steps leading to the Felons'-door were soon
crowded; and several recesses and niches on that side of the prison
were peopled from an early hour with living statues.
Well do I remember the awe with which I heard the chimes of St.
Sepulchre's church announce the lapse of another and another quarter
of an hour, the calculations which were made of the exact number of
minutes which the victims had yet to breathe, and the speculations as
to the manner in which they were then engaged, and the deportment which
they would assume in the closing scene.
The appearance of the city marshals between seven and eight arranging
the constables, announced that the time had nearly arrived. A humourist
would have jested at the overacted dignity of the functionaries just
named of that day. A Wellington disposing his ranks to meet the
fiercest shock of the best warriors of France, could not have given
a finer idea of the importance of command, than these civic heroes
suggested while placing in Newgate order their crowd of clubmen.
It had been usual to hang black cloth on the chains which ran along
three sides of the scaffold. On the occasion now recalled this part
of the ceremonial was not omitted. The black was duly paraded; but so
beggarly a display in connexion with any public proceeding my _not_
"young memory" cannot parallel. It had been so worn and torn, that such
a collection of tatters, it might fairly be concluded, could hardly
have been found in any part of his Majesty's dominions,--Rosemary-lane,
perhaps, excepted. The idlers, who by this time had assembled in
great force, and who--the majority of them at all events--evidently
considered they had but to enjoy themselves, laughed immoderately,
and indulged in all sorts of jokes on this Ragfair set-out; which,
to confess the truth, as their streamers, shaped into all imaginable
forms, fluttered in the wind,--bearing in mind the solemnity of the
occasion, and the supposed object of the exposure of the sable shreds,
namely, mourning,--was the perfection of burlesque.
The hand of St. Sepulchre's clock was pointed at the quarter to eight.
Fifteen minutes more, and the unhappy ones appointed to die were
expected to ascend that platform from which they were to sink into
eternity. The immense multitude extended far up Giltspur-street one
way, and almost reached to Ludgate-hill in the opposite direction.
In all the houses commanding a view of the gallows the windows were
crowded; the ledges without the parapets and roofs were in like manner
surmounted by numerous spectators.
It would not be easy to describe the sensation created by the
appearance of the very important actors who next came on the
stage,--the executioners.
"Here are Jade Ketch and his man!" was the exclamation of almost every
individual in the crowd to his neighbour.
There was something in the look of the men which really challenged
attention. The principal, or "Jack Ketch himself," as he was called,
was a tall, elderly personage. His costume presented a long blue
frock-coat, a scarlet waistcoat, and his hose bound with red garters
below the knee-buttons of his inexpressibles. He wore a flower in his
coat, or carried one in his mouth. He surveyed the eagerly-staring
populace, and sustained their gaze with an air of calm indifference,
which, however, had nothing of startling effrontery about it. His
assistant was a very different figure; he was a coarse-featured,
pock-marked, short, thick-set man. All his motions indicated great
vivacity; and, if a judgment might be formed from his exterior, he was
proud and rejoiced to fill an office of such high distinction, and felt
more satisfaction in reflecting on the conspicuous situation in which
he was placed, than pity for the poor creatures who almost instantly
were to be committed to his professional care. He generally wore
dark clothes; but sometimes had a bit of his master's distinguishing
finery,--a red waistcoat. He nimbly paced the scaffold on this
occasion, and looked on the mob, as I fancied, with an air of mirth
or exultation, and presently applied himself, with no bad taste, to
tear down the miserable black rags which have been mentioned; and, I
believe, since that day they have never reappeared, or anything of the
kind in their place. This operation completed, he seemed to confer with
the other hangman on the business before them. The tall steps necessary
to enable them to attach the halters to the gallows they moved towards
the end of the platform near the spot on which the first who came forth
was to stand; and, everything now being ready, they composedly waited
the coming of the sheriffs with their prisoners.
The clock of St. Sepulchre's church struck eight; a murmur burst
from the vast assemblage near it: and the solemn bell of St. Paul's
cathedral a moment afterwards confirmed, so to speak, the announcement
of the fatal hour. All was expectation. The executioners frequently
looked towards the door from which those expected, were to advance, as
if to ascertain if they were coming. There was something of excitement
in their manner, and a silent indescribable movement among those within
the enclosure, that told more distinctly than could speech, that the
last scene was about to open.
It was nearly ten minutes after eight when the heavy tone of the
prison-bell was heard. Such a sound!--a knell of death sounded for
the living, who were then in perfect health, but who were next minute
to be consigned to the grave, is well calculated to thrill the most
unfeeling. This usage always appeared to me to heighten the solemnity
of the scene, and the misery of the convicts for whom it tolled. Yet
the authorities deemed it a compliment, or honour, to the sufferer,
too great to be conceded in every case. The murderer, for instance,
was denied the privilege of hearing it. None but those condemned for
the less heinous crimes of forgery, or other capital felony unattended
with the spilling of human blood, were _favoured_ with the melancholy
distinction.
The signal for the bell, I believe, was given at the instant when the
brief procession, from the room in which the prisoners were pinioned
to the door from which they pass to the final scene of expiation,
commenced. The sullen sound was but three or four times repeated when
those immediately in front of the prison-entrance saw the white wand
of the sheriff approach from within. An officer appeared ascending
the ladder, and by his side a man whose solemn aspect indicated with
sufficient clearness that he was one of the doomed. The next moment
he had passed to the platform, and stood in presence of the gazing
populace. When the wand, the insignia of office, was seen, the word was
given "Hats off!" and the multitude on every side obeyed the mandate,
and stood uncovered.
The unfortunate man who appeared first of the six who were to surrender
their lives on this day, was perfectly resigned to his deplorable fate.
His eye was bright, his step was firm, and it was impossible for a
human being in such circumstances to be more collected, or to deport
himself with more propriety. If sorrow at leaving this world oppressed
him, hope solaced him with the cheering prospect that it would be his,
immediately, to enter on a better. He wore his hat,--such being the
usage at that time,--which was removed by the executioners, and placed
at one end of the scaffold; and then the clergyman made his appearance.
With him the culprit conversed devoutly, but with cheerfulness. His
cravat having been taken off, the old executioner elevated himself
by the steps, put the fatal noose over the sufferer's head, on which
the cap was immediately placed, and the end of the halter being then
passed round the beam, was carefully tied. The chain and hook now
introduced had not yet been adopted. The companions in woe and death
of the unfortunate I have described, quickly followed. Clark was the
third or fourth that appeared, and he had the weakness to distinguish
himself by the idle bravado of throwing away his hat. To each of them
the ordinary addressed a few words. The caps, which had been left up
for some moments, were next drawn down over the whole face. A prayer
was commenced; but, before it concluded, the minister passed a white
handkerchief over his mouth. That was the fatal signal; the drop fell
with a dismal noise, and the death-struggle ensued. It was then twenty
minutes after eight, and in three or four minutes, all appearance of
life had ceased. In the same instant that they were suspended the crowd
began to withdraw, while those who had been at a distance pressed
forward to gain a more distinct view of the appalling spectacle. A cry
of horror burst from a portion of the multitude when the floor gave
way; but the impression it made was singularly transient. In less than
a quarter of an hour cool indifference was everywhere to be marked,
and foolish levity and boisterous mirth succeeded to the awe and
commiseration lately manifested.
A year or two after this scene, the public mind was violently excited
by the case of Governor Wall. This culprit, twenty years before,
being then the king's representative at Goree, had caused a man to be
flogged so severely that he died. He was present when the punishment
was inflicted, and excited the floggers by calling to them, "Cut his
liver out!" among other horrible expressions. The crime of whipping a
man to death was well calculated to awaken public indignation; but it
was not his guilt alone which caused the ferment then witnessed in the
metropolis. The belief that, because he had been a governor, mercy was
likely to be shown to him, which would be denied to another, probably
sealed his doom, and proved a cruel aggravation of his wretched
destiny. He was tried on a Wednesday, and ordered for execution on
the Friday next following, but was respited till Monday. This was
considered an indication that the sentence would not be carried
into effect at all, although on the last-mentioned day a vast crowd
assembled in the Old Bailey. A second respite had been granted; but
this was not generally known, at least to the multitude congregated
on the occasion. Great was the disappointment when the hour of seven
struck, and no preparations for the execution were visible. Many
clung to the expectation that it would yet take place; and several
affirmed, untruly I believe, that the apparatus had often been brought
out and erected after that hour. I mingled with some of the numerous
groups, and listened to the discussions, which were carried on with
great vivacity, on the subject of the crime, and probable fate of the
criminal. Not till after eight was the idea totally abandoned that the
raging thirst of the infuriated populace for his blood would not then
be gratified. It was between eight and nine that I had an opportunity
of speaking with Mr. Newman, the governor of Newgate, and learned from
him that further time had been granted, and that Wall was to suffer on
the coming Thursday.
The mob separated with bitter execrations; and the belief that a
murderer, whose guilt was of the blackest dye, would escape punishment
because he had powerful friends, gained ground throughout the nation.
If horror had previously been inspired by his crime, to that personal
and political rancour were now added, and the public mind was in a
state of violent exasperation. The Thursday arrived! and another crowd
assembled in front of Newgate, but doubting much whether the spectacle
so ardently desired would at last be offered to their longing eyes.
Though the officers were at their posts, and the scaffold in its place,
it was still insisted that the governor would escape the fate he
merited. The most ridiculous stories were circulated of the influence
exercised in his favour, and of the culpable resolution of those who
were in power to prevent the administration of justice. These, however,
were all confuted when the appointed hour arrived, and the miserable
object of public indignation was brought out to suffer like a common
offender.
When Governor Wall heard his sentence pronounced on the Wednesday,
with whatever dismay it filled him, he prepared to submit to it with
resignation. He threw himself, when he had returned to the prison, on
his wretched bed, and said he should not rise from it till the officers
of justice came to lead him to his fate. The respites granted awakened
in him a hope not before entertained, only to render the rigour of the
law more dreadful, from the unsettled state of his mind up to the last
moment.
He was a remarkably fine man in appearance, standing more than six feet
high. When he came on the scaffold, his figure served but to swell the
exultation of the crowd. As he advanced, he was greeted with three loud
huzzas. When these subsided, a thousand ferocious voices addressed
to the executioners the language which the cruel governor was charged
with having used while the victim of his severity was writhing under
the lash. The furious exclamations were not lost on the criminal; he
requested the executioners to perform their part as expeditiously as
possible. The drop almost instantly fell, and the shouts of the mob
were in that dreadful moment renewed. He struggled long, and it was
supposed that his sufferings were greater than those of any other
victim on whom the same sentence had been executed. When about to be
turned off, Wall entreated that his legs might not be pulled. The
wish was respected till his long-protracted agonies compelled the
sheriff, in the humane performance of his duty, to order that it should
be done in order to terminate his misery. After hanging an hour, he
was cut down; and the remains were conveyed in a cart, attended by a
joyful rabble, to a house in Castle-street, Saffron-hill, there to be
anatomized.
Subsequent to the period of which I have been speaking, an idea was
entertained of recurring to the old mode of execution; at least it was
revived on one occasion. A triangular gallows was made, and sockets
were inserted in the road, opposite Green-arbour-court, to receive the
supporting posts. On this, Anne Hurle, convicted of forgery, and a
male culprit, were put to death, about thirty years ago. The criminals
were brought out at the Felons'-door in a cart, and carried to the
upper end of the Old Bailey. There, after the necessary preparations,
the ordinary took his leave. The executioner urged the horse forward,
and the vehicle was drawn from under the feet of the criminals. The
motion caused them to swing backwards and forwards; but this was
speedily stopped by the hangman, who leaped from the cart for the
purpose. It appeared to the spectators that the victims suffered more
than they would have done if executed from the drop. This was probably
represented to the city authorities, for the latter method of carrying
the law into effect was promptly restored.
It was formerly the usage, when a crime of remarkable atrocity had
been committed, to execute the offender near the scene of his guilt.
The minds then exercised on these painful subjects judged that a
salutary horror would be inspired by the example so afforded, and that
localities once dangerous would thus be rendered comparatively secure.
Those who were punished capitally for the riots of 1780 suffered in
various parts of the town; and, in the year 1790, two incendiaries were
hanged in Aldersgate-street, at the eastern end of Long-lane. Since
that period there have been few executions in London except in front
of Newgate. The last deviation from the regular course was in the case
of a sailor named Cashman, who suffered death about the year 1817, in
Skinner-street, opposite the house of a gunsmith whose shop he had been
concerned in plundering. The gunsmith was anxious that this should not
be; but his voice was overruled, and the criminal was carried in a cart
to the scaffold. It was then, it should seem, supposed that an awful
warning would be given to the dissolute in Skinner-street, which would
be in a great measure lost if the executioner performed his work at a
distance of some forty yards from the scene of depredation.