HOLFORD'S STUDIES.
It was midnight.
In a garret, belonging to a house in the same court where Crankey Jem
resided, sate Henry Holford.
He was alone. His elbow rested on the table, and his hand supported his
feverish head—for dark thoughts filled the brain of that young man.
The flickering light of a single candle fell upon the pages of an old
volume, which he was reading with intense interest.
His cheeks were pale,—his lips were dry,—his throat was parched,—and his
eye-balls glared with unnatural lustre.
He did not feel athirst—else there was water handy to assuage the
craving:—nor did he hear his heart beating violently, nor experience the
feverish and rapid throbbing of his temples.
No:—his whole thoughts—his entire feelings—his every sensation,—all were
absorbed in the subject of his study.
And that the reader may fully comprehend the nature of those impulses
which were now urging this strange young man on to the perpetration of a
deed that was destined to give a terrible celebrity to his name, we must
quote the passage on which his mind was so intently fixed:—
"THE ASSASSINATION OF GUSTAVUS III., OF
SWEDEN.[35]
"The nobles were discontented with the general conduct of the King;
and a conspiracy was planned against him under his own roof. His
wars had compelled him to negotiate large loans, and to impose upon
his subjects heavy taxes. The nobles took advantage of that
circumstance to prejudice the minds of many of the people against
the sovereign who had laboured so long for their real good. On the
16th of March, 1792, he received an anonymous letter, warning him of
his immediate danger from a plot that was laid to take away his
life, requesting him to remain at home, and avoid balls for a year;
and assuring him, that if he should go to the masquerade for which
he was preparing, he would be assassinated that very night. The King
read the note with contempt, and at a late hour entered the
ball-room. After some time he sat down in a box with the Count of
Essen, and observed he was not deceived in his contempt for the
letter, since, had there been any design against his life, no time
could be more favourable than that moment. He then mingled, without
apprehension, among the crowd; and just as he was preparing to
retire with the Prussian ambassador, he was surrounded by several
persons in masks, one of whom fired a pistol at the back of the
King, and lodged the contents in his body. A scene of dreadful
confusion ensued. The conspirators, amidst the general tumult and
alarm, had time to retire to other parts of the room; but one of
them had previously dropped his pistols and a dagger close by the
wounded King. A general order was given to all the company to
unmask, and the doors were immediately closed; but no person
appeared with any particular distinguishing marks of guilt. The King
was immediately conveyed to his apartment; and the surgeon, after
extracting a ball and some slugs, gave favourable hopes of his
Majesty's recovery.
"Suspicions immediately fell upon such of the nobles as had been
notorious for their opposition to the measures of the court. The
anonymous letter was traced up to Colonel Liljehorn, Major in the
King's Guards, and he was immediately apprehended. But the most
successful clue that seemed to offer was in consequence of the
weapons which had fallen from the assassin. An order was issued,
directing all the armourers, gunsmiths, and cutlers, in Stockholm,
to give every information in their power to the officers of justice,
concerning the weapons. A gunsmith who had repaired the pistols
readily recognised them to be the same which he had repaired some
time since for a nobleman of the name of Ankarstrom, a captain in
the army; and the cutler who had made the dagger, referred at once
to the same person.
"The King languished from the 17th to the 29th of March. At first,
the reports of his medical attendants were favourable; but on the
28th a mortification was found to have taken place, which terminated
his existence in a few hours. On opening his body, a square piece of
lead and two rusty nails were found unextracted within the ribs.
"During his illness, and particularly after he was made acquainted
with the certainty of his approaching dissolution, Gustavus
continued to display that unshaken courage which he had manifested
on every occasion during his life. A few hours before his decease,
he made some alterations in the arrangement of public affairs. He
had before, by his will, appointed a council of regency, but
convinced, by recent experience, how little he could depend on the
attachment of his nobles, and being also aware of the necessity of a
strong government in difficult times, he appointed his brother, the
Duke of Sudermania, sole regent, till his son, who was then about
fourteen, should have attained the age of eighteen years. His last
words were a declaration of pardon to the conspirators against his
life. The actual murderer alone was excepted; and he was excepted
only at the strong instance of the regent, and those who surrounded
his Majesty in his dying moments. Immediately on the death of the
King, the young prince was proclaimed by the title of Gustavus IV.
"Ankarstrom was no sooner apprehended, than he confessed with an air
of triumph, that he was the person 'who had endeavoured to liberate
his country from a monster and a tyrant.' Suspicions at the same
time fell on the Counts Horn and Ribbing, Baron Pechlin, Baron
Ehrensvard, Baron Hartsmandorf, Von Engerstrom the Royal Secretary,
and others; and these suspicions were confirmed by the confession of
Ankarstrom. After a very fair and ample trial, this man was
condemned to be publicly and severely whipped on three successive
days, his right hand and his head to be cut off, and his body
impaled: which sentence he suffered on the 17th of May. His property
was given to his children, who, however, were compelled to change
their name."
"Ankarstrom was a martyr—a hero!" exclaimed Holford, aloud; his
imagination excited by the preceding narrative, and all the morbid
feelings of his wrongly-biassed mind aroused at the idea of the terrible
renown that attached itself to the name of a regicide.
Then,—although the garret in which he sate was so cold that ice floated
on the water in the pitcher, and the nipping chill of a February night
came through the cracked panes and ill-closed lattice, while the snow
lay thick upon the slanting tiles immediately above his head,—that young
man's entire frame glowed with a feverish heat, which shone with
sinister lustre in his eyes, and appeared in the two deep-red hectic
spots which marked his cheeks.
"Yes—Ankarstrom was a hero!" he exclaimed. "Oh! how he must have
despised the efforts of the torturers to wring from him a groan:—how he
must have scorned the array of penalties which were sought to be made so
terrible! And Ravaillac—the regicide beneath whose hand fell Henry IV.
of France—oh! how well is every word of his history treasured up in my
mind. But Francis Damien—ah! his fate was terrible indeed! And yet I am
not afraid to contemplate it—even though such a one should be in store
for me."
Then hastily turning to the "History of France," in the volume which he
was reading, he slowly and in measured terms repeated aloud the
following passage:—
"ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF LOUIS XV.,
OF FRANCE.
"In the year 1757, one Francis Damien, an unhappy wretch, whose
sullen mind, naturally unsettled, was inflamed by the disputes
between the King and his Parliament concerning religion, formed the
desperate resolution of attempting the life of his Sovereign. In the
dusk of the evening, as the King prepared to enter his coach, he was
suddenly, though slightly, wounded, with a pen-knife, between the
fourth and fifth ribs, in the presence of his son, and in the midst
of his guards. The daring assassin had mingled with the crowd of
courtiers, but was instantly betrayed by his distracted countenance.
He declared it was never his intention to kill the King: but that he
only meant to wound him, that God might touch his heart, and incline
him to restore the tranquillity of his dominions by re-establishing
the Parliament, and banishing the Archbishop of Paris, whom he
regarded as the source of the present commotions. In these frantic
and incoherent declarations he persisted, amidst the most exquisite
tortures; and after human ingenuity had been exhausted in devising
new modes of torment, his judges, tired out with his obstinacy,
consigned him to a death, the inhumanity of which might fill the
hearts of savages with horror: he was conducted to the common place
of execution, amidst a vast concourse of the populace; stripped
naked, and fastened to the scaffold by iron manacles. One of his
hands was then burnt in liquid flaming sulphur; his thighs, legs,
and arms, were torn with red hot pincers: boiling oil, melted lead,
resin, and sulphur, were poured into the wounds; and, to complete
the terrific catastrophe, he was torn to pieces by horses!"
"And they call him an unhappy wretch!" exclaimed Holford, pushing the
book from him: "no—no! He must have had a great and a powerful mind to
have dared to attempt to kill a King! And his name is remembered in
history! Ah! that thought must have consoled him in the midst of those
infernal torments. What is more delightful than the conviction of
emerging from vile obscurity, and creating a reputation—although one so
tarnished and disfigured that the world shrinks from it with loathing?
Yes:—better to be a Turpin or a Barrington—a Claude du Val or a Jack
Sheppard, than live unknown, and die without exciting a sensation. But
it would be glorious—oh! how glorious to be ranked with Ankarstrom,
Ravaillac, Damien, Felton, Guy Fawkes, Fieschi, and that gallant few who
have either slain, or attempted the lives of, monarchs or great men! I
am miserable,—poor,—obscure,—and without a hope of rising by legitimate
means. I have seen the inside of a palace—and am doomed to drag on my
wretched existence in this garret. I have partaken of the dainties that
came from the table of a sovereign—and, were I hungry now, a sorry crust
is all that my cupboard would afford. I have listened to the musical
voice of that high-born lady whose name I scarcely dare to breathe even
to myself—and now the cold blast of February comes with its hoarse sound
to grate upon my ears in this miserable—miserable garret! Oh! why was my
destiny cast in so lowly a sphere? What has been my almost constant
occupation—with some few brighter intervals—since I was twelve years
old? A pot-boy—a low, degraded pot-boy: the servant of servants—the
slave of slaves—forced to come and go at the beck and call of the
veriest street-sweeper that frequented the tap-room! Ah! my God—when I
think of all this humiliation, I feel that my blood boils even up to my
very brain—my eyes and cheeks appear to be upon fire—I seem as if my
senses were leaving me!"
And, as he spoke, he clenched his fists and ground his teeth together
with a ferocious bitterness, which indicated the fearfully morbid
condition of his mind.
For he was enraged against fortune who had made him poor and
humble—against the world for keeping him so—and against royalty and
aristocracy for being so much happier and so incomparably more blessed
than the section of society to which he belonged.
And in his vanity—for his soaring disposition made him vain—he conceived
that he possessed elements of greatness, which the world, with a wilful
blindness, would not see; or which adverse circumstances would not
suffer to develop themselves.
He deemed himself more persecuted than others moving in the same sphere:
his restless, diseased, and excited mind, had conjured up a thousand
evils to which he thought himself the marked—the special prey.
He had seen, in his visits to the palace, so much of the highest
eminence of luxury, pleasure, happiness, and indolent enjoyment, that he
looked around with horror and affright when he found himself hurled back
again into the lowest depths of obscurity, privation, and cheerlessness
of life.
He had at intervals feasted his eyes so greedily with all the
fascination, the glitter, the gorgeousness, the splendour, the ease, and
the voluptuousness, of the Court, that he could not endure the
contemplation of the fearful contrast which was afforded by the
every-day and familiar scenes of starvation, penury, misery, and
ineffectual toil that marked the existence of the people.
The moral condition of Henry Holford was a striking proof of the daring
flights of which the human mind is capable. On the very first occasion
of his visit to the palace, he had allowed himself to be carried away by
all the wildest emotions and the strangest impressions that were
produced by the novelty of what he then saw and heard. Royalty had been
ever associated, in his vulgar conception, with something grand and
handsome in man, and something wonderfully beautiful in woman. Thus,
when he first saw the Queen, he was prepared to admire her:—he admired
her accordingly; and that feeling increased to a degree the insolence of
which at times overawed and terrified even himself.
By another wayward inclination of his unhealthy but enthusiastic mind,
he had from the first been prepared to dislike the Prince; and this
feeling increased in violence with those circumstances which each
successive visit to the royal abode developed. At length—as if his evil
destiny must infallibly hurry him on to some appalling catastrophe—he
was discovered by the Prince in the detestable condition of an
eaves-dropper, and was ignominiously driven forth from that dwelling
where his mind had gradually collected the elements of a most unnatural
excitement.
He knew that any attempt to repeat his visits would be frustrated by the
precautions which were certain to have been adopted to prevent future
intrusions of a like nature; and he now felt precisely as one who is
compelled suddenly to abandon a habit to which he had become wedded.
Strange as it may appear, the morbid excitement attendant upon those
visits to the palace was as necessary to Holford's mental happiness as
tobacco, opium, snuff, or strong liquors are to so many millions of
individuals.
With a person in such a state of mind, the first impulse was bitter
hatred against the one who had deprived him of a source of pleasurable
excitement; and in that vengeful feeling were absorbed all those
rational reflections which would have convinced him that his own
insolent intrusion—his own unpardonable conduct—had provoked the
treatment he had received. He never paused to ask himself by what right
he had entered the palace and played the ignoble part of a listener to
private conversation and a spy upon the hallowed sanctity of domestic
life:—the dominant idea in his mind was his ignominious expulsion.
"Fate has now filled my cup of bitterness to the brim," he would say to
himself; "and all that remains for me to do is to avenge myself on him
whom my destiny has made the instrument of this crowning degradation."
By degrees the mind of that young man found its gloomy broodings upon
vengeance associating themselves with other sentiments. He gradually
blended this idea of revenge with the ardent desire of breaking those
trammels which kept his name imprisoned in the silent cavern of
obscurity. The two sentiments at length united in his imagination; and
his pulse beat quickly—and his eyes flashed fire, when he surveyed the
possibility of gratifying his thirst for vengeance and suddenly
rendering his name notorious at the same moment, and by one
desperate—fearful deed!
The reader cannot now be at a loss to comprehend how this wretchedly
mistaken young man was brought to study the history of those regicides
who have gained an infamous renown in the annals of nations.
And as he dwelt with an insane enthusiasm upon those narratives, the
feeling of admiration—nay, adoration—which he had once experienced
towards the Queen, was merged in the terrible longing for a diabolical
notoriety that now became his predominating—his all-absorbing passion!
"Yes!" he exclaimed, as he pushed the book away from him, that night on
which we have introduced the reader to his garret: "I will be talked
about—my name shall be upon every tongue! Obscurity shall no longer
enshroud me: its darkness is painful to my soul. I will do a deed that
shall make the Kingdom ring from one end to the other with the
astounding tidings:—the newspapers shall struggle with all the eagerness
of competition to glean the most trivial facts concerning me;—and when
the day arrives for me to appear before my judges, the great nobles and
the high-born ladies of England shall crowd in the tribunal to witness
the trial of the pot-boy Henry Holford!"
The act on which the young man was now resolved, appeared not to him in
its real light as an atrocious crime—a damnable deed that would arouse a
yell of execration from one end of the land to the other:—it seemed, on
the contrary, a glorious achievement of which he would have reason to be
proud.
Alas! how strangely constituted is the human mind, which, in any state
of being, could cherish such monstrous delusions—such fatal aspirations!
But is there no blame to be attached to society for this development of
ideas so morbid even on the part of one single individual? is there
nothing in the constitution of that society which gives encouragement,
as it were, to those detestable sentiments?
Let us see.
Enough has been said in the more serious and reasoning parts of this
work to prove that society is in a vitiated—a false—and an artificial
condition. The poor are too poor, and the rich too rich: the obscure are
too low, and the exalted too high. The upper classes alone have
opportunities of signalising themselves: the industrious millions have
no chance of rising in the State. Interest procures rank in the
Navy—money buys promotion in the Army—and interest and money united
obtain seats in the Legislative Assembly. Interest and money, then,
remain to the exclusive few: the millions have neither—nor are they even
stimulated by a national system of Education. An aristocrat of common
abilities may rise to eminence in some department of the State, with but
little trouble: but a son of toil, however vast his natural talents, has
not a single chance of starting from obscurity through the medium of
their proper development.
This is true: and we defy the most subtle reasoner on behalf of the
oligarchy to refute those positions.
Now, such being the case,—with a dominant aristocracy on one hand, and
the oppressed millions on the other,—is it not evident that every now
and then some member of the latter class will brood upon the vast, the
astounding contrast until feelings of a deplorably morbid nature become
excited in his mind? How could it be otherwise? Ireland, with its
agrarian outrages and its frequent instances of assassination, proves
the fact. England, with its incendiary fires in periods of deep
distress, affords additional corroboration.
We deplore that such should be the case; and not for a moment do we
advocate such means of vindicating just rights against the usurpers
thereof.
But if these instances of outbreaking revenge—if these ebullitions of
indomitable resentment _do_ now and then occur, no small portion of the
blame must be charged against that aristocracy which maintains itself on
an eminence so immeasurably above the depths in which the masses are
compelled to languish. And when the poor creature who is goaded to
desperation, _does_ strike—can we wonder if, in the madness of his rage,
he deals his blows indiscriminately, or against an innocent person? He
may even aim at royalty itself—although, in every really constitutional
country, the sovereign is little more than a mere puppet, the Prime
Minister of the day being the virtual ruler of the nation.
From what we have said, it is easy to perceive how the contemplation of
the splendid luxury of the palace first unhinged and unsettled the mind
of Henry Holford.
We must now go a step farther.
Society manifests a most inordinate and pernicious curiosity in respect
to criminals who perpetrate an unusual offence. This curiosity passes
all legitimate bounds. The newspapers, with a natural attention to
pecuniary interests, obey the cravings of that feeling by serving up the
most highly-seasoned food to suit the peculiar appetite. Portraits of
the guilty one are exhibited in every picture-shop. Apposite allusions
are introduced into dramatic representations; and even the presiding
genius of a "Punch and Judy show" mingles the subject with his humorous
outpourings. If the criminal make an attack upon royalty, he goes
through the important but mysterious ordeal of an examination at the
Home Office, whence the reporters for the press are excluded. On his
appearance at Bow Street, the magisterial tribunal is "crowded with
gentlemen and ladies, who were accommodated with seats upon the bench,"
as the journals say; and when the finale comes at the Central Criminal
Court, the fees for admission to the gallery rise to two or three
guineas for each individual.
Thus the criminal is made into a hero!
Now is not all this sufficient to turn the head of one whose mind is
already partially unhinged?
Society, then, is to blame in many ways for the development of those
morbid feelings which, in the present instance, actuated Henry Holford
in his desperate purpose.
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Footnote 35:
From Evans' and Forbes' "Geographical Grammar." Edition of 1814.