Still I think at the Judgment Day,
When God sifts the good from the bad men,
There’ll be something more to say.”
What more the Lord Chief Justice found to say.
“In this case we know the immediate consequence of your crime. It has
been the loss of human life, it has been the disturbance of public
peace, it has been the creation of a certain sense of distrust of public
professions and of public faith.... The sentence of this Court therefore
is that, as to you, Leander Starr Jameson, you be confined for a period
of fifteen months without hard labor; that you, Sir John Willoughby,
have ten months’ imprisonment; and that you, etc., etc.”
London Times, July 29th.
What the Hon. “Reggie” Blake thought about it.
“H. M. HOLLOWAY PRISON,
“July 28th.
“I am going to keep a diary while I am in prison, that is, if they will
let me. I never kept one before because I hadn’t the time; when I was
home on leave there was too much going on to bother about it, and when
I was up country I always came back after a day’s riding so tired that I
was too sleepy to write anything. And now that I have the time, I won’t
have anything to write about. I fancy that more things happened to me
to-day than are likely to happen again for the next eight months, so I
will make this day take up as much room in the diary as it can. I am
writing this on the back of the paper the Warder uses for his official
reports, while he is hunting up cells to put us in. We came down on him
rather unexpectedly and he is nervous.
“Of course, I had prepared myself for this after a fashion, but now I
see that somehow I never really did think I would be in here, and all
my friends outside, and everything going on just the same as though I
wasn’t alive somewhere. It’s like telling yourself that your horse can’t
possibly pull off a race, so that you won’t mind so much if he doesn’t,
but you always feel just as bad when he comes in a loser. A man can’t
fool himself into thinking one way when he is hoping the other.
“But I am glad it is over, and settled. It was a great bore not knowing
your luck and having the thing hanging over your head every morning
when you woke up. Indeed it was quite a relief when the counsel got all
through arguing over those proclamations, and the Chief Justice summed
up, but I nearly went to sleep when I found he was going all over it
again to the jury. I didn’t understand about those proclamations myself
and I’ll lay a fiver the jury didn’t either. The Colonel said he didn’t.
I couldn’t keep my mind on what Russell was explaining about, and I
got to thinking how much old Justice Hawkins looked like the counsel in
‘Alice in Wonderland’ when they tried the knave of spades for stealing
the tarts. He had just the same sort of a beak and the same sort of a
wig, and I wondered why he had his wig powdered and the others didn’t.
Pollock’s wig had a hole in the top; you could see it when he bent over
to take notes. He was always taking notes. I don’t believe he understood
about those proclamations either; he never seemed to listen, anyway.
“The Chief Justice certainly didn’t love us very much, that’s sure; and
he wasn’t going to let anybody else love us either. I felt quite the
Christian Martyr when Sir Edward was speaking in defence. He made it
sound as though we were all a lot of Adelphi heroes and ought to be
promoted and have medals, but when Lord Russell started in to read the
Riot Act at us I began to believe that hanging was too good for me. I’m
sure I never knew I was disturbing the peace of nations; it seems like
such a large order for a subaltern.
“But the worst was when they made us stand up before all those people to
be sentenced. I must say I felt shaky about the knees then, not because
I was afraid of what was coming, but because it was the first time I
had ever been pointed out before people, and made to feel ashamed. And
having those girls there, too, looking at one. That wasn’t just fair to
us. It made me feel about ten years old, and I remembered how the Head
Master used to call me to his desk and say, ‘Blake Senior, two pages of
Horace and keep in bounds for a week.’ And then I heard our names and
the months, and my name and ‘eight months’ imprisonment,’ and there was
a bustle and murmur and the tipstaves cried, ‘Order in the Court,’ and
the Judges stood up and shook out their big red skirts as though they
were shaking off the contamination of our presence and rustled away,
and I sat down, wondering how long eight months was, and wishing they’d
given me as much as they gave Jameson.
“They put us in a room together then, and our counsel said how sorry
they were, and shook hands, and went off to dinner and left us. I
thought they might have waited with us and been a little late for dinner
just that once; but no one waited except a lot of costers outside whom
we did not know. It was eight o’clock and still quite light when we came
out, and there was a line of four-wheelers and a hansom ready for us.
I’d been hoping they would take us out by the Strand entrance, just
because I’d like to have seen it again, but they marched us instead
through the main quadrangle--a beastly, gloomy courtyard that echoed,
and out, into Carey Street--such a dirty, gloomy street. The costers and
clerks set up a sort of a cheer when we came out, and one of them cried,
‘God bless you, sir,’ to the doctor, but I was sorry they cheered. It
seemed like kicking against the umpire’s decision. The Colonel and I got
into a hansom together and we trotted off into Chancery Lane and turned
into Holborn. Most of the shops were closed, and the streets looked
empty, but there was a lighted clock-face over Mooney’s public-house,
and the hands stood at a quarter past eight. I didn’t know where
Holloway was, and was hoping they would have to take us through some
decent streets to reach it; but we didn’t see a part of the city that
meant anything to me, or that I would choose to travel through again.
“Neither of us talked, and I imagined that the people in the streets
knew we were going to prison, and I kept my eyes on the enamel card on
the back of the apron. I suppose I read, ‘Two-wheeled hackney carriage:
if hired and discharged within the four-mile limit, 1s.’ at least a
hundred times. I got more sensible after a bit, and when we had turned
into Gray’s Inn Road I looked up and saw a tram in front of us with
‘Holloway Road and King’s X,’ painted on the steps, and the Colonel saw
it about the same time I fancy, for we each looked at the other, and the
Colonel raised his eyebrows. It showed us that at least the cabman knew
where we were going.
“‘They might have taken us for a turn through the West End first, I
think,’ the Colonel said. ‘I’d like to have had a look around, wouldn’t
you? This isn’t a cheerful neighborhood, is it?’
“There were a lot of children playing in St. Andrew’s Gardens, and a
crowd of them ran out just as we passed, shrieking and laughing over
nothing, the way kiddies do, and that was about the only pleasant sight
in the ride. I had quite a turn when we came to the New Hospital just
beyond, for I thought it was Holloway, and it came over me what eight
months in such a place meant. I believe if I hadn’t pulled myself up
sharp, I’d have jumped out into the street and run away. It didn’t last
more than a few seconds, but I don’t want any more like them. I was
afraid, afraid--there’s no use pretending it was anything else. I was in
a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook, as I have seen
a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and trembles down his
sides.
“During those few seconds it seemed to be more than I could stand; I
felt sure that I couldn’t do it--that I’d go mad if they tried to force
me. The idea was so terrible--of not being master over your own legs and
arms, to have your flesh and blood and what brains God gave you buried
alive in stone walls as though they were in a safe with a time-lock on
the door set for eight months ahead. There’s nothing to be afraid of in
a stone wall really, but it’s the idea of the thing--of not being free
to move about, especially to a chap that has always lived in the open as
I have, and has had men under him. It was no wonder I was in a funk for
a minute. I’ll bet a fiver the others were, too, if they’ll only own up
to it. I don’t mean for long, but just when the idea first laid hold of
them. Anyway, it was a good lesson to me, and if I catch myself thinking
of it again I’ll whistle, or talk to myself out loud and think of
something cheerful. And I don’t mean to be one of those chaps who spends
his time in jail counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders,
or measuring how many of his steps make a mile, for madness lies that
way. I mean to sit tight and think of all the good times I’ve had, and
go over them in my mind very slowly, so as to make them last longer and
remember who was there and what we said, and the jokes and all that;
I’ll go over house-parties I have been on, and the times I’ve had in the
Riviera, and scouting parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were taking
Matabele Land.
“They say that if you’re good here they give you things to read after a
month or two, and then I can read up all those instructive books that a
fellow never does read until he’s laid up in bed.
“But that’s crowding ahead a bit; I must keep to what happened to-day.
We struck York Road at the back of the Great Western Terminus, and I
half hoped we might see some chap we knew coming or going away: I would
like to have waved my hand to him. It would have been fun to have seen
his surprise the next morning when he read in the paper that he had
been bowing to jail-birds, and then I would like to have cheated the
tipstaves out of just one more friendly good-by. I wanted to say good-by
to somebody, but I really couldn’t feel sorry to see the last of any
one of those we passed in the streets--they were such a dirty,
unhappy-looking lot, and the railroad wall ran on forever apparently,
and we might have been in a foreign country for all we knew of it. There
were just sooty gray brick tenements and gas-works on one side, and
the railroad cutting on the other, and semaphores and telegraph wires
overhead, and smoke and grime everywhere, it looked exactly like the
sort of street that should lead to a prison, and it seemed a pity to
take a smart hansom and a good cob into it.
“It was just a bit different from our last ride together--when we rode
through the night from Krugers-Dorp with hundreds of horses’ hoofs
pounding on the soft veldt behind us, and the carbines clanking against
the stirrups as they swung on the sling belts. We were being hunted
then, harassed on either side, scurrying for our lives like the Derby
Dog in a race-track when every one hoots him and no man steps out to
help--we were sick for sleep, sick for food, lashed by the rain, and we
knew that we were beaten; but we were free still, and under open skies
with the derricks of the Rand rising like gallows on our left, and
Johannesburg only fifteen miles away.”