OF THE FACE NECESSARY TO A SWINDLER—(AN INCIDENTAL SPECULATION ON THE
“DIVISION OF PROPERTY”)—AND OF THE USE AND ABUSE OF MUSTACHIOS
IT is a homely expression, often used in reply to a sarcasm on a
personal deformity, “that we did not make ourselves.” Not even a
Professor of Political Economy can argue away this conviction, rooted
as it is in the depths of the human heart. Much, however, can be done
with the rude lump—if indeed it be rude—whereof man finds himself the
ill-starred possessor. Hence, let no one moderately deformed despair
of his fitness to join our brotherhood Hump backs, club feet, and bow
shins have, it must be owned, their disadvantages for the
service—notwithstanding, the genius of their owners may triumph over
such outward obstacles. A fine face tastefully set in hair may be
considered a blessing for the profession; yet it would be to inflict a
great injustice on the higher uses of the science to suppose a mere
face so framed all-sufficient. No; “we work by wit and not by
whiskers.” The outward man goes far, but he must depend upon the
ethereal spark—upon the inward intelligence—for self-distinction.
And first for the FACE OF A SWINDLER. Men who set themselves up as
judges of character—I have heard the sciolists—sometimes marvel that the
sons of commerce should so frequently fall victims to some individual
swindler; when he, the party swindling, is one of the most ingenuous
creatures breathing; looking, in fact, the swindler that he is,—when
from his eyebrows to the corners of his lips there is painted in the
largest human capitals the calling of the professor. The truth is, the
unsuspecting men accustomed to pore over day-books and ledgers have not
had sufficient time to learn to read human faces. They can on the
instant, if put to the test, tell a good guinea from a bad one; but
though they shall stare in the features of a human counterfeit for an
hour or more, they cannot, one in a hundred, discover the washed brass
from the true gold. More; though they shall hear the counterfeit—though
the ring of its voice shall be the truest Brummagem—the trading man
shall complacently rub his hands, satisfied that he is hearing the
sweetest sound of the mint.
I confess it, to the honour of the trading community of this commercial
country, I confess it; the success of some faces of my brotherhood upon
men behind counters has been to me startling evidence of the
unsophisticated character of the tradesman. For instance; there is
Nobrowns, Scarceamag, Fleeceington, and others I could name—shall I own
it?—I have sometimes felt myself humiliated by their prosperity. I have
felt the science lowered by the facility with which they have
ingratiated themselves into the favour of the jeweller, the coachmaker,
the tailor. Had _I_ kept shop, I have thought I should have shown
Nobrowns to the door at the first glance of his eye; and without looking
at Scarceamag, but simply hearing his base-metal voice, I should have
told him I had nothing in his way, and straightway ordered him across
the threshold. And yet these men have flourished for a score of years;
and, at this moment, are prosperous swindlers. How is the enigma to be
explained—how the more than Arcadian innocency of the dwellers in Bond
Street and Regent Street to be philosophically accounted for? Is it,
that men immersed in the profound abstraction of £ s. d. lose somewhat
of the sagacity inherited and often improved by poorer souls; that, too
much rapt by the splendid visions of the future profits, they are less
vigilant as to the danger of present credit? Providence, however, hath
wisely partitioned its benefits. If it be given to Scarceamag, with
_his_ face, to swindle and be poor—it is also allotted to Puddingtête,
the tradesman, to be swindled and grow rich. Take this, then, my dear
pupil, for an axiom: you may—since you cannot help it—look the greatest
swindler in life; but if you shall hold your own counsel, your face
shall, at least to the acute men behind counters, never reveal it.
Tradesmen can read anything but customers’ faces.[12] This truth is
every day borne out by the success of fellows whose features have gone
far to vulgarise the science. Ragamuffins who ought never to have
aspired beyond the pea-and-thimble board at a country fair—knaves marked
and impressed by the truthful hand of nature for the lowest offices of
legerdemain have, trusting to the simplicity, the unsuspecting
ingenuousness of a money-getting generation, to the marvellous innocency
of the commercial body, made for themselves a reputation of the first
class, or of very nearly the first class of the highest profession.
Ultimately, in the advancement of society, these vulgar upstarts will be
met by a greater number of competitors, elevated and accomplished with
the graces of life, and the term swindler will be, as it ought to be,
synonymous with gentleman. The commercial faculty will, on the other
hand, be rendered more acute in its observation of human character;
hence it will require a greater delicacy of style—more imposing and a
more winning manner to arrive at any distinction—indeed, even to make a
clear paltry five hundred a year as a swindler, than in these times will
suffice to ensure to a tolerably industrious man an income of a
thousand. This is inevitable. When the tens of thousands of noble
spirits, heretofore absorbed by the professions, are left to trade upon
their wits—when all society is more strongly marked, more arbitrarily
divided into two classes, the swindlers and the swindled—when, instead
of a violent and ruthless division of property, as infamously as
ignorantly insisted upon by certain firebrands—there is a graceful
exchange of elegant patronage on the one side, and a profound expression
of thanksgiving respect on the other, the character of the successful
swindler will rise to its ordained and natural elevation, and a
Whitefeather (pardon the honest vanity) take his place with many
illustrious names sufficiently obvious to the philosophical reader. The
time is happily passing away when brute violence is to achieve national
good—when the price of bread is to be beaten down by a bludgeon, or
wages raised upon a pike. It is therefore a matter of deep regret to the
contemplative man, and such I am not ashamed to confess myself, to
perceive how many gifted persons are, by a premature nativity,
ill-placed. How many men at the present day breathing national arson and
patriotic pillage—men who have so profoundly studied the _meum_, that
they are entirely ignorant of that of _tuum_—would, born a few years
hence, have shed a lustre, have conferred a dignity upon even an
illustrious and dignified profession. Let me not be asked to enumerate
examples—I eschew the personal for the general. It is enough that the
eye of the philosopher can perceive in many a sulphureous patriot the
indefatigable swindler; that the sage, pondering on the inevitable
changes of society, can detect in a present Bull-ring Brutus all the
misapplied qualities of a future Isaac Solomons!
Footnote 12:
I can scarcely believe that Captain Whitefeather was a reader of the
Essays of David Hume; and yet a similar opinion—a friend of mine, a
poor curate to whom I showed the Captain’s MS., pointed it out to
me—is expressed by the sceptic philosopher, who, in his Essay on
“Delicacy of Taste,” says:—“You will seldom find that mere men of the
world, whatever strong sense they may be endowed with, are very nice
in distinguishing characters, or in marking those insensible
differences and gradations which make one man preferable to
another.”—[JOHN JACKDAW, Ed.]
Blissful time—glorious return of the golden age—when rapine and fire,
and cutting and maiming shall no longer be the evils adopted by
comprehensive minds to work out, as they conceive, a great good; but
when one half of the people shall live peaceably upon the other; when
the whole aim and end of every two men out of four shall be to possess
themselves of their daily bread—(philosophers will receive the phrase in
its more enlarged meaning)—by an art demanding in its exercise the
highest and most chastened faculties of the moral creature. The two
halves of society will then be fairly arrayed against each other; and
for ruthless weapons—for sword, dagger, and pistol on one side, and
bayonet, sabre, and carbine on the other—we shall have the more peaceful
and courteous instruments, silvery words, blandest smiles, and the
happiest self-possession, opposed by cautious interrogation, wary looks
and silent heavy doubtings. Here then is a contest worthy of
intellectual beings! This is indeed a duello of the immortal principle!
How poor, how savage, how unworthy of a rational creature to break into
the peaceful dwelling of an honest silversmith—to fire his
bed-curtains—to bruise and batter his ornate cream-jugs, his chased
candlesticks, and embossed tankards,—or, the spoil carried off amidst
the exulting howl of barbarians, to fling it into the hospitable
melting-pot—how loathsome, how degrading this brutal mode of a division
of property, to that refined and gracious system, the cunning birth of
better times—the fruit of a loftier and truer consideration of man’s
dignity towards his fellow!
Let us consider the two pictures; let us contemplate the working of the
different principles. How revolting the scene of violence! How debasing
to our common nature to witness a mob of denaturalised creatures
bursting in the good man’s door! How they scamper upstairs! Like festal
savages they wave firebrands and torches about their heads as they rush
into the sacred bedroom. The worthy man says a short prayer, and thinks
of his stock—his wife and daughters, trembling for their lives, are
horrified at being seen in nightcaps with their hair in paper! All the
house is in consternation; and, a touch of humanity softening the mob,
they benevolently suffer the silversmith and his family to escape, in
their night-clothes, over the roof, and descend, like cats, into the
gutter of their neighbour. The shop is ransacked of everything; and now
a sanguinary fight is going on behind the counter between two of the
ruffians for the plated top of a pepper-castor. This—this is one
principle of a division of property; as if property was only to be
divided by the blaze of torches and the crackling of rafters! Turn we to
the ennobling contrast.
[Illustration:
“Politely receives his destroyer”
]
Mark the swindler! How graciously he descends from his chariot—for the
swindler of first-rate genius rarely marauds on foot—and with what a
composed elegance, with what a perfect self-possession he enters the
shop! There is something inexpressibly taking in his manner. Surveying
him from head to foot, we cannot repress the opinion that the “age of
chivalry” is _not_ past. He is the knight of later times—the Chevalier
Bayard in a round hat. _Sans peur_ glows in his eyeball, and the
whiteness of his kid gloves is _sans reproche_! Two or three centuries
ago he had, with mailed hand, “shaken the bags of hoarding abbots,” and
now comes he, with a condescending smile at his mouth, to deal with a
silversmith. See! he crosses the threshold—treads the shop. It is
impossible to resist the fascination of his lofty courtesy. The
tradesman, wary as he is—suspicious as loss after loss has made
him—despite of himself, confesses the supremacy of the stranger, and,
with a smiling lip, a twinkling eye, folded palms, and inclined back,
politely receives his destroyer. A conversation ensues; and the
swindler—I am of course putting the case of a man of genius—fastens upon
the tradesman, who every moment becomes more deeply impressed with the
consequence of his patron; and therefore, having flung to the winds all
low suspicion, is the most obsequious, the most humble servant of the
swindler. There is nothing too costly for him—nothing too curious; no
order too difficult to be met—no time too short for the accomplishment
of his wishes. The swindler is evidently a man of the very highest
consequence; and the silversmith, if I may adopt a homely expression, is
inevitably _done_, ay, done—
“—as brown as a berry.”[13]
Footnote 13:
It will be seen that the Captain had some knowledge of Chaucer.—[JOHN
JACKDAW, Ed.]
The swindler whirls away from the tradesman, who has attended him,
bareheaded, to the kerbstone, and then the man of precious metals
returns to his shop in that delightful serenity of mind, apt, I am told,
to possess people with profits ranging from fifty to seventy-five in the
hundred.
What—it will be asked—what, does Mr Giltspur, the silversmith, without
further questions put, trust his service of plate, besides a magnificent
suite of amethysts (for which the honourable Mr Thug expressed a sudden
liking), to the honour of his customer? To be sure he does; and his
blood simmering with a sense of profit, he orders them to be delivered
at “——— Hotel,” where Mr Thug is staying; but which delightful and
convenient hostelry he, shortly afterwards, suddenly leaves on the most
imperative business. A thousand instances bear out the probability of
Thug’s success and Giltspur’s discomfiture. People may talk about the
innocence of a pastoral age: I am, from long experience, convinced of
it, that the most innocent, the most unsuspecting, the most easily-taken
biped on the face of the earth is—your London shopkeeper. Armed with
proper weapons, it is almost impossible that he can escape you. The poor
creature is weakness, imbecility itself; “Wear your eye thus,” and as
surely as the fluttering bird drops into the mouth of the snake, as
surely fall the tribe of Giltspurs into the folds of the Thugs.
Well, and is it not delightful that it should be so? Here is Giltspur,
for a certain number of days at least, made very happy; he has delivered
his goods, and has already calculated to the odd sevenpence-halfpenny
the amount of profit. Thug has conferred upon him a great
pleasure—passing, it must be owned—but sweet, very sweet, whilst it
endures.
Does the reader still remember the picture of violence drawn in a former
page? Does he still behold the pallid silversmith—his fainting wife—and
blushing daughters? Does he yet hear the roar of the flames, as they
come up the staircase—the fury of pillage in the shop below?
The same effect is produced by the swindler, but how different the
cause! The “division of property” is just as complete—the fine, deep
philosophy that preaches it equally well honoured; and yet, what grace
on one side—what civility on the other; and, to one party at least, what
tangible, enduring satisfaction! Who, then, with the smallest spark of
human dignity within him would stoop to violence when he may “divide”
with ease? The “multiplication” of the human animal is, indeed,
according to the modern school-men, “vexation”; but the “division” of
property—unless divided on the bland principles of swindling—would be
infinitely worse. In the progress of society, then, it is by swindling,
and by swindling only, that we shall escape the most grievous
revolution.
To proceed with the personal qualifications necessary to a Swindler. He
must have a face of purest brass. If handsome, all the better; yet,
perhaps, expression is of greater importance than the mere proportion of
feature. If, however, he _look_ a Swindler—if to the contemplative men
who peruse human lines, printed in the blackest ink on some human faces,
he look his profession—his success with the sages of trade is certain.
It is, however, of the first importance that there should be no alloy in
the face. It should, for instance, be as incapable of emotion as the
bull hide on the shield of Ajax.[14] This, youthful Swindler, is the
besetting danger; hence, bend all your energies to obtain a stony look
of self-possession. Though a constable should put his “dead hand” upon
your shoulder, and your very marrow should thrill at the touch—your face
must remain motionless as the face of the Apollo Belvidere—your eye
unquenched—your voice with not a crack in it. I will not disguise the
difficulties of arriving at this super-human placidity. Talk of the
self-possession of a Cæsar—the coolness of a Napoleon—quackery all! What
is there in the composure of a man who takes snuff whilst hundreds of
other men’s limbs are being blown into the air (to be wept over by the
spirits of glory), with at the most a _sauve qui peut_ for it; whilst,
in the scale of advantage, there is a laurel wreath and a triumphant
entry and civic addresses,—what is all this to the quiet dignity
demanded of a swindler in a perilous situation—his splendid cabriolet,
perhaps, waiting at the shop—whilst, sneaked out at the back door, Bob
the apprentice has run for Police Officer Snatchem, F. No. 20, to attend
immediately to our hero, who at his approach beholds a no dim vision of
the very handsome police omnibus—the prison barber with his ignominious
shears—and hears, or thinks he hears, the pathetic, admonitory address
of Common Sergeant or Recorder? It may, according to a worn metaphor,
take nerves of iron to direct an army; but they must be brass, and of
the finest brass too, to swindle. Fighting is, indeed, a mechanic trade;
millions can fight,—but how few can gracefully swindle! We know that the
result of both operations is often the same, but how inferior one to the
other! Bonaparte brought a _few_ pictures from Italy, which the
world—Heaven knows!—made noise enough about. In warlike phrase he “took
them” from a vanquished people: a poor, shabby act to brag of; but had
he, unassisted by squadrons and battalions, and parks of artillery—had
he, by the unassisted efforts of his own mind, with no other masked
battery, no other weapon than his own hand and his own tongue,—had he
robbed one dealer of a Correggio—another of a Raphael—a third of a
Titian—a fourth of a Murillo—and so on,—it had indeed been an
achievement to boast of; but to crack of the incident as one of the
trophies of the army of Italy was the sublime of gasconading! My late
friend Featherfinger—he died, poor fellow, having burst a blood-vessel
from intense study at Macquarrie Harbour—had a magnificent bronze clock;
a superb thing! a thing to make a man value time. Had I not pledged my
honour to secrecy, I could write a history touching his possession of
that clock, which, of itself, is enough to immortalise any one man. My
honour, however, is sacred; and my lips are hushed. This much, probably,
I may be permitted to observe: The industry—nay, that is a poor,
unworthy term—the genius manifested by the indefatigable Featherfinger
to possess that clock—methinks I see him now; poor fellow! seated with
his Greek cap, his black satin morning gown figured with pink poppies—an
Indian shawl (the _gage d’amour_ of an Italian countess) about his
waist—his feet in bead-embroidered slippers, the work, as he protested,
of some heart-devoted heiress—his meerschaum in his mouth—in his hand a
book, _Satan_ or the _Lives of Highwaymen_ (for he was passionately fond
of light literature)—his tiger page, only three feet high, and warranted
to grow no taller, in green and gold, with a breast-plate of best double
gilt buttons, standing at a reverential distance—whilst the bronze clock
on the mantelpiece vibrated with its monitory, moralising—yes,
moralising—_tick, tick!_ Methinks I see him as I enter raise one eye
from the page, nod, smile—and such a smile!—there was only one
shopkeeper, and he was a philosophical member of the Society of Friends
and dealer in _virtu_, that ever stood against it—smile, and then cast
the other eye towards the clock itself with a look of touching reproach
at my delay, or with a glance of approving pleasure at my punctuality.
Methinks I see him—Gracious powers! That such a man should die at
Macquarrie Harbour, taxed beyond his strength of study, a victim to—but
no; loyalty to the Ministry was ever a virtue of the Whitefeathers, and
I breathe no word against the Whigs! To hurry from the theme. Much has
been said about the boldness, the fine contempt of public opinion shown
by Napoleon when he took the horses of St Mark from Venice to place them
on his own palace gate in Paris. Well, the act was not without its
merit, but did I dare to write the story of Featherfinger’s clock, the
theft of Napoleon would, in comparison to the genius manifested by my
friend, sink to the petty larceny committed by schoolboys upon apple
stalls. But so it is; the finest history remains, and ever will remain,
unwritten. The Venice horses have been celebrated by poets and
historians, but posterity is left to bewilder itself with guesses on
Featherfinger’s clock. Yet—and I am prepared to meet the consequences of
such an assertion—I am convinced that great as the conqueror was in all
the varieties of the science, Buonaparte’s horses must pass from the
recollection of the earth; whereas Featherfinger’s clock, duly
chronicled, was a thing for time! It may be cited as an illustration of
the injustice of Fortune—of the tricks she plays with the noble and the
man—when the reader is informed that the tiger page of my dear friend—of
him whose bones are mouldering (for he _was_ buried) in a foreign
earth—of him born, as the poet says—
“To steal a grace beyond the reach of art”—
that that little cab-page—that tiger-moth fluttering as I have seen him
with _billet-doux_ about the carriage-lamps and round the torches of an
opera night,—that he has at this moment a country-seat and grounds at
Hackney, purchased and supported by the precarious profits of a
night-house—that is, of a mansion hospitably open in the vicinity of
Drury Lane, for the refreshment of travellers with beer, beef and
oysters, from eleven at night until six in the morning. But so it is; a
genius, like my departed friend, dies beggared at the last; whilst mere
industry at forty-five grows his own pine apples!
Footnote 14:
I may, by the way, observe that the Captain, whose education was not
equal to his parts, is indebted for a few of his classical allusions
to another pen.—[JOHN JACKDAW, Ed.]
I have, I trust, been sufficiently minute in my description of the face
requisite to be put upon Swindling. In conclusion, I have only to
enforce the necessity of the most rigid self-discipline to prevent even
the most evanescent exhibition of what is conveniently called modesty;
for the swindler who can blush is lost. His must be a brow whereon
“Shame is ashamed to sit.”
A money-lender, a courtier, steeped to the lips in broken promises—a
pick-pocket caught in the act, all of these may, if they can, blush and
not be ruined; but woe to the swindler whose cheek admits the
self-accusing tint! His face, like the face of the man in the moon, must
look down upon all sorts of acted abominations, yet blench not.
MUSTACHIOS.—These _were_ pretty things for the profession; but I grieve
to say it, lawyers’ clerks, linen-drapers’ apprentices, players out of
place, and even pedestrian vendors of lucifer matches, have detracted
from their exclusive importance; hence, I would counsel the youthful,
sanguine swindler to eschew what indeed vulgar usage has rendered a very
questionable advantage, and to swindle with clean lips. It is enough to
break the heart of a rabbi to see how one of “Heaven’s best gifts,” the
human beard, is in these hirsute days cut and notched according to the
impudence or ignorance of the wearer. It is said of the French that they
have a thousand ways of cooking an egg: let it be our boast that we have
as many modes of dressing the chin. I have, I hope, a love of the
picturesque, as the world will one day know from a work of mine still,
unhappily, in manuscript.[15] I, therefore, am a passionate admirer of
the beard of patriarchal growth; but for your nasty, stunted, straggly,
ragged, edgy things—now like the skin of a dog with the mange, now like
the end of a skein of whitey-brown thread, now as if culled from chopped
hay, and now as if cut from a singed blanket—pah!—were I caliph for a
day—but no matter, let me not wander to legislation, but stick to my
higher subject—Swindling. I say, then, to my disciple, eschew
mustachios. At best they are a doubtful good. If, however, you are
determined to wear them, let me hope that their hue is black as death.
If, on the contrary, Heaven has awarded you a pair of pale gold or deep
carrot colour, tamper not with them, but shave. Never, like Richard,
think to stand “the hazard of the _die_”; if so, your case is desperate.
I knew three promising young fellows, all of whom laid their ruin at the
door of Mr Rowland. But—for I like to anticipate—it may be asked, Do you
always, Captain Whitefeather, walk abroad with unrazored lips? To this I
boldly answer that—for I was justified in the vanity—I did wear an
adorned mouth; more, that a lady, who shall be nameless, was in
hysterics (of course at intervals) for three days, when my mustachios
fell; but no, I could not condescend to wear them when I saw—yes, I
confess it—even a better pair than my own upon the face of a fellow in
the Surrey gallery, selling play-bills, Spanish nuts, and ginger beer.
What the revolution of society may in time produce it would of course be
impudence in me, who am not a Paternoster Row astrologer, to declare;
but, for the next five-and-twenty years, mustachios will, I think, be a
dangerous decoration for the swindler. So much business has been done
with them that suspicion will have scarcely subsided under at least
another quarter of a century. The horse-tails of Ibrahim Pacha have not
been more triumphant; but victory will not always perch upon the same
banner.
Footnote 15:
_The Handbook of Ratcliffe Highway_, an inestimable work (when
printed) for the stranger in London.—[JOHN JACKDAW, Ed.]
The swindler should not at the present day hope to take the Philistines
by the strength of his hair. No; let him shave, and put the barest face
upon the dignity of his profession—it cannot be _too_ bare.