murdered him is well known: it was Bishop Berkeley. The story is familiar,
though hitherto not put in a proper light. Berkeley, when a young man, went
to Paris and called on Père Malebranche. He found him in his cell cooking.
Cooks have ever been a _genus irritabile_; authors still more so:
Malebranche was both: a dispute arose; the old father, warm already, became
warmer; culinary and metaphysical irritations united to derange his liver:
he took to his bed, and died. Such is the common version of the story:
"So the whole ear of Denmark is abused." The fact is, that the matter was
hushed up, out of consideration for Berkeley, who (as Pope remarked) had
"every virtue under heaven:" else it was well known that Berkeley, feeling
himself nettled by the waspishness of the old Frenchman, squared at him; a
_turn-up_ was the consequence: Malebranche was floored in the first round;
the conceit was wholly taken out of him; and he would perhaps have given
in; but Berkeley's blood was now up, and he insisted on the old Frenchman's
retracting his doctrine of Occasional Causes. The vanity of the man was too
great for this; and he fell a sacrifice to the impetuosity of Irish youth,
combined with his own absurd obstinacy.
Leibnitz, being every way superior to Malebranche, one might, _a fortiori_,
have counted on _his_ being murdered; which, however, was not the case. I
believe he was nettled at this neglect, and felt himself insulted by the
security in which he passed his days. In no other way can I explain
his conduct at the latter end of his life, when he chose to grow very
avaricious, and to hoard up large sums of gold, which he kept in his
own house. This was at Vienna, where he died; and letters are still in
existence, describing the immeasurable anxiety which he entertained for his
throat. Still his ambition, for being _attempted_ at least, was so
great, that he would not forego the danger. A late English pedagogue, of
Birmingham manufacture, viz., Dr. Parr, took a more selfish course, under
the same circumstances. He had amassed a considerable quantity of gold and
silver plate, which was for some time deposited in his bed-room at his
parsonage house, Hatton. But growing every day more afraid of being
murdered, which he knew that he could not stand, (and to which, indeed, he
never had the slightest pretension,) he transferred the whole to the Hatton
blacksmith; conceiving, no doubt, that the murder of a blacksmith would
fall more lightly on the _salus reipublicæ_, than that of a pedagogue. But
I have heard this greatly disputed; and it seems now generally agreed, that
one good horse-shoe is worth about 2 1/4 Spital sermons.
As Leibnitz, though not murdered, may be said to have died, partly of
the fear that he should be murdered, and partly of vexation that he was
not,--Kant, on the other hand--who had no ambition in that way--had a
narrower escape from a murderer than any man we read of, except Des Cartes.
So absurdly does fortune throw about her favors! The case is told, I think,
in an anonymous life of this very great man. For health's sake, Kant
imposed upon himself, at one time, a walk of six miles every day along a
highroad. This fact becoming known to a man who had his private reasons for
committing murder, at the third milestone from Königsberg, he waited for
his "intended," who came up to time as duly as a mail-coach. But for an
accident, Kant was a dead man. However, on considerations of "morality," it
happened that the murderer preferred a little child, whom he saw playing in
the road, to the old transcendentalist: this child he murdered; and thus it
happened that Kant escaped. Such is the German account of the matter; but
my opinion is--that the murderer was an amateur, who felt how little would
be gained to the cause of good taste by murdering an old, arid, and adust
metaphysician; there was no room for display, as the man could not possibly
look more like a mummy when dead, than he had done alive.
Thus, gentlemen, I have traced the connection between philosophy and our
art, until insensibly I find that I have wandered into our own era. This I
shall not take any pains to characterize apart from that which preceded
it, for, in fact, they have no distinct character. The seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, together with so much of the nineteenth as we have
yet seen, jointly compose the Augustan age of murder. The finest work of
the seventeenth century is, unquestionably, the murder of Sir Edmondbury
Godfrey, which has my entire approbation. At the same time, it must be
observed, that the quantity of murder was not great in this century, at
least amongst our own artists; which, perhaps, is attributable to the want
of enlightened patronage. _Sint Mæcenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones_.
Consulting Grant's "Observations on the Bills of Mortality," (4th edition,
Oxford, 1665,) I find, that out of 229,250, who died in London during one
period of twenty years in the seventeenth century, not more than eighty-six
were murdered; that is, about four three-tenths per annum. A small number
this, gentlemen, to found an academy upon; and certainly, where the
quantity is so small, we have a right to expect that the quality should be
first-rate. Perhaps it was; yet, still I am of opinion that the best artist
in this century was not equal to the best in that which followed. For
instance, however praiseworthy the case of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey may be
(and nobody can be more sensible of its merits than I am), still I cannot
consent to place it on a level with that of Mrs. Ruscombe of Bristol,
either as to originality of design, or boldness and breadth of style. This
good lady's murder took place early in the reign of George III., a reign
which was notoriously favorable to the arts generally. She lived in College
Green, with a single maid-servant, neither of them having any pretension
to the notice of history but what they derived from the great artist whose
workmanship I am recording. One fine morning, when all Bristol was alive
and in motion, some suspicion arising, the neighbors forced an entrance
into the house, and found Mrs. Ruscombe murdered in her bed-room, and the
servant murdered on the stairs: this was at noon; and, not more than two
hours before, both mistress and servant had been seen alive. To the best of
my remembrance, this was in 1764; upwards of sixty years, therefore, have
now elapsed, and yet the artist is still undiscovered. The suspicions of
posterity have settled upon two pretenders--a baker and a chimney-sweeper.
But posterity is wrong; no unpractised artist could have conceived so bold
an idea as that of a noon-day murder in the heart of a great city. It was
no obscure baker, gentlemen, or anonymous chimney-sweeper, be assured, that
executed this work. I know who it was. (_Here there was a general buzz,
which at length broke out into open applause; upon which the lecturer
blushed, and went on with much earnestness_.) For Heaven's sake, gentlemen,
do not mistake me; it was not I that did it. I have not the vanity to think
myself equal to any such achievement; be assured that you greatly overrate
my poor talents; Mrs. Ruscombe's affair was far beyond my slender
abilities. But I came to know who the artist was, from a celebrated
surgeon, who assisted at his dissection. This gentleman had a private
museum in the way of his profession, one corner of which was occupied by a
cast from a man of remarkably fine proportions.
"That," said the surgeon, "is a cast from the celebrated Lancashire
highwayman, who concealed his profession for some time from his neighbors,
by drawing woollen stockings over his horse's legs, and in that way
muffling the clatter which he must else have made in riding up a flagged
alley that led to his stable. At the time of his execution for highway
robbery, I was studying under Cruickshank: and the man's figure was
so uncommonly fine, that no money or exertion was spared to get into
possession of him with the least possible delay. By the connivance of the
under-sheriff he was cut down within the legal time, and instantly put into
a chaise and four; so that, when he reached Cruickshank's he was positively
not dead. Mr. ----, a young student at that time, had the honor of giving
him the _coup de grâce_, and finishing the sentence of the law." This
remarkable anecdote, which seemed to imply that all the gentlemen in the
dissecting-room were amateurs of our class, struck me a good deal; and I
was repeating it one day to a Lancashire lady, who thereupon informed me,
that she had herself lived in the neighborhood of that highwayman, and well
remembered two circumstances, which combined, in the opinion of all his
neighbors, to fix upon him the credit of Mrs. Ruscombe's affair. One was,
the fact of his absence for a whole fortnight at the period of that murder:
the other, that, within a very little time after, the neighborhood of this
highwayman was deluged with dollars: now Mrs. Ruscombe was known to have
hoarded about two thousand of that coin. Be the artist, however, who he
might, the affair remains a durable monument of his genius; for such was
the impression of awe, and the sense of power left behind, by the strength
of conception manifested in this murder, that no tenant (as I was told in
1810) had been found up to that time for Mrs. Ruscombe's house.
But, whilst I thus eulogize the Ruscombian case, let me not be supposed to
overlook the many other specimens of extraordinary merit spread over the
face of this century. Such cases, indeed, as that of Miss Bland, or of
Captain Donnellan, and Sir Theophilus Boughton, shall never have any
countenance from me. Fie on these dealers in poison, say I: can they not
keep to the old honest way of cutting throats, without introducing such
abominable innovations from Italy? I consider all these poisoning cases,
compared with the legitimate style, as no better than wax-work by the side
of sculpture, or a lithographic print by the side of a fine Volpato. But,
dismissing these, there remain many excellent works of art in a pure style,
such as nobody need be ashamed to own, as every candid connoisseur will
admit. _Candid_, observe, I say; for great allowances must be made in
these cases; no artist can ever be sure of carrying through his own fine
preconception. Awkward disturbances will arise; people will not submit to
have their throats cut quietly; they will run, they will kick, they will
bite; and whilst the portrait painter often has to complain of too much
torpor in his subject, the artist, in our line, is generally embarrassed by
too much animation. At the same time, however disagreeable to the artist,
this tendency in murder to excite and irritate the subject, is certainly
one of its advantages to the world in general, which we ought not to
overlook, since it favors the development of latent talent. Jeremy Taylor
notices with admiration, the extraordinary leaps which people will take
under the influence of fear. There was a striking instance of this in the
recent case of the M'Keands; the boy cleared a height, such as he will
never clear again to his dying day. Talents also of the most brilliant
description for thumping, and indeed for all the gymnastic exercises,
have sometimes been developed by the panic which accompanies our artists;
talents else buried and hid under a bushel to the possessors, as much as to
their friends. I remember an interesting illustration of this fact, in a
case which I learned in Germany.
Riding one day in the neighborhood of Munich, I overtook a distinguished
amateur of our society, whose name I shall conceal. This gentleman informed
me that, finding himself wearied with the frigid pleasures (so he
called them) of mere amateurship, he had quitted England for the
continent--meaning to practise a little professionally. For this purpose
he resorted to Germany, conceiving the police in that part of Europe to be
more heavy and drowsy than elsewhere. His _debut_ as a practitioner took
place at Mannheim; and, knowing me to be a brother amateur, he freely
communicated the whole of his maiden adventure. "Opposite to my lodging,"
said he, "lived a baker: he was somewhat of a miser, and lived quite alone.
Whether it were his great expanse of chalky face, or what else, I know
not--but the fact was, I 'fancied' him, and resolved to commence business
upon his throat, which by the way he always carried bare--a fashion which
is very irritating to my desires. Precisely at eight o'clock in the
evening, I observed that he regularly shut up his windows. One night I
watched him when thus engaged--bolted in after him--locked the door--and,
addressing him with great suavity, acquainted him with the nature of my
errand; at the same time advising him to make no resistance, which would be
mutually unpleasant. So saying, I drew out my tools; and was proceeding to
operate. But at this spectacle, the baker, who seemed to have been struck
by catalepsy at my first announce, awoke into tremendous agitation. 'I will
_not_ be murdered!' he shrieked aloud; 'what for will I lose my precious
throat?' 'What for?' said I; 'if for no other reason, for this--that you
put alum into your bread. But no matter, alum or no alum, (for I was
resolved to forestall any argument on that point,) know that I am a
virtuoso in the art of murder--am desirous of improving myself in its
details--and am enamored of your vast surface of throat, to which I am
determined to be a customer.' 'Is it so?' said he, 'but I'll find you
custom in another line;' and so saying, he threw himself into a boxing
attitude. The very idea of his boxing struck me as ludicrous. It is true,
a London baker had distinguished himself in the ring, and became known
to fame under the title of the Master of the Rolls; but he was young and
unspoiled: whereas this man was a monstrous feather-bed in person, fifty
years old, and totally out of condition. Spite of all this, however, and
contending against me, who am a master in the art, he made so desperate a
defence, that many times I feared he might turn the tables upon me;
and that I, an amateur, might be murdered by a rascally baker. What a
situation! Minds of sensibility will sympathize with my anxiety. How severe
it was, you may understand by this, that for the first thirteen rounds the
baker had the advantage. Round the fourteenth, I received a blow on
the right eye, which closed it up; in the end, I believe, this was my
salvation: for the anger it roused in me was so great that, in this and
every one of the three following rounds, I floored the baker.
"Round 18th. The baker came up piping, and manifestly the worse for wear.
His geometrical exploits in the four last rounds had done him no good.
However, he showed some skill in stopping a message which I was sending to
his cadaverous mug; in delivering which, my foot slipped, and I went down.
"Round 19th. Surveying the baker, I became ashamed of having been so
much bothered by a shapeless mass of dough; and I went in fiercely,
and administered some severe punishment. A rally took place--both went
down--baker undermost--ten to three on amateur.
"Round 20th. The baker jumped up with surprising agility; indeed, he
managed his pins capitally, and fought wonderfully, considering that he was
drenched in perspiration; but the shine was now taken out of him, and his
game was the mere effect of panic. It was now clear that he could not last
much longer. In the course of this round we tried the weaving system, in
which I had greatly the advantage, and hit him repeatedly on the conk.
My reason for this was, that his conk was covered with carbuncles; and I
thought I should vex him by taking such liberties with his conk, which in
fact I did.
"The three next rounds, the master of the rolls staggered about like a cow
on the ice. Seeing how matters stood, in round twenty-fourth I whispered
something into his ear, which sent him down like a shot. It was nothing
more than my private opinion of the value of his throat at an annuity
office. This little confidential whisper affected him greatly; the very
perspiration was frozen on his face, and for the next two rounds I had it
all my own way. And when I called _time_ for the twenty-seventh round, he
lay like a log on the floor."
After which, said I to the amateur, "It may be presumed that you
accomplished your purpose." "You are right," said he mildly, "I did; and a
great satisfaction, you know, it was to my mind, for by this means I killed
two birds with one stone;" meaning that he had both thumped the baker and
murdered him. Now, for the life of me, I could not see _that_; for, on the
contrary, to my mind it appeared that he had taken two stones to kill one
bird, having been obliged to take the conceit out of him first with his
fist, and then with his tools. But no matter for his logic. The moral of
his story was good, for it showed what an astonishing stimulus to latent
talent is contained in any reasonable prospect of being murdered. A
pursy, unwieldy, half cataleptic baker of Mannheim had absolutely fought
six-and-twenty rounds with an accomplished English boxer merely upon this
inspiration; so greatly was natural genius exalted and sublimed by the
genial presence of his murderer.
Really, gentlemen, when one hears of such things as these, it becomes a
duty, perhaps, a little to soften that extreme asperity with which most
men speak of murder. To hear people talk, you would suppose that all the
disadvantages and inconveniences were on the side of being murdered, and
that there were none at all in _not_ being murdered. But considerate men
think otherwise. "Certainly," says Jeremy Taylor, "it is a less temporal
evil to fall by the rudeness of a sword than the violence of a fever: and
the axe" (to which he might have added the ship-carpenter's mallet and the
crow-bar) "a much less affliction than a strangury." Very true; the
bishop talks like a wise man and an amateur, as he is; and another great
philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, was equally above the vulgar prejudices on
this subject. He declares it to be one of "the noblest functions of reason
to know whether it is time to walk out of the world or not." (Book III.,
Collers' Translation.) No sort of knowledge being rarer than this, surely
_that_ man must be a most philanthropic character, who undertakes to
instruct people in this branch of knowledge gratis, and at no little hazard
to himself. All this, however, I throw out only in the way of speculation
to future moralists; declaring in the meantime my own private conviction,
that very few men commit murder upon philanthropic or patriotic principles,
and repeating what I have already said once at least--that, as to the
majority of murderers, they are very incorrect characters.
With respect to Williams's murders, the sublimest and most entire in their
excellence that ever were committed, I shall not allow myself to speak
incidentally. Nothing less than an entire lecture, or even an entire course
of lectures, would suffice to expound their merits. But one curious fact,
connected with his case, I shall mention, because it seems to imply that
the blaze of his genius absolutely dazzled the eye of criminal justice. You
all remember, I doubt not, that the instruments with which he executed his
first great work, (the murder of the Marrs,) were a ship-carpenter's mallet
and a knife. Now the mallet belonged to an old Swede, one John Petersen,
and bore his initials. This instrument Williams left behind him, in Marr's
house, and it fell into the hands of the magistrates. Now, gentlemen, it
is a fact that the publication of this circumstance of the initials led
immediately to the apprehension of Williams, and, if made earlier, would
have prevented his second great work, (the murder of the Williamsons,)
which took place precisely twelve days after. But the magistrates kept back
this fact from the public for the entire twelve days, and until that second
work was accomplished. That finished, they published it, apparently feeling
that Williams had now done enough for his fame, and that his glory was at
length placed beyond the reach of accident.
As to Mr. Thurtell's case, I know not what to say. Naturally, I have every
disposition to think highly of my predecessor in the chair of this society;
and I acknowledge that his lectures were unexceptionable. But, speaking
ingenuously, I do really think that his principal performance, as an
artist, has been much overrated. I admit that at first I was myself carried
away by the general enthusiasm. On the morning when the murder was made
known in London, there was the fullest meeting of amateurs that I have ever
known since the days of Williams; old bed-ridden connoisseurs, who had got
into a peevish way of sneering and complaining "that there was nothing
doing," now hobbled down to our club-room: such hilarity, such benign
expression of general satisfaction, I have rarely witnessed. On every side
you saw people shaking hands, congratulating each other, and forming
dinner parties for the evening; and nothing was to be heard but triumphant
challenges of--"Well! will _this_ do?" "Is _this_ the right thing?" "Are
you satisfied at last?" But, in the midst of this, I remember we all
grew silent on hearing the old cynical amateur, L. S----, that _laudator
temporis acti_, stumping along with his wooden leg; he entered the room
with his usual scowl, and, as he advanced, he continued to growl and
stutter the whole way--"Not an original idea in the whole piece--mere
plagiarism,--base plagiarism from hints that I threw out! Besides, his
style is as hard as Albert Durer, and as coarse as Fuseli." Many thought
that this was mere jealousy, and general waspishness; but I confess that,
when the first glow of enthusiasm had subsided, I have found most judicious
critics to agree that there was something _falsetto_ in the style of
Thurtell. The fact is, he was a member of our society, which naturally gave
a friendly bias to our judgments; and his person was universally familiar
to the cockneys, which gave him, with the whole London public, a temporary
popularity, that his pretensions are not capable of supporting; for
_opinionum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat_. There was,
however, an unfinished design of Thurtell's for the murder of a man with a
pair of dumb-bells, which I admired greatly; it was a mere outline, that he
never completed; but to my mind it seemed every way superior to his chief
work. I remember that there was great regret expressed by some amateurs
that this sketch should have been left in an unfinished state: but there
I cannot agree with them; for the fragments and first bold outlines of
original artists have often a felicity about them which is apt to vanish in
the management of the details.
The case of the M'Keands I consider far beyond the vaunted performance of
Thurtell,--indeed above all praise; and bearing that relation, in fact, to
the immortal works of Williams, which the Æneid bears to the Iliad.
But it is now time that I should say a few words about the principles of
murder, not with a view to regulate your practice, but your judgment: as
to old women, and the mob of newspaper readers, they are pleased with
anything, provided it is bloody enough. But the mind of sensibility
requires something more. _First_, then, let us speak of the kind of person
who is adapted to the purpose of the murderer; _secondly_, of the place
where; _thirdly_, of the time when, and other little circumstances.
As to the person, I suppose it is evident that he ought to be a good man;
because, if he were not, he might himself, by possibility, be contemplating
murder at the very time; and such "diamond-cut-diamond" tussles, though
pleasant enough where nothing better is stirring, are really not what a
critic can allow himself to call murders. I could mention some people (I
name no names) who have been murdered by other people in a dark lane; and
so far all seemed correct enough; but, on looking farther into the matter,
the public have become aware that the murdered party was himself, at the
moment, planning to rob his murderer, at the least, and possibly to murder
him, if he had been strong enough. Whenever that is the case, or may be
thought to be the case, farewell to all the genuine effects of the art. For
the final purpose of murder, considered as a fine art, is precisely the
same as that of tragedy, in Aristotle's account of it, viz., "to cleanse
the heart by means of pity and terror." Now, terror there may be, but how
can there be any pity for one tiger destroyed by another tiger?