There are other manifestations of greatness than to relieve suffering or
to wreck an empire. Julius Cæsar and John Howard are not the only heroes
who have smiled upon the world. In the supreme adaptation of means to an
end there is a constant nobility, for neither ambition nor virtue is
the essential of a perfect action. How shall you contemplate with
indifference the career of an artist whom genius or good guidance
has compelled to exercise his peculiar skill, to indulge his finer
aptitudes? A masterly theft rises in its claim to respect high above the
reprobation of the moralist. The scoundrel, when once justice is quit
of him, has a right to be appraised by his actions, not by their
effect; and he dies secure in the knowledge that he is commonly more
distinguished, if he be less loved, than his virtuous contemporaries.
While murder is wellnigh as old as life, property and the pocket
invented theft, late-born among the arts. It was not until avarice
had devised many a cunning trick for the protection of wealth, until
civilisation had multiplied the forms of portable property, that
thieving became a liberal and an elegant profession. True, in pastoral
society, the lawless man was eager to lift cattle, to break down the
barrier between robbery and warfare. But the contrast is as sharp
between the savagery of the ancient reiver and the polished performance
of Captain Hind as between the daub of the pavement and the perfection
of Velasquez.
So long as the Gothic spirit governed Europe, expressing itself in
useless ornament and wanton brutality, the more delicate crafts had
no hope of exercise. Even the adventurer upon the road threatened his
victim with a bludgeon, nor was it until the breath of the Renaissance
had vivified the world that a gentleman and an artist could face the
traveller with a courteous demand for his purse. But the age which
witnessed the enterprise of Drake and the triumph of Shakespeare knew
also the prowess of the highwayman and the dexterity of the cutpurse.
Though the art displayed all the freshness and curiosity of the
primitives, still it was art. With Gamaliel Ratsey, who demanded a
scene from Hamlet of a rifled player, and who could not rob a Cambridge
scholar without bidding him deliver an oration in a wood, theft
was already better than a vulgar extortion. Moll Cutpurse, whose
intelligence and audacity were never bettered, was among the bravest of
the Elizabethans. Her temperament was as large and as reckless as
Ben Jonson's own. Neither her tongue nor her courage knew the curb of
modesty, and she was the first to reduce her craft to a set of wise and
imperious rules. She it was who discovered the secret of discipline,
and who insisted that every member of her gang should undertake no other
enterprise than that for which nature had framed him. Thus she made easy
the path for that other hero, of whom you are told that his band was
made up 'of several sorts of wicked artists, of whom he made several
uses, according as he perceived which way every man's particular talent
lay.' This statesman--Thomas Dun was his name--drew up for the use of
his comrades a stringent and stately code, and he was wont to deliver
an address to all novices concerning the art and mystery of robbing
upon the highway. Under auspices so brilliant, thievery could not but
flourish, and when the Stuarts sat upon the throne it was already lifted
above the level of questioning experiment.
Every art is shaped by its material, and with the variations of its
material it must perforce vary. If the skill of the cutpurse compelled
the invention of the pocket, it is certain that the rare difficulties
of the pocket created the miraculous skill of those crafty fingers which
were destined to empty it. And as increased obstacles are perfection's
best incentive, a finer cunning grew out of the fresh precaution.
History does not tell us who it was that discovered this new continent
of roguery. Those there are who give the credit to the valiant Moll
Cutpurse; but though the Roaring Girl had wit to conceive a thousand
strange enterprises, she had not the hand to carry them out, and the
first pickpocket must needs have been a man of action. Moreover, her
nickname suggests the more ancient practice, and it is wiser to yield
the credit to Simon Fletcher, whose praises are chanted by the early
historians.
Now, Simon, says his biographer, was 'looked upon to be the greatest
artist of his age by all his contemporaries.' The son of a baker
in Rosemary Lane, he early deserted his father's oven for a life of
adventure; and he claims to have been the first collector who, stealing
the money, yet left the case. The new method was incomparably more
subtle than the old: it afforded an opportunity of a hitherto unimagined
delicacy; the wielders of the scissors were aghast at a skill which put
their own clumsiness to shame, and which to a previous generation would
have seemed the wildest fantasy. Yet so strong is habit, that even
when the picking of pockets was a recognised industry, the superfluous
scissors still survived, and many a rogue has hanged upon the Tree
because he attempted with a vulgar implement such feats as his unaided
forks had far more easily accomplished.
But, despite the innovation of Simon Fletcher, the highway was the glory
of Elizabeth, the still greater glory of the Stuarts. 'The Lacedæmonians
were the only people,' said Horace Walpole, 'except the English who seem
to have put robbery on a right foot.' And the English of the seventeenth
century need fear the rivalry of no Lacedæmonian. They were, indeed,
the most valiant and graceful robbers that the world has ever known.
The Civil War encouraged their profession, and, since many of them had
fought for their king, a proper hatred of Cromwell sharpened their wits.
They were scholars as well as gentlemen; they tempered their sport with
a merry wit; their avarice alone surpassed their courtesy; and they
robbed with so perfect a regard for the proprieties that it was only the
pedant and the parliamentarian who resented their interference.
Nor did their princely manner fail of its effect upon their victims. The
middle of the seventeenth century was the golden age, not only of the
robber, but of the robbed. The game was played upon either side with a
scrupulous respect for a potent, if unwritten, law. Neither might nor
right was permitted to control the issue. A gaily attired, superbly
mounted highwayman would hold up a coach packed with armed men, and take
a purse from each, though a vigorous remonstrance might have carried him
to Tyburn. But the traveller knew his place: he did what was expected of
him in the best of tempers. Who was he that he should yield in courtesy
to the man in the vizard? As it was monstrous for the one to discharge
his pistol, so the other could not resist without committing an outrage
upon tradition. One wonders what had been the result if some mannerless
reformer had declined his assailant's invitation and drawn his sword.
Maybe the sensitive art might have died under this sharp rebuff. But
none save regicides were known to resist, and their resistance was never
more forcible than a volley of texts. Thus the High-toby-crack swaggered
it with insolent gaiety, knowing no worse misery than the fear of the
Tree, so long as he followed the rules of his craft. But let a touch of
brutality disgrace his method, and he appealed in vain for sympathy or
indulgence. The ruffian, for instance, of whom it is grimly recorded
that he added a tie-wig to his booty, neither deserved nor received the
smallest consideration. Delivered to justice, he speedily met the death
his vulgarity merited, and the road was taught the salutary lesson that
wigs were as sacred as trinkets hallowed by association.
With the eighteenth century the highway fell upon decline. No doubt in
its silver age, the century's beginning, many a brilliant deed was done.
Something of the old policy survived, and men of spirit still went upon
the pad. But the breadth of the ancient style was speedily forgotten;
and by the time the First George climbed to the throne, robbery
was already a sordid trade. Neither side was conscious of its noble
obligation. The vulgar audacity of a bullying thief was suitably
answered by the ungracious, involuntary submission of the terrified
traveller. From end to end of England you might hear the cry of 'Stand
and deliver.' Yet how changed the accent! The beauty of gesture, the
deference of carriage, the ready response to a legitimate demand--all
the qualities of a dignified art were lost for ever. As its professors
increased in number, the note of aristocracy, once dominant, was
silenced. The meanest rogue, who could hire a horse, might cut a
contemptible figure on Bagshot Heath, and feel no shame at robbing
a poor man. Once--in that Augustan age, whose brightest ornament
was Captain Hind--it was something of a distinction to be decently
plundered. A century later there was none so humble but he might be
asked to empty his pocket. In brief, the blight of democracy was upon
what should have remained a refined, secluded art; and nowise is the
decay better illustrated than in the appreciation of bunglers, whose
exploits were scarce worth a record.
James Maclaine, for instance, was the hero of his age. In a history
of cowards he would deserve the first place, and the 'Gentleman
Highwayman,' as he was pompously styled, enjoyed a triumph denied to
many a victorious general. Lord Mountford led half White's to do him
honour on the day of his arrest. On the first Sunday, which he spent in
Newgate, three thousand jostled for entrance to his cell, and the
poor devil fainted three times at the heat caused by the throng of his
admirers. So long as his fate hung in the balance, Walpole could not
take up his pen without a compliment to the man, who claimed to have
robbed him near Hyde Park. Yet a more pitiful rascal never showed the
white feather. Not once was he known to take a purse with his own hand,
the summit of his achievement being to hold the horses' heads while his
accomplice spoke with the passengers. A poltroon before his arrest, in
Court he whimpered and whinnied for mercy; he was carried to the cart
pallid and trembling, and not even his preposterous finery availed to
hearten him at the gallows. Taxed with his timidity, he attempted to
excuse himself on the inadmissible plea of moral rectitude. 'I have as
much personal courage in an honourable cause,' he exclaimed in a passage
of false dignity, 'as any man in Britain; but as I knew I was committing
acts of injustice, so I went to them half loth and half consenting; and
in that sense I own I am a coward indeed.'
The disingenuousness of this proclamation is as remarkable as its
hypocrisy. Well might he brag of his courage in an honourable cause,
when he knew that he could never be put to the test. But what palliation
shall you find for a rogue with so little pride in his art, that he
exercised it 'half loth, half consenting'? It is not in this recreant
spirit that masterpieces are achieved, and Maclaine had better have
stayed in the far Highland parish, which bred him, than have attempted
to cut a figure in the larger world of London. His famous encounter with
Walpole should have covered him with disgrace, for it was ignoble at
every point; and the art was so little understood, that it merely added
a leaf to his crown of glory. Now, though Walpole was far too well-bred
to oppose the demand of an armed stranger, Maclaine, in defiance of
his craft, discharged his pistol at an innocent head. True, he wrote
a letter of apology, and insisted that, had the one pistol-shot proved
fatal, he had another in reserve for himself. But not even Walpole would
have believed him, had not an amiable faith given him an opportunity for
the answering quip: 'Can I do less than say I will be hanged if he is?'
As Maclaine was a coward and no thief, so also he was a snob and no
gentleman. His boasted elegance was not more respectable than his art.
Fine clothes are the embellishment of a true adventurer; they hang ill
on the sloping shoulders of a poltroon.
And Maclaine, with all the ostensible weaknesses of his kind, would
claim regard for the strength that he knew not. He occupied a costly
apartment in St. James's Street; his morning dress was a crimson damask
banjam, a silk shag waistcoat, trimmed with lace, black velvet breeches,
white silk stockings, and yellow morocco slippers; but since his
magnificence added no jot to his courage, it was rather mean than
admirable. Indeed, his whole career was marred by the provincialism of
his native manse.
And he was the adored of an intelligent age; he basked a few brief weeks
in the noonday sun of fashion.
If distinction was not the heritage of the Eighteenth Century, its glory
is that now and again a giant raised his head above the stature of a
prevailing rectitude. The art of verse was lost in rhetoric; the noble
prose, invented by the Elizabethans, and refined under the Stuarts, was
whittled away to common sense by the admirers of Addison and Steele.
Swift and Johnson, Gibbon and Fielding, were apparitions of strength
in an amiable, ineffective age. They emerged sudden from the impeccable
greyness, to which they afforded an heroic contrast. So, while the
highway drifted--drifted to a vulgar incompetence, the craft was
illumined by many a flash of unexpected genius. The brilliant
achievements of Jonathan Wild and of Jack Sheppard might have relieved
the gloom of the darkest era, and their separate masterpieces make some
atonement for the environing cowardice and stupidity. Above all, the
Eighteenth Century was Newgate's golden age; now for the first time and
the last were the rules and customs of the Jug perfectly understood.
If Jonathan the Great was unrivalled in the art of clapping his enemies
into prison, if Jack the Slip-string was supreme in the rarer art of
getting himself out, even the meanest criminal of his time knew what
was expected of him, so long as he wandered within the walled yard, or
listened to the ministrations of the snuff-besmirched Ordinary. He might
show a lamentable lack of cleverness in carrying off his booty; he might
prove a too easy victim to the wiles of the thief-catcher; but he never
fell short of courage, when asked to sustain the consequences of his
crime.
Newgate, compared by one eminent author to a university, by another to
a ship, was a republic, whose liberty extended only so far as its iron
door. While there was no liberty without, there was licence within; and
if the culprit, who paid for the smallest indiscretion with his neck,
understood the etiquette of the place, he spent his last weeks in an
orgie of rollicking lawlessness. He drank, he ate, he diced; he
received his friends, or chaffed the Ordinary; he attempted, through
the well-paid cunning of the Clerk, to bribe the jury; and when every
artifice had failed he went to Tyburn like a man. If he knew not how to
live, at least he would show a resentful world how to die.
'In no country,' wrote Sir T. Smith, a distinguished lawyer of the time,
'do malefactors go to execution more intrepidly than in England'; and
assuredly, buoyed up by custom and the approval of their fellows, Wild's
victims made a brave show at the gallows. Nor was their bravery the
result of a common callousness. They understood at once the humour and
the delicacy of the situation. Though hitherto they had chaffed the
Ordinary, they now listened to his exhortation with at least a semblance
of respect; and though their last night upon earth might have been
devoted to a joyous company, they did not withhold their ear from the
Bellman's Chant. As twelve o'clock approached--their last midnight upon
earth--they would interrupt the most spirited discourse, they would
check the tour of the mellowest bottle to listen to the solemn doggerel.
'All you that in the condemn'd hole do lie,' groaned the Bellman of
St. Sepulchre's in his duskiest voice, and they who held revel in
the condemned hole prayed silence of their friends for the familiar
cadences:
All you that in the condemn'd hole do lie,
Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die,
Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near,
That you before th' Almighty must appear.
Examine well yourselves, in time repent
That you may not t' eternal flames be sent;
And when St. Pulchre's bell to-morrow tolls,
The Lord above have mercy on your souls.
Past twelve o'clock!
Even if this warning voice struck a momentary terror into their
offending souls, they were up betimes in the morning, eager to pay their
final debt. Their journey from Newgate to Tyburn was a triumph, and
their vanity was unabashed at the droning menaces of the Ordinary. At
one point a chorus of maidens cast wreaths upon their way, or pinned
nosegays in their coats, that they might not face the executioner
unadorned. At the Crown Tavern they quaffed their last glass of ale, and
told the landlord with many a leer and smirk that they would pay him on
their way back. Though gravity was asked, it was not always given; but
in the Eighteenth Century courage was seldom wanting. To the common
citizen a violent death was (and is) the worst of horrors; to the
ancient highwayman it was the odd trick lost in the game of life. And
the highwayman endured the rope, as the practised gambler loses his
estate, without blenching. One there was, who felt his leg tremble in
his own despite: wherefore he stamped it upon the ground so violently,
that in other circumstances he would have roared with pain, and he left
the world without a tremor. In this spirit Cranmer burnt his recreant
right hand, and in either case the glamour of a unique occasion was a
stimulus to courage.
But not even this brilliant treatment of accessories availed to save the
highway from disrepute; indeed, it had become the profitless pursuit
of braggarts and loafers, long before the abolition of the stage-coach
destroyed its opportunity. In the meantime, however, the pickpocket was
master of his trade. His strategy was perfect, his sleight of hand as
delicate as long, lithe fingers and nimble brains could make it. He had
discarded for ever those clumsy instruments whose use had barred the
progress of the Primitives. The breast-pocket behind the tightest
buttoned coat presented no difficulty to his love of research, and he
would penetrate the stoutest frieze or the lightest satin, as easily as
Jack Sheppard made a hole through Newgate. His trick of robbery was
so simple and yet so successful, that ever since it has remained a
tradition. The collision, the victim's murmured apology, the hasty
scuffle, the booty handed to the aide-de-camp, who is out of sight
before the hue and cry can be raised--such was the policy advocated two
hundred years ago; such is the policy pursued to day by the few artists
that remain.
Throughout the eighteenth century the art of cly-faking held its own,
though its reputation paled in the glamour of the highway. It culminated
in George Barrington, whose vivid genius persuaded him to work alone and
to carry off his own booty; it still flourished (in a silver age) when
the incomparable Haggart performed his prodigies of skill; even in our
prosaic time some flashes of the ancient glory have been seen. Now
and again circumstances have driven it into eclipse. When the facile
sentiment of the Early Victorian Era poised the tear of sympathy upon
every trembling eyelid, the most obdurate was forced to provide himself
with a silk handkerchief of equal size and value.
Now, a wipe is the easiest booty in the world, and the Artful Dodger
might grow rich without the exercise of the smallest skill. But wipes
dwindled, with dwindling sensibility; and once more the pickpocket was
forced upon cleverness or extinction.
At the same time the more truculent trade of housebreaking was winning
a lesser triumph of its own. Never, save in the hands of one or two
distinguished practitioners, has this clumsy, brutal pursuit taken on
the refinement of an art. Essentially modern, it has generally been
pursued in the meanest spirit of gain. Deacon Brodie clung to it as to
a diversion, but he was an amateur, without a clear understanding of
his craft's possibilities. The sole monarch of housebreakers was Charles
Peace. At a single stride he surpassed his predecessors; nor has the
greatest of his imitators been worthy to hand on the candle which
he left at the gallows. For the rest, there is small distinction
in breaking windows, wielding crowbars, and battering the brains of
defenceless old gentlemen. And it is to such miserable tricks as this
that he who two centuries since rode abroad in all the glory of the
High-toby-splice descends in these days of avarice and stupidity. The
legislators who decreed that henceforth the rope should be reserved for
the ultimate crime of murder were inspired with a proper sense of humour
and proportion. It would be ignoble to dignify that ugly enterprise of
to-day, the cracking of suburban cribs, with the same punishment which
was meted out to Claude Duval and the immortal Switcher. Better for the
churl the disgrace of Portland than the chance of heroism and respect
given at the Tree!
And where are the heroes whose art was as glorious as their intrepidity?
One and all they have climbed the ascent of Tyburn.
One and all, they have leaped resplendent from the cart. The world,
which was the joyous playground of highwaymen and pickpockets, is now
the Arcadia of swindlers. The man who once went forth to meet his equal
on the road, now plunders the defenceless widow or the foolish clergyman
from the security of an office. He has changed Black Bess for a
brougham, his pistol for a cigar; a sleek chimney-pot sits upon the
head, which once carried a jaunty hat, three-cornered; spats have
replaced the tops of ancient times; and a heavy fur coat advertises at
once the wealth and inaction of the modern brigand. No longer does he
roam the heaths of Hounslow or Bagshot; no longer does he track the
grazier to a country fair. Fearful of an encounter, he chooses for the
fields of his enterprise the byways of the City, and the advertisement
columns of the smugly Christian Press. He steals without risking his
skin or losing his respectability. The suburb, wherein he brings up
a blameless, flat-footed family, regards him as its most renowned
benefactor. He is generally a pillar (or a buttress) of the Church, and
oftentimes a mayor; with his ill-gotten wealth he promotes charities,
and endows schools; his portrait is painted by a second-rate
Academician, and hangs, until disaster overtakes him, in the town-hall
of his adopted borough.
How much worse is he than the High-toby-cracks of old! They were as
brave as lions; he is a very louse for timidity. His conduct is meaner
than the conduct of the most ruffianly burglar that ever worked a
centre-bit. Of art he has not the remotest inkling: though his greed
is bounded by the Bank of England, he understands not the elegancies of
life; he cares not how he plumps his purse, so long as it be full; and
if he were capable of conceiving a grand effect, he would willingly
surrender it for a pocketed half-crown. This side the Channel, in brief,
romance and the picturesque are dead; and in France, the last refuge of
crime, there are already signs of decay. The Abbé Bruneau caught a whiff
of style and invention from the past. That other Abbé--Rosslot was his
name--shone forth a pure creator: he owed his prowess to the example of
none. But in Paris crime is too often passionel, and a crime passionel
is a crime with a purpose, which, like the novel with a purpose, is
conceived by a dullard, and carried out for the gratification of the
middle-class.
To whitewash the scoundrel is to put upon him the heaviest dishonour: a
dishonour comparable only to the monstrously illogical treatment of
the condemned. When once a hero has forfeited his right to comfort and
freedom, when he is deemed no longer fit to live upon earth, the Prison
Chaplain, encouraging him to a final act of hypocrisy, gives him a free
pass (so to say) into another and more exclusive world. So, too, the
moralist would test the thief by his own narrow standard, forgetting
that all professions are not restrained by the same code. The road has
its ordinances as well as the lecture-room; and if the thief is commonly
a bad moralist, it is certain that no moralist was ever a great thief.
Why then detract from a man's legitimate glory? Is it not wiser to
respect 'that deep intuition of oneness,' which Coleridge says is 'at
the bottom of our faults as well as our virtues?' To recognise that
a fault in an honest man is a virtue in a scoundrel? After all, he
is eminent who, in obedience to his talent, does prodigies of valour
unrivalled by his fellows. And none has so many opportunities of various
eminence as the scoundrel.
The qualities which may profitably be applied to a cross life
are uncommon and innumerable. It is not given to all men to be
light-brained, light-limbed, light-fingered. A courage which shall face
an enemy under the starlight, or beneath the shadow of a wall, which
shall track its prey to a well-defended lair, is far rarer than a
law-abiding cowardice. The recklessness that risks all for a present
advantage is called genius, if a victorious general urge it to success;
nor can you deny to the intrepid Highwayman, whose sudden resolution
triumphs at an instant of peril, the possession of an admirable gift.
But all heroes have not proved themselves excellent at all points. This
one has been distinguished for the courtly manner of his attack, that
other for a prescience which discovers booty behind a coach-door or
within the pocket of a buttoned coat. If Cartouche was a master of
strategy, Barrington was unmatched in another branch; and each may claim
the credit due to a peculiar eminence. It is only thus that you may
measure conflicting talents: as it were unfair to judge a poet by a
brief experiment in prose, so it would be monstrous to cheapen the
accomplishments of a pickpocket, because he bungled at the concealment
of his gains.
A stern test of artistry is the gallows. Perfect behaviour at an
enforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect of
talent--an effect which has not too often been rehearsed. There is no
reason why the Scoundrel, fairly beaten at the last point in the game,
should not go to his death without swagger and without remorse. At
least he might comfort himself with such phrases as 'a dance without the
music,' and he has not often been lacking in courage. What he has missed
is dignity: his pitfalls have been unctuosity, on the one side, bravado
on the other. It was the Prison Ordinary, who first misled him into the
assumption of a piety which neither preacher nor disciple understood. It
was the Prison Ordinary, who persuaded him to sign his name to a
lying confession of guilt, drawn up in accordance with a foolish and
inexorable tradition, and to deliver such a last dying speech as would
not disappoint the mob.
The set phrases, the vain prayer offered for other sinners, the
hypocritical profession of a superior righteousness, were neither noble
nor sincere. When Tom Jones (for instance) was hanged, in 1702, after
a prosperous career on Hounslow Heath, his biographer declared that
he behaved with more than usual 'modesty and decency,' because he
'delivered a pretty deal of good advice to the young men present,
exhorting them to be industrious in their several callings.' Whereas
his biographer should have discovered that it is not thus that your true
hero bids farewell to frolic and adventure.
As little in accordance with good taste was the last appearance of the
infamous Jocelin Harwood, who was swung from the cart in 1692 for murder
and robbery. He arrived at Tyburn insolently drunk. He blustered and
ranted, until the spectators hissed their disapproval, and he died
vehemently shouting that he would act the same murder again in the same
case. Unworthy, also, was the last dying repartee of Samuel Shotland,
a notorious bully of the Eighteenth Century. Taking off his shoes, he
hurled them into the crowd, with a smirk of delight. 'My father and
mother often told me,' he cried, 'that I should die with my shoes on;
but you may all see that I have made them both liars.' A great man dies
not with so mean a jest, and Tyburn was untouched to mirth by Shotland's
facile humour.
On the other hand, there are those who have given a splendid example of
a brave and dignified death. Brodie was a sorry bungler when at work,
but a perfect artist at the gallows. The glory of his last achievement
will never fade. The muttered prayer, unblemished by hypocrisy, the jest
thrown at George Smith--a metaphor from the gaming-table--the silent
adjustment of the cord which was to strangle him, these last offices
were performed with an unparalleled quietude and restraint. Though he
had pattered the flash to all his wretched accomplices, there was no
trace of the last dying speech in his final utterances, and he set an
example of a simple greatness, worthy to be followed even to the end
of time. Such is the type, but others also have given proof of a serene
temper. Tom Austin's masterpiece was in another kind, but it was none
the less a masterpiece. At the very moment that the halter was being put
about his neck, he was asked by the Chaplain what he had to say before
he died. 'Only,' says he, 'there's a woman yonder with some curds and
whey, and I wish I could have a pennyworth of them before I am hanged,
because I don't know when I shall see any again.' There is a brave
irrelevance in this very human desire, which is beyond praise.
Valiant also was the conduct of Roderick Audrey, who after a brief but
brilliant career paid his last debt to the law in 1714.
He was but sixteen, and, says his biographer, 'he went very decent to
the gallows, being in a white waistcoat, clean napkin, white gloves, and
an orange in one hand.' So well did he play his part, that one wonders
Jack Ketch did not shrink from the performance of his. But throughout
his short life, Roderick Audrey--the very name is an echo of
romance!--displayed a contempt for whatever was common or ugly. Not only
was his appearance at Tyburn a lesson in elegance, but he thieved,
as none ever thieved before or since, with no other accomplice than a
singing-bird. Thus he would play outside a house, wherein he espied a
sideboard of plate, and at last, bidding his playmate flutter through
an open window into the parlour, he would follow upon the excuse of
recovery, and, once admitted, would carry off as much silver as he could
conceal. None other ever attempted so graceful an artifice, and yet
Audrey's journey to Tyburn is even more memorable than the story of his
gay accomplice.
But it is not only the truly great who have won for themselves an
enduring reputation. There are men, not a few, esteemed, like the
popular novelist, not for their art but for some foolish gift, some
facile trick of notoriety, whose actions have tickled the fancy, not the
understanding of the world. The coward and the impostor have been set
upon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity.
For more than a century Dick Turpin has appeared not so much the
greatest of highwaymen, as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess has
been extolled in novels and upon the stage; his ride to York is still
bepraised for a feat of miraculous courage and endurance; the death of
Black Bess has drawn floods of tears down the most callous cheeks. And
the truth is that Turpin was never a gentleman of the road at all! Black
Bess is as pure an invention as the famous ride to York. The ruffian,
who is said to have ridden the phantom mare from one end of England to
the other, was a common butcher, who burned an old woman to death at
Epping, and was very properly hanged at York for the stealing of a horse
which he dared not bestride.
Not one incident in his career gives colour to the splendid myth which
has been woven round his memory. Once he was in London, and he died at
York. So much is true; but there is naught to prove that his progress
from the one town to the other did not occupy a year. Nor is there any
reason why the halo should have been set upon his head rather than upon
another's. Strangest truth of all, none knows at what moment Dick Turpin
first shone into glory. At any rate, there is a gap in the tradition,
and the chap-books of the time may not be credited with this vulgar
error. Perhaps it was the popular drama of Skelt which put the ruffian
upon the black mare's back; but whatever the date of the invention,
Turpin was a popular hero long before Ainsworth sent him rattling across
England. And in order to equip this butcher with a false reputation,
a valiant officer and gentleman was stripped of the credit due to
a magnificent achievement. For though Turpin tramped to York at a
journeyman's leisure, Nicks rode thither at a stretch--Nicks the
intrepid and gallant, whom Charles II., in admiration of his feat, was
wont to call Swiftnicks.
This valiant collector, whom posterity has robbed for Turpin's
embellishment, lived at the highest moment of his art. He knew by rote
the lessons taught by Hind and Duval; he was a fearless rider and a
courteous thief. Now, one morning at five of the clock, he robbed a
gentleman near Barnet of £560, and riding straight for York, he appeared
on the Bowling Green at six in the evening. Being presently recognised
by his victim, he was apprehended, and at the trial which followed he
pleaded a triumphant alibi. But vanity was too strong for discretion,
and no sooner was Swiftnicks out of danger, than he boasted, as well he
might, of his splendid courage. Forthwith he appeared a popular hero,
obtained a commission in Lord Moncastle's regiment, and married a
fortune. And then came Turpin to filch his glory! Nor need Turpin have
stooped to a vicarious notoriety, for he possessed a certain rough, half
conscious humour, which was not despicable. He purchased a new fustian
coat and a pair of pumps, in which to be hanged, and he hired five poor
men at ten shillings the day, that his death might not go unmourned.
Above all, he was distinguished in prison. A crowd thronged his cell
to identify him, and one there was who offered to bet the keeper half a
guinea that the prisoner was not Turpin; whereupon Turpin whispered the
keeper, 'Lay him the wager, you fool, and I will go you halves.' Surely
this impudent indifference might have kept green the memory of the man
who never rode to York!
If the Scoundrel may claim distinction on many grounds, his character
is singularly uniform. To the anthropologist he might well appear
the survival of a savage race, and savage also are his manifold
superstitions. He is a creature of times and seasons. He chooses the
occasion of his deeds with as scrupulous a care as he examines his
formidable crowbars and jemmies. At certain hours he would refrain from
action, though every circumstance favoured his success: he would rather
obey the restraining voice of a wise, unreasoning wizardry, than fill
his pockets with the gold for which his human soul is ever hungry. There
is no law of man he dares not break but he shrinks in horror from the
infringement of the unwritten rules of savagery. Though he might cut a
throat in self-defence, he would never walk under a ladder; and if the
13th fell on a Friday, he would starve that day rather than obtain a
loaf by the method he best understands. He consults the omens with as
patient a divination as the augurs of old; and so long as he carries an
amulet in his pocket, though it be but a pebble or a polished nut, he is
filled with an irresistible courage. For him the worst terror of all is
the evil eye, and he would rather be hanged by an unsuspected judge than
receive an easy stretch from one whose glance he dared not face. And
while the anthropologist claims him for a savage, whose civilisation has
been arrested at brotherhood with the Solomon Islanders, the politician
might pronounce him a true communist, in that he has preserved a
wholesome contempt of property and civic life. The pedant, again, would
feel his bumps, prescribe a gentle course of bromide, and hope to cure
all the sins of the world by a municipal Turkish bath. The wise man,
respecting his superstitions, is content to take him as he finds him,
and to deduce his character from his very candid history, which is
unaffected by pedant or politician.
Before all things, he is sanguine; he believes that Chance, the great
god of his endeavour, fights upon his side. Whatever is lacking to-day,
to-morrow's enterprise will fulfil, and if only the omens be favourable,
he fears neither detection nor the gallows. His courage proceeds from
this sanguine temperament, strengthened by shame and tradition rather
than from a self-controlled magnanimity; he hopes until despair is
inevitable, and then walks firmly to the gallows, that no comrade may
suspect the white feather. His ambition, too, is the ambition of the
savage or of the child; he despises such immaterial advantages as power
and influence, being perfectly content if he have a smart coat on his
back and a bottle of wine at his elbow. He would rather pick a lock than
batter a constitution, and the world would be well lost, if he and his
doxy might survey the ruin in comfort.
But if his ambition be modest, his love of notoriety is boundless.
He must be famous, his name must be in the mouths of men, he must be
immortal (for a week) in a rough woodcut. And then, what matters it how
soon the end? His braveries have been hawked in the street; his prowess
has sold a Special Edition; he is the first of his race, until a luckier
rival eclipses him. Thus, also, his dandyism is inevitable: it is not
enough for him to cover his nakedness--he must dress; and though his
taste is sometimes unbridled, it is never insignificant. Indeed, his
biographers have recorded the expression of his fancy in coats and
small-clothes as patiently and enthusiastically as they have applauded
his courage. And truly the love of magnificence, which he shares with
all artists, is sincere and characteristic. When an accomplice of
Jonathan Wild's robbed Lady M----n at Windsor, his equipage cost him
forty pounds; and Nan Hereford was arrested for shoplifting at the very
moment that four footmen awaited her return with an elegant sedan-chair.
His vanity makes him but a prudish lover, who desires to woo less than
to be wooed; and at all times and through all moods he remains the
primeval sentimentalist. He will detach his life entirely from the
catchwords which pretend to govern his actions; he will sit and croon
the most heartrending ditties in celebration of home-life and a mother's
love, and then set forth incontinently upon a well-planned errand of
plunder. For all his artistry, he lacks balance as flagrantly as a
popular politician or an advanced journalist. Therefore it is the more
remarkable that in one point he displays a certain caution: he boggles
at a superfluous murder. For all his contempt of property, he still
preserves a respect for life, and the least suspicion of unnecessary
brutality sets not only the law but his own fellows against him. Like
all men whose god is Opportunity, he is a reckless gambler; and, like
all gamblers, he is monstrously extravagant. In brief, he is a tangle of
picturesque qualities, which, until our own generation, was incapable of
nothing save dulness.
The Bible and the Newgate Calendar--these twain were George Borrow's
favourite reading, and all save the psychologist and the pedant will
applaud the preference. For the annals of the 'family' are distinguished
by an epic severity, a fearless directness of speech, which you will
hardly match outside the Iliad or the Chronicles of the Kings. But the
Newgate Calendar did not spring ready-made into being: it is the result
of a curious and gradual development. The chap-books came first, with
their bold type, their coarse paper, and their clumsy, characteristic
woodcuts--the chap-books, which none can contemplate without an
enchanted sentiment. Here at last you come upon a literature, which has
been read to pieces. The very rarity of the slim, rough volumes, proves
that they have been handed from one greedy reader to another, until the
great libraries alone are rich enough to harbour them. They do not
boast the careful elegance of a famous press: many of them came from the
printing-office of a country town: yet the least has a simplicity and
concision, which are unknown in this age of popular fiction. Even their
lack of invention is admirable: as the same woodcut might be used to
represent Guy, Earl of Warwick, or the last highwayman who suffered
at Tyburn, so the same enterprise is ascribed with a delightful
ingenuousness to all the heroes who rode abroad under the stars to fill
their pockets.
The Life and Death of Gamaliel Ratsey delighted England in 1605, and
was the example of after ages. The anecdote of the road was already
crystallised, and henceforth the robber was unable to act contrary to
the will of the chap-book. Thus there grew up a folk-lore of thievery:
the very insistence upon the same motive suggests the fairytale, and, as
in the legends of every country, there is an identical element which the
anthropologists call 'human'; so in the annals of adventure there is
a set of invariable incidents, which are the essence of thievery. The
industrious hacks, to whom we owe the entertainment of the chap-books,
being seedy parsons or lawyers' clerks, were conscious of their literary
deficiencies: they preferred to obey tradition rather than to invent
ineptitudes. So you may trace the same jest, the same intrigue through
the unnumbered lives of three centuries. And if, being a philosopher,
you neglect the obvious plagiarism, you may induce from these
similarities a cunning theory concerning the uniformity of the human
brain. But the easier explanation is, as always, the more satisfactory;
and there is little doubt that in versatility the thief surpassed his
historian.
Had the chap-books still been scattered in disregarded corners, they
would have been unknown or misunderstood. Happily, a man of genius
came in the nick to convert them into as vivid and sparkling a piece
of literature as the time could show. This was Captain Alexander Smith,
whose Lives of the Highwaymen, published in 1719, was properly described
by its author as 'the first impartial piece of this nature which ever
appeared in English.' Now, Captain Smith inherited from a nameless
father no other patrimony than a fierce loyalty to the Stuarts, and the
sanguine temperament which views in horror a well-ordered life. Though
a mere foundling, he managed to acquire the rudiments, and he was not
wholly unlettered when at eighteen he took to the road. His courage,
fortified by an intimate knowledge of the great tradition, was rewarded
by an immediate success, and he rapidly became the master of so
much leisure as enabled him to pursue his studies with pleasure and
distinction. When his companions damned him for a milksop, he was
loftily contemptuous, conscious that it was not in intelligence alone
that he was their superior. While the Stuarts were the gods of his
idolatry, while the Regicides were the fiends of his frank abhorrence,
it was from the Elizabethans that he caught the splendid vigour of his
style; and he owed not only his historical sense, but his living English
to the example of Philemon Holland. Moreover, it is to his constant
glory that, living at a time that preferred as well to attenuate the
English tongue as to degrade the profession of the highway, he not only
rode abroad with a fearless courtesy, but handled his own language with
the force and spirit of an earlier age.
He wrote with the authority of courage and experience. A hazardous
career had driven envy and malice from his dauntless breast. Though he
confesses a debt to certain 'learned and eminent divines of the Church
of England,' he owed a greater debt to his own observation, and he
knew--none better--how to recognise with enthusiasm those deeds of
daring which only himself has rivalled. A master of etiquette, he
distributed approval and censure with impartial hand; and he was
quick to condemn the smallest infraction of an ancient law. Nor was he
insensible to the dignity of history. The best models were always
before him. With admirable zeal he studied the manner of such masters
as Thucydides and Titus Livius of Padua. Above all, he realised
the importance of setting appropriate speeches in the mouths of his
characters; and, permitting his heroes to speak for themselves, he
imparted to his work an irresistible air of reality and good faith. His
style, always studied, was neither too low nor too high for his subject.
An ill-balanced sentence was as hateful to him as a foul thrust or a
stolen advantage.
Abroad a craftsman, he carried into the closet the skill and energy
which distinguished him when the moon was on the heath. Though not
born to the arts of peace, he was determined to prove his respect for
letters, and his masterpiece is no less pompous in manner than it is
estimable in tone and sound in reflection. He handled slang as one who
knew its limits and possibilities, employing it not for the sake of
eccentricity, but to give the proper colour and sparkle to his page;
indeed, his intimate acquaintance with the vagabonds of speech enabled
him to compile a dictionary of Pedlar's French, which has been pilfered
by a whole battalion of imitators. Moreover, there was none of the
proverbs of the pavement, those first cousins of slang, that escaped
him; and he assumed all the licence of the gentleman-collector in the
treatment of his love-passages.
Captain Smith took the justest view of his subject. For him robbery, in
the street as on the highway, was the finest of the arts, and he always
revered it for its own sake rather than for vulgar profit. Though, to
deceive the public, he abhorred villainy in word, he never concealed his
admiration in deed of a 'highwayman who robs like a gentleman.' 'There
is a beauty in all the works of nature,' he observes in one of his
wittiest exordia, 'which we are unable to define, though all the world
is convinced of its existence: so in every action and station of life
there is a grace to be attained, which will make a man pleasing to all
about him and serene in his own mind.' Some there are, he continues, who
have placed 'this beauty in vice itself; otherwise it is hardly probable
that they could commit so many irregularities with a strong gust and
an appearance of satisfaction.' Notwithstanding that the word 'vice' is
used in its conventional sense, we have here the key to Captain Smith's
position. He judged his heroes' achievements with the intelligent
impartiality of a connoisseur, and he permitted no other prejudice than
an unfailing loyalty to interrupt his opinion.
Though he loved good English as he loved good wine, he was never so
happy as when (in imagination) he was tying the legs of a Regicide under
the belly of an ass. And when in the manner of a bookseller's hack he
compiled a Comical and Tragical History of the Lives and Adventures of
the most noted Bayliffs, adoration of the Royalists persuaded him to
miss his chance. So brave a spirit as himself should not have
looked complacently upon the officers of the law, but he saw in
the glorification of the bayliff another chance of castigating the
Roundheads, and thus he set an honorific crown upon the brow of man's
natural enemy. 'These unsanctified rascals,' wrote he, 'would run into
any man's debt without paying him, and if their creditors were Cavaliers
they thought they had as much right to cheat 'em, as the Israelites had
to spoil the Egyptians of their ear-rings and jewels.' Alas! the boot
was ever on the other leg; and yet you cannot but admire the Captain's
valiant determination to sacrifice probability to his legitimate hate.
Of his declining years and death there is no record. One likes to think
of him released from care, and surrounded by books, flowers, and the
good things of this earth. Now and again, maybe, he would muse on the
stirring deeds of his youth, and more often he would put away the memory
of action to delight in the masterpiece which made him immortal. He
would recall with pleasure, no doubt, the ready praise of Richard
Steele, his most appreciative critic, and smile contemptuously at the
baseness of his friend and successor, Captain Charles Johnson. Now, this
ingenious writer was wont to boast, when the ale of Fleet Street had
empurpled his nose, that he was the most intrepid highwayman of them
all. 'Once upon a time,' he would shout, with an arrogant gesture, 'I
was known from Blackheath to Hounslow, from Ware to Shooter's Hill.'
And the truth is, the only 'crime' he ever committed was plagiarism.
The self-assumed title of Captain should have deceived nobody, for the
braggart never stole anything more difficult of acquisition than another
man's words. He picked brains, not pockets; he committed the greater
sin and ran no risk. He helped himself to the admirable inventions
of Captain Smith without apology or acknowledgment, and, as though to
lighten the dead-weight of his sin, he never skipped an opportunity of
maligning his victim. Again and again in the very act to steal he will
declare vaingloriously that Captain Smith's stories are 'barefaced
inventions.' But doubt was no check to the habit of plunder, and you
knew that at every reproach, expressed (so to say) in self-defence, he
plied the scissors with the greater energy. The most cunning theft is
the tag which adorns the title-page of his book:
Little villains oft submit to fate
That great ones may enjoy the world in state.
Thus he quotes from Gay, and you applaud the aptness of the quotation,
until you discover that already it was used by Steele in his
appreciation of the heroic Smith! However, Johnson has his uses, and
those to whom the masterpiece of Captain Alexander is inaccessible will
turn with pleasure to the General History of the lives and adventures
of the most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c., and will
feel no regret that for once they are receiving stolen goods.
Though Johnson fell immeasurably below his predecessor in talent, he
manifestly excelled him in scholarship. A sojourn at the University had
supplied him with a fine assortment of Latin tags, and he delighted to
prove his erudition by the citation of the Chronicles. Had he possessed
a sense of humour, he might have smiled at the irony of committing a
theft upon the historian of thieves. But he was too vain and too pompous
to smile at his own weakness, and thus he would pretend himself a
venturesome highwayman, a brave writer, and a profound scholar. Indeed,
so far did his pride carry him, that he would have the world believe
him the same Charles Johnson, who wrote The Gentleman Cully and The
Successful Pyrate. Thus with a boastful chuckle he would quote:
Johnson, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning
Thus, ignoring the insult, he would plume himself after his drunken
fashion that he, too, was an enemy of Pope.
Yet Johnson has remained an example. For the literature of scoundrelism
is as persistent in its form as in its folk-lore. As Harman's Caveat,
which first saw the light in 1566, serves as a model to an unbroken
series of such books, as The London Spy, so from Johnson in due course
were developed the Newgate Calendar, and those innumerable records,
which the latter half of the Eighteenth Century furnished us forth.
The celebrated Calendar was in its origin nothing more than a list
of prisoners printed in a folio slip. But thereafter it became the
Malefactor's Bloody Register, which we know. Its plan and purpose were
to improve the occasion. The thief is no longer esteemed for an artist
or appraised upon his merits: he is the awful warning, which shall
lead the sinner to repentance. 'Here,' says the preface, 'the giddy
thoughtless youth may see as in a mirror the fatal consequences of
deviating from virtue'; here he may tremble at the discovery that 'often
the best talents are prostituted to the basest purposes.' But in spite
of 'the proper reflections of the whole affair,' the famous Calendar
deserved the praise of Borrow. There is a directness in the narration,
which captures all those for whom life and literature are something
better than psychologic formulæ. Moreover, the motives which drive
the brigand to his doom are brutal in their simplicity, and withal as
genuine and sincere as greed, vanity, and lust can make them. The true
amateur takes pleasure even in the pious exhortations, because he knows
that they crawl into their place, lest the hypocrite be scandalised.
But with years the Newgate Calendar also declined, and at last it has
followed other dead literatures into the night.
Meanwhile the broadside had enjoyed an unbroken and prosperous career.
Up and down London, up and down England, hurried the Patterer or Flying
Stationer. There was no murder, no theft, no conspiracy, which did not
tempt the Gutter Muse to doggerel. But it was not until James Catnach
came up from Alnwick to London (in 1813), that the trade reached the top
of its prosperity. The vast sheets, which he published with their scurvy
couplets, and the admirable picture, serving in its time for a hundred
executions, have not lost their power to fascinate. Theirs is the aspect
of the early woodcut; the coarse type and the catchpenny headlines are
a perpetual delight; as you unfold them, your care keeps pace with your
admiration; and you cannot feel them crackle beneath your hand without
enthusiasm and without regret. He was no pedant--Jemmy Catnach; and
the image of his ruffians was commonly as far from portraiture, as
his verses were remote from poetry. But he put together in a roughly
artistic shape the last murder, robbery, or scandal of the day. His
masterpieces were far too popular to live, and if they knew so vast a
circulation as 2,500,000 they are hard indeed to come by. And now the
art is wellnigh dead; though you may discover an infrequent survival in
a country town. But how should Catnach, were he alive to-day, compete
with the Special Edition of an evening print?
The decline of the Scoundrel, in fact, has been followed by the
disappearance of chap-book and broadside. The Education Act, which made
the cheap novel a necessity, destroyed at a blow the literature of the
street. Since the highwayman wandered, fur-coated, into the City, the
patterer has lost his occupation. Robbery and murder have degenerated
into Chinese puzzles, whose solution is a pleasant irritant to the
idle brain. The misunderstanding of Poe has produced a vast polyglot
literature, for which one would not give in exchange a single chapter of
Captain Smith. Vautrin and Bill Sykes are already discredited, and it
is a false reflection of M. Dupin, which dazzles the eye of a moral and
unimaginative world. Yet the wise man sighs for those fearless days,
when the brilliant Macheath rode vizarded down Shooter's Hill, and
presently saw his exploits set forth, with the proper accompaniment of a
renowned and ancient woodcut, upon a penny broadside.