(MOLL CUTPURSE AND JONATHAN WILD)
THEY plied the same trade, each with incomparable success. By her, as
by him, the art of the fence was carried to its ultimate perfection. In
their hands the high policy of theft wanted nor dignity nor assurance.
Neither harboured a single scheme which was not straightway translated
into action, and they were masters at once of Newgate and the Highway.
As none might rob without the encouragement of his emperor, so none
was hanged at Tyburn while intrigue or bribery might avail to drag a
half-doomed neck from the halter; and not even Moll herself was
more bitterly tyrannical in the control of a reckless gang than the
thin-jawed, hatchet-faced Jonathan Wild.
They were statesmen rather than warriors--happy if they might direct
the enterprises of others, and determined to punish the lightest
disobedience by death. The mind of each was readier than his right arm,
and neither would risk an easy advantage by a misunderstood or unwonted
sleight of hand. But when you leave the exercise of their craft to
contemplate their character with a larger eye, it is the woman who at
every point has the advantage. Not only was she the peerless inventor
of a new cunning; she was at home (and abroad) the better fellow. The
suppression of sex was in itself an unparalleled triumph, and the
most envious detractor could not but marvel at the domination of her
womanhood. Moreover, she shone in a gayer, more splendid epoch.
The worthy contemporary of Shakespeare, she had small difficulty in
performing feats of prowess and resource which daunted the intrepid
ruffians of the eighteenth century. Her period, in brief, gave her an
eternal superiority; and it were as hopeless for Otway to surpass
the master whom he disgraced, as for Wild to o'ershadow the brilliant
example of Moll Cutpurse.
Tyrants both, they exercised their sovereignty in accordance with their
varying temperament. Hers was a fine, fat, Falstaffian humour, which,
while it inspired Middleton, might have suggested to Shakespeare an
equal companion of the drunken knight. His was but a narrow, cynic wit,
not edged like the knife, which wellnigh cut his throat, but blunt and
scratching like a worn-toothed saw.
She laughed with a laugh that echoed from Ludgate to Charing Cross, and
her voice drowned all the City. He grinned rarely and with malice;
he piped in a voice shrill and acid as the tricks of his mischievous
imagination. She knew no cruelty beyond the necessities of her life,
and none regretted more than she the inevitable death of a traitor.
He lusted after destruction with a fiendish temper, which was a grim
anticipation of De Sade; he would even smile as he saw the noose tighten
round the necks of the poor innocents he had beguiled to Tyburn. It was
his boast that he had contrived robberies for the mere glory of dragging
his silly victims to the gallows. But Moll, though she stood half-way
between the robber and his prey, would have sacrificed a hundred
well-earned commissions rather than see her friends and comrades
strangled. Her temperament compelled her to the loyal support of her own
order, and she would have shrunk in horror from her rival, who, for all
his assumed friendship with the thief, was a staunch and subtle ally of
justice.
Before all things she had the genius of success. Her public offences
were trivial and condoned. She died in her bed, full of years and of
honours, beloved by the light-fingered gentry, reverenced by all the
judges on the bench. He, for all the sacrifices he made to a squint-eyed
law, died execrated alike by populace and police. Already Blueskin had
done his worst with a pen-knife; already Jack Sheppard and his comrades
had warned Drury Lane against the infamous thief-catcher. And so
anxious, on the other hand, was the law to be quit of their too zealous
servant, that an Act of Parliament was passed with the sole object of
placing Jonathan's head within the noose. His method, meagre though
masterly, lulled him too soon to an impotent security. She, with her
larger view of life, her plumper sense of style, was content with
nothing less than an ultimate sovereignty, and manifestly did she prove
her superiority.
Though born for the wimple, she was more of a man than the breeched
and stockinged Jonathan, whose only deed of valiance was to hang,
terrier-like, by his teeth to an evasive enemy. While he cheated
at cards and cogged the dice, she trained dogs and never missed a
bear-baiting. He shrank, like the coward that he was, from the exercise
of manly sports; she cared not what were the weapons--quarterstaff or
broadsword--so long as she vanquished her opponent. She scoured the town
in search of insult; he did but exert his cunning when a quarrel was put
upon him. Who, then, shall deny her manhood? Who shall whisper that his
style was the braver or the better suited to his sex?
As became a hero, she kept the best of loose company: her parlour was
ever packed with the friends of loyalty and adventure. Are not Hind and
Mull Sack worth a thousand Blueskins? Moreover, plunder and wealth were
not the only objects of her pursuit: she was not merely a fence but a
patriot, and she would have accounted a thousand pounds well lost, if
she did but compass the discomfiture of a Parliament-man. Indeed, if
Jonathan, the thief-catcher, limped painfully after his magnificent
example, Jonathan the man and the sportsman confessed a pitiful
inferiority to the valiant Moll. Thus she avenged her sex by distancing
the most illustrious of her rivals; and if he pleads for his credit a
taste for theology, hers is the chuckle of contemptuous superiority. She
died a patriot, bequeathing a fountain of wine to the champions of
an exiled king; he died a casuist, setting crabbed problems to the
Ordinary. Here, again, the advantage is evident: loyalty is the virtue
of men; a sudden attachment to religion is the last resource of the
second-rate citizen and of the trapped criminal.