I was struck the other day by an account of an application made to the
Lord Mayor of London by a country clergyman, to give, as a warning to
others, publicity to a letter he had just received from the East. The
clergyman, it seems, had advertised in the ‘Times’ for pupils, and gave
for address a certain letter of the Greek alphabet. To this address
there came in due time an answer from a gentleman, dated Constantinople,
stating that he was an Anglo-Indian on his way to England, to place
his two sons in an educational establishment; but that having, by
an excursion to Jerusalem, exhausted his immediate resources, he was
obliged to defer the prosecution of his journey till the arrival of some
funds he expected from India--certain to arrive in a month or two.
Not wishing, however, to delay the execution of his project, and being
satisfied with the promises held forth by the advertiser, he purposed
placing his sons under his care, and to do so, desired that forty pounds
might be remitted him at once, to pay his journey to England, for which
convenience he, the writer, would not alone be obliged, but also extend
his patronage to the lender, by recommending him to his friend Sir Hugh
Rose, who was himself desirous of sending his sons to be educated in
England. The address of a banker was given to whom the money should be
remitted, and an immediate reply requested, or “application should be
made in some other quarter.”
Now, the clergyman did not answer this strange appeal, but he inserted
another advertisement, changing, however, the symbol by which he was
to be addressed, and appearing in this way to be a different person. To
this new address there came another letter, perfectly identical in style
and matter: the only change was, that the writer was now at the Hôtel
de la Reine d’Angleterre at Buda; but all the former pledges of future
protection were renewed, as well as the request for a prompt reply, or
“application will be made in another quarter.”
The clergyman very properly laid the matter before the Lord Mayor, who,
with equal propriety, stamped the attempt as the device of a swindler,
against which publicity in the newspapers was the best precaution. The
strangest thing of all, however, was, that nobody appeared to know the
offender; nor was there in the ‘Times,’ or in the other newspapers where
the circumstances were detailed, one single surmise as to the identity
of this ingenious individual. It is the more singular, since this man
is a specialty--an actual personification of some of the very subtlest
rogueries of the age we live in!
If any of my readers can recall a very remarkable exposure the ‘Times’
newspaper made some ten or twelve years ago, of a most shameful fraud
practised upon governesses, by which they were induced to deposit a sum
equivalent to their travelling expenses from England to some town on the
Continent, as a guarantee to the employer, they will have discovered
the gentleman with the two sons to be educated--the traveller in Syria,
the friend of Sir Hugh Rose, the Anglo-Indian who expects eight hundred
pounds in two months, but has a present and pressing necessity for
forty.
The governess fraud was ingenious. It was done in this way: An
advertisement appeared in the ‘Times,’ setting forth that an English
gentleman, travelling with his family abroad, wanted a governess--the
conditions liberal, the requirements of a high order. The family
in question, who mixed with the very best society on the Continent,
required that the governess should be a lady of accomplished manners,
and one in every respect qualified for that world of fashion to which
she would be introduced as a member of the advertiser’s family. The
advertiser, however, found that all the English ladies who had hitherto
filled this situation in his family had, through the facilities thus
presented them of entrance into life, made very advantageous marriages;
and to protect himself against the loss entailed by the frequent call on
him for travelling expenses--bringing out new candidates for the hands
of princes and grand-dukes--he proposed that the accepted governess
should deposit with him a sum--say fifty pounds--equivalent to the
charge of the journey; and which, if she married, should be confiscated
to the benefit of her employer.
The scheme was very ingenious; it was, in fact, a lottery in which you
only paid for your ticket when you had drawn a prize. Till the lucky
number turned up, you never parted with your money. Was there ever any
such bribe held forth to a generation of unmarried and marriageable
women? There was everything that could captivate the mind: the tour
on the Continent--the family who loved society and shared it so
generously--the father so parental in his kindness, and who evidently
gave the governess the benediction of a parent on the day she may have
married the count; and all secured for what--for fifty pounds? No; but
for the deposit, the mere storing up of fifty pounds in a strong box;
for if, after two years, the lady neither married nor wished to remain,
she could claim her money and go her way.
The success was immense; and as the advertiser wrote replies from
different towns to different individuals, governesses arrived at
Brussels, at Coblentz, at Frankfort, at Mayence, at Munich, at Nice--and
heaven knows where besides--whose deposits were lodged in the hands of
N. F. That ingenious gentleman straightway departed, and was no more
seen, and only heard of when the distress and misery of these unhappy
ladies had found their way to the public press. The ‘Times,’ with all
that ability and energy it knows how to employ, took the matter up,
published some of the statements--very painful and pathetic they
were--of the unfortunate victims of this fraud, and gave more than
one “leader” to its exposure. Nor was the Government wanting in proper
activity. Orders were sent out from the Foreign Office to the different
legations and consulates abroad, to warn the police in the several
districts against the machinations of this artful scoundrel, should he
chance to be in their neighbourhood. Even more distinct instructions
were sent out to certain legations, by which R. N. F. could be arrested
on charges that would at least secure his detention till the law
officers had declared what steps could be taken in his behalf. It was
not the age of photography, but a very accurate description of the
man’s appearance and address was furnished, and his lofty stature,
broad chest, burly look, and bushy whiskers--a shade between red and
auburn--were all duly posted in each Chancellerie of the Continent.
For a while it seemed as if he lived in retirement--his late success
enabled this to be an “elegant retirement”--and it is said that he
passed it on the Lake of Como, in a villa near that of the once Queen
Caroline. There are traditions of a distinguished stranger--a man of
rank and a man of letters--who lived there estranged from all the
world, and deeply engaged in the education of his two sons. One of these
youths, however, not responding to all this parental devotion, involved
himself in some scrape, fled from his father’s roof, and escaped into
Switzerland. N. F., as soon as he could rally from the first shock of
the news, hastened after, to bring him back, borrowing a carriage from a
neighbouring nobleman in his haste. With this he crossed the frontier
at Chiasso, but never to come back again. The coachman, indeed, brought
tidings of the sale of the equipage, which the illustrious stranger had
disposed of, thus quitting a neighbourhood he could only associate with
a sorrowful past, and a considerable number of debts into the bargain.
Another blank occurs here in history, which autobiography alone perhaps
could fill. It would be unfair and un-philosophical to suppose that
because we cannot trace him he was inactive: we might as reasonably
imply that the moon ceased to move when we lost sight of her. At all
events, towards the end of autumn of that last year of the war in the
Crimea, a stout, well-dressed, portly man, with an air of considerable
assurance, swaggered into the Chancellerie of her Majesty’s Legation at
Munich, notwithstanding the representations of the porter, who would,
if he had dared, have denied him admittance, and asked, in a voice of
authority, if there were no letters there for Captain F. The gentleman
to whom the question was addressed was an attaché of the Legation, and
at that time in “charge” of the mission, the Minister being absent.
Though young in years, F. could scarcely, in the length and breadth of
Europe, have fallen upon one with a more thorough insight into every
phase and form of those mysteries by which the F. category of men exist.
Mr L. was an actual amateur in this way, and was no more the man to be
angry with F. for being a swindler, than with Ristori for being Medea or
Macready being Macbeth. Not that he had the slightest suspicion at the
time of F.’s quality, as he assured him that there were no letters for
that name.
“How provoking!” said the Captain, as he bit his lip. “They will be
so impatient in England,” muttered he to himself, “and I know Sidney
Herbert is sure to blame _me_.” Then he added aloud, “I am at a
dead-lock here. I have come from the Crimea with despatches, and
expected to find money here to carry me on to England; and these stupid
people at the War Office have forgotten all about it. Is it not enough
to provoke a saint?”
“I don’t know; I never was a saint,” said the impassive attaché.
“Well, it’s trying to a sinner,” said F., with a slight laugh; for
he was one of those happy-natured dogs who are not indifferent to the
absurd side of even their own mishaps. “How long does the post take to
England?”
“Three days.”
“And three back--that makes six; a week--an entire week.”
“Omitting Sunday,” said the grave attaché, who really felt an interest
in the other’s dilemma.
“All I can say is, it was no fault of mine,” cried F., after a moment.
“If I am detained here through their negligence, they must make the
best excuse they can. Have you got a cigar?” This was said with his eyes
fixed on a roll of Cubans on the table.
“Take one,” said the other.
“Thanks,” said F., as he selected three. “I’ll drop in to-morrow, and
hope to have better luck.”
“How much money do you want?” asked Mr L.
“Enough to carry me to London.”
“How much is that?”
“Let me see. Strasbourg--Paris, a day at Paris; Cowley might detain me
two days: fifteen or twenty pounds would do it amply.”
“You shall have it.”
“All right,” said F., who walked to the fire, and, lighting his cigar,
smoked away; while the other took some notes from a table-drawer and
counted them.
“Shall I give you a formal receipt for this?” asked F.
“You can tell them at the Office,” said L., as he dipped his pen into
the ink and continued the work he had been previously engaged in. F.
said a few civil words--the offhand gratitude of a man who was fully as
much in the habit of bestowing as of receiving favours, and withdrew. L.
scarcely noticed his departure; he was deep in his despatch, and wrote
on. At length he came to the happy landing-place, that spot of rest for
the weary foot--“I have the honour to be, my Lord,” and he arose and
stood at the fire.
As L. smoked his cigar he reflected, and as he reflected he remembered;
and, to refresh his memory, he took out some papers from a pigeon-hole,
and at last finding what he sought, sat down to read it. The document
was a despatch, dated a couple of years back, instructing H.M.’s
representative at the Court of Munich to secure the person of a certain
N. F., and hold him in durance till application should be made to the
Bavarian Government for his extradition and conveyance to England. Then
followed a very accurate description of the individual--his height,
age, general looks, voice, and manner--every detail of which L. now saw
closely tallied with the appearance of his late visitor.
He pondered for a while over the paper, and then looked at his watch. It
was five o’clock! The first train to Augsburg was to start at six. There
was little time, consequently, to take the steps necessary to arrest a
person on suspicion; for he should first of all have to communicate
with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who should afterwards back his
application to the Prefect of Police. The case was one for detail,
and for what the Germans insist upon, much writing--and there was very
little time to do it in. L., however, was not one to be easily defeated.
If baffled in one road, he usually found out another. He therefore
wrote a brief note to the Minister, stating that he might require his
assistance at a later hour of the evening, and at a time not usually
official. This done, he despatched another note to Captain E. F., saying
familiarly it was scarcely worth while trying to catch the mail-train
that night, and that perhaps instead he would come over and take a
_tétè-à-tête_ dinner with him at the Legation.
F. was overjoyed as he read it! No man ever felt a higher pleasure in
good company, nor knew better how to make it profitable. If he had been
asked to choose, he would infinitely rather have had the invitation to
dine than the twenty pounds he had pocketed in the morning. The cognate
men of the world--and all members of the diplomatic career are to a
certain extent in this category--were in F.’s estimation the “trump
cards” of the pack, with which he could “score tricks” innumerable, and
so he accepted at once; and, in a very few minutes after his acceptance,
made his appearance in a correct dinner-dress and a most unexceptionable
white tie.
“Couldn’t refuse that pleasant offer of yours, L.” (he was familiar at
once, and called him L.), “and here I am!” said he, as he threw himself
into an easy-chair with all the bland satisfaction of one who looked
forward to a good dinner and a very enjoyable evening.
“I am happy to have secured you,” said L., with a little laugh to
himself at the epigram of his phrase. “Do you like caviar?”
“Delight in it!”
“I have just got some fresh from St Petersburg, and our cook here is
rather successful in his caviar soup. We have a red trout from the
_Tegen See_, a saddle of Tyrol mutton, and a pheasant--_voilà votre
diner!_ but I can promise you a more liberal _carte_ in drinkables; just
say what you like in the way of wine!”
F.’s face beamed over with ecstasy. It was one of the grand moments of
his life; and if he could, hungry as he was, he would have prolonged it!
To be there the guest of her Majesty’s mission; to know, to feel, that
the arms of England were over the door! that he was to be waited on
by flunkies in the livery of the Legation, fed by the cook who had
ministered to official palates, his glass filled with wine from
the cellar of him who represented royalty! These were very glorious
imaginings; and little wonder that F., whose whole life was a Poem in
its way, should feel that they almost overcame him. In fact, like the
woman in the nursery song, he was ready to exclaim, “This is none of
me!” but still there were abundant evidences around him that all was
actual, positive, and real.
“By the way,” said L., in a light, careless way, “did you ever in your
wanderings chance upon a namesake of yours, only that he interpolates
another Christian name, and calls himself R. Napoleon F.?”
The stranger started: the fresh, ruddy glow of his cheek gave way to
a sickly yellow, and, rising from his chair, he said, “Do you mean to
‘split’ on me, sir?”
“I’m afraid, F.,” said the other, jauntily, “the thing looks ugly. You
are R. N. F.!”
“And are you, sir, such a scoundrel--such an assassin--as to ask a man
to your table in order to betray him?”
“These are strong epithets, F., and I’ll not discuss them; but if you
ask, Are you going to dine here today? I’d say, No. And if you should
ask, Where are, you likely to pass the evening? I’d hint, In the city
jail.”
At this F. lost all command over himself, and broke out into a torrent
of the wildest abuse. He was strong of epithets, and did not spare
them. He stormed, he swore, he threatened, he vociferated; but L.,
imperturbable throughout all, only interposed with an occasional mild
remonstrance--a subdued hint--that his language was less than polite or
parliamentary. At length the door opened, two gendarmes appeared, and N.
F. was consigned to their hands and removed.
The accusations against him were manifold; from before and since the day
of the governesses, he had been living a life of dishonesty and fraud.
German law proceedings are not characterised by any rash impetuosity;
the initial steps in F.’s case took about eighteen months, during which
he remained a prisoner. At the end of this time the judges discovered
some informality in his committal; and as L. was absent from Munich,
and no one at the Legation much interested in the case, the man was
liberated on signing a declaration--to which Bavarian authorities,
it would seem, attach value--that he was “a rogue and a vagabond;”
confessions which the Captain possibly deemed as absurd an act of
“surplusage” as though he were to give a written declaration that he was
a vertebrated animal and a biped.
He went forth once more, and, difficult as it appears to the
intelligence of honest and commonplace folk, he went forth to prosper
and live luxuriously--so gullible is the world, so ready and eager to
be cheated and deceived. Sir Edward Lytton has somewhere declared that
a single number of the ‘Times’ newspaper, taken at random, would be
the very best and most complete picture of our daily life--the fullest
exponent of our notions, wants, wishes, and aspirations. Not a hope, nor
fear, nor prejudice--not a particle of our blind trustfulness, or of our
as blind unbelief, that would not find its reflex in the broadsheet. R.
N. F. had arrived at the same conclusion, only in a more limited sense.
The advertisement columns were all to him. What cared he for foreign
wars, or the state of the Funds? as little did he find interest in
railway intelligence, or “our own correspondent.” What he wanted was,
the people who inquired after a missing relative--a long-lost son or
brother, who was supposed to have died in the Mauritius or Mexico: an
affectionate mother who desired tidings as to the burial-place of a
certain James or John, who had been travelling in a particular year in
the south of Spain: an inquirer for the will of Paul somebody: or
any one who could supply evidence as to the marriage of Sarah Meekins
_alias_ Crouther, supposed to have been celebrated before her Majesty’s
Vice-Consul at Kooroobakaboo--these were the paragraphs that touched
him.
Never was there such a union of intelligence and sympathy as in him! He
knew everybody, and seemed not alone to have been known to, but actually
beloved by, every one. It was in _his_ arms poor Joe died at Aden. _He_
gave away Maria at Tunis. He followed Tom to his grave at Corfu; and he
was the mysterious stranger who, on board the P. and O. boat, offered
his purse to Edward, and was almost offended at being denied. The way in
which this man tracked the stories of families through the few lines
of a newspaper advertisement was positively marvellous. Whatever was
wanting in the way of evidence of this, or clue to that, came at once
into his attributions.
A couple of years ago, an English lady, the wife of a clergyman, passed
a winter at Rome with her daughter, and in the mixed society of that
capital made acquaintance with a Polish Count of most charming manners
and fascinating address. The acquaintance ripened into intimacy, and
ended in an attachment which led to the marriage of the young lady with
the distinguished exile.
On arriving in England, however, it was discovered that the accomplished
Count was a common soldier, and a deserter from the Prussian army; and
means were accordingly had recourse to in order to obtain a divorce, and
the breach of a marriage accomplished under a fraudulent representation.
While the proceedings were but in the initiative, there came a letter
from Oneglia, near Nice, to the afflicted mother of the young lady,
recalling to her mind the elderly gentleman with the blue spectacles who
usually sat next her at the English Church at Rome. He was the writer of
the present letter, who, in turning over the columns of the ‘Times’ read
the melancholy story of her daughter’s betrayal and misery. By one of
those fortunate accidents more frequent in novels than in life, he had
the means of befriending her, and very probably of rescuing her from
her present calamity. He, the writer, had actually been present at the
wedding, and as a witness had signed the marriage-certificate of that
same _soi-disant_ Count Stanislaus Sobieski Something-or-other, at
Lemberg, in the year ‘49, and knew that the unhappy but deserted wife
was yet living. A certain momentary pressure of money prevented his
at once coming to England to testify to this fact; but if a small sum,
sufficient to pay a little balance he owed his innkeeper and wherewithal
to make his journey to England, were forwarded to the address of
Frederick Brooks, Esq., or lodged to his account at the Bank of French &
Co., Florence, he would at once hasten to London and depose formally
to every fact he had stated. By the merest accident I myself saw this
letter, which the lady had, for more accurate information about the
writer, sent to the banker at Florence, and in an instant I detected the
fine Roman hand of R. N. F. It is needless to say that this shot went
wide of the mark.
But that this fellow has lived for upwards of twenty years, travelling
the Continent in every direction, eating and drinking at the best
hotels, frequenting theatres, cafés, and public gardens, denying himself
nothing, is surely a shame and a disgrace to the police of Europe, which
has been usually satisfied to pass him over a frontier, and suffer him
to continue his depredations on the citizens of another state. Of the
obloquy he has brought upon his own country I do not speak. We must, I
take it, have our scoundrels like other people; the only great grievance
here is, that the fellow’s ubiquity is such that it is hard to believe
that the swindler who walked off with the five watches from Hamburg is
the same who, in less than eight days afterwards, borrowed fifty ducats
from a waiter at Naples, and “bolted.”
Of late I have observed he has dropped his second _prénom_ of Napoleon,
and does not call himself by it. There is perhaps in this omission a
delicate forbearance, a sense of refined deference to the other bearer
of that name, whom he recognises as his master.
In the ingenuity of his manifold devices even religion has not escaped
him, and it would be impossible to count how often he has left the
“Establishment” for Rome, been converted, reconverted, reconciled, and
brought home again--always, be it noted, at the special charge of so
much money from the Church Fund, or a subscription from the faithful,
ever zealous and eager to assist a really devout and truly sincere
convert!
That this man is an aspiring and ambitious vagabond may be seen in the
occasional raids he makes into the very best society, without having, at
least to ordinary eyes, anything to obtain in these ventures, beyond the
triumph of seeing himself where exposure and detection would be
certain to be followed by the most condign punishment. At Rome, for
instance--how, I cannot say--he obtained admission to the Duc de
Grammont’s receptions; and at Florence, under the pretext of being
a proprietor, and “a most influential” one, of the ‘Times,’ he
breakfasted, by special invitation, with Baron Ricasoli, and had a long
and most interesting conversation with him as to the conditions--of
course political--on which he would consent to support Italian unity.
These must have been done in pure levity; they were imaginative
excursions, thrown off in the spirit of those fanciful variations great
violinists will now and then indulge in, as though to say, “Is there a
path too intricate for me to thread, is there a pinnacle too fine for me
to balance on?”
A great deal of this fellow’s long impunity results from the shame men
feel in confessing to have been “done” by him. Nobody likes the avowal,
acknowledging, as it does, a certain defect in discrimination, and a
natural reluctance to own to having been the dupe of one of the most
barefaced and vulgar rogues in Europe.
There is one circumstance in this case which might open a very curious
psychological question; it is this: F.’s victims have not in general been
the frank, open, free-giving, or trustful class of men; on the contrary,
they have usually been close-fisted, cold, cautious people, who
weigh carefully what they do, and are rarely the dupes of their own
impulsiveness. F. is an Irishman, and yet his successes have been
far more with English--ay, even with Scotchmen--than with his own
countrymen.
In part this may be accounted for by the fact that F. did not usually
present himself as one in utter want and completely destitute; his
appeal for money was generally made on the ground of some speculation
that was to repay the lender; it was because he knew “something to
your advantage” that he asked for that £10. He addressed himself, in
consequence, to the more mercantile spirit of a richer community--to
those, in fact, who, more conversant with trade, better understood the
meaning of an investment.
But there was another, and, as I take it, a stronger and less fallible
ground for success. This fellow has, what all Irishmen are more or less
gifted with, an immense amount of vitality, a quality which undeniably
makes a man companionable, however little there may be to our taste in
his manner, his education, or his bearing. This same vitality imparts
itself marvellously to the colder temperaments of others, and gives out
its own warmth to natures that never of themselves felt the glow of an
impulse, or the glorious furnace-heat of a rash action.
This was the magnetism he worked with. “Canny” Scotchmen and shrewd
Yankees--ay, even Swiss innkeepers--felt the touch of his quality.
There was, or there seemed to be, a geniality in the fellow that, in its
apparent contempt for all worldliness, threw men off their guard, and
it would have smacked of meanness to distrust a fellow so open and
unguarded.
Now Paddy has seen a good deal of this at home, and could no more be
humbugged by it than he could believe a potato to be a truffle.
F. was too perfect an artist ever to perform in an Irish part to an
Irish audience, and so he owes little or nothing to the land of his
birth.
Apart from his unquestionable success, which of course settles the
question, I would not have called him a great performer--indeed, my
astonishment has always been how he succeeded, or with whom.
“Don’t tell me of Beresford’s blunders,” said the Great Duke after
Albuera. “Did he beat Soult? if so, he was a good officer.”
This man’s triumphs are some twenty odd years of expensive living, with
occasional excursions into good society. He wears broadcloth, and dines
on venison, when his legitimate costume had been the striped uniform of
the galleys, and his diet the black bread of a convict.
The injury these men do in life is not confined to the misery their
heartless frauds inflict, for the very humblest and poorest are often
their victims: they do worse, in the way they sow distrust and suspicion
of really deserving objects, in the pretext they afford the miserly man
to draw closer his purse-strings, and “not be imposed on;” and, worst of
all, in the ill repute they spread of a nation which, not attractive by
the graces of manner or the charms of a winning address, yet cherished
the thought that in truthfulness and fair dealing there was not one
could gainsay it.
As I write, I have just heard tidings of R. N. F. One of our most
distinguished travellers and discoverers, lately returning from Venice
to the South, passed the night at Padua, and met there what he described
as an Indian officer--Major Newton--who was travelling, he said, with a
nephew of Lord Palmer-ston’s.
The Major was a man fall of anecdote, and abounded in knowledge of
people and places; he had apparently been everywhere with everybody,
and, with a communicativeness not always met with in old soldiers, gave
to the stranger a rapid sketch of his own most adventurous life. As the
evening wore on, he told too how he was waiting there for a friend,
a certain N. F., who was no other than himself, the nephew of Lord
Palmerston being represented by his son, an apt youth, who has already
given bright promise of what his later years may develop.
N. F. retired to bed at last, so much overcome by brandy-and-water that
my informant escaped being asked for a loan, which I plainly see he
would not have had the fortitude to have refused; and the following
morning he started so early that N. F., wide awake as he usually is, was
not vigilant enough to have anticipated.
I hope these brief details, _pour servir à l’histoire de Monsieur R. N.
F._, may save some kind-hearted traveller from the designs of a thorough
blackguard, and render his future machinations through the press more
difficult to effect and more certain of exposure.
I had scarcely finished this brief, imperfect sketch, when I read in
‘Galignani’ the following:--
“Swindling on the Continent.--A letter from Venice of March 29 gives us
the following piece of information which may still be of service to some
of our readers, though, from the fact with which it concludes, it
would seem that the proceedings, of the party have been brought to a
standstill, at least for some time. This is not, however, it may be
recollected, the first occasion we have had to bring the conduct of
the individual referred to under the notice of our readers for similar
practices:--
“‘I am informed that one Mr Newton, _alias_ Neville, _alias_ Fane, and
with a dozen other _aliases_, has been arrested at Padua for swindling.
This ubiquitous gentleman has been travelling for some years at the
expense of hotel-keepers, and other geese easily fleeced, on the
Continent In the year 1862, Mr Neville and his two sons made their
suspicious appearance at Venice, and they now, minus the younger son,
have visited Padua as Mr Robert N. Newton and son, taking up their
residence at the Stella d’Oro. They arrived without luggage and without
money, both of which had been lost in the Danube; but they expected
remittances from India! The obliging landlord lent money, purchased
clothes, fed them gloriously, and contrived, between the 8th Feb.
and 25th of March, to become the creditor of Newton and son for 1000
swanzig. The expenses continued, but the remittances never came.
The patient landlord began to lose that virtue, and denounced these
_aliases_ as swindlers. The police of Vienna, hearing of the event, sent
information that these two accommodating gentlemen had practised the
victimising art for two months in December last at the Hotel Regina
Inghilterre, at Pesth, run up a current account of 700 florins, and
decamped; and a hotel-keeper recognised the scamps as having re-resided
at the Luna, in Venice, in 1862, and “plucked some profit from that
pale-faced moon.” Mr Newton’s handwriting proved him to be in 1863
one Major Fane, who had generously proposed to bring all his family,
consisting of ten persons, to pass the winter at the Barbesi Hotel at
Venice, if the proprietor would forward him 700 fr., as, owing to his
wife’s prolonged residence at Rome and Naples, he was short of money,
which, however, he expected, would cease on the arrival of supplies from
Calcutta. These gentlemen are now in durance vile, and there is no
doubt but that this letter will lead to their recognition by many other
victims.’”
Let no sanguine enthusiast for the laws of property imagine, however,
that this great man’s career is now ended, and that R. N. F. will no
more go forth as of old to plunder and to rob. Imprisonment for debt is
a grievous violation of personal liberty certainly, but it is finite;
and some fine morning, when the lark is carolling high in heaven, and
the bright rivulets are laughing in the gay sunlight, R. N. F. will
issue from his dungeon to taste again the sweets of liberty, and to
partake once more of the fleshpots of some confiding landlord. F. is a
man of great resources, doubtless. When he repeats a part, he feels
the same sort of repugnance that Fechter would to giving a fiftieth
representation of Hamlet, but he would bow to the necessity which a
clamorous public imposes, however his own taste might rebel against the
dreariness of the task. Still, I feel assured that he will next appear
in a new part. We shall hear of him--that is certain. He will be in
search of a lost will, by which he would inherit millions, or a Salvator
Rosa that he has been engaged to buy for the Queen, or perhaps he will
be a missionary to assist in that religious movement now observable in
Italy. How dare I presume, in my narrow inventiveness, to suggest to
such a master of the art as he is? I only know that, whether he comes
before the world as the friend of Sir Hugh Rose, a proprietor of the
‘Times,’ the agent of Lord Palmerston, or a recent convert from Popery,
he will sustain his part admirably; and that same world that he has
duped, robbed, and swindled for more than a quarter of a century will
still feed and clothe him--still believe in the luggage that never
comes, and the remittance that will never turn up.
After all, the man must be a greater artist than I was willing to
believe him to be. He must be a deep student of the human heart--not,
perhaps, in its highest moods; and he must well understand how to touch
certain chords which give their response in unlimited confidence and
long credit.
No doubt there must be some wondrous fascination in these changeful
fortunes--these ups and downs of life--otherwise no man could have
gone, as he has, for nigh thirty years, hunted, badgered, insulted,
and imprisoned in almost every capital of Europe, and yet no sooner
liberated than, like a giant refreshed, he again returns to his old
toil, never weary wherever the bread of idleness can be eaten, and where
a lie will pay for his liquor.
Talk of novel-writers--this is the great master of fiction--the man who
brings the product of imagination to the real test of credibility--the
actual interest of his public. Let him fail in his description, his
narrative, the progress of his events, or their probability, and he
is ruined at once. He must not alone arrange the circumstances of his
story, but he must perform the hero, and that, too, as we saw lately
at Padua, without any adventitious aid of dress or costume. I can fancy
what a sorry figure some of our popular tale-writers would present if
they had to appeal to an innkeeper with this poor story of their luggage
lost in the Danube. What a contempt the rascal must have had for Italian
notions of geography, too, when he adopted a river so remote from
where he stood! And yet I’d swear he was as cool, as collected, and as
self-sustained at that moment, as ever was Mr Gladstone in the House as
he rose to move a motion of supply.
Well, he is in Padua now, doubtless dreaming of fresh conquests, and not
impossibly speculating on a world whose gullibility is indeed infinite,
and which actually seems to take the same pleasure in being cheated in
Fact as it does in being deceived in Fiction. Who knows if the time is
not coming when, instead of sending a box of new novels to the country,
some Mr Mudie will despatch one of these R. N. F. folk by a fast
train, with a line to say, “A great success: his Belgian rogueries most
amusing; the exploit at Madrid equal to anything in ‘Gil Bias’.”