their excellence that ever were committed, I shall not allow myself to
speak incidentally. Nothing less than an entire lecture, or even an
entire course of lectures, would suffice to expound their merits. But
one curious fact, connected with his case, I shall mention, because it
seems to imply that the blaze of his genius absolutely dazzled the eye
of criminal justice. You all remember, I doubt not, that the instruments
with which he executed his first great work (the murder of the Marrs)
were a ship-carpenter’s mallet and a knife. Now, the mallet belonged to
an old Swede, one John Peterson, and bore his initials. This instrument
Williams left behind him, in Marr’s house, and it fell into the hands of
the magistrates. Now, gentlemen, it is a fact that the publication of
this circumstance of the initials led immediately to the apprehension of
Williams, and, if made earlier, would have prevented his second great
work, the murder of the Williamsons, which took place precisely twelve
days after. But the magistrates kept back this fact from the public for
the entire twelve days, and until that second work was accomplished.
That finished, they published it, apparently feeling that Williams had
now done enough for his fame, and that his glory was at length placed
beyond the reach of accident.
As to Mr. Thurtell’s case, I know not what to say. Naturally, I have
every disposition to think highly of my predecessor in the chair of this
society; and I acknowledge that his lectures were unexceptionable. But,
speaking ingenuously, I do really think that his principal performance,
as an artist, has been much overrated. I admit that at first I was
myself carried away by the general enthusiasm. On the morning when the
murder was made known in London, there was the fullest meeting of
amateurs that I have ever known since the days of Williams; old
bedridden connoisseurs, who had got into a peevish way of sneering and
complaining “that there was nothing doing,” now hobbled down to our
clubroom: such hilarity, such benign expression of general satisfaction,
I have rarely witnessed. On every side you saw people shaking hands,
congratulating each other, and forming dinner-parties for the evening;
and nothing was to be heard but triumphant challenges of, “Well! will
_this_ do?” “Is _this_ the right thing?” “Are you satisfied at last?”
But, in the midst of this, I remember we all grew silent on hearing the
old cynical amateur, L. S----, that _laudator temporis acti_, stumping
along with his wooden leg; he entered the room with his usual scowl,
and, as he advanced, he continued to growl and stutter the whole way.
“Not an original idea in the whole piece,--mere plagiarism,--base
plagiarism from hints that I threw out! Besides, his style is as hard as
Albert Durer, and as coarse as Fuseli.” Many thought that this was mere
jealousy and general waspishness; but I confess that when the first
glow of enthusiasm had subsided, I have found most judicious critics to
agree that there was something _falsetto_ in the style of Thurtell. The
fact is, he was a member of our society, which naturally gave a friendly
bias to our judgments; and his person was universally familiar to the
cockneys, which gave him, with the whole London public, a temporary
popularity, that his pretensions are not capable of supporting; for
_opinionum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia confirmat_. There was,
however, an unfinished design of Thurtell’s for the murder of a man with
a pair of dumbbells, which I admired greatly; it was a mere outline,
that he never completed; but to my mind it seemed every way superior to
his chief work. I remember that there was great regret expressed by some
amateurs that this sketch should have been left in an unfinished state:
but there I cannot agree with them; for the fragments and first bold
outlines of original artists have often a felicity about them which is
apt to vanish in the management of the details.
The case of the M‘Keands I consider far beyond the vaunted performance
of Thurtell,--indeed, above all praise; and bearing that relation, in
fact, to the immortal works of Williams which the Æneid bears to the
Iliad.
But it is now time that I should say a few words about the principles of
murder, not with a view to regulate your practice, but your judgment: as
to old women, and the mob of newspaper readers, they are pleased with
anything, provided it is bloody enough. But the mind of sensibility
requires something more. _First_, then, let us speak of the kind of
person who is adapted to the purpose of the murderer; _secondly_, of the
place where; _thirdly_, of the time when, and other little
circumstances.
As to the person, I suppose it is evident that he ought to be a good
man; because, if he were not, he might himself, by possibility, be
contemplating murder at the very time; and such “diamond-cut-diamond”
tussles, though pleasant enough where nothing better is stirring, are
really not what a critic can allow himself to call murders. I could
mention some people (I name no names) who have been murdered by other
people in a dark lane; and so far all seemed correct enough; but, on
looking further into the matter, the public have become aware that the
murdered party was himself, at the moment, planning to rob his murderer,
at the least, and possibly to murder him, if he had been strong enough.
Whenever that is the case, or may be thought to be the case, farewell to
all the genuine effects of the art. For the final purpose of murder,
considered as a fine art, is precisely the same as that of tragedy, in
Aristotle’s account of it, namely, “to cleanse the heart by means of
pity and terror.” Now, terror there may be, but how can there be any
pity for one tiger destroyed by another tiger?
It is also evident that the person selected ought not to be a public
character. For instance, no judicious artist would have attempted to
murder Abraham Newland. For the case was this: everybody read so much
about Abraham Newland, and so few people ever saw him, that there was a
fixed belief that he was an abstract idea. And I remember that once,
when I happened to mention that I had dined at a coffee-house in
company with Abraham Newland, everybody looked scornfully at me, as
though I had pretended to have played at billiards with Prester John, or
to have had an affair of honor with the Pope. And, by the way, the Pope
would be a very improper person to murder: for he has such a virtual
ubiquity as the father of Christendom, and, like the cuckoo, is so often
heard but never seen, that I suspect most people regard _him_ also as an
abstract idea. Where, indeed, a public character is in the habit of
giving dinners, “with every delicacy of the season,” the case is very
different: every person is satisfied that _he_ is no abstract idea; and,
therefore, there can be no impropriety in murdering him; only that his
murder will fall into the class of assassinations, which I have not yet
treated.
_Thirdly._ The subject chosen ought to be in good health; for it is
absolutely barbarous to murder a sick person, who is usually quite
unable to bear it. On this principle, no cockney ought to be chosen who
is above twenty-five, for after that age he is sure to be dyspeptic. Or
at least, if a man will hunt in that warren, he ought to murder a couple
at one time; if the cockneys chosen should be tailors, he will of course
think it his duty, on the old-established equation, to murder eighteen.
And, here, in this attention to the comfort of sick people, you will
observe the usual effect of a fine art to soften and refine the
feelings. The world in general, gentlemen, are very bloody-minded; and
all they want in a murder is a copious effusion of blood; gaudy display
in this point is enough for _them_. But the enlightened connoisseur is
more refined in his taste; and from our art, as from all the other
liberal arts when thoroughly cultivated, the result is, to improve and
to humanize the heart; so true is it, that
“Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes,
Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.”
A philosophic friend, well known for his philanthropy and general
benignity, suggests that the subject chosen ought also to have a family
of young children wholly dependent on his exertions, by way of deepening
the pathos. And, undoubtedly, this is a judicious caution. Yet I would
not insist too keenly on this condition. Severe good taste
unquestionably demands it; but still, where the man was otherwise
unobjectionable in point of morals and health, I would not look with too
curious a jealousy to a restriction which might have the effect of
narrowing the artist’s sphere.
So much for the person. As to the time, the place, and the tools, I have
many things to say, which at present I have no room for. The good sense
of the practitioner has usually directed him to night and privacy. Yet
there have not been wanting cases where this rule was departed from with
excellent effect. In respect to time, Mrs. Ruscombe’s case is a
beautiful exception, which I have already noticed; and in respect both
to time and place, there is a fine exception in the annals of Edinburgh
(year 1805), familiar to every child in Edinburgh, but which has
unaccountably been defrauded of its due portion of fame amongst English
amateurs. The case I mean is that of a porter to one of the banks, who
was murdered whilst carrying a bag of money, in broad daylight, on
turning out of the High Street, one of the most public streets in
Europe, and the murderer is to this hour undiscovered.
“Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus,
Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore.”
And now, gentlemen, in conclusion, let me again solemnly disclaim all
pretensions on my own part to the character of a professional man. I
never attempted any murder in my life, except in the year 1801, upon the
body of a tom-cat; and _that_ turned out differently from my intention.
My purpose, I own, was downright murder. “Semper ego auditor tantum?”
said I, “nunquamne reponam?” And I went down stairs in search of Tom at
one o’clock on a dark night, with the “animus” and no doubt with the
fiendish looks of a murderer. But when I found him, he was in the act of
plundering the pantry of bread and other things. Now this gave a new
turn to the affair; for the time being one of general scarcity, when
even Christians were reduced to the use of potato-bread, rice-bread, and
all sorts of things, it was downright treason in a tom-cat to be wasting
good wheaten-bread in the way he was doing. It instantly became a
patriotic duty to put him to death; and as I raised aloft and shook the
glittering steel, I fancied myself rising like Brutus, effulgent from a
crowd of patriots, and, as I stabbed him, I
“Called aloud on Tully’s name,
And bade the father of his country hail!”
Since then, what wandering thoughts I may have had of attempting the
life of an ancient ewe, of a superannuated hen, and such “small deer,”
are locked up in the secrets of my own breast; but for the higher
departments of the art, I confess myself to be utterly unfit. My
ambition does not rise so high. No, gentlemen, in the words of Horace,--
“Fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.”
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THE CAPTAIN’S STORY.
BY REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
I have been asked to tell what I know of the case of Joseph C. Wylie,
whose mysterious disappearance caused so much excitement in Cincinnati
when it occurred. That was in ’58, however, before the war; and I had
supposed all trace of the affair had been swept from the public mind by
the events which followed. Indeed, I see no reason for reviving it now,
except that it bears more fully than any evidence I have ever heard upon
the curious matter called spiritualism, and I have thought (though I am
only a plain man, not used to dealing in such whimseys) it offers a key
to unlock the riddle.
Wylie was a river-hand; ran the Ohio and Lower Mississippi as clerk and
captain on several stern-wheelers, so came to be known pretty generally
along shore. He was with me as second clerk when the thing happened. I
was running the Jacob Strader, one of the largest steamboats on the
Mississippi. I took little account of the fellow; he was a small,
red-headed, weak-eyed man, shambling lazily about, whose legs and arms
seemed scarcely to have gristle enough in them to hold them firmly
together.
The only noteworthy trait about him was that he never touched liquor or
a card, but found his amusement, instead, in sitting with some of the
deck hands below, telling long pointless yarns. I had to stop it at
last. That runs contrary to my notions of discipline.
It was in April that he disappeared, like a flea, under my very eyes.
The Strader lay at the wharf, at Cincinnati; it was Sunday, about noon;
she was to get up steam at seven o’clock next morning. I walked up the
levee, and just off the cobble-stones met Wylie. He had a drum of figs
in his hand which he had just bought from some pedler on the David Swan,
and was going to take home to his little Joe, in Cairo, he said, as he
walked alongside of me.
I met John Fordyce, and stopped to get a light of him; Wylie went into a
shanty fitted up as a shop for the sale of cigars, newspapers, and the
like; he wanted a “Despatch,” he said. The shop was but a single room,
opening, front and back, on the wide (and at that hour on Sunday
morning), empty wharf; a square, plank-built affair, made to hold the
two counters and a stove in the middle. Wylie went into it, as I said,
but out of it he was never seen to come alive. I stood talking with
Fordyce for some minutes, then called the clerk, and when he did not
answer, went in search of him, but found only the boy who tended the
shop, asleep under the counter. Wylie was not there, nor on the boat,
nor on the wharf. He was nowhere, so far as the sharpest eyes of the
Cincinnati police could discover.
The thing staggered me when I had time to take it home and realize that
the man was actually gone; spirited away in broad daylight, before my
face. It was absurd, impossible; yet it struck me with a sort of horror
that did not belong to midnight murder.
They called it murder in the papers; there was a great outcry; but where
was the foul play? The boy (a child of ten) had heard or seen nothing;
it was impossible that Wylie could have been foully dealt with, and no
sound or cry reach Fordyce or me, half a dozen feet off. It was just as
impossible that he could have left the shop, unseen by us on the wide,
open levee. That he could have gone voluntarily, nobody hinted. The poor
fellow had but few ideas beyond his wife and boy, Joe. His trunk on
board was found filled with cheap summer clothes for them both, some
tinware, a japanned tea-tray, a china mug; trifles which he had gathered
up at auctions, and was taking to Cairo to make their little home
comfortable. He had made an engagement to go out with the first clerk
that afternoon; his clean shirt, collar, and shaving apparatus were all
laid out in his state-room.
But that was the last of him. It only remained to gather up these things
and carry them with the news to his wife.
I shirked that. I cannot face a woman in trouble. I ordered Stein, who
had been a sort of crony of his, to do it. Stein was the steward, and
was leaving the boat. He had a good berth offered to him in St. Louis,
he said; so that I knew he had time to see Wylie’s widow, and break it
gently to her.
If widow she was. If Wylie had died naturally I would have dismissed
him from my mind; but the matter rankled there, as I might say, from its
very doubt and mystery.
About two years afterward, therefore, when Warrick brought a little boy
on board, as the boat lay at Cairo, and told me it was Wylie’s son, I
found myself going, again and again, to the part of the deck where the
child was playing, feeling pained to notice how coarsely dressed it was,
and how pinched, even hunger-bitten, the little honest face.
“Is it going so badly with her?” I asked.
Warrick nodded, saying aloud, “Joe’s shaken with the whooping-cough,
Captain. He’s the deuce of a boy for sniffing up all the ailments that
are going up and down the river.”
Joe looked up and laughed.
“He had better shake them down into the river again, then,” I said. “Let
him and his mother come aboard for a trip or two. Nothing like air off
of water for that whoop, the old women say.”
I sent Warrick to urge the plan on Mrs. Wylie. I knew it was not the air
that was needed so much as good, wholesome food. Warrick set apart the
best state-room for her, and I dropped in myself to see that it was all
in order.
In the evening, before we started, Warrick brought her aboard and into
the cabin where I was. I found that she had some exaggerated notions
about one or two good turns I had done her husband, and a trifle which I
had sent to her when he was lost; so, after that, I held aloof from her.
I hate philandering. I kept an eye, though, to see how she fared,--on
the little body in her rusty black gown, shying round with Joe in the
corners, out of the way of the ladies who went sweeping their long
dresses up and down.
I soon found, however, that all the men on board who had known Wylie,
from Warrick down, vied with each other in treating her with a sort of
patronizing respect; even Jake, the black cook, was continually sending
up little messes for her and Joe. She was but a poor mouse of a woman,
who had made a god of that stupid little weak-eyed fellow, and of his
boy after he was gone; take her on politics, or even gossip, anything
outside of Wylie and her child, and there was nothing in her. Warrick
told me that she had never been outside of Cairo before, and the near
village of Blandville, where she had been a sempstress before her
marriage; this journey was like a glimpse of a new world to her. I used
to see her sitting in a dark corner on deck until late in the night, her
eyes strained over the long stretch of shore as we floated by; and I
could understand how the heavy, wooded hills, crouching like sullen
beasts along the water’s edge, or the miles and miles of yellow
cane-brake lying flat and barren in the desolate, homesick twilight of a
winter’s day, might have a different meaning to the lonely woman, and to
us, who counted them only as “a run” of so many hours.
She was sitting this way one evening on our back trip, when the boat
stopped to wood at a place called by the boatmen Dead Man’s Riffle.
Warrick was near me, watching her.
“She wears black,” he said, at last. “Now for me,” cutting off a quid
of tobacco, “I never believed Joe Wylie was dead. No, it was a bad bit
of work, dead or alive,--bad.”
“It is work I would give much to see cleared up, before I die,” I said.
Warrick and I were walking up and down the hurricane-deck.
“Would you?” he said, slowly, chewing and glancing up at me,--“would
you? There’s a way. But no matter--” stopping short and looking ashamed.
I said nothing. I never urge a man to speak, if he has ever so little
mind to hold his tongue quiet. But Warrick had some notion that troubled
him. He walked nearer at each turn to the place where a stout, short
young woman was sitting, dressed in brown linsey. There was nothing
remarkable about her face, which was heavy and dull, if we except a pair
of thick, dead, fishy gray eyes.
“Do you see that girl?” he jerked out. “Many of the men aboard would say
that she could tell you anything you want to know; the dead are about
her all the time, they say. _I_ don’t say it, Captain, mind; I’m not
such a fool.”
“I should hope not, Warrick,” I said, gravely, and began to talk of
something else. But somehow the matter stuck in my mind. The next day we
stopped for freight at Natchez. I went up into the city with one of the
passengers. Old Jimmy A. it was,--anybody on the Western waters will
know who I mean; for strangers I will only say that A. was one of the
most thorough misers I ever knew. He was an extensive stock-broker and
speculator in Western lands. When his wife lived he had always
consulted her, and abode by her advice in his business. I believe he
mourned for the old woman sincerely, though when she died he had taken
the ribbon away with which the women had bound her chin and put twine
instead, to save a penny.
A. was my companion, as I said. Coming down into the old town a sudden
idea struck me.
“These lots are cheap, Mr. A.,” I said. “Buy them and put up good
dwellings on them, and your fortune is made. Real estate is going up
here daily.”
The old man seized on the plan eagerly, and held me by the coat while he
went about the lots, calculating, muttering, chuckling to himself.
“It’s a good notion, very good. This swamp could be drained,--it would
bring in eleven per cent, eleven and a half--and a half; I wish I knew
what Ann would think of it, poor Ann! I’ve a great mind to go into it; I
have indeed.”
It was with difficulty I got the old fellow away and on board in time
before the boat put off. It was growing dusk as we stepped off the plank
on deck. A. still clung to me, following me up and down, charging me to
say nothing of the plan until he had well considered it. As we went up
to the outer cabin we met the woman to whom Warrick had directed my
notice the day before. She was pacing up and down with heavy, masculine
steps; she stood still as we came up; her dead gray eyes fell on A. and
rested there with a curious absorbing look; which, perhaps, I should not
have seen but for Warrick’s warning.
She remained quite quiet until we had passed and returned; then
stooping suddenly to a table before her, wrote on a scrap of paper, and
handed it to the old man, walking away after she had done so; every
motion lifeless, mechanical, like a clumsy machine of wood set in
action.
A. had not seen her, I think, until she thrust the paper into his hand;
he stared, pulled at his ragged gray beard, and then peered at it
through his spectacles. There was a queer, scared little noise in his
throat, like the crow of a chicken.
“Why, Captain, look here! this is--is--” holding out the dirty scrap of
paper.
It was a message from his wife. “Do not touch real estate, except to
mortgage,” she said. “The drainage of the swamp would eat up four years’
profits.”
(“I thought of that,” he interrupted, quickly.) “Do not withdraw your
money from P. C.”
“That is all,” I said. “Who is this woman, Mr. A.?”
“God knows. But no human being alive knew of that P. C. money. _Ann
did._” His face was colorless and his teeth chattered. We went to the
woman. She was apparently stolid, and but half educated; I saw no sign
of cunning, even shrewdness, about her.
“The message had been given to her,” she said. “How, she did not know.”
“From a spirit?”
“She could not say that. She supposed so. They called her a writing
medium.”
Afterward she said, “This thing would ruin her,” crying in a feeble,
stupid way. She had been an operative in some mill in Cincinnati, we
were told, and was discharged in consequence of it. The “manifestations”
were followed by attacks of something resembling paralysis, which would
soon leave her helpless. I left the old man talking to her.
Warrick came to me that evening. He had heard of the affair. “Captain,”
he said, “I’m going to try if no tidings can be had from Joe Wylie. Have
I your permission?” I nodded, shortly. Warrick’s broad face was pale and
anxious. I sat for a while looking at the closed door of the little
office into which they had gone. Then I got up and followed them. The
woman (Lusk was her name) was there, Warrick, and the wife of the
carpenter,--a shrewd, sensible woman,--who had been a friend of Wylie’s,
as most women were.
She and the girl sat facing each other at a table on which flared a
dirty oil lamp. Warrick leaned on the back of a chair with both hands,
watching the girl’s face.
“She knows what she’s got to do, Captain,” vigorously chewing and
spitting, but not lifting his eyes. “I told her to consult her familiar
spirit, or whatever it is. Let’s have him up! Let’s know what’s become
of Joe, good or bad.”
I had seen Warrick cool and grave when a burning boat was drifting with
all aboard right into the rapids; but now he was a coward in every bone
of his body; his very voice grew piping and boisterous as the woman
turned her square, heavy face toward him, and the gray eyes, which they
said saw the dead, fell on his.
For the girl, I observed that she had the appearance of extreme nervous
dejection; her breath was uncertain and feeble; her lips blue. I touched
her and found that the blood had almost ceased to circulate. Her temples
were hot; hands icy cold; the pupils of the eyes contracted. The look
was _fastened into_ Warrick. I can describe it in no other way. I shook
her, but could not loosen the hold of it. It was as if she drew the life
out of his burly big body with her dull eyes.