a book of scoundrels(流浪之书)

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A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

A BOOK OF

SCOUNDRELS

by CHARLES WHIBLEY

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

INTRODUCTION

There are other manifestations of greatness than to relieve suffering or

to wreck an empire. Julius C<ae>sar 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

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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;

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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

Laced<ae>monians 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

Laced<ae>monian. 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

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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.

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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-

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS

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

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ABOOKOFSCOUNDRELS1ABOOKOFSCOUNDRELSbyCHARLESWHIBLEYABOOKOFSCOUNDRELS2INTRODUCTIONThereareothermanifestationsofgreatnessthantorelievesufferingortowreckanempire.JuliusCsarandJohnHowardarenottheonlyheroeswhohavesmiledupontheworld.Inthesupremeadaptationofmeanstoanendthereisaconstantnobility,forneitheram...

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a book of scoundrels(流浪之书)

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