Charles Whibley

“ Arrogant in his skill, delighted with his manifold triumphs, Haggart led a life of unbroken prosperity under the brisk air of heaven, and, despite the risk of his profession, he remained two years a stranger to poverty and imprisonment. His worst mishap was to slip his forks into an empty pocket, or to encounter in his cups a milvadering horse-dealer; but his joys were free and frank, while he exulted in his success with a boyish glee. 'I was never happier in all my life than when I fingered all this money,' he exclaims when he had captured the comfortable prize of two hundred pounds. ”

“ One famous gesture was irresistible, and he never employed it but some poor ruffian fell senseless to the floor. His stumpy fingers would fix a noose of air round some imagined neck, and so devoutly was the pantomime studied that you almost heard the creak of the retreating cart as the phantom culprit was turned off. But his conduct in the pulpit was due to no ferocity of temperament. He merely exercised his legitimate craft. So long as Newgate supplied him with an enforced audience, so long would he thunder and bluster at the wrongdoer according to law and the dictates of his conscience. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus died the most famous highwayman that ever drew rein upon an English road; and he died the death of a hero. The unnumbered crimes of violence and robbery wherewith he might have been charged weighed not a feather's weight upon his destiny; he suffered not in the cause of plunder, but in the cause of Charles Stuart. And in thus excusing his death, his contemporaries did him scant justice. For while in treasonable loyalty he had a thousand rivals, on the road he was the first exponent of the grand manner. The middle of the seventeenth century was, in truth, the golden age of the Road. ”

“ And the love of music was Peace's constant solace. Whatever treasures he might discard in a hurried flight, he never left a fiddle behind, and so vast became his pilfered collection that he had to borrow an empty room in a friend's house for its better disposal.
Moreover, he had a fervent pride in his craft; and you might deduce from his performance the whole theory and practice of burglary. He worked ever without accomplices. He knew neither the professional thief nor his lingo; and no association with gaol-birds involved him in the risk of treachery and betrayal. ”

“ III—A PARALLEL (GILDEROY AND SIXTEEN-STRING JACK)
THEIR closest parallel is the notoriety which dogged them from the very day of their death. Each, for his own exploits, was the most famous man of his time, the favourite of broadsides, the prime hero of the ballad-mongers. And each owed his fame as much to good fortune as to merit, since both were excelled in their generation by more skilful scoundrels. If Gilderoy was unsurpassed in brutality, he fell immeasurably below Hind in artistry and wit, nor may he be compared to such accomplished highwaymen as Mull Sack or the Golden Farmer. ”

“ The greed of gold, doubtless, half persuaded him, but gold was otherwise attainable, and the motive was assuredly far more subtle. Brodie, in fact, was of a romantic turn. He was, so to say, a glorified schoolboy, surfeited with penny dreadfuls. He loved above all things to patter the flash, to dream himself another Macheath, to trick himself out with all the trappings of a crime he was unfit to commit. It was never the job itself that attracted him: he would always rather throw the dice than force a neighbour's window. But he must needs have a distraction from the respectability of his life. ”

“ He was a Tamerlane, robbed of his opportunity; a valiant warrior, who looked in vain for a battlefield; a marauder who climbed the scaffold not for the magnitude, but for the littleness of his sins. Thus Borrow, in complete misunderstanding of the rascal's qualities.
Now, Haggart's ambition was as circumscribed as his ability. He died, as he was born, an expert cly-faker, whose achievements in sleight of hand are as yet unparalleled. Had the world been one vast breast pocket his fish-hook fingers would have turned it inside out. ”

“ Thus was the craft of thieving practised when Moll was enrolled a humble member of the gang. Yet nature had not endowed her with the qualities which ensure an active triumph. 'The best signs and marks of a happy, industrious hand,' wrote the hoyden, 'is a long middle finger, equally suited with that they call the fool's or first finger.' Now, though she was never a clumsy jade, the practice of sword-play and quarterstaff had not refined the industry of her hands, which were the rather framed for strength than for delicacy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gilderoy's brutality, which was always theatrical, ensured a constant remembrance, and the lofty gallows added to his repute; while the brilliant inspiration of the strings, which decorated Rann's breeches, was sufficient to conquer death. How should a hero sink to oblivion who had chosen for himself so splendid a name as Sixteen-String Jack?
So far, then, their achievement is parallel. And parallel also is their taste for melodrama. Each employed means too great or too violent for the end in view. Gilderoy burnt houses and ravished women, when his sole object was the acquisition of money. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lightest word, the fleetest smile of the renowned highwayman, threw the world into a fit of excitement, and a glimpse of Rann was worth a king's ransom. I could look upon him all day for nothing! And I knew what a fever of fear throbbed behind his mask of happy contempt. Yet bravely he played the part unto the very end. If the toasts of London were determined to gaze at him, he assured them they should have a proper salve for their eyes. So he dressed himself as a light-hearted sportsman. His coat and waistcoat were of pea-green cloth ”

“ A SPARE, lean frame; a small head set forward upon a pair of sloping shoulders; a thin, sharp nose, and rat-like eyes; a flat, hollow chest; shrunk shanks, modestly retreating from their snuff-coloured hose—these are the tokens which served to remind his friends of Ralph Briscoe, the Clerk of Newgate. As he left the prison in the grey air of morning upon some errand of mercy or revenge, he appeared the least fearsome of mortals, while an awkward limp upon his left toe deepened the impression of timidity. ”

“ In bravery as in gallantry he knew no rival, and he plundered with so elegant a style, that only a churlish victim could resent the extortion. He would as soon have turned his back upon an enemy as demand a purse uncovered. For every man he had a quip, for every woman a compliment; nor did he ever conceal the truth that the means were for him as important as the end. Though he loved money, he still insisted that it should be yielded in freedom and good temper; and while he emptied more coaches than any man in England, he was never at a loss for admirers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No Tamerlane he, questing for a continent, but David Haggart, the man with the long forks, happy if he snatched his neighbour's purse.
Before all things he respected the profession which his left hand made inevitable, and which he pursued with unconquerable pride. Nor in his inspired youth was plunder his sole ambition: he cultivated the garden of his style with the natural zeal of the artist; he frowned upon the bungler with a lofty contempt. ”

“ On horseback, with the semblance of a fire-arm, a man may easily challenge a coachful of women. It needs a cool brain and a sound courage to empty a pocket in the watchful presence of spies and policemen. While Gentleman Harry chose a lonely road, or the cover of night for his exploits, the Switcher always worked by day, hustled by a crowd of witnesses.
Their hours of leisure furnish a yet more striking contrast. Simms was a polished dandy delighting in his clothes, unhappy if he were deprived of his bottle and his game. ”

“ Yet none knew her until she reached Bishopsgate, where an orange-wench set up the cry, 'Moll Cutpurse on horseback!' Instantly the cavalier was surrounded by a noisy mob. Some would have torn her from the saddle for an imagined insult upon womanhood, others, more wisely minded, laughed at the prank with good-humoured merriment. Every minute the throng grew denser, and it had fared hardly with roystering Moll, had not a wedding and the arrest of a debtor presently distracted the gaping idlers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While he never took a shilling without sweetening his depredation with a joke, he was, like all humorists, an acute philosopher. 'Remember what I tell you,' he said to the foolish persons who once attempted to rob him, the master-thief of England, 'disgrace not yourself for small sums, but aim high, and for great ones; the least will bring you to the gallows.' There, in five lines, is the whole philosophy of thieving, and many a poor devil has leapt from the cart to his last dance because he neglected the counsel of the illustrious Hind. ”

“ 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 ”

“ His confession, in brief, was so dangerous a document, it betrayed the friends and servants of so many great houses, that the officers of the Law found safety for their patrons in its destruction, and not a line of the hero's testimony remains. The trial of his comrades dragged on for many a year, and after Cartouche had been cruelly broken on the wheel, not a few of the gang, of which he had been at once the terror and inspiration, suffered a like fate. Such the career and such the fitting end of the most distinguished marauder the world has known. ”

“ In one of the countless chap-books which dishonour his fame, he is unjustly accused of relying for his effects upon an elaborate apparatus, half knife, half scissors, wherewith to rip the pockets of his victims. The mere backbiting of envy! An artistic triumph was never won save by legitimate means; and the hero who plundered the Dulce of L—r at Ranelagh, who emptied the pockets of his acquaintance without fear of exposure, who all but carried off the priceless snuff-box of Count Orloff, most assuredly followed his craft in full simplicity and with a proper scorn of clumsy artifice. ”