Dick Turpin

“ But hark back to Dick Turpin. We left him rattling along in superb style, and in the highest possible glee. He could not, in fact, be otherwise than exhilarated; nothing being so wildly intoxicating as a mad gallop. We seem to start out of [389] ourselves—to be endued, for the time, with new energies. Our thoughts take wings rapid as our steed. We feel as if his fleetness and boundless impulses were for the moment our own. We laugh; we exult; we shout for very joy. ”

“ The mill loomed before them, a huge, dark shadow on the shadows.
Dick and Anne ran along the road to Larkland. Presently they heard horse’s hoofs clattering down the road. There was a pause at the big gate, and a familiar voice said, “Steady, Rosinante, steady!” as the rider bent to open the gate.
“Cousin Mayo! Cousin Mayo!” cried Dick and Anne, running toward him.
“Hey! Who’s there?” he called sharply.
“It’s just us,” said Anne; and Dick said, “Anne and me.”
“Anne!—here at this time of night! Why, everybody in The Village is distracted about you. Get on Rosinante behind me. ”

“ With his friends, they say Dick Turpin can be as gentle as a lamb; with his foes, especially with a limb of the law like yourself, he's been found but an ugly customer. I once saw him at Newmarket, where he was collared by two constable culls, one on each side. Shaking off one, and dealing the other a blow in the face with his heavy-handled whip, he stuck spurs into his mare, and though the whole field gave chase, he distanced them all, easily. ”

“ You will meet me at the priory."
"No," answered the highwayman, boldly; "if you go, I go too. It shall never be said that Dick Turpin was afraid to follow where another would lead. Proceed."
Luke gave his horse the bridle, and the animal slowly and steadily commenced the descent, fixing his fore legs upon the steps, and drawing his hinder limbs carefully after him. Here it was that the lightness and steadiness of Turpin's mare was completely shown. No Alpine mule could have borne its rider with more apparent ease and safety. Turpin encouraged her by hand and word ”

“ But it is not only the truly great who have won for themselves an enduring reputation. There are men, not a few, esteemed, like the popular novelist, not for their art but for some foolish gift, some facile trick of notoriety, whose actions have tickled the fancy, not the understanding of the world. The coward and the impostor have been set upon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity. For more than a century Dick Turpin has appeared not so much the greatest of highwaymen, as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess has been extolled in novels and upon the stage ”

“ We made inquiries from quite a number of people, but could get no satisfactory information, until we met with an elderly gentleman, who informed us that it was not Dick Turpin who was gibbeted there, but a "gentleman" in the same profession, whose name was Spence Broughton, the only trace of him now being a lane that bore his name. As far as he knew, Dick Turpin had never been nearer Sheffield than Maltby, a village five miles away, and that was on his ride from London to York. ”

“ No one passed except a negro man who went slinking down the road.
“Anne,” whispered Patsy, “that man looks like—I believe it is—Cæsar!”
“Any darky you saw would look like Cæsar to you, now he’s a deserter,” giggled Anne. “You don’t see anybody that looks like Dick, do you?”
“No; and don’t let’s wait any longer. We’re [244] so crazy to find out about Dick we’re getting to be real slackers in Red Cross and gardening.”
They “went by” Larkland, and there they found Dick, busy stretching wire and driving staples, helping Cousin Mayo wire in a new pigeon cote. ”

“ Turpin, the reader already knows, was a crack rider; he was the crack rider of England of his time, and, perhaps, of any time. The craft and mystery of jockeyship was not so well understood in the eighteenth as it is in the nineteenth century; men treated their horses differently, and few rode them as well as many ride now, when every youngster takes to the field as naturally as if he had been bred a Guacho. Dick Turpin was a glorious exception to the rule, and anticipated a later age. ”

“ The familiar "Dick" itself shows us how the great public long ago took Turpin to its ample bosom, and cherished him, but the student of these things smiles a little sourly as he traces the quite unheroic doings of this exceptionally mean and skulking scoundrel, and fails all the time to note anything of a dashing nature in his very busy but altogether sordid career.
Turpin never rode that famous Ride to York upon Black Bess: another and an earlier than he by some sixty years—the bold and daring Nevison—performed [Pg 174] that ride, as we have already shown ”

“ His exploit in thus riding from near Rochester to York is the original of the later, inferior and wholly fictitious story of Dick Turpin’s ride from London to York, on Black Bess; an exploit never performed by him.
MRS. LYNN LINTON
One presently becomes more tolerant of Gad’s Hill, for, coming to Charles Dickens’ house and the old “Falstaff” inn, almost opposite, there opens a view [Pg 91] over the surrounding country that is really fine, and the road goes down, too, towards Strood, in a manner eminently picturesque. ”

“ Do tell me all about it," said I. The elderly gentleman opposite now spoke and said:
"I can give you the correct account, for I was one of the passengers and one of the victims; I may say."
"Oh, do tell me if there is any danger of Dick Turpin coming again today?" I asked.
"Not the slightest, " said the old gentleman, "and that is the reason why I am travelling again so soon. Besides, I am armed with my horse-pistols." ”

“ Turpin's external man, we have before said, was singularly prepossessing. It was especially so in the eyes of the sex—fair we certainly cannot say upon the present occasion—, amongst whom not a single dissentient voice was to be heard. All concurred in thinking him a fine fellow; could plainly read his high courage in his bearing; his good breeding in his débonnaire deportment; and his manly beauty in his extravagant red whiskers. Dick saw the effect that he produced. He was at home in a moment. Your true highwayman has ever a passion for effect. This does not desert him at the gallows ”

“ I just can’t finish it to-day.”
“You’d better,” said Patsy, who had followed him into the garden. “When father says ‘Richard’ and shuts his mouth—so! he means business. Say, Dick! What were you getting that candle for? What are you going to do? Let us go with you, Anne Lewis and me, and I’ll help you here.”
“You help!” Dick spoke in his most superior masculine manner. “Girls haven’t any business in gardens. They ought to stay in the house and make bed-quilts. They’re too afraid of dirty hands and freckled faces.” ”

“ Happy Acres was a bower of roses; they would take their knitting to the summerhouse every day. Anne remembered—of course she remembered—Dick’s dare and double dare about their following him and finding out what he was doing? They must certainly do that. He went off every few days, no one knew where. David and Steve had tried to follow him, but Dick led them a chase—like an old red fox, Cousin Mayo said—for miles and miles, and then back home. It was certainly a secret, and she and Anne must find it out. And Patsy ended as she began; begging Anne to hurry and come to The Village. ”

“ It was ascertained that they had been reading the adventures of Dick Turpin, and other noted highwaymen, which had given them this singular and dangerous taste for a life in violation of the laws of God and man. ”

“ Will you tell me why "the human interest" of a legend about Dick Turpin's head festering on Newgate, England, is any greater to Americans than the truth about Black Jack of Texas, whose head flew off into the crowd, when the support was removed from his feet and he was hanged down in New Mexico? ”

“ He dragged back the poles he had pulled aside.
“Put out the light,” he said. “I’ll stay here and watch. If they don’t step on the poles, they’ll never find us.”
“Oh, Dick! If——”
“Hush! They’re coming!”
They crouched down in silence, listening fearfully to the footsteps and voices that came nearer and nearer. Three men, the foremost one carrying a lantern, stopped in the main room of the mine. Dick saw them clearly; they were Solomon Gabe, Cæsar, and Isham.
[254] Solomon Gabe was moaning over and over: “Uh, my boy! Dey’ll git you, dey’ll git you! My boy! my boy!” ”

“ Richard Turpin is a very different fellow in his costume of to-day, but he is the same Dick of the jack-boots and the heath, this vulgar robber who smirks and is called smart. He drives a fine equipage, and lives luxuriously, and keeps a harem, and frequents Wall Street, and beats everybody in the game of making money, and spending it profusely and splendidly. He dazzles the eyes of the widow's son, and bewilders his mind. The boy sees the money with which Richard surrounds himself by means which honorable men despise. ”

“ The boy hears that all men are fallible, and that some men are no worse than other men, and that money is a fine thing, and honor and truth and respect and all the rest of it are very well, but see what power, what pleasure, what luxury Turpin commands! Then the poor boy rushes for the same prizes, and fails, and ends in disgrace, the jail, suicide. And Dick Turpin tosses a hundred dollars to the boy's mother, and a generous press exclaims, "Not a model man, perhaps ”

“ Turpin, who was but at a small distance on horseback, came up, when King cried out "D———n ye, shoot him Dick, or we shall be taken" at which instant, Turpin let fly one of his pistols and the other directly afterwards. Both shots missed Bayes, but severely wounded King in two places, who cried out, "Why, Dick, you have killed me nearly so." Turpin hearing this, and finding (illegible text) to be desperate indeed, rode away as fast as possible. ”

“ He was just about to bang on the door when he heard a voice,—not Isham’s and not Lily Belle’s. He peeped through a knothole. There was a man sitting at the table. His back was turned. Dick crept to the side of the cabin and looked through a crack. Now Lily Belle was between him and the man. Isham threw a lightwood [250] knot on the fire and the blaze flared up. And Lily Belle moved. The man was Cæsar Gabe, the deserter!
This news ought to go at once to The Village. But Anne! He could not go back without one effort to find her. He ran down the road to the ford. There he stopped. ”

“ Again, this time in the Grub Street Journal of July 24th, 1735, we find a trace of the busy Dick, in the following: "Monday, Mr. Omar, of Southwark, meeting between Barnes-Common and Wandsworth, Turpin the butcher, with another [Pg 198] person, clapt spurs to his horse, but they coming up with him, oblig'd him to dismount, and Turpin suspecting that he knew him, would have shot him, but was prevented by the other, who pull'd the pistol out of his hand." ”

“ I wish we could find out Dick’s secret.”
“If just we could!” Patsy replied; “but—well, sometimes I think we might as well give up. We can’t keep on forever trotting after him, with the Red Cross and Camp Feed Friend and the Canning Club and Happy Acres and all the other things there are to do.”
“Oh, no, Pats-pet! We’ll not give up,” Anne said decidedly. “There’s some way to manage it. But of course we mustn’t take time from the garden; not now, while there’s so much to do. The main thing is to make our garden beat those [177] bragging boys’. Oh! ”

“ Your potatoes are taller than theirs. And your peas are better; I’ve counted the pods on the biggest vines in both gardens. It’s just splendid what you’ve done—all but Dick.”
“Oh!—Dick.” Whatever Patsy herself might say about Dick, she could never bear to have others find fault with her twin brother. “He helps Cousin Agnes in her garden. He would work here sometimes—real often—but the boys call him ‘slacker’ because he won’t join them. He’s working hard over his secret, whatever it is. He comes home so dirty! And—well, Anne, I know it’s something big, from the way he acts.” ”

“ You and Ruth will stay in ‘the bedroom,’ Patsy will move out of it, into the dressing room that Sweet William will give up. He can sleep on a pallet in ‘the chamber’ or go into the ‘tumble-up room’ with Dick and David. Of course you will stay here.”
“What’s that you are saying?” asked Black Mayo, who came up the walk just then. “‘Stay here?’ You aren’t hoping you can have Agnes and Ruth with you?”
“Yes, indeed!” said Patsy. “Now, don’t you come and try to hog them away. They are going to live with us.”
“Indeed they are not,” declared Black Mayo. “They’re going to Larkland. ”

“ Come to the hot corn muffins!”
[41] “I ought to go home,” said Black Mayo. “Polly’ll be expecting me.”
“Indeed she will not,” said Mrs. Osborne. “Polly never expects you till she sees you coming in the gate. How is she, and how are your pigeons? I understand they are a part of your family now. Of course you’ll stay to supper, Mayo. Patsy, tell Emma to put another plate on the table.”
A visit from their Cousin Mayo, always a delight, was now especially welcome to Dick because it postponed, perhaps prevented, a disagreeable interview with his father. ”

“ Anne jumped up and down, uttering little squeals of excitement. “Steve! David! Dick! Why don’t you have a school war garden?”
“A school garden?” questioned Steve.
“Yes; like we have in Washington, that all the pupils work in,” said Anne.
“Thank you! I get enough gardening at home,” said Dick, sourly. “I don’t want to spend all my life hung to one end of a stick with a hoe at the other end.”
“Oh! but this is fun, and good war work too. [64] It takes just a few hours a week from each of us. The more there are to help, the less there is for each one to do.” ”