Chapter 10

Yet from the moment of arrest Jack Sheppard asserted his magnificent superiority. If Cartouche was a sorry bungler at prison-breaking, Sheppard was unmatched in this dangerous art. The sport of the one was to break in, of the other to break out. True, the Briton proved his inferiority by too frequently placing himself under lock and key; but you will forgive his every weakness for the unexampled skill wherewith he extricated himself from the stubbornest dungeon. Cartouche would scarce have given Sheppard a menial's office in his gang. How cordially Sheppard would have despised Cartouche's solitary experiment in escape! To be foiled by a dog and a boxmaker's daughter! Would not that have seemed contemptible to the master breaker of those unnumbered doors and walls which separate the Castle from the freedom of Newgate roof?

Such, then, is the contrast between the heroes. Sheppard claims our admiration for one masterpiece. Cartouche has a sheaf of works, which shall carry him triumphantly to the remotest future.

And when you forget a while professional rivalry, and consider the delicacies of leisure, you will find the Frenchman's greatness still indisputable. At all points he was the prettier gentleman. Sheppard, to be sure, had a sense of finery, but he was so unused to grandeur that vulgarity always spoiled his effects. When he hied him from the pawnshop, laden with booty, he must e'en cram what he could not wear into his pockets; and doubtless his vulgar lack of reticence made detection easier. Cartouche, on the other hand, had an unfailing sense of proportion, and was never more dressed than became the perfect dandy. He was elegant, he was polished, he was joyous. He drank wine, while the other soaked himself in beer; he despised whatever was common, while his rival knew but the coarser flavours of life.

The one was distinguished by a boisterous humour, a swaggering pride in his own prowess; the wit of the other might be edged like a knife, nor would he ever appeal for a spectacle to the curiosity of the mob. Both were men of many mistresses, but again in his conduct with women Cartouche showed an honester talent. Sheppard was at once the prey and the whipping-block of his two infamous doxies, who agreed in deformity of feature as in contempt for their lover. Cartouche, on the other hand, chose his cabaret for the wit of its patronne, and was always happy in the elegance and accomplishment of his companions. One point of likeness remains. The two heroes resembled each other not only in their profession, but in their person. Though their trade demanded physical strength, each was small and slender of build. 'A little, slight-limbed lad,' says the historian of Sheppard. 'A thin, spare frame,' sings the poet of Cartouche. Here, then, neither had the advantage, and if in the shades Cartouche despises the clumsiness and vulgarity of his rival, Sheppard may still remember the glory of Newgate, and twit the Frenchman with the barking of the boxmaker's dog. But genius is the talent of the dead, and the wise, who are not partisans, will not deny to the one or to the other the possession of the rarer gift.

VAUX

TO Haggart, who babbled on the Castle Rock of Willie Wallace and was only nineteen when he danced without the music; to Simms, alias Gentleman Harry, who showed at Tyburn how a hero could die; to George Barrington, the incomparably witty and adroit--to these a full meed of honour has been paid. Even the coarse and dastardly Freney has achieved, with Thackeray's aid (and Lever's) something of a reputation. But James Hardy Vaux, despite his eloquent bid for fame, has not found his rhapsodist. Yet a more consistent ruffian never pleaded for mercy. From his early youth until in 1819 he sent forth his Memoirs to the world, he lived industriously upon the cross. There was no racket but he worked it with energy and address. Though he practised the more glorious crafts of pickpocket and shoplifter, he did not despise the begging-letter, and he suffered his last punishment for receiving what another's courage had conveyed. His enterprise was not seldom rewarded with success, and for a decade of years he continued to preserve an appearance of gentility; but it is plain, even from his own narrative, that he was scarce an artist, and we shall best understand him if we recognise that he was a Philistine among thieves. He lived in an age of pocket-picking, and skill in this branch is the true test of his time. A contemporary of Barrington, he had before him the most brilliant of examples, which might properly have enforced the worth of a simple method. But, though he constantly brags of his success at Drury Lane, we take not his generalities for gospel, and the one exploit whose credibility is enforced with circumstance was pitiful both in conception and performance. A meeting of freeholders at the 'Mermaid Tavern,' Hackney, was the occasion, and after drawing blank upon blank, Vaux succeeded at last in extracting a silver snuff-box. Now, his clumsiness had suggested the use of the scissors, and the victim not only discovered the scission in his coat, but caught the thief with the implements of his art upon him. By a miracle of impudence Vaux escaped conviction, but he deserved the gallows for his want of principle, and not even sympathy could have let drop a tear, had justice seized her due. On the straight or on the cross the canons of art deserve respect; and a thief is great, not because he is a thief, but because, in filling his own pocket, he preserves from violence the legitimate traditions of his craft.

But it was in conflict with the jewellers that Vaux best proved his mettle. It was his wont to clothe himself 'in the most elegant attire,' and on the pretence of purchase to rifle the shops of Piccadilly. For this offence--'pinching' the Cant Dictionary calls it--he did his longest stretch of time, and here his admirable qualities of cunning and coolness found their most generous scope. A love of fine clothes he shared with all the best of his kind, and he visited Mr Bilger--the jeweller who arrested him--magnificently arrayed. He wore a black coat and waistcoat, blue pantaloons, Hessian boots, and a hat 'in the extreme of the newest fashion.' He was also resplendent with gold watch and eye-glass. His hair was powdered, and a fawney sparkled on his dexter fam. The booty was enormous, and a week later he revisited the shop on another errand. This second visit was the one flash of genius in a somewhat drab career: the jeweller was so completely dumfounded, that Vaux might have got clean away. But though he kept discreetly out of sight for a while, at last he drifted back to his ancient boozing-ken, and was there betrayed to a notorious thief-catcher. The inevitable sentence of death followed. It was commuted after the fashion of the time, and Vaux, having sojourned a while at the Hulks, sought for a second time the genial airs of Botany Bay.

His vanity and his laziness were alike invincible. He believed himself a miracle of learning as well as a perfect thief, and physical toil was the sole 'lay' for which he professed no capacity. For a while he corrected the press for a printer, and he roundly asserts that his knowledge of literature and of foreign tongues rendered him invaluable. It was vanity again that induced him to assert his innocence when he was lagged for so vulgar a crime as stealing a wipe from a tradesman in Chancery Lane. At the moment of arrest he was on his way to purchase base coin from a Whitechapel bit-faker: but, despite his nefarious errand, he is righteously wrathful at what he asserts was an unjust conviction, and henceforth he assumed the crown of martyrdom. His first and last ambition during the intervals of freedom was gentility, and so long as he was not at work he lived the life of a respectable grocer. Although the casual Cyprian flits across his page, he pursued the one flame of his life for the good motive, and he affects to be a very model of domesticity. The sentiment of piety also was strong upon him, and if he did not, like the illustrious Peace, pray for his jailer, he rivalled the Prison Ordinary in comforting the condemned. Had it only been his fate to die on the gallows, how unctuous had been his croak!

The text of his 'Memoirs' having been edited, it is scarce possible to define his literary talent. The book, as it stands, is an excellent piece of narrative, but it loses somewhat by the pretence of style. The man's invulnerable conceit prevented an absolute frankness, and there is little enough hilarity to correct the acid sentiment and the intolerable vows of repentance. Again, though he knows his subject, and can patter flash with the best, his incorrigible respectability leads him to ape the manner of a Grub Street hack, and to banish to a vocabulary those pearls of slang which might have added vigour and lustre to his somewhat tiresome page. However, the thief cannot escape his inevitable defects. The vanity, the weakness, the sentimentality of those who are born beasts of prey, yet have the faculty of depredation only half-developed, are the foes of truth, and it is well to remember that the autobiography of a rascal is tainted at its source. A congenial pickpocket, equipped with the self-knowledge and the candour which would enable him to recognise himself an outlaw and justice his enemy rather than an instrument of malice, would prove a Napoleon rather than a Vaux. So that we must e'en accept our Newgate Calendar with its many faults upon its head, and be content. For it takes a man of genius to write a book, and the thief who turns author commonly inhabits a paradise of the second-rate.

GEORGE BARRINGTON

AS Captain Hind was master of the road, George Barrington was (and remains for ever) the absolute monarch of pickpockets. Though the art, superseding the cutting of purses, had been practised with courage and address for half a century before Barrington saw the light, it was his own incomparable genius that raised thievery from the dangerous valley of experiment, and set it, secure and honoured, upon the mountain height of perfection. To a natural habit of depredation, which, being a man of letters, he was wont to justify, he added a sureness of hand, a fertility of resource, a recklessness of courage which drove his contemporaries to an amazed respect, and from which none but the Philistine will withhold his admiration. An accident discovered his taste and talent. At school he attempted to kill a companion--the one act of violence which sullies a strangely gentle career; and outraged at the affront of a flogging, he fled with twelve guineas and a gold repeater watch. A vulgar theft this, and no presage of future greatness; yet it proves the fearless greed, the contempt of private property, which mark as with a stigma the temperament of the prig. His faculty did not rust long for lack of use, and at Drogheda, when he was but sixteen, he encountered one Price, half barnstormer, half thief. Forthwith he embraced the twin professions, and in the interlude of more serious pursuits is reported to have made a respectable appearance as Jaffier in Venice Preserved. For a while he dreamed of Drury Lane and glory; but an attachment for Miss Egerton, the Belvidera to his own Jaffier, was more costly than the barns of Londonderry warranted, and, with Price for a colleague, he set forth on a tour of robbery, merely interrupted through twenty years by a few periods of enforced leisure.

His youth, indeed, was his golden age. For four years he practised his art, chilled by no shadow of suspicion, and his immunity was due as well to his excellent bearing as to his sleight of hand. 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. At his first appearance he was the master, sumptuously apparelled, with Price for valet. At Dublin his birth and quality were never questioned, and when he made a descent upon London it was in company with Captain W. H--n, who remained for years his loyal friend. He visited Brighton as the chosen companion of Lord Ferrers and the wicked Lord Lyttelton. His manners and learning were alike irresistible. Though the picking of pockets was the art and interest of his life, he was on terms of easy familiarity with light literature, and he considered no toil too wearisome if only his conversation might dazzle his victims. Two maxims he charactered upon his heart: the one, never to run a large risk for a small gain; the other, never to forget the carriage and diction of a gentleman.

He never stooped to pilfer, until exposure and decay had weakened his hand. In his first week at Dublin he carried off £1000, and it was only his fateful interview with Sir John Fielding that gave him poverty for a bedfellow. Even at the end, when he slunk from town to town, a notorious outlaw, he had inspirations of his ancient magnificence, and--at Chester--he eluded the vigilance of his enemies and captured £600, wherewith he purchased some months of respectability. Now, respectability was ever dear to him, and it was at once his pleasure and profit to live in the highest society. Were it not blasphemy to sully Barrington with slang you would call him a member of the swell-mob, but, having cultivated a grave and sober style for himself, he recoiled in horror from the flash lingo, and his susceptibility demands respect.

He kept a commonplace book! Was ever such thrift in a thief? Whatever images or thoughts flashed through his brain, he seized them on paper, even 'amidst the jollity of a tavern, or in the warmth of an interesting conversation.' Was it then strange that he triumphed as a man of fashionable and cultured leisure? He would visit Ranelagh with the most distinguished, and turn a while from epigram and jest to empty the pocket of a rich acquaintance. And ever with so tactful a certainty, with so fine a restraint of the emotions, that suspicion was preposterous. To catalogue his exploits is superfluous, yet let it be recorded that once he went to Court, habited as a clergyman, and came home the richer for a diamond order, Lord C--'s proudest decoration. Even the assault upon Prince Orloff was nobly planned. Barrington had precise intelligence of the marvellous snuff-box--the Empress's own gift to her lover; he knew also how he might meet the Prince at Drury Lane; he had even discovered that the Prince for safety hid the jewel in his vest. But the Prince felt the Prig's hand upon the treasure, and gave an instant alarm. Over-confidence, maybe, or a too liberal dinner was the cause of failure, and Barrington, surrounded in a moment, was speedily in the lock-up. It was the first rebuff that the hero had received, and straightway his tact and ingenuity left him. The evidence was faulty, the prosecution declined, and naught was necessary for escape save presence of mind. Even friends were staunch, and had Barrington told his customary lie, his character had gone unsullied. Yet having posed for his friends as a student of the law, at Bow Street he must needs declare himself a doctor, and the needless discrepancy ruined him. Though he escaped the gallows, there was an end to the diversions of intellect and fashion; as he discovered when he visited the House of Lords to hear an appeal, and Black Rod ejected him at the persuasion of Mr. G--. As yet unused to insult, he threatened violence against the aggressor, and finding no bail he was sent on his first imprisonment to the Bridewell in Tothill Fields. Rapid, indeed, was the descent. At the first grip of adversity, he forgot his cherished principles, and two years later the loftiest and most elegant gentlemen that ever picked a pocket was at the Hulks--for robbing a harlot at Drury Lane! Henceforth, his insolence and artistry declined, and, though to the last there were intervals of grandeur, he spent the better part of fifteen years in the commission of crimes, whose very littleness condemned them. At last an exile from St. James's and Ranelagh, he was forced into a society which still further degraded him. Hitherto he had shunned the society of professed thieves; in his golden youth he had scorned to shelter him in the flash kens, which were the natural harbours of pickpockets. But now, says his biographer, he began to seek evil company, and, the victim of his own fame, found safety only in obscene concealment.

At the Hulks he recovered something of his dignity, and discretion rendered his first visit brief enough. Even when he was committed on a second offence, and had attempted suicide, he was still irresistible, and he was discharged with several years of imprisonment to run. But, in truth, he was born for honour and distinction, and common actions, common criminals, were in the end distasteful to him. In his heyday he stooped no further than to employ such fences as might profitably dispose of his booty, and the two partners of his misdeeds were both remarkable.

James, the earlier accomplice affected clerical attire, and in 1791 'was living in a Westphalian monastery, to which he some years ago retired, in an enviable state of peace and penitence, respected for his talents, and loved for his amiable manners, by which he is distinguished in an eminent degree.' The other ruffian, Lowe by name, was known to his own Bloomsbury Square for a philanthropic and cultured gentleman, yet only suicide saved him from the gallows. And while Barrington was wise in the choice of his servants, his manners drove even strangers to admiration. Policemen and prisoners were alike anxious to do him honour. Once when he needed money for his own defence, his brother thieves, whom he had ever shunned and despised, collected £100 for the captain of their guild. Nor did gaoler and judge ever forget the respect due to a gentleman. When Barrington was tried and condemned for the theft of Mr. Townsend's watch at Enfield Races--September 15, 1790, was the day of his last transgression--one knows not which was the more eloquent in his respect, the judge or the culprit.

But it was not until the pickpocket set out for Botany Bay that he took full advantage of his gentlemanly bearing. To thrust 'Mr.' Barrington into the hold was plainly impossible, even though transportation for seven years was his punishment. Wherefore he was admitted to the boatswain's mess, was allowed as much baggage as a first-class passenger, and doubtless beguiled the voyage (for others) with the information of a well-stored mind. By an inspiration of luck he checked a mutiny, holding the quarter-deck against a mob of ruffians with no weapon but a marline-spike. And hereafter, as he tells you in his 'Voyage to New South Wales,' he was accorded the fullest liberty to come or go. He visited many a foreign port with the officers of the ship; he packed a hundred note-books with trite and superfluous observations; he posed, in brief, as the captain of the ship without responsibility. Arrived at Port Jackson, he was acclaimed a hero, and received with obsequious solicitude by the Governor, who promised that his 'future situation should be such as would render his banishment from England as little irksome as possible.' Forthwith he was appointed high constable of Paramatta, and, like Vautrin, who might have taken the youthful Barrington for another Rastignac, he ended his days the honourable custodian of less fortunate convicts. Or, as a broadside ballad has it,

He left old Drury's flash purlieus, To turn at last a copper.

Never did he revert to his ancient practice. If in his youth he had lived the double-life with an effrontery and elegance which Brodie himself never attained, henceforth his career was single in its innocence. He became a prig in the less harmful and more offensive sense. After the orthodox fashion he endeared himself to all who knew him, and ruled Paramatta with an equable severity. Having cultivated the humanities for the base purposes of his trade, he now devoted himself to literature with an energy of dulness, becoming, as it were, a liberal education personified. His earlier efforts had been in verse, and you wonder that no enterprising publisher had ventured on a limited edition. Time was he composed an ode to Light, and once recovering from a fever contracted at Ballyshannon, he addressed a few burning lines to Hygeia:

Hygeia! thou whose eyes display The lustre of meridian day;

and so on for endless couplets. Then, had he not celebrated in immortal verse his love for Miss Egerton, untimely drowned in the waters of the Boyne? But now, as became the Constable of Paramatta, he chose the sterner medium, and followed up his 'Voyage to New South Wales' with several exceeding trite and valuable histories.

His most ambitious work was dedicated in periods of unctuous piety to his Majesty King George III., and the book's first sentence is characteristic of his method and sensibility: 'In contemplating the origin, rise, and fall of nations, the mind is alternately filled with a mixture of sacred pain and pleasure.' Would you read further? Then you will find Fauna and Flora, twin goddesses of ineptitude, flitting across the page, unreadable as a geographical treatise. His first masterpiece was translated into French, anno VI., and the translator apologises that war with England alone prevents the compilation of a suitable biography. Was ever thief treated with so grave a consideration?

Then another work was prefaced by the Right Hon. William Eden, and all were 'embellished with beautiful coloured plates,' and ran through several editions. Once only did he return to poetry, the favoured medium of his youth, and he returned to write an imperishable line. Even then his pedantry persuaded him to renounce the authorship, and to disparage the achievement. The occasion was the opening of a theatre at Sydney, wherein the parts were sustained by convicts. The cost of admission to the gallery was one shilling, paid in money, flour, meat, or spirits.

The play was entitled The Revenge and the Hotel, and Barrington provided the prologue, which for one passage is for ever memorable. Thus it runs:

From distant climes, o'er widespread seas, we come, Though not with much eclat or beat of drum; True patriots we, for be it understood, We left our country for our country's good. No private views disgraced our generous zeal, What urged our travels was our country's weal; And none will doubt, but that our emigration Has proved most useful to the British nation.

'We left our country for our country's good.' That line, thrown fortuitously into four hundred pages of solid prose, has emerged to become the common possession of Fleet Street. It is the man's one title to literary fame, for spurning the thievish practice he knew so well, he was righteously indignant when The London Spy was fathered upon him. Though he emptied his contemporary's pockets of many thousands, he enriched the Dictionary of Quotations with one line, which will be repeated so long as there is human hand to wield a pen. And, if the High Constable of Paramatta was tediously respectable, George Barrington, the Prig, was a man of genius.

THE SWITCHER AND GENTLEMAN HARRY

I--THE SWITCHER