Chapter 3

Captain Smith took the justest view of his subject. For him robbery, in the street as on the highway, was the finest of the arts, and he always revered it for its own sake rather than for vulgar profit. Though, to deceive the public, he abhorred villainy in word, he never concealed his admiration in deed of a 'highwayman who robs like a gentleman.' 'There is a beauty in all the works of nature,' he observes in one of his wittiest exordia, 'which we are unable to define, though all the world is convinced of its existence: so in every action and station of life there is a grace to be attained, which will make a man pleasing to all about him and serene in his own mind.' Some there are, he continues, who have placed 'this beauty in vice itself; otherwise it is hardly probable that they could commit so many irregularities with a strong gust and an appearance of satisfaction.' Notwithstanding that the word 'vice' is used in its conventional sense, we have here the key to Captain Smith's position. He judged his heroes' achievements with the intelligent impartiality of a connoisseur, and he permitted no other prejudice than an unfailing loyalty to interrupt his opinion.

Though he loved good English as he loved good wine, he was never so happy as when (in imagination) he was tying the legs of a Regicide under the belly of an ass. And when in the manner of a bookseller's hack he compiled a Comical and Tragical History of the Lives and Adventures of the most noted Bayliffs, adoration of the Royalists persuaded him to miss his chance. So brave a spirit as himself should not have looked complacently upon the officers of the law, but he saw in the glorification of the bayliff another chance of castigating the Roundheads, and thus he set an honorific crown upon the brow of man's natural enemy. 'These unsanctified rascals,' wrote he, 'would run into any man's debt without paying him, and if their creditors were Cavaliers they thought they had as much right to cheat 'em, as the Israelites had to spoil the Egyptians of their ear-rings and jewels.' Alas! the boot was ever on the other leg; and yet you cannot but admire the Captain's valiant determination to sacrifice probability to his legitimate hate.

Of his declining years and death there is no record. One likes to think of him released from care, and surrounded by books, flowers, and the good things of this earth. Now and again, maybe, he would muse on the stirring deeds of his youth, and more often he would put away the memory of action to delight in the masterpiece which made him immortal. He would recall with pleasure, no doubt, the ready praise of Richard Steele, his most appreciative critic, and smile contemptuously at the baseness of his friend and successor, Captain Charles Johnson. Now, this ingenious writer was wont to boast, when the ale of Fleet Street had empurpled his nose, that he was the most intrepid highwayman of them all. 'Once upon a time,' he would shout, with an arrogant gesture, 'I was known from Blackheath to Hounslow, from Ware to Shooter's Hill.' And the truth is, the only 'crime' he ever committed was plagiarism. The self-assumed title of Captain should have deceived nobody, for the braggart never stole anything more difficult of acquisition than another man's words. He picked brains, not pockets; he committed the greater sin and ran no risk. He helped himself to the admirable inventions of Captain Smith without apology or acknowledgment, and, as though to lighten the dead-weight of his sin, he never skipped an opportunity of maligning his victim. Again and again in the very act to steal he will declare vaingloriously that Captain Smith's stories are 'barefaced inventions.' But doubt was no check to the habit of plunder, and you knew that at every reproach, expressed (so to say) in self-defence, he plied the scissors with the greater energy. The most cunning theft is the tag which adorns the title-page of his book:

Little villains oft submit to fate That great ones may enjoy the world in state.

Thus he quotes from Gay, and you applaud the aptness of the quotation, until you discover that already it was used by Steele in his appreciation of the heroic Smith! However, Johnson has his uses, and those to whom the masterpiece of Captain Alexander is inaccessible will turn with pleasure to the General History of the lives and adventures of the most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c., and will feel no regret that for once they are receiving stolen goods.

Though Johnson fell immeasurably below his predecessor in talent, he manifestly excelled him in scholarship. A sojourn at the University had supplied him with a fine assortment of Latin tags, and he delighted to prove his erudition by the citation of the Chronicles. Had he possessed a sense of humour, he might have smiled at the irony of committing a theft upon the historian of thieves. But he was too vain and too pompous to smile at his own weakness, and thus he would pretend himself a venturesome highwayman, a brave writer, and a profound scholar. Indeed, so far did his pride carry him, that he would have the world believe him the same Charles Johnson, who wrote The Gentleman Cully and The Successful Pyrate. Thus with a boastful chuckle he would quote:

Johnson, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning

Thus, ignoring the insult, he would plume himself after his drunken fashion that he, too, was an enemy of Pope.

Yet Johnson has remained an example. For the literature of scoundrelism is as persistent in its form as in its folk-lore. As Harman's Caveat, which first saw the light in 1566, serves as a model to an unbroken series of such books, as The London Spy, so from Johnson in due course were developed the Newgate Calendar, and those innumerable records, which the latter half of the Eighteenth Century furnished us forth. The celebrated Calendar was in its origin nothing more than a list of prisoners printed in a folio slip. But thereafter it became the Malefactor's Bloody Register, which we know. Its plan and purpose were to improve the occasion. The thief is no longer esteemed for an artist or appraised upon his merits: he is the awful warning, which shall lead the sinner to repentance. 'Here,' says the preface, 'the giddy thoughtless youth may see as in a mirror the fatal consequences of deviating from virtue'; here he may tremble at the discovery that 'often the best talents are prostituted to the basest purposes.' But in spite of 'the proper reflections of the whole affair,' the famous Calendar deserved the praise of Borrow. There is a directness in the narration, which captures all those for whom life and literature are something better than psychologic formulæ. Moreover, the motives which drive the brigand to his doom are brutal in their simplicity, and withal as genuine and sincere as greed, vanity, and lust can make them. The true amateur takes pleasure even in the pious exhortations, because he knows that they crawl into their place, lest the hypocrite be scandalised. But with years the Newgate Calendar also declined, and at last it has followed other dead literatures into the night.

Meanwhile the broadside had enjoyed an unbroken and prosperous career. Up and down London, up and down England, hurried the Patterer or Flying Stationer. There was no murder, no theft, no conspiracy, which did not tempt the Gutter Muse to doggerel. But it was not until James Catnach came up from Alnwick to London (in 1813), that the trade reached the top of its prosperity. The vast sheets, which he published with their scurvy couplets, and the admirable picture, serving in its time for a hundred executions, have not lost their power to fascinate. Theirs is the aspect of the early woodcut; the coarse type and the catchpenny headlines are a perpetual delight; as you unfold them, your care keeps pace with your admiration; and you cannot feel them crackle beneath your hand without enthusiasm and without regret. He was no pedant--Jemmy Catnach; and the image of his ruffians was commonly as far from portraiture, as his verses were remote from poetry. But he put together in a roughly artistic shape the last murder, robbery, or scandal of the day. His masterpieces were far too popular to live, and if they knew so vast a circulation as 2,500,000 they are hard indeed to come by. And now the art is wellnigh dead; though you may discover an infrequent survival in a country town. But how should Catnach, were he alive to-day, compete with the Special Edition of an evening print?

The decline of the Scoundrel, in fact, has been followed by the disappearance of chap-book and broadside. The Education Act, which made the cheap novel a necessity, destroyed at a blow the literature of the street. Since the highwayman wandered, fur-coated, into the City, the patterer has lost his occupation. Robbery and murder have degenerated into Chinese puzzles, whose solution is a pleasant irritant to the idle brain. The misunderstanding of Poe has produced a vast polyglot literature, for which one would not give in exchange a single chapter of Captain Smith. Vautrin and Bill Sykes are already discredited, and it is a false reflection of M. Dupin, which dazzles the eye of a moral and unimaginative world. Yet the wise man sighs for those fearless days, when the brilliant Macheath rode vizarded down Shooter's Hill, and presently saw his exploits set forth, with the proper accompaniment of a renowned and ancient woodcut, upon a penny broadside.

CAPTAIN HIND

JAMES HIND, the Master Thief of England, the fearless Captain of the Highway, was born at Chipping Norton in 1618. His father, a simple saddler, had so poor an appreciation of his son's magnanimity, that he apprenticed him to a butcher; but Hind's destiny was to embrue his hands in other than the blood of oxen, and he had not long endured the restraint of this common craft when forty shillings, the gift of his mother, purchased him an escape, and carried him triumphant and ambitious to London.

Even in his negligent schooldays he had fastened upon a fitting career. A born adventurer, he sought only enterprise and command: if a commission in the army failed him, then he would risk his neck upon the road, levying his own tax and imposing his own conditions. To one of his dauntless resolution an opportunity need never have lacked; yet he owed his first preferment to a happy accident. Surprised one evening in a drunken brawl, he was hustled into the Poultry Counter, and there made acquaintance over a fresh bottle with Robert Allen, one of the chief rogues in the Park, and a ruffian, who had mastered every trick in the game of plunder. A dexterous cly-faker, an intrepid blade, Allen had also the keenest eye for untested talent, and he detected Hind's shining qualities after the first glass. No sooner had they paid the price of release, than Hind was admitted of his comrade's gang; he took the oath of fealty, and by way of winning his spurs was bid to hold up a traveller on Shooter's Hill. Granted his choice of a mount, he straightway took the finest in the stable, with that keen perception of horse-flesh which never deserted him, and he confronted his first victim in the liveliest of humours. There was no falter in his voice, no hint of inexperience in his manner, when he shouted the battle-cry: 'Stand and deliver!' The horseman, fearful of his life, instantly surrendered a purse of ten sovereigns, as to the most practised assailant on the road. Whereupon Hind, with a flourish of ancient courtesy, gave him twenty shillings to bear his charges. 'This,' said he, 'is for handsale sake '; and thus they parted in mutual compliment and content.

Allen was overjoyed at his novice's prowess. 'Did you not see,' he cried to his companions, 'how he robbed him with a grace?' And well did the trooper deserve his captain's compliment, for his art was perfect from the first. 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.

Under Allen he served a brilliant apprenticeship. Enrolled as a servant, he speedily sat at the master's right hand, and his nimble brains devised many a pretty campaign. For a while success dogged the horse-hoofs of the gang; with wealth came immunity, and not one of the warriors had the misfortune to look out upon the world through a grate. They robbed with dignity, even with splendour. Now they would drive forth in a coach and four, carrying with them a whole armoury of offensive weapons; now they would take the road apparelled as noblemen, and attended at a discreet distance by their proper servants. But recklessness brought the inevitable disaster; and it was no less a personage than Oliver Cromwell who overcame the hitherto invincible Allen. A handful of the gang attacked Oliver on his way from Huntingdon, but the marauders were outmatched, and the most of them were forced to surrender. Allen, taken red-handed, swung at Tyburn; Hind, with his better mount and defter horsemanship, rode clear away.

The loss of his friend was a lesson in caution, and henceforth Hind resolved to follow his craft in solitude. He had embellished his native talent with all the instruction that others could impart, and he reflected that he who rode alone neither ran risk of discovery nor had any need to share his booty. Thus he began his easy, untrammelled career, making time and space of no account by his rapid, fearless journeys. Now he was prancing the moors of Yorkshire, now he was scouring the plain between Gloucester and Tewkesbury, but wherever he rode, he had a purse in his pocket and a jest on his tongue. To recall his prowess is to ride with him (in fancy) under the open sky along the fair, beaten road; to put up with him at the busy, white posthouse, to drink unnumbered pints of mulled sack with the round-bellied landlord, to exchange boastful stories over the hospitable fire, and to ride forth in the morning with the joyous uncertainty of travel upon you. Failure alone lay outside his experience, and he presently became at once the terror and the hero of England.

Not only was his courage conspicuous; luck also was his constant companion; and a happy bewitchment protected him for three years against the possibility of harm. He had been lying at Hatfield, at the George Inn, and set out in the early morning for London. As he neared the town-gate, an old beldame begged an alms of him, and though Hind, not liking her ill-favoured visage, would have spurred forward, the beldame's glittering eye held his horse motionless. 'Good woman,' cried Hind, flinging her a crown, 'I am in haste; pray let me pass.' 'Sir,' answered the witch, 'three days I have awaited your coming. Would you have me lose my labour now?' And with Hind's assent the sphinx delivered her message: 'Captain Hind,' said she, 'your life is beset with constant danger, and since from your birth I have wished you well, my poor skill has devised a perfect safeguard.' With this she gave him a small box containing what might have been a sundial or compass. 'Watch this star,' quoth she, 'and when you know not your road, follow its guidance. Thus you shall be preserved from every peril for the space of three years. Thereafter, if you still have faith in my devotion, seek me again, and I will renew the virtue of the charm.'

Hind took the box joyfully; but when he turned to murmur a word of gratitude, the witch struck his nag's flanks with a white wand, the horse leapt vehemently forward, and Hind saw his benefactress no more. Henceforth, however, a warning voice spoke to him as plainly as did the demon to Socrates; and had he but obeyed the beldame's admonition, he might have escaped a violent death. For he passed the last day of the third year at the siege of Youghal, where; deprived of happy guidance, he was seriously wounded, and whence he presently regained England to his own undoing.

So long as he kept to the road, his life was one long comedy. His wit and address were inexhaustible, and fortune never found him at a loss. He would avert suspicion with the tune of a psalm, as when, habited like a pious shepherd, he broke a traveller's head with his crook, and deprived him of his horse. An early adventure was to force a pot-valiant parson, who had drunk a cup too much at a wedding, into a rarely farcical situation. Hind, having robbed two gentlemen's servants of a round sum, went ambling along the road until he encountered a parson. 'Sir,' said he, 'I am closely pursued by robbers. You, I dare swear, will not stand by and see me plundered.' Before the parson could protest, he thrust a pistol into his hand, and bade him fire it at the first comer, while he rode off to raise the county. Meanwhile the rifled travellers came up with the parson, who, straightway, mistaking them for thieves, fired without effect, and then, riding forward, flung the pistol in the face of the nearest. Thus the parson of the parish was dragged before the magistrate, while Hind, before his dupe could furnish an explanation, had placed many a mile between himself and his adversary.

Though he could on occasion show a clean pair of heels, Hind was never lacking in valiance; and, another day, meeting a traveller with a hundred pounds in his pocket, he challenged him to fight there and then, staked his own horse against the money, and declared that he should win who drew first blood. 'If I am the conqueror,' said the magnanimous Captain, 'I will give you ten pounds for your journey. If you are favoured of fortune, you shall give me your servant's horse.' The terms were instantly accepted, and in two minutes Hind had run his adversary through the sword-arm. But finding that his victim was but a poor squire going to London to pay his composition, he not only returned his money, but sought him out a surgeon, and gave him the best dinner the countryside could afford.

Thus it was his pleasure to act as a providence, many a time robbing Peter to pay Paul, and stripping the niggard that he might indulge his fervent love of generosity. Of all usurers and bailiffs he had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence in jack-boots discharged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goods for his own security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, 'My friend!' he exclaimed, 'I lent you late a sum of twenty pounds. Repay it at once, or I take your miserable life.' The usurer was obliged to return the money, with another twenty for interest, and when he would take the law of the innkeeper, was shown the bond duly cancelled, and was flogged wellnigh to death for his pains.

So Hind rode the world up and down, redressing grievances like an Eastern monarch, and rejoicing in the abasement of the evildoer. Nor was the spirit of his adventure bounded by the ocean. More than once he crossed the seas; the Hague knew him, and Amsterdam, though these somnolent cities gave small occasion for the display of his talents. It was from Scilly that he crossed to the Isle of Man, where, being recommended to Lord Derby, he gained high favour, and received in exchange for his jests a comfortable stipend. Hitherto, said the Chronicles, thieving was unknown in the island. A man might walk whither he would, a bag of gold in one hand, a switch in the other, and fear no danger. But no sooner had Hind appeared at Douglas than honest citizens were pilfered at every turn. In dismay they sought the protection of the Governor, who instantly suspected Hind, and gallantly disclosed his suspicions to the Captain. 'My lord!' exclaimed Hind, a blush upon his cheek, 'I protest my innocence; but willingly will I suffer the heaviest penalty of your law if I am recognised for the thief.' The victims, confronted with their robber, knew him not, picturing to the Governor a monster with long hair and unkempt beard. Hind, acquitted with apologies, fetched from his lodging the disguise of periwig and beard. 'They laugh who win!' he murmured, and thus forced forgiveness and a chuckle even from his judges.

As became a gentleman-adventurer, Captain Hind was staunch in his loyalty to his murdered King. To strip the wealthy was always reputable, but to rob a Regicide was a masterpiece of well-doing.

A fervent zeal to lighten Cromwell's pocket had brought the illustrious Allen to the gallows. But Hind was not one whit abashed, and he would never forego the chance of an encounter with his country's enemies. His treatment of Hugh Peters in Enfield Chace is among his triumphs. At the first encounter the Presbyterian plucked up courage enough to oppose his adversary with texts. To Hind's command of 'Stand and deliver!' duly enforced with a loaded pistol, the ineffable Peters replied with ox-eye sanctimoniously upturned: 'Thou shalt not steal; let him that stole, steal no more,' adding thereto other variations of the eighth commandment. Hind immediately countered with exhortations against the awful sin of murder, and rebuked the blasphemy of the Regicides, who, to defend their own infamy, would wrest Scripture from its meaning. 'Did you not, O monster of impiety,' mimicked Hind in the preacher's own voice, 'pervert for your own advantage the words of the Psalmist, who said, "Bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron"? Moreover, was it not Solomon who wrote: "Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry"? And is not my soul hungry for gold and the Regicides' discomfiture?' Peters was still fumbling after texts when the final argument: 'Deliver thy money, or I will send thee out of the world!' frightened him into submission, and thirty broad pieces were Hind's reward.