CHAPTER XXI.

THE GUILLOTINE AND MADAME RACHEL.

ON one of my numerous visits to Paris a notorious poisoner—Le-Pommerais—was awaiting execution by the guillotine.

I am not of a cruel disposition, but I confess that certain sights afford me a morbid gratification, the more so as I know that one witness more or less can in no way affect the victim, who, in nine cases out of ten, is dazed, despite the bravado that is sometimes assumed.

I had seen Müller and the pirates hanged in London, and a man “garrotted” at Barcelona; I had seen two soldiers shot at Bregenz on the Lake Constance, and now for the first time in my life I was within measurable distance of the Place de la Grève, where the most hideous drama, accompanied by all the pomp that a dramatic nation can introduce, was to be enacted one morning. But what morning? There was the rub, for the French are nothing if not original, and whilst permitting the unhappy victim to drink and smoke and play cards till 2 a.m. ruthlessly rouse him a couple of hours later, and roughly proceed to prepare his toilette.

Inquire as I did, nobody could give me the day, and although on more than one occasion I had driven to the accursed spot and waylaid officials likely to know, their replies were invariably the same; nobody knew, nobody cared, it would be time enough when the fateful morning arrived, and then _voilà_; a rush of two powerful men on a defenceless, trussed fellow-creature; a shove with unnecessary violence on to a plank, a strap or two unnecessarily tight to secure the unresisting wretch; a jerk and a flash of burnished steel; a quivering trunk, and a head squirting blood yards high, and the handful of sawdust, and the roar of a delighted multitude as “Monsieur de Paris” leisurely proceeds to light a cigarette, and within five minutes the whole ghastly paraphernalia has disappeared within the gloomy parallelograms of La Roquette.

Terrible as all this sounds, is it not less terrible than the secret executions indulged in by our own merciful laws? There at least excitement must for the time hold the victim till the supreme moment arrives, whilst here the granite walls, the grim officials, the parson mumbling prayers, divest the function of everything but strict officialism, which to the culprit must indeed be the very bitterness of death.

When the name of Count La Grange was more familiar to English ears than it is in these forty years later days, it was my delightful privilege to know—if not the redoubtable Count himself—a fair and important member of the distinguished sportsman’s family circle. I had, indeed, seen “Waterloo avenged” at Epsom in the June of 1864, when Gladiateur left the field miles behind; but it was only in the following autumn that I made the personal acquaintance of the goddess who professed a kind of allegiance to the sporting Frenchman, and re-avenged, as it were, the vengeance that had been meted out to my country the previous summer.

I was in Paris under the wing of Bob Hope-Johnstone, the terrible major, whose dislike was a thing to be avoided, and whose blow, as a certain bric-à-brac pair of Israelite brothers once discovered to their cost, was like the kick of a horse. We had dipped pretty freely into the delights of that most delightful of cities, when, sipping our coffee one evening on the terrace of the Café de la Paix, we were transfixed—at least, I was—by what appeared a heavenly being stepping out of a brougham. In those benighted days a brisk trade was done in the “Cabinets particulier” that extended over the upper floors of the historical café, and night after night the best men and the loveliest women of the Third Empire resorted thither by battalions and indulged in every delight that the best of cookery and the best of wines never failed to stimulate.

An obliging _maître d’hôtel_ had informed me who the lady was, and possessing a reserve of assurance, since happily simmered down into a reserved and retiring disposition, I sent up my name without further ado and craved permission to pay my homage. It would be absurd and nauseous to repeat the beautiful phrases one poured into the ear of a being who, if alive now—which is doubtful—has probably not a tooth in her head; suffice to say she was a superb écarté player, and initiated me into the rudiments of the game. It seemed marvellous to me that such a goddess should strive so laboriously to overcome in me the violation of every canon of the game, but in those long-ago days I was fair of hair and of a ruddy countenance, and the coincidence may not have been so extraordinary after all. Often of an afternoon I visited her hotel in the Bois de Boulogne, and it was only when La Grange was known to be in Paris that my going in and coming out was in the least circumscribed.

Sitting at a table, with his blubber lips lingering over a glass of absinthe, was our old acquaintance, “Jellybelly,” who, noticing the late Duke of Hamilton and Claud de Crespigny within hail, bellowed out, “Will your Grace tell me the French for crab, I feel itching for one at dinner?” and on being told a species—not of the sea—shouted in his purest Franco-Houndsditch, “_Garsong_, _apporty moir un morphion rôti_.”

As the police have lately been somewhat in evidence over the commission as to whether they are as corrupt as some people consider them, an instance of over-zeal that occurred long ago will, I trust, be laid to heart in future criticisms.

Lord Chief Justice Cockburn and his boon companion, Serjeant Ballantine, once witnessed an act of unnecessary brutality towards a female in the Haymarket.

“Why this unnecessary violence, my man?” inquired the amiable Sir Alexander.

“Mind your own business, or I’ll show you,” was the reply of the zealous constable, and within a trice the female was forgotten and her two champions found themselves in Vine Street.

“Name,” inquired a priggish inspector of the Lord Chief Justice, and on being informed, he added: “No doubt—we’ve heard this kind of thing before.”

“Yours,” he continued, addressing the great serjeant. “Quite so,” he added, on being told, and nothing but the entry of an official who recognised them prevented the two great legal luminaries from spending a night in the cells.

As every one is aware, neither of these distinguished men were saints, but they respected the ordinary laws of humanity, and did not admit that every poor wretch who had stooped to folly was the legitimate target for kicks and cuffs and lying testimony.

Although a leap into the seventies is necessary, the sensation that the so-called “Great Turf Fraud” caused must excuse a brief reference to it. It was in 1877 that an old lady with ample means conceived the brilliant idea of adding to her income by speculating on the Turf. Her choice of colleagues, however, was not a happy one, and before long she was led blindly by a genius known to posterity as Benson. Amongst his staff was a brilliant phalanx, the two brothers Carr, Murray, Bates, and the inevitable solicitor, one Froggatt.

A house in Northumberland Street, since pulled down, was where these worthies matured their plans, and by the irony of fate, in the very next house lived Superintendent Thompson, of Bow Street, who, astute as he was reputed to be, was oblivious of the cauldron that was simmering for months under his very nose.

It was in the suitable month of April—possibly the first—that the old lady (Madame Goncourt) opened the ball by paying out in driblets £13,000. When the sum rose to £40,000 she became sceptical, and took her first sensible step and consulted a lawyer.

At this point the police came on the scene, and again the genius of Benson appears, for he, grasping the situation, bought up certain Scotland Yard inspectors who, for a consideration—and a large one—undertook to warn the chief culprits how and when danger was to be avoided.

Consultations in Northumberland Street were now deemed risky, so the venue was changed to the “Rainbow Tavern” (now known as the “Argyll”), a pot-house abutting on Oxford Street, and there the original conspirators and their solicitor, augmented by Inspectors Druscovitch, Meiklejohn, and Palmer, arranged for telegrams and other details to defeat the ends of justice.

The commonplace sequel will suggest itself to most people. Benson, the two Carrs, Bates, and Froggatt were sent to penal servitude for fifteen and ten years respectively. Later on Benson “peached” on his police allies, who in November were tried, Druscovitch and Meiklejohn receiving two years each, and Palmer being acquitted.

Madame Goncourt, it may be added, was still without her profits.

After his fifteen years, Benson was currently supposed to have burst out as the director of numerous shops in the metropolis, where electric appliances for the instant cure of gout and inhalers warranted to contain “compressed Italian air” and to make everybody a Patti or a Mario were to be had for a guinea; whilst a further guinea entitled the purchaser to a consultation with the specialist.

This, however, did not last long, and Benson ended his career shortly after by throwing himself over the balustrade of an American gaol.

Surely never was a commonplace affair dignified with such a high-sounding title! ’Twas the novelty that did it.

Where one voracious old woman existed in the seventies, the twentieth century could produce a dozen, and where two policemen were caught accepting blackmail, a battalion exists to-day, only their tactics have marched with the times, and instead of receiving their levies in pot-houses, they secrete themselves in cupboards and receive “hush money” from alien brothel-keepers. At the same time, they affect the sorry appearance associated with badly cut frock-coats and brimless tall hats. The boots, however, beat them.

Very few of the _dramatis personæ_ appear to be left.

Druscovitch for some years was employed as a Strand hotel detective. Meiklejohn may occasionally be seen, unkempt and down-at-heel, in the vicinity of mediocre saloon bars (glasses only), and Madame Goncourt has long since explained to the Recording Angel that though she was the first, she certainly won’t be the last, who has missed the certainties that go begging on the Turf.

But the sixties were celebrated for a much more amusing and widespread example of human credulity and vanity than the humdrum so-called “Turf frauds,” with their unsavoury, commonplace ingredients of a voracious old woman, a bevy of sharpers, and a file of flat-footed police-inspectors.

It was in 1868 that London heard that a divine being was amongst them, coming no one knew whence, and whose age no one could guess, gifted with the power of arresting Time, restoring youth and beauty, and ready—for a consideration—to impart these blessings to all who sought her aid.

It was in the narrowest part of Bond Street that the goddess pitched her tent, and to say that the traffic was impeded would convey but a poor idea of the congestion that retarded locomotion in that worst-built of thoroughfares. Old men desirous of enamelling their bald old pates, ponderous females with scratch wigs and asthma, and girls, pretty and ugly, with defects capable of improvement, hustled and tussled to pay the fee of the wonderful enchantress who guaranteed to restore youth to old age and make one and all “beautiful for ever.”

Madame Rachel was a bony and forbidding looking female, with the voice of a Deal boatman and the physique of a grenadier. The robes she affected when receiving her clients, and the crystals and gimcracks that clattered at her girdle, might well inspire awe, as, emerging from behind massive curtains, she approached her victim with some phrase suggestive of “knowing all about it,” which, indeed, was part of the system when time and opportunity permitted, or the status of the client justified it.

Rachel rarely smiled; when she laughed—which was rarer still—it was the laugh of a rhinoceros. Assisting her was a beautiful girl, of the _beauté du diable_ type, with the suspicion of a cast in one of her heavy-lashed eyes, which made her more bewitching than ever.

“How old do you think my daughter?” once inquired the arch-impostor of a man from whom I had it direct. He having replied “Seventeen,” she turned to the siren with, “Tell this gentleman, my child, what you saw during the French Revolution, and how I took you to see the execution of Marie Antoinette.”

And then “Alma,” coached to perfection, turned her bewitching eyes as if peering into eternity, and began a string of twaddle that ought not to have deceived a Bluecoat boy.

Everybody consulted Madame Rachel. If a youth got a black eye at young Reed’s sparring rooms (at the “Rising Sun” in Whitehall) it was in Bond Street he was made presentable for any fashionable function in the evening, and in every conceivable walk of life one met evidence of the universal sway of enamel; whilst nightly at the Opera, Rachel and her daughter occupied a box on the grand tier and surveyed the battalions of old men and old women, youths and maidens, who had passed through their hands.

But despite Alma’s charms, she had a narrow squeak of being implicated with her mother in the prosecution that followed later on—instead, however, she was taken in hand by Lady Cardigan, and made a success in Grand Opera. But her troubles were not yet over, and aspirants to her heart and hand (enamelled and otherwise) were in considerable evidence nightly at the Opera house in Paris.

It was at the hands of one of these she met her fate. Carried away by jealousy or scorn, he shot her from the stalls, though, happily, not fatally. After this she disappeared, but not before displaying a magnanimity that was refreshing in the reputed daughter of the flint-hearted Rachel, for she refused to prosecute her assailant, who escaped with a nominal imprisonment.

A controversy afterwards ensued in the daily Press as to the becoming height of female dress; some advocated up to the shoulder, others below, some a tape, some nothing; but the important question has not yet been set at rest, and never will be, despite County Council edicts in the name of propriety, or the hypocrisy and flunkeydom that stalk over the land.

Alma in all her glory had her own ideas, and appeared invariably and literally in “semi-nude.”

Years after she was recognised by a former adorer at the Concordia Music Hall in Constantinople, but all the _beauté du diable_ had vanished; the cast still remained, but failed to ravish—Nature had worked through the enamel with which her skin had been saturated, and Alma pure and simple remained—a living example of how “Time turns the old days to derision.”

Madame Rachel’s experiences were of a more prosy description, and, prosecuted a few years later by a Mrs. Pearce—said to have been a daughter of Mario’s—whose jewels she had annexed in addition to a considerable sum, she was relegated to five years’ penal servitude.

But the most amusing incident has yet to be told, although it seems incredible that even so foolish a woman should court publicity by joining in the prosecution. The report of the trial in any old paper of the period will convince the most sceptical of the absence of exaggeration in this ungarnished recital.

Mrs. Borrodale was a frivolous old lady of some forty years, whose wealth, vanity, and frequent visits to Bond Street marked her out as a desirable client to the astute Rachel.

“You’ve won the heart of a great lord,” was her greeting one day, “who desires to see you in your natural beauty.”

Mrs. Borrodale, having first blushed through her enamel, was not long in consenting, and having stipulated for a subdued light, and that the “view” should be through a curtain, proceeded to be enamelled from head to foot. On a given day she posed in all the beauty of her birthday suit, and Lord Ranelagh, who was the reputed admirer, peeped through a slit in the tapestry—and, let us hope, then fled.

His lordship, it may be added, eventually died a bachelor. The very title is extinct, and the enamelled old Venus never assumed a coronet. After this, the old sinner was known as “Peeping Tom,” and the foal by a thoroughbred stallion of repute, Peeping Tom (which, however, never attained any position on the Turf), was christened Ranelagh.

Incredible as it may appear, this silly old woman capped her indiscretion by joining in the prosecution instituted by the stockbroker’s wife, and so published to a gaping world what might have better been left to the imagination.

Rachel has, it is currently reported, two sons at the present moment practising as solicitors under high-sounding names, who not long ago wriggled out of a nasty case by the skin of their teeth, whilst their less acute Christian colleagues suffered the penalty attendant on blackmailing.

But the Rachel establishment was by no means the only type that flourished in the long-ago sixties by pandering to human frailty, and the premises occupied by Madame Osch, situated at the corner of Piccadilly and St. James’s Street—and now, like Babylon, with not one stone standing upon another—could have told some curious tales of wards in Chancery and Hebrew jewellers, and of Tommy and John, and of how Tommy was arrested as he started for Monte Carlo, and how John, smelling a rat, evaded ill effects; but the recitation would only bore a twentieth-century reader, for human nature then is the same nature as now, and what flourished then in one shape still flourishes in another, and the only reflection worthy of consideration is that, if these things were done in the green tree, what is being done in the dry?