A Book of Scoundrels

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So fell the scourge of Paris into the grip of justice. But once under
lock and key, he displayed all the qualities which made him supreme. His
gaiety broke forth into a light-hearted contempt of his gaolers, and
the Lieutenant Criminel, who would interrogate him, was covered with
ridicule. Not for an instant did he bow to fate: all shackled as he was,
his legs engarlanded in heavy chains--which he called his garters--he
tempered his merriment with the meditation of escape. From the first he
denied all knowledge of Cartouche, insisting that his name was Charles
Bourguignon, and demanding burgundy, that he might drink to his country
and thus prove him a true son of the soil. Not even the presence of his
mother and brother abashed him. He laughed them away as impostors, hired
by a false justice to accuse and to betray the innocent. No word of
confession crossed his lips, and he would still entertain the officers
of the law with joke and epigram.

Thus he won over a handful of the Guard, and, begging for solitude, he
straightway set about escape with a courage and an address which Jack
Sheppard might have envied. His delicate ear discovered that a cellar
lay beneath his cell; and with the old nail which lies on the floor of
every prison he made his way downwards into a boxmaker's shop. But a
barking dog spoiled the enterprise: the boxmaker and his daughter
were immediately abroad, and once more Cartouche was lodged in prison,
weighted with still heavier garters.

Then came a period of splendid notoriety: he held his court, he gave an
easy rein to his wit, he received duchesses and princes with an air of
amiable patronage. Few there were of his visitants who left him without
a present of gold, and thus the universal robber was further rewarded by
his victims. His portrait hung in every house, and his thin, hard face,
his dry, small features were at last familiar to the whole of France. M.
Grandval made him the hero of an epic--'Le Vice Puni.' Even the theatre
was dominated by his presence; and while Arlequin-Cartouche was greeted
with thunders of applause at the Italiens, the more serious Francais set
Cartouche upon the stage in three acts, and lavished upon its theme the
resources of a then intelligent art. M. Le Grand, author of the piece,
deigned to call upon the king of thieves, spoke some words of argot with
him, and by way of conscience money gave him a hundred crowns.

Cartouche set little store by such patronage. He pocketed the crowns,
and then put an end to the comedy by threatening that if it were played
again the companions of Cartouche would punish all such miscreants as
dared to make him a laughing stock. For Cartouche would endure ridicule
at no man's hand. At the very instant of his arrest, all bare-footed as
he was, he kicked a constable who presumed to smile at his discomfiture.
His last days were spent in resolute abandonment. True, he once
attempted to beat out his brains with the fetters that bound him;
true, also, he took a poison that had been secretly conveyed within the
prison. But both attempts failed, and, more scrupulously watched, he had
no other course than jollity. Lawyers and priests he visited with a
like and bitter scorn, and when, on November 27, 1721, he was led to the
scaffold, not a word of confession or contrition had been dragged from
him.

To the last moment he cherished the hope of rescue, and eagerly he
scanned the crowd for the faces of his comrades. But the gang, trusting
to its leader's nobility, had broken its oath. With contemptuous dignity
Cartouche determined upon revenge: proudly he turned to the priest,
begging a respite and the opportunity of speech. Forgotten by his
friends, he resolved to spare no single soul: he betrayed even his
mistresses to justice.

Of his gang, forty were in the service of Mlle. de Montpensier, who
was already in Spain; while two obeyed the Duchesse de Ventadour as
valets-de-pied. 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. Thackeray, with no better guide than a chap-book, was
minded to belittle him, now habiting him like a scullion, now sending
him forth on some petty errand of cly-faking. But for all Thackeray's
contempt his fame is still undimmed, and he has left the reputation of
one who, as thief unrivalled, had scarce his equal as wit and dandy
even in the days when Louis the Magnificent was still a memory and an
example.




III--A PARALLEL

(SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE)


IF the seventeenth century was the golden age of the hightobyman, it was
at the advent of the eighteenth that the burglar and street-robber plied
their trade with the most distinguished success, and it was the good
fortune of both Cartouche and Sheppard to be born in the nick of time.
Rivals in talent, they were also near contemporaries, and the Scourge of
Paris may well have been famous in the purlieus of Clare Market before
Jack the Slip-String paid the last penalty of his crimes. As each of
these great men harboured a similar ambition, so their careers are
closely parallel. Born in a humble rank of life, Jack, like Cartouche,
was the architect of his own fortune; Jack, like Cartouche, lived to be
flattered by noble dames and to claim the solicitude of his Sovereign;
and each owed his pre-eminence rather to natural genius than to a
sympathetic training.

But, for all the Briton's artistry, the Frenchman was in all points save
one the superior. Sheppard's brain carried him not beyond the wants of
to-day and the extortions of Poll Maggot.

Who knows but he might have been a respectable citizen, with never a
chance for the display of his peculiar talent, had not hunger and his
mistress's greed driven him upon the pad? History records no brilliant
robbery of his own planning, and so circumscribed was his imagination
that he must needs pick out his own friends and benefactors for
depredation. His paltry sense of discipline permitted him to be betrayed
even by his brother and pupil, and there was no cracksman of his time
over whose head he held the rod of terror. Even his hatred of Jonathan
Wild was the result not of policy but of prejudice. Cartouche, on the
other hand, was always perfect when at work. The master of himself, he
was also the master of his fellows. There was no detail of civil war
that he had not made his own, and he still remains, after nearly two
centuries, the greatest captain the world has seen. Never did he permit
an enterprise to fail by accident; never was he impelled by hunger or
improvidence to fight a battle unprepared. His means were always neatly
fitted to their end, as is proved by the truth that, throughout his
career, he was arrested but once, and then not by his own inadvertence
but by the treachery of others.

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 L1000, 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
L600, 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 L100 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.