“I’faith, I believe you’re a pair,” said Mr. Wood.
“Pray, sir, keep your tongue to yourself. Your opinion isn’t asked anyhow–no, nor your company wanted neither,” cried Mrs. Catherine, with proper spirit.
At which remark Mr. Wood only whistled.
“I have asked this here gentleman to pass this evening along with me. We’ve been drinking together, ma’am.”
“That we have”, said Mr. Wood, looking at Mrs. Cat with the most perfect good-humour.
“I say, ma’am, that we’ve been a-drinking together; and when we’ve been a-drinking together, I say that a man is my friend. Doctor Wood is my friend, madam–the Reverend Doctor Wood. We’ve passed the evening in company, talking about politics, madam–politics and riddle-iddle-igion. We’ve not been flaunting in tea-gardens, and ogling the men.”
“It’s a lie!” shrieked Mrs. Hayes. “I went with Tom–you know I did: the boy wouldn’t let me rest till I promised to go.”
“Hang him, I hate him,” said Mr. Hayes: “he’s always in my way.”
“He’s the only friend I have in the world, and the only being I care a pin for,” said Catherine.
“He’s an impudent idle good-for-nothing scoundrel, and I hope to see him hanged!” shouted Mr. Hayes. “And pray, madam, whose carriage was that as you came home in? I warrant you paid something for the ride–ha, ha!”
“Another lie!” screamed Cat, and clutched hold of a supper-knife. “Say it again, John Hayes, and, by —— I’ll do for you.”
“Do for me? Hang me,” said Mr. Hayes, flourishing a stick, and perfectly pot-valiant, “do you think I care for a bastard and a–?”
He did not finish the sentence, for the woman ran at him like a savage, knife in hand. He bounded back, flinging his arms about wildly, and struck her with his staff sharply across the forehead. The woman went down instantly. A lucky blow was it for Hayes and her: it saved him from death, perhaps, and her from murder.
All this scene–a very important one of our drama–might have been described at much greater length; but, in truth, the author has a natural horror of dwelling too long upon such hideous spectacles: nor would the reader be much edified by a full and accurate knowledge of what took place. The quarrel, however, though not more violent than many that had previously taken place between Hayes and his wife, was about to cause vast changes in the condition of this unhappy pair.
Hayes was at the first moment of his victory very much alarmed; he feared that he had killed the woman; and Wood started up rather anxiously too, with the same fancy. But she soon began to recover. Water was brought; her head was raised and bound up; and in a short time Mrs. Catherine gave vent to a copious fit of tears, which relieved her somewhat. These did not affect Hayes much–they rather pleased him, for he saw he had got the better; and although Cat fiercely turned upon him when he made some small attempt towards reconciliation, he did not heed her anger, but smiled and winked in a self-satisfied way at Wood. The coward was quite proud of his victory; and finding Catherine asleep, or apparently so, when he followed her to bed, speedily gave himself up to slumber too, and had some pleasant dreams to his portion.
Mr. Wood also went sniggering and happy upstairs to his chamber. The quarrel had been a real treat to him; it excited the old man- -tickled him into good-humour; and he promised himself a rare continuation of the fun when Tom should be made acquainted with the circumstances of the dispute. As for his Excellency the Count, the ride from Marylebone Gardens, and a tender squeeze of the hand, which Catherine permitted to him on parting, had so inflamed the passions of the nobleman, that, after sleeping for nine hours, and taking his chocolate as usual the next morning, he actually delayed to read the newspaper, and kept waiting a toy-shop lady from Cornhill (with the sweetest bargain of Mechlin lace), in order to discourse to his chaplain on the charms of Mrs. Hayes.
She, poor thing, never closed her lids, except when she would have had Mr. Hayes imagine that she slumbered; but lay beside him, tossing and tumbling, with hot eyes wide open and heart thumping, and pulse of a hundred and ten, and heard the heavy hours tolling; and at last the day came peering, haggard, through the window-curtains, and found her still wakeful and wretched.
Mrs. Hayes had never been, as we have seen, especially fond of her lord; but now, as the day made visible to her the sleeping figure and countenance of that gentleman, she looked at him with a contempt and loathing such as she had never felt even in all the years of her wedded life. Mr. Hayes was snoring profoundly: by his bedside, on his ledger, stood a large greasy tin candlestick, containing a lank tallow-candle, turned down in the shaft; and in the lower part, his keys, purse, and tobacco-pipe; his feet were huddled up in his greasy threadbare clothes; his head and half his sallow face muffled up in a red woollen nightcap; his beard was of several days’ growth; his mouth was wide open, and he was snoring profoundly: on a more despicable little creature the sun never shone. And to this sordid wretch was Catherine united for ever. What a pretty rascal history might be read in yonder greasy day-book, which never left the miser!–he never read in any other. Of what a treasure were yonder keys and purse the keepers! not a shilling they guarded but was picked from the pocket of necessity, plundered from needy wantonness, or pitilessly squeezed from starvation. “A fool, a miser, and a coward! Why was I bound to this wretch?” thought Catherine: “I, who am high-spirited and beautiful (did not HE tell me so?); I who, born a beggar, have raised myself to competence, and might have mounted–who knows whither?–if cursed Fortune had not baulked me!”
As Mrs. Cat did not utter these sentiments, but only thought them, we have a right to clothe her thoughts in the genteelest possible language; and, to the best of our power, have done so. If the reader examines Mrs. Hayes’s train of reasoning, he will not, we should think, fail to perceive how ingeniously she managed to fix all the wrong upon her husband, and yet to twist out some consolatory arguments for her own vanity. This perverse argumentation we have all of us, no doubt, employed in our time. How often have we,–we poets, politicians, philosophers, family-men,–found charming excuses for our own rascalities in the monstrous wickedness of the world about us; how loudly have we abused the times and our neighbours! All this devil’s logic did Mrs. Catherine, lying wakeful in her bed on the night of the Marylebone fete, exert in gloomy triumph.
It must, however, be confessed, that nothing could be more just than Mrs. Hayes’s sense of her husband’s scoundrelism and meanness; for if we have not proved these in the course of this history, we have proved nothing. Mrs. Cat had a shrewd observing mind; and if she wanted for proofs against Hayes, she had but to look before and about her to find them. This amiable pair were lying in a large walnut-bed, with faded silk furniture, which had been taken from under a respectable old invalid widow, who had become security for a prodigal son; the room was hung round with an antique tapestry (representing Rebecca at the Well, Bathsheba Bathing, Judith and Holofernes, and other subjects from Holy Writ), which had been many score times sold for fifty pounds, and bought back by Mr. Hayes for two, in those accommodating bargains which he made with young gentlemen, who received fifty pounds of money and fifty of tapestry in consideration of their hundred-pound bills. Against this tapestry, and just cutting off Holofernes’s head, stood an enormous ominous black clock, the spoil of some other usurious transaction. Some chairs, and a dismal old black cabinet, completed the furniture of this apartment: it wanted but a ghost to render its gloom complete.
Mrs. Hayes sat up in the bed sternly regarding her husband. There is, be sure, a strong magnetic influence in wakeful eyes so examining a sleeping person (do not you, as a boy, remember waking of bright summer mornings and finding your mother looking over you? had not the gaze of her tender eyes stolen into your senses long before you woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and love, and fresh springing joy?) Some such influence had Catherine’s looks upon her husband: for, as he slept under them, the man began to writhe about uneasily, and to burrow his head in the pillow, and to utter quick, strange moans and cries, such as have often jarred one’s ear while watching at the bed of the feverish sleeper. It was just upon six, and presently the clock began to utter those dismal grinding sounds, which issue from clocks at such periods, and which sound like the death-rattle of the departing hour. Then the bell struck the knell of it; and with this Mr. Hayes awoke, and looked up, and saw Catherine gazing at him.
Their eyes met for an instant, and Catherine turned away, burning red, and looking as if she had been caught in the commission of a crime.
A kind of blank terror seized upon old Hayes’s soul: a horrible icy fear, and presentiment of coming evil; and yet the woman had but looked at him. He thought rapidly over the occurrences of the last night, the quarrel, and the end of it. He had often struck her before when angry, and heaped all kinds of bitter words upon her; but, in the morning, she bore no malice, and the previous quarrel was forgotten, or, at least, passed over. Why should the last night’s dispute not have the same end? Hayes calculated all this, and tried to smile.
“I hope we’re friends, Cat?” said he. “You know I was in liquor last night, and sadly put out by the loss of that fifty pound. They’ll ruin me, dear–I know they will.”
Mrs. Hayes did not answer.
“I should like to see the country again, dear,” said he, in his most wheedling way. “I’ve a mind, do you know, to call in all our money? It’s you who’ve made every farthing of it, that’s sure; and it’s a matter of two thousand pound by this time. Suppose we go into Warwickshire, Cat, and buy a farm, and live genteel. Shouldn’t you like to live a lady in your own county again? How they’d stare at Birmingham! hey, Cat?”
And with this Mr. Hayes made a motion as if he would seize his wife’s hand, but she flung his back again.
“Coward!” said she, “you want liquor to give you courage, and then you’ve only heart enough to strike women.”
“It was only in self-defence, my dear,” said Hayes, whose courage had all gone. “You tried, you know, to–to–“
“To STAB you, and I wish I had!” said Mrs. Hayes, setting her teeth, and glaring at him like a demon; and so saying she sprung out of bed. There was a great stain of blood on her pillow. “Look at it,” said she. “That blood’s of your shedding!” and at this Hayes fairly began to weep, so utterly downcast and frightened was the miserable man. The wretch’s tears only inspired his wife with a still greater rage and loathing; she cared not so much for the blow, but she hated the man: the man to whom she was tied for ever–for ever! The bar between her and wealth, happiness, love, rank perhaps. “If I were free,” thought Mrs. Hayes (the thought had been sitting at her pillow all night, and whispering ceaselessly into her ear)–,”If I were free, Max would marry me; I know he would:–he said so yesterday!”
* * *
As if by a kind of intuition, old Wood seemed to read all this woman’s thoughts; for he said that day with a sneer, that he would wager she was thinking how much better it would be to be a Count’s lady than a poor miser’s wife. “And faith,” said he, “a Count and a chariot-and-six is better than an old skinflint with a cudgel.” And then he asked her if her head was better, and supposed that she was used to beating; and cut sundry other jokes, which made the poor wretch’s wounds of mind and body feel a thousand times sorer.
Tom, too, was made acquainted with the dispute, and swore his accustomed vengeance against his stepfather. Such feelings, Wood, with a dexterous malice, would never let rest; it was his joy, at first quite a disinterested one, to goad Catherine and to frighten Hayes: though, in truth, that unfortunate creature had no occasion for incitements from without to keep up the dreadful state of terror and depression into which he had fallen.
For, from the morning after the quarrel, the horrible words and looks of Catherine never left Hayes’s memory; but a cold fear followed him–a dreadful prescience. He strove to overcome this fate as a coward would–to kneel to it for compassion–to coax and wheedle it into forgiveness. He was slavishly gentle to Catherine, and bore her fierce taunts with mean resignation. He trembled before young Billings, who was now established in the house (his mother said, to protect her against the violence of her husband), and suffered his brutal language and conduct without venturing to resist.
The young man and his mother lorded over the house: Hayes hardly dared to speak in their presence; seldom sat with the family except at meals; but slipped away to his chamber (he slept apart now from his wife) or passed the evening at the public-house, where he was constrained to drink–to spend some of his beloved sixpences for drink!
And, of course, the neighbours began to say, “John Hayes neglects his wife.” “He tyrannises over her, and beats her.” “Always at the public-house, leaving an honest woman alone at home!”
The unfortunate wretch did NOT hate his wife. He was used to her–fond of her as much as he could be fond–sighed to be friends with her again–repeatedly would creep, whimpering, to Wood’s room, when the latter was alone, and begged him to bring about a reconciliation. They WERE reconciled, as much as ever they could be. The woman looked at him, thought what she might be but for him, and scorned and loathed him with a feeling that almost amounted to insanity. What nights she lay awake, weeping, and cursing herself and him! His humility and beseeching looks only made him more despicable and hateful to her.
If Hayes did not hate the mother, however, he hated the boy–hated and feared him dreadfully. He would have poisoned him if he had had the courage; but he dared not: he dared not even look at him as he sat there, the master of the house, in insolent triumph. O God! how the lad’s brutal laughter rung in Hayes’s ears; and how the stare of his fierce bold black eyes pursued him! Of a truth, if Mr. Wood loved mischief, as he did, honestly and purely for mischief’s sake, he had enough here. There was mean malice, and fierce scorn, and black revenge, and sinful desire, boiling up in the hearts of these wretched people, enough to content Mr. Wood’s great master himself.
Hayes’s business, as we have said, was nominally that of a carpenter; but since, for the last few years, he had added to it that of a lender of money, the carpenter’s trade had been neglected altogether for one so much more profitable. Mrs. Hayes had exerted herself, with much benefit to her husband, in his usurious business. She was a resolute, clear-sighted, keen woman, that did not love money, but loved to be rich and push her way in the world. She would have nothing to do with the trade now, however, and told her husband to manage it himself. She felt that she was separated from him for ever, and could no more be brought to consider her interests as connected with his own.
The man was well fitted for the creeping and niggling of his dastardly trade; and gathered his moneys, and busied himself with his lawyer, and acted as his own bookkeeper and clerk, not without satisfaction. His wife’s speculations, when they worked in concert, used often to frighten him. He never sent out his capital without a pang, and only because he dared not question her superior judgment and will. He began now to lend no more: he could not let the money out of his sight. His sole pleasure was to creep up into his room, and count and recount it. When Billings came into the house, Hayes had taken a room next to that of Wood. It was a protection to him; for Wood would often rebuke the lad for using Hayes ill: and both Catherine and Tom treated the old man with deference.
At last–it was after he had collected a good deal of his money– Hayes began to reason with himself, “Why should I stay?–stay to be insulted by that boy, or murdered by him? He is ready for any crime.” He determined to fly. He would send Catherine money every year. No–she had the furniture; let her let lodgings–that would support her. He would go, and live away, abroad in some cheap place–away from that boy and his horrible threats. The idea of freedom was agreeable to the poor wretch; and he began to wind up his affairs as quickly as he could.
Hayes would now allow no one to make his bed or enter his room; and Wood could hear him through the panels fidgeting perpetually to and fro, opening and shutting of chests, and clinking of coin. At the least sound he would start up, and would go to Billings’s door and listen. Wood used to hear him creeping through the passages, and returning stealthily to his own chamber.
One day the woman and her son had been angrily taunting him in the presence of a neighbour. The neighbour retired soon; and Hayes, who had gone with him to the door, heard, on returning, the voice of Wood in the parlour. The old man laughed in his usual saturnine way, and said, “Have a care, Mrs. Cat; for if Hayes were to die suddenly, by the laws, the neighbours would accuse thee of his death.”
Hayes started as if he had been shot. “He too is in the plot,” thought he. “They are all leagued against me: they WILL kill me: they are only biding their time.” Fear seized him, and he thought of flying that instant and leaving all; and he stole into his room and gathered his money together. But only a half of it was there: in a few weeks all would have come in. He had not the heart to go. But that night Wood heard Hayes pause at HIS door, before he went to listen at Mrs. Catherine’s. “What is the man thinking of?” said Wood. “He is gathering his money together. Has he a hoard yonder unknown to us all?”
Wood thought he would watch him. There was a closet between the two rooms: Wood bored a hole in the panel, and peeped through. Hayes had a brace of pistols, and four or five little bags before him on the table. One of these he opened, and placed, one by one, five-and-twenty guineas into it. Such a sum had been due that day–Catherine spoke of it only in the morning; for the debtor’s name had by chance been mentioned in the conversation. Hayes commonly kept but a few guineas in the house. For what was he amassing all these? The next day, Wood asked for change for a twenty-pound bill. Hayes said he had but three guineas. And, when asked by Catherine where the money was that was paid the day before, said that it was at the banker’s. “The man is going to fly,” said Wood; “that is sure: if he does, I know him–he will leave his wife without a shilling.”
He watched him for several days regularly: two or three more bags were added to the former number. “They are pretty things, guineas,” thought Wood, “and tell no tales, like bank-bills.” And he thought over the days when he and Macshane used to ride abroad in search of them.
I don’t know what thoughts entered into Mr. Wood’s brain; but the next day, after seeing young Billings, to whom he actually made a present of a guinea, that young man, in conversing with his mother, said, “Do you know, mother, that if you were free, and married the Count, I should be a lord? It’s the German law, Mr. Wood says; and you know he was in them countries with Marlborough.”
“Ay, that he would,” said Mr. Wood, “in Germany: but Germany isn’t England; and it’s no use talking of such things.”
“Hush, child!” said Mrs. Hayes, quite eagerly: “how can _I_ marry the Count? Besides, a’n’t I married, and isn’t he too great a lord for me?”
“Too great a lord?–not a whit, mother. If it wasn’t for Hayes, I might be a lord now. He gave me five guineas only last week; but curse the skinflint who never will part with a shilling.”
“It’s not so bad as his striking your mother, Tom. I had my stick up, and was ready to fell him t’other night,” added Mr. Wood. And herewith he smiled, and looked steadily in Mrs. Catherine’s face. She dared not look again; but she felt that the old man knew a secret that she had been trying to hide from herself. Fool! he knew it; and Hayes knew it dimly: and never, never, since that day of the gala, had it left her, sleeping or waking. When Hayes, in his fear, had proposed to sleep away from her, she started with joy: she had been afraid that she might talk in her sleep, and so let slip her horrible confession.
Old Wood knew all her history since the period of the Marylebone fete. He had wormed it out of her, day by day; he had counselled her how to act; warned her not to yield; to procure, at least, a certain provision for her son, and a handsome settlement for herself, if she determined on quitting her husband. The old man looked on the business in a proper philosophical light, told her bluntly that he saw she was bent upon going off with the Count, and bade her take precautions: else she might be left as she had been before.
Catherine denied all these charges; but she saw the Count daily, notwithstanding, and took all the measures which Wood had recommended to her. They were very prudent ones. Galgenstein grew hourly more in love: never had he felt such a flame; not in the best days of his youth; not for the fairest princess, countess, or actress, from Vienna to Paris.
At length–it was the night after he had seen Hayes counting his money-bags–old Wood spoke to Mrs. Hayes very seriously. “That husband of yours, Cat,” said he, “meditates some treason; ay, and fancies we are about such. He listens nightly at your door and at mine: he is going to leave you, be sure on’t; and if he leaves you, he leaves you to starve.”
“I can be rich elsewhere,” said Mrs. Cat.
“What, with Max?”
“Ay, with Max: and why not?” said Mrs. Hayes.
“Why not, fool! Do you recollect Birmingham? Do you think that Galgenstein, who is so tender now because he HASN’T won you, will be faithful because he HAS? Psha, woman, men are not made so! Don’t go to him until you are sure: if you were a widow now, he would marry you; but never leave yourself at his mercy: if you were to leave your husband to go to him, he would desert you in a fortnight!”
She might have been a Countess! she knew she might, but for this cursed barrier between her and her fortune. Wood knew what she was thinking of, and smiled grimly.
“Besides,” he continued, “remember Tom. As sure as you leave Hayes without some security from Max, the boy’s ruined: he who might be a lord, if his mother had but–Psha! never mind: that boy will go on the road, as sure as my name’s Wood. He’s a Turpin cock in his eye, my dear,–a regular Tyburn look. He knows too many of that sort already; and is too fond of a bottle and a girl to resist and be honest when it comes to the pinch.”
“It’s all true,” said Mrs. Hayes. “Tom’s a high mettlesome fellow, and would no more mind a ride on Hounslow Heath than he does a walk now in the Mall.”
“Do you want him hanged, my dear?” said Wood.
“Ah, Doctor!”
“It IS a pity, and that’s sure,” concluded Mr. Wood, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, and closing this interesting conversation. “It is a pity that that old skinflint should be in the way of both your fortunes; and he about to fling you over, too!”
Mrs. Catherine retired musing, as Mr. Billings had previously done; a sweet smile of contentment lighted up the venerable features of Doctor Wood, and he walked abroad into the streets as happy a fellow as any in London.
CHAPTER XII. TREATS OF LOVE, AND PREPARES FOR DEATH.
And to begin this chapter, we cannot do better than quote a part of a letter from M. l’Abbe O’Flaherty to Madame la Comtesse de X—– at Paris:
“MADAM,–The little Arouet de Voltaire, who hath come ‘hither to take a turn in England,’ as I see by the Post of this morning, hath brought me a charming pacquet from your Ladyship’s hands, which ought to render a reasonable man happy; but, alas! makes your slave miserable. I think of dear Paris (and something more dear than all Paris, of which, Madam, I may not venture to speak further)–I think of dear Paris, and find myself in this dismal Vitehall, where, when the fog clears up, I can catch a glimpse of muddy Thames, and of that fatal palace which the kings of England have been obliged to exchange for your noble castle of Saint Germains, that stands so stately by silver Seine. Truly, no bad bargain. For my part, I would give my grand ambassadorial saloons, hangings, gildings, feasts, valets, ambassadors and all, for a bicoque in sight of the Thuilleries’ towers, or my little cell in the Irlandois.
“My last sheets have given you a pretty notion of our ambassador’s public doings; now for a pretty piece of private scandal respecting that great man. Figure to yourself, Madam, his Excellency is in love; actually in love, talking day and night about a certain fair one whom he hath picked out of a gutter; who is well nigh forty years old; who was his mistress when he was in England a captain of dragoons, some sixty, seventy, or a hundred years since; who hath had a son by him, moreover, a sprightly lad, apprentice to a tailor of eminence that has the honour of making his Excellency’s breeches.
“Since one fatal night when he met this fair creature at a certain place of publique resort, called Marylebone Gardens, our Cyrus hath been an altered creature. Love hath mastered this brainless ambassador, and his antics afford me food for perpetual mirth. He sits now opposite to me at a table inditing a letter to his Catherine, and copying it from–what do you think?–from the ‘Grand Cyrus.’ ‘I swear, madam, that my happiness would be to offer you this hand, as I have my heart long ago, and I beg you to bear in mind this declaration.’ I have just dictated to him the above tender words; for our Envoy, I need not tell you, is not strong at writing or thinking.
“The fair Catherine, I must tell you, is no less than a carpenter’s wife, a well-to-do bourgeois, living at the Tyburn, or Gallows Road. She found out her ancient lover very soon after our arrival, and hath a marvellous hankering to be a Count’s lady. A pretty little creature is this Madam Catherine. Billets, breakfasts, pretty walks, presents of silks and satins, pass daily between the pair; but, strange to say, the lady is as virtuous as Diana, and hath resisted all my Count’s cajoleries hitherto. The poor fellow told me, with tears in his eyes, that he believed he should have carried her by storm on the very first night of their meeting, but that her son stepped into the way; and he or somebody else hath been in the way ever since. Madam will never appear alone. I believe it is this wondrous chastity of the lady that has elicited this wondrous constancy of the gentleman. She is holding out for a settlement; who knows if not for a marriage? Her husband, she says, is ailing; her lover is fool enough, and she herself conducts her negotiations, as I must honestly own, with a pretty notion of diplomacy.”
* * *
This is the only part of the reverend gentleman’s letter that directly affects this history. The rest contains some scandal concerning greater personages about the Court, a great share of abuse of the Elector of Hanover, and a pretty description of a boxing-match at Mr. Figg’s amphitheatre in Oxford Road, where John Wells, of Edmund Bury (as by the papers may be seen), master of the noble science of self-defence, did engage with Edward Sutton, of Gravesend, master of the said science; and the issue of the combat.
“N. B.”–adds the Father, in a postscript–“Monsieur Figue gives a hat to be cudgelled for before the Master mount; and the whole of this fashionable information hath been given me by Monseigneur’s son, Monsieur Billings, garcon-tailleur, Chevalier de Galgenstein.”
Mr. Billings was, in fact, a frequent visitor at the Ambassador’s house; to whose presence he, by a general order, was always admitted. As for the connection between Mrs. Catherine and her former admirer, the Abbe’s history of it is perfectly correct; nor can it be said that this wretched woman, whose tale now begins to wear a darker hue, was, in anything but SOUL, faithless to her husband. But she hated him, longed to leave him, and loved another: the end was coming quickly, and every one of our unknowing actors and actresses were to be implicated, more or less, in the catastrophe.
It will be seen that Mrs. Cat had followed pretty closely the injunctions of Mr. Wood in regard to her dealings with the Count; who grew more heart-stricken and tender daily, as the completion of his wishes was delayed, and his desires goaded by contradiction. The Abbe has quoted one portion of a letter written by him; here is the entire performance, extracted, as the holy father said, chiefly from the romance of the “Grand Cyrus”.
“Unhappy Maximilian unto unjust Catherina.
“MADAM,–It must needs be that I love you better than any ever did, since, notwithstanding your injustice in calling me perfidious, I love you no less than I did before. On the contrary, my passion is so violent, and your unjust accusation makes me so sensible of it, that if you did but know the resentments of my soule, you would confess your selfe the most cruell and unjust woman in the world. You shall, ere long, Madam, see me at your feete; and as you were my first passion, so you will be my last.
“On my knees I will tell you, at the first handsom opportunity, that the grandure of my passion can only be equalled by your beauty; it hath driven me to such a fatall necessity, as that I cannot hide the misery which you have caused. Sure, the hostil goddes have, to plague me, ordayned that fatal marridge, by which you are bound to one so infinitly below you in degree. Were that bond of ill-omind Hymen cut in twayn witch binds you, I swear, Madam, that my happiniss woulde be to offer you this hande, as I have my harte long agoe. And I praye you to beare in minde this declaracion, which I here sign with my hande, and witch I pray you may one day be called upon to prove the truth on. Beleave me, Madam, that there is none in the World who doth more honor to your vertue than myselfe, nor who wishes your happinesse with more zeal than–MAXIMILIAN.
“From my lodgings in Whitehall, this 25th of February.
“To the incomparable Catherina, these, with a scarlet satten petticoat.”
The Count had debated about the sentence promising marriage in event of Hayes’s death; but the honest Abbe cut these scruples very short, by saying, justly, that, because he wrote in that manner, there was no need for him to act so; that he had better not sign and address the note in full; and that he presumed his Excellency was not quite so timid as to fancy that the woman would follow him all the way to Germany, when his diplomatic duties would be ended; as they would soon.
The receipt of this billet caused such a flush of joy and exultation to unhappy happy Mrs. Catherine, that Wood did not fail to remark it, and speedily learned the contents of the letter. Wood had no need to bid the poor wretch guard it very carefully: it never from that day forth left her; it was her title of nobility,–her pass to rank, wealth, happiness. She began to look down on her neighbours; her manner to her husband grew more than ordinarily scornful; the poor vain wretch longed to tell her secret, and to take her place openly in the world. She a Countess, and Tom a Count’s son! She felt that she should royally become the title!
About this time–and Hayes was very much frightened at the prevalence of the rumour–it suddenly began to be about in his quarter that he was going to quit the country. The story was in everybody’s mouth; people used to sneer when he turned pale, and wept, and passionately denied it.
It was said, too, that Mrs. Hayes was not his wife, but his mistress–everybody had this story–his mistress, whom he treated most cruelly, and was about to desert. The tale of the blow which had felled her to the ground was known in all quarters. When he declared that the woman tried to stab him, nobody believed him: the women said he would have been served right if she had done so. How had these stories gone abroad? “Three days more, and I WILL fly,” thought Hayes; “and the world may say what it pleases.”
Ay, fool, fly–away so swiftly that Fate cannot overtake thee: hide so cunningly that Death shall not find thy place of refuge!
CHAPTER XIII. BEING A PREPARATION FOR THE END.
The reader, doubtless, doth now partly understand what dark acts of conspiracy are beginning to gather around Mr. Hayes; and possibly hath comprehended–
1. That if the rumour was universally credited which declared that Mrs. Catherine was only Hayes’s mistress, and not his wife,
She might, if she so inclined, marry another person; and thereby not injure her fame and excite wonderment, but actually add to her reputation.
2. That if all the world did steadfastly believe that Mr. Hayes intended to desert this woman, after having cruelly maltreated her,
The direction which his journey might take would be of no consequence; and he might go to Highgate, to Edinburgh, to Constantinople, nay, down a well, and no soul would care to ask whither he had gone.
These points Mr. Hayes had not considered duly. The latter case had been put to him, and annoyed him, as we have seen; the former had actually been pressed upon him by Mrs. Hayes herself; who, in almost the only communication she had had with him since their last quarrel, had asked him, angrily, in the presence of Wood and her son, whether he had dared to utter such lies, and how it came to pass that the neighbours looked scornfully at her, and avoided her?
To this charge Mr. Hayes pleaded, very meekly, that he was not guilty; and young Billings, taking him by the collar, and clinching his fist in his face, swore a dreadful oath that he would have the life of him if he dared abuse his mother. Mrs. Hayes then spoke of the general report abroad, that he was going to desert her; which, if he attempted to do, Mr. Billings vowed that he would follow him to Jerusalem and have his blood. These threats, and the insolent language of young Billings, rather calmed Hayes than agitated him: he longed to be on his journey; but he began to hope that no obstacle would be placed in the way of it. For the first time since many days, he began to enjoy a feeling something akin to security, and could look with tolerable confidence towards a comfortable completion of his own schemes of treason.
These points being duly settled, we are now arrived, O public, at a point for which the author’s soul hath been yearning ever since this history commenced. We are now come, O critic, to a stage of the work when this tale begins to assume an appearance so interestingly horrific, that you must have a heart of stone if you are not interested by it. O candid and discerning reader, who art sick of the hideous scenes of brutal bloodshed which have of late come forth from pens of certain eminent wits,* if you turn away disgusted from the book, remember that this passage hath not been written for you, or such as you, who have taste to know and hate the style in which it hath been composed; but for the public, which hath no such taste:–for the public, which can patronise four different representations of Jack Sheppard,–for the public whom its literary providers have gorged with blood and foul Newgate garbage,–and to whom we poor creatures, humbly following at the tail of our great high-priests and prophets of the press, may, as in duty bound, offer some small gift of our own: a little mite truly, but given with good-will. Come up, then, fair Catherine and brave Count;–appear, gallant Brock, and faultless Billings;–hasten hither, honest John Hayes: the former chapters are but flowers in which we have been decking you for the sacrifice. Ascend to the altar, ye innocent lambs, and prepare for the final act: lo! the knife is sharpened, and the sacrificer ready! Stretch your throats, sweet ones,–for the public is thirsty, and must have blood!
* This was written in 1840.
CHAPTER THE LAST.
That Mr. Hayes had some notion of the attachment of Monsieur de Galgenstein for his wife is very certain: the man could not but perceive that she was more gaily dressed, and more frequently absent than usual; and must have been quite aware that from the day of the quarrel until the present period, Catherine had never asked him for a shilling for the house expenses. He had not the heart to offer, however; nor, in truth, did she seem to remember that money was due.
She received, in fact, many sums from the tender Count. Tom was likewise liberally provided by the same personage; who was, moreover, continually sending presents of various kinds to the person on whom his affections were centred.
One of these gifts was a hamper of choice mountain-wine, which had been some weeks in the house, and excited the longing of Mr. Hayes, who loved wine very much. This liquor was generally drunk by Wood and Billings, who applauded it greatly; and many times, in passing through the back-parlour,–which he had to traverse in order to reach the stair, Hayes had cast a tender eye towards the drink; of which, had he dared, he would have partaken.
On the 1st of March, in the year 1726, Mr. Hayes had gathered together almost the whole sum with which he intended to decamp; and having on that very day recovered the amount of a bill which he thought almost hopeless, he returned home in tolerable good-humour; and feeling, so near was his period of departure, something like security. Nobody had attempted the least violence on him: besides, he was armed with pistols, had his money in bills in a belt about his person, and really reasoned with himself that there was no danger for him to apprehend.
He entered the house about dusk, at five o’clock. Mrs. Hayes was absent with Mr. Billings; only Mr. Wood was smoking, according to his wont, in the little back-parlour; and as Mr. Hayes passed, the old gentleman addressed him in a friendly voice, and, wondering that he had been such a stranger, invited him to sit and take a glass of wine. There was a light and a foreman in the shop; Mr. Hayes gave his injunctions to that person, and saw no objection to Mr. Wood’s invitation.
The conversation, at first a little stiff between the two gentlemen, began speedily to grow more easy and confidential: and so particularly bland and good-humoured was Mr., or Doctor Wood, that his companion was quite caught, and softened by the charm of his manner; and the pair became as good friends as in the former days of their intercourse.
“I wish you would come down sometimes of evenings,” quoth Doctor Wood; “for, though no book-learned man, Mr. Hayes, look you, you are a man of the world, and I can’t abide the society of boys. There’s Tom, now, since this tiff with Mrs. Cat, the scoundrel plays the Grank Turk here! The pair of ’em, betwixt them, have completely gotten the upper hand of you. Confess that you are beaten, Master Hayes, and don’t like the boy?”
“No more I do,” said Hayes; “and that’s the truth on’t. A man doth not like to have his wife’s sins flung in his face, nor to be perpetually bullied in his own house by such a fiery sprig as that.”
“Mischief, sir,–mischief only,” said Wood: “’tis the fun of youth, sir, and will go off as age comes to the lad. Bad as you may think him–and he is as skittish and fierce, sure enough, as a young colt—there is good stuff in him; and though he hath, or fancies he hath, the right to abuse every one, by the Lord he will let none others do so! Last week, now, didn’t he tell Mrs. Cat that you served her right in the last beating matter? and weren’t they coming to knives, just as in your case? By my faith, they were. Ay, and at the “Braund’s Head,” when some fellow said that you were a bloody Bluebeard, and would murder your wife, stab me if Tom wasn’t up in an instant and knocked the fellow down for abusing of you!”
The first of these stories was quite true; the second was only a charitable invention of Mr. Wood, and employed, doubtless, for the amiable purpose of bringing the old and young men together. The scheme partially succeeded; for, though Hayes was not so far mollified towards Tom as to entertain any affection for a young man whom he had cordially detested ever since he knew him, yet he felt more at ease and cheerful regarding himself: and surely not without reason. While indulging in these benevolent sentiments, Mrs. Catherine and her son arrived, and found, somewhat to their astonishment, Mr. Hayes seated in the back-parlour, as in former times; and they were invited by Mr. Wood to sit down and drink.
We have said that certain bottles of mountain-wine were presented by the Count to Mrs. Catherine: these were, at Mr. Wood’s suggestion, produced; and Hayes, who had long been coveting them, was charmed to have an opportunity to drink his fill. He forthwith began bragging of his great powers as a drinker, and vowed that he could manage eight bottles without becoming intoxicated.
Mr. Wood grinned strangely, and looked in a peculiar way at Tom Billings, who grinned too. Mrs. Cat’s eyes were turned towards the ground: but her face was deadly pale.
The party began drinking. Hayes kept up his reputation as a toper, and swallowed one, two, three bottles without wincing. He grew talkative and merry, and began to sing songs and to cut jokes; at which Wood laughed hugely, and Billings after him. Mrs. Cat could not laugh; but sat silent.
What ailed her? Was she thinking of the Count? She had been with Max that day, and had promised him, for the next night at ten, an interview near his lodgings at Whitehall. It was the first time that she would see him alone. They were to meet (not a very cheerful place for a love-tryst) at St. Margaret’s churchyard, near Westminster Abbey. Of this, no doubt, Cat was thinking; but what could she mean by whispering to Wood, “No, no! for God’s sake, not tonight!”
“She means we are to have no more liquor,” said Wood to Mr. Hayes; who heard this sentence, and seemed rather alarmed.
“That’s it,–no more liquor,” said Catherine eagerly; “you have had enough to-night. Go to bed, and lock your door, and sleep, Mr. Hayes.”
“But I say I’ve NOT had enough drink!” screamed Hayes; “I’m good for five bottles more, and wager I will drink them too.”
“Done, for a guinea!” said Wood.
“Done, and done!” said Billings.
“Be YOU quiet!” growled Hayes, scowling at the lad. “I will drink what I please, and ask no counsel of yours.” And he muttered some more curses against young Billings, which showed what his feelings were towards his wife’s son; and which the latter, for a wonder, only received with a scornful smile, and a knowing look at Wood.
Well! the five extra bottles were brought, and drunk by Mr. Hayes; and seasoned by many songs from the recueil of Mr. Thomas d’Urfey and others. The chief part of the talk and merriment was on Hayes’s part; as, indeed, was natural,–for, while he drank bottle after bottle of wine, the other two gentlemen confined themselves to small beer,–both pleading illness as an excuse for their sobriety.
And now might we depict, with much accuracy, the course of Mr. Hayes’s intoxication, as it rose from the merriment of the three-bottle point to the madness of the four–from the uproarious quarrelsomeness of the sixth bottle to the sickly stupidity of the seventh; but we are desirous of bringing this tale to a conclusion, and must pretermit all consideration of a subject so curious, so instructive, and so delightful. Suffice it to say, as a matter of history, that Mr. Hayes did actually drink seven bottles of mountain-wine; and that Mr. Thomas Billings went to the “Braund’s Head,” in Bond Street, and purchased another, which Hayes likewise drank.
“That’ll do,” said Mr. Wood to young Billings; and they led Hayes up to bed, whither, in truth, he was unable to walk himself.
* * *
Mrs. Springatt, the lodger, came down to ask what the noise was. “‘Tis only Tom Billings making merry with some friends from the country,” answered Mrs. Hayes; whereupon Springatt retired, and the house was quiet.
* * *
Some scuffling and stamping was heard about eleven o’clock.
* * *
After they had seen Mr. Hayes to bed, Billings remembered that he had a parcel to carry to some person in the neighbourhood of the Strand; and, as the night was remarkably fine, he and Mr. Wood agreed to walk together, and set forth accordingly.
(Here follows a description of the THAMES AT MIDNIGHT, in a fine historical style; with an account of Lambeth, Westminster, the Savoy, Baynard’s Castle, Arundel House, the Temple; of Old London Bridge, with its twenty arches, “on which be houses builded, so that it seemeth rather a continuall street than a bridge;”–of Bankside, and the “Globe” and the “Fortune” Theatres; of the ferries across the river, and of the pirates who infest the same–namely, tinklermen, petermen, hebbermen, trawlermen; of the fleet of barges that lay at the Savoy steps; and of the long lines of slim wherries sleeping on the river banks and basking and shining in the moonbeams. A combat on the river is described, that takes place between the crews of a tinklerman’s boat and the water-bailiffs. Shouting his war-cry, “St. Mary Overy a la rescousse!” the water-bailiff sprung at the throat of the tinklerman captain. The crews of both vessels, as if aware that the struggle of their chiefs would decide the contest, ceased hostilities, and awaited on their respective poops the issue of the death-shock. It was not long coming. “Yield, dog!” said the water-bailiff. The tinklerman could not answer–for his throat was grasped too tight in the iron clench of the city champion; but drawing his snickersnee, he plunged it seven times in the bailiff’s chest: still the latter fell not. The death-rattle gurgled in the throat of his opponent; his arms fell heavily to his side. Foot to foot, each standing at the side of his boat, stood the brave men–THEY WERE BOTH DEAD! “In the name of St. Clement Danes,” said the master, “give way, my men!” and, thrusting forward his halberd (seven feet long, richly decorated with velvet and brass nails, and having the city arms, argent, a cross gules, and in the first quarter a dagger displayed of the second), he thrust the tinklerman’s boat away from his own; and at once the bodies of the captains plunged down, down, down, down in the unfathomable waters.
After this follows another episode. Two masked ladies quarrel at the door of a tavern overlooking the Thames: they turn out to be Stella and Vanessa, who have followed Swift thither; who is in the act of reading “Gulliver’s Travels” to Gay, Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke, and Pope. Two fellows are sitting shuddering under a doorway; to one of them Tom Billings flung a sixpence. He little knew that the names of those two young men were–Samuel Johnson and Richard Savage.)
ANOTHER LAST CHAPTER.
Mr. Hayes did not join the family the next day; and it appears that the previous night’s reconciliation was not very durable; for when Mrs. Springatt asked Wood for Hayes, Mr. Wood stated that Hayes had gone away without saying whither he was bound, or how long he might be absent. He only said, in rather a sulky tone, that he should probably pass the night at a friend’s house. “For my part, I know of no friend he hath,” added Mr. Wood; “and pray Heaven that he may not think of deserting his poor wife, whom he hath beaten and ill-used so already!” In this prayer Mrs. Springatt joined; and so these two worthy people parted.
What business Billings was about cannot be said; but he was this night bound towards Marylebone Fields, as he was the night before for the Strand and Westminster; and, although the night was very stormy and rainy, as the previous evening had been fine, old Wood good-naturedly resolved upon accompanying him; and forth they sallied together.
Mrs. Catherine, too, had HER business, as we have seen; but this was of a very delicate nature. At nine o’clock, she had an appointment with the Count; and faithfully, by that hour, had found her way to Saint Margaret’s churchyard, near Westminster Abbey, where she awaited Monsieur de Galgenstein.
The spot was convenient, being very lonely, and at the same time close to the Count’s lodgings at Whitehall. His Excellency came, but somewhat after the hour; for, to say the truth, being a freethinker, he had the most firm belief in ghosts and demons, and did not care to pace a churchyard alone. He was comforted, therefore, when he saw a woman muffled in a cloak, who held out her hand to him at the gate, and said, “Is that you?” He took her hand,–it was very clammy and cold; and at her desire he bade his confidential footman, who had attended him with a torch, to retire, and leave him to himself.
The torch-bearer retired, and left them quite in darkness; and the pair entered the little cemetery, cautiously threading their way among the tombs. They sat down on one, underneath a tree it seemed to be; the wind was very cold, and its piteous howling was the only noise that broke the silence of the place. Catherine’s teeth were chattering, for all her wraps; and when Max drew her close to him, and encircled her waist with one arm, and pressed her hand, she did not repulse him, but rather came close to him, and with her own damp fingers feebly returned his pressure.
The poor thing was very wretched and weeping. She confided to Max the cause of her grief. She was alone in the world,–alone and penniless. Her husband had left her; she had that very day received a letter from him which confirmed all that she had suspected so long. He had left her, carried away all his property, and would not return!
If we say that a selfish joy filled the breast of Monsieur de Galgenstein, the reader will not be astonished. A heartless libertine, he felt glad at the prospect of Catherine’s ruin; for he hoped that necessity would make her his own. He clasped the poor thing to his heart, and vowed that he would replace the husband she had lost, and that his fortune should be hers.
“Will you replace him?” said she.
“Yes, truly, in everything but the name, dear Catherine; and when he dies, I swear you shall be Countess of Galgenstein.”
“Will you swear?” she cried, eagerly.
“By everything that is most sacred: were you free now, I would” (and here he swore a terrific oath) “at once make you mine.”
We have seen before that it cost Monsieur de Galgenstein nothing to make these vows. Hayes was likely, too, to live as long as Catherine–as long, at least, as the Count’s connection with her; but he was caught in his own snare.
She took his hand and kissed it repeatedly, and bathed it in her tears, and pressed it to her bosom. “Max,” she said, “I AM FREE! Be mine, and I will love you as I have done for years and years.”
Max started back. “What, is he dead?” he said.
“No, no, not dead: but he never was my husband.”
He let go her hand, and, interrupting her, said sharply, “Indeed, madam, if this carpenter never was your husband, I see no cause why _I_ should be. If a lady, who hath been for twenty years the mistress of a miserable country boor, cannot find it in her heart to put up with the protection of a nobleman–a sovereign’s representative–she may seek a husband elsewhere!”
“I was no man’s mistress except yours,” sobbed Catherine, wringing her hands and sobbing wildly; “but, O Heaven! I deserved this. Because I was a child, and you saw, and ruined, and left me–because, in my sorrow and repentance, I wished to repair my crime, and was touched by that man’s love, and married him–because he too deceives and leaves me–because, after loving you–madly loving you for twenty years–I will not now forfeit your respect, and degrade myself by yielding to your will, you too must scorn me! It is too much–too much–O Heaven!” And the wretched woman fell back almost fainting.
Max was almost frightened by this burst of sorrow on her part, and was coming forward to support her; but she motioned him away, and, taking from her bosom a letter, said, “If it were light, you could see, Max, how cruelly I have been betrayed by that man who called himself my husband. Long before he married me, he was married to another. This woman is still living, he says; and he says he leaves me for ever.”
At this moment the moon, which had been hidden behind Westminster Abbey, rose above the vast black mass of that edifice, and poured a flood of silver light upon the little church of St. Margaret’s, and the spot where the lovers stood. Max was at a little distance from Catherine, pacing gloomily up and down the flags. She remained at her old position at the tombstone under the tree, or pillar, as it seemed to be, as the moon got up. She was leaning against the pillar, and holding out to Max, with an arm beautifully white and rounded, the letter she had received from her husband: “Read it, Max,” she said: “I asked for light, and here is Heaven’s own, by which you may read.”
But Max did not come forward to receive it. On a sudden his face assumed a look of the most dreadful surprise and agony. He stood still, and stared with wild eyes starting from their sockets; he stared upwards, at a point seemingly above Catherine’s head. At last he raised up his finger slowly and said, “Look, Cat–THE HEAD–THE HEAD!” Then uttering a horrible laugh, he fell down grovelling among the stones, gibbering and writhing in a fit of epilepsy.
Catherine started forward and looked up. She had been standing against a post, not a tree–the moon was shining full on it now; and on the summit strangely distinct, and smiling ghastly, was a livid human head.
The wretched woman fled–she dared look no more. And some hours afterwards, when, alarmed by the Count’s continued absence, his confidential servant came back to seek for him in the churchyard, he was found sitting on the flags, staring full at the head, and laughing, and talking to it wildly, and nodding at it. He was taken up a hopeless idiot, and so lived for years and years; clanking the chain, and moaning under the lash, and howling through long nights when the moon peered through the bars of his solitary cell, and he buried his face in the straw.
* * *
There–the murder is out! And having indulged himself in a chapter of the very finest writing, the author begs the attention of the British public towards it; humbly conceiving that it possesses some of those peculiar merits which have rendered the fine writing in other chapters of the works of other authors so famous.
Without bragging at all, let us just point out the chief claims of the above pleasing piece of composition. In the first place, it is perfectly stilted and unnatural; the dialogue and the sentiments being artfully arranged, so as to be as strong and majestic as possible. Our dear Cat is but a poor illiterate country wench, who has come from cutting her husband’s throat; and yet, see! she talks and looks like a tragedy princess, who is suffering in the most virtuous blank verse. This is the proper end of fiction, and one of the greatest triumphs that a novelist can achieve: for to make people sympathise with virtue is a vulgar trick that any common fellow can do; but it is not everybody who can take a scoundrel, and cause us to weep and whimper over him as though he were a very saint. Give a young lady of five years old a skein of silk and a brace of netting-needles, and she will in a short time turn you out a decent silk purse–anybody can; but try her with a sow’s ear, and see whether she can make a silk purse out of THAT. That is the work for your real great artist; and pleasant it is to see how many have succeeded in these latter days.
The subject is strictly historical, as anyone may see by referring to the Daily Post of March 3, 1726, which contains the following paragraph:
“Yesterday morning, early, a man’s head, that by the freshness of it seemed to have been newly cut off from the body, having its own hair on, was found by the river’s side, near Millbank, Westminster, and was afterwards exposed to public view in St. Margaret’s churchyard, where thousands of people have seen it; but none could tell who the unhappy person was, much less who committed such a horrid and barbarous action. There are various conjectures relating to the deceased; but there being nothing certain, we omit them. The head was much hacked and mangled in the cutting off.”
The head which caused such an impression upon Monsieur de Galgenstein was, indeed, once on the shoulders of Mr. John Hayes, who lost it under the following circumstances. We have seen how Mr. Hayes was induced to drink. Mr. Hayes having been encouraged in drinking the wine, and growing very merry therewith, he sang and danced about the room; but his wife, fearing the quantity he had drunk would not have the wished-for effect on him, she sent away for another bottle, of which he drank also. This effectually answered their expectations; and Mr. Hayes became thereby intoxicated, and deprived of his understanding.
He, however, made shift to get into the other room, and, throwing himself upon the bed, fell asleep; upon which Mrs. Hayes reminded them of the affair in hand, and told them that was the most proper juncture to finish the business. *
* * *
* The description of the murder and the execution of the culprits, which here follows in the original, was taken from the newspapers of the day. Coming from such a source they have, as may be imagined, no literary merit whatever. The details of the crime are simply horrible, without one touch of even that sort of romance which sometimes gives a little dignity to murder. As such they precisely suited Mr. Thackeray’s purpose at the time–which was to show the real manners and customs of the Sheppards and Turpins who were then the popular heroes of fiction. But nowadays there is no such purpose to serve, and therefore these too literal details are omitted.
* * *
Ring, ding, ding! the gloomy green curtain drops, the dramatis personae are duly disposed of, the nimble candle snuffers put out the lights, and the audience goeth pondering home. If the critic take the pains to ask why the author, who hath been so diffuse in describing the early and fabulous acts of Mrs. Catherine’s existence, should so hurry off the catastrophe where a deal of the very finest writing might have been employed, Solomons replies that the “ordinary” narrative is far more emphatic than any composition of his own could be, with all the rhetorical graces which he might employ. Mr. Aram’s trial, as taken by the penny-a-liners of those days, had always interested him more than the lengthened and poetical report which an eminent novelist has given of the same. Mr. Turpin’s adventures are more instructive and agreeable to him in the account of the Newgate Plutarch, than in the learned Ainsworth’s Biographical Dictionary. And as he believes that the professional gentlemen who are employed to invest such heroes with the rewards that their great actions merit, will go through the ceremony of the grand cordon with much more accuracy and despatch than can be shown by the most distinguished amateur; in like manner he thinks that the history of such investitures should be written by people directly concerned, and not by admiring persons without, who must be ignorant of many of the secrets of Ketchcraft. We very much doubt if Milton himself could make a description of an execution half so horrible as the simple lines in the Daily Post of a hundred and ten years since, that now lies before us–“herrlich wie am ersten Tag,”–as bright and clean as on the day of publication. Think of it! it has been read by Belinda at her toilet, scanned at “Button’s” and “Will’s,” sneered at by wits, talked of in palaces and cottages, by a busy race in wigs, red heels, hoops, patches, and rags of all variety–a busy race that hath long since plunged and vanished in the unfathomable gulf towards which we march so briskly.
Where are they? “Afflavit Deus”–and they are gone! Hark! is not the same wind roaring still that shall sweep us down? and yonder stands the compositor at his types who shall put up a pretty paragraph some day to say how, “Yesterday, at his house in Grosvenor Square,” or “At Botany Bay, universally regretted,” died So-and-So. Into what profound moralities is the paragraph concerning Mrs. Catherine’s burning leading us!
Ay, truly, and to that very point have we wished to come; for, having finished our delectable meal, it behoves us to say a word or two by way of grace at its conclusion, and be heartily thankful that it is over. It has been the writer’s object carefully to exclude from his drama (except in two very insignificant instances–mere walking-gentlemen parts), any characters but those of scoundrels of the very highest degree. That he has not altogether failed in the object he had in view, is evident from some newspaper critiques which he has had the good fortune to see; and which abuse the tale of “Catherine” as one of the dullest, most vulgar, and immoral works extant. It is highly gratifying to the author to find that such opinions are abroad, as they convince him that the taste for Newgate literature is on the wane, and that when the public critic has right down undisguised immorality set before him, the honest creature is shocked at it, as he should be, and can declare his indignation in good round terms of abuse. The characters of the tale ARE immoral, and no doubt of it; but the writer humbly hopes the end is not so. The public was, in our notion, dosed and poisoned by the prevailing style of literary practice, and it was necessary to administer some medicine that would produce a wholesome nausea, and afterwards bring about a more healthy habit.
And, thank Heaven, this effect HAS been produced in very many instances, and that the “Catherine” cathartic has acted most efficaciously. The author has been pleased at the disgust which his work has excited, and has watched with benevolent carefulness the wry faces that have been made by many of the patients who have swallowed the dose. Solomons remembers, at the establishment in Birchin Lane where he had the honour of receiving his education, there used to be administered to the boys a certain cough-medicine, which was so excessively agreeable that all the lads longed to have colds in order to partake of the remedy. Some of our popular novelists have compounded their drugs in a similar way, and made them so palatable that a public, once healthy and honest, has been well-nigh poisoned by their wares. Solomons defies anyone to say the like of himself–that his doses have been as pleasant as champagne, and his pills as sweet as barley-sugar;–it has been his attempt to make vice to appear entirely vicious; and in those instances where he hath occasionally introduced something like virtue, to make the sham as evident as possible, and not allow the meanest capacity a single chance to mistake it.
And what has been the consequence? That wholesome nausea which it has been his good fortune to create wherever he has been allowed to practise in his humble circle.
Has anyone thrown away a halfpennyworth of sympathy upon any person mentioned in this history? Surely no. But abler and more famous men than Solomons have taken a different plan; and it becomes every man in his vocation to cry out against such, and expose their errors as best he may.
Labouring under such ideas, Mr. Isaac Solomons, junior, produced the romance of Mrs. Cat, and confesses himself completely happy to have brought it to a conclusion. His poem may be dull–ay, and probably is. The great Blackmore, the great Dennis, the great Sprat, the great Pomfret, not to mention great men of our own time–have they not also been dull, and had pretty reputations too? Be it granted Solomons IS dull; but don’t attack his morality; he humbly submits that, in his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no man shall allow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to enter his bosom for any character of the piece: it being, from beginning to end, a scene of unmixed rascality performed by persons who never deviate into good feeling. And although he doth not pretend to equal the great modern authors, whom he hath mentioned, in wit or descriptive power; yet, in the point of moral, he meekly believes that he has been their superior; feeling the greatest disgust for the characters he describes, and using his humble endeavour to cause the public also to hate them.
Horsemonger Lane: January 1840.