BEHIND THE SCENES; OR, A BREAKFAST IN NEWGATE.
(Concluded from page 134.)
No further delay was allowed. The sheriffs moved on, the ordinary, the culprits, and the officers did the same; and that class of attendants to which I belonged followed. I shall not easily forget the circumstances of this brief, but melancholy progress. The faltering step—the deep-drawn sigh—the mingling exclamations of anguish and devotion which marked the advance of the victims—the deep tones of the reverend gentleman who now commenced reading a portion of the burial service, and the tolling of the prison bell, which, as we proceeded through some of the most dreary passages of the gaol, burst on the ear, rendered the whole spectacle impressive beyond description. Few steps sufficed to conduct us to the small room, or entrance-hall, into which the debtor's door opens, and from this we saw the ladder which the criminals were to ascend, and the scaffold on which they were to die. I was on the alert to detect any sudden emotion which this spectacle might cause, but could not perceive that it had the slightest effect. The minds of the sufferers had been so prepared, that a partial view of the machine to which they were being conducted, seemed to give no additional shock. No further pause was deemed necessary. The clock was striking eight, and the ordinary and the youth first brought to the press-room, immediately passed up the ladder. To the two culprits that remained, the gentleman whom I have already mentioned offered his services, and filled up with a prayer the little interval which elapsed, before the second was conducted to the platform.
I heard from without the murmur of awe, of expectation, and pity, which ran through the crowd in front of the prison, and stepping on a small erection to the left of the door, gained a momentary glimpse of a portion of the immense multitude, who, uncovered, and in breathless silence, gazed on the operations of the executioners. I retreated just as the third halter had been adjusted. The finisher of the law was in the act of descending, when the under-sheriff addressed him—
Is everything quite ready?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then take care and draw the bolt out smartly.—Now, don't bungle it."
"No, sir—you may depend upon it," was the answer. And the obsequious anxiety of the hangman to seem polite and obliging, his apparent zeal to give satisfaction, though very natural seemed to me not a little curious.
Prayers, which had been interrupted for a moment, while the last awful ceremony was in progress, were resumed. As he read them, I saw the clergyman fix his eye on the executioner with a peculiar expression. He drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and passed it slightly over his upper lip. This was the fatal signal. A lumbering noise, occasioned by the falling of part of the apparatus, announced that it had been obeyed.
In that moment, a rush from the scaffold forced me from the door. The sheriffs, the under-sheriff, the ordinary, the gentleman who had assisted him in preparing the sufferers for eternity, and several other persons quitted the platform as expeditiously as possible, that they might not behold the final agonies of the unhappy men. Sir Thomas took me by the arm as he passed, and signified that he wished me to accompany him. I did so. Again I marched through the passages which I had recently traversed. Two minutes brought me to the door of the room to which I had first been conducted. Here my friend accosted me with his natural firmness of tone, which before had been considerably subdued by humane emotions, and said—
"You must breakfast with us."
I started at the unsentimental idea of eating the moment after quitting so awful a spectacle, as that which I have attempted to describe. But I had not sufficient energy to resist the good will which rather unceremoniously handed me in. Here I found the other sheriff, the ordinary, the under-sheriff, the city-marshal, and one or two of the individuals I had previously met, already seated.
"Well, it is all over," said Sir Thomas, as he took his seat at the table.
"Yes, it is," said the ordinary, in the same tone which I had heard a few moments before, and admired as appropriately solemn. "It is all over, and—" putting his cup and saucer to the under-sheriff, who prepared to pour out the tea—"I am very glad of it."
"I hope you do not mean the breakfast is all over," remarked the sheriff, whose wit I had previously admired, "for I have had none yet."
The moment had not arrived at which humour like this could be duly appreciated, and I did not observe that any of the company gave even that sort of note of face for a laugh which we had all used half an hour before.
Our conversation turned naturally on the manner in which the sufferers had conducted themselves; on the wishes they had expressed, and the confessions they had made.
But while I looked on the hospitably spread table, I could not help connecting operations rather different in their character, which must have been going on at the same moment. "In my mind's eye," I saw the attendants carrying the fowl and eggs to the breakfast table, while the sheriffs and their guests were conducting the sufferers to the scaffold.
From what I have already said, it must be inferred that the first speeches which accomplished the circuit of the table, were of a very serious character. But, mingled with them, some common breakfast-table requests and civilities caught my attention, as singular from their association. The performance of duties the most important cannot relieve man from the necessity of claiming his "daily bread," and I do not know that it is any reproach to a clergyman that he is not distinguished by versatility of manner. The abrupt transition from the gravity of the pulpit to the flippancy of the bar I should not admire; but the consistency of the reverend gentleman here attracted my notice. I had been just listening to him while he repeated, with devotional elongation, the solemn words of the burial service; and when I heard him with the same elongation of sound, address himself to me—"Shall I trouble you to cut up the fowl—can I help you to some tongue, sir?" I confess that I felt tempted not to laugh, but to comment on the oddly-contrasted feelings which the same voice, thus variously exerted, inspired.
Horror-struck, as I had been, at the first mention of the unfeeling word "breakfast," my excuse for staying was to see if others could eat. That I should take food was quite out of the question. But the wing of a fowl having been put on my plate, I thought it would be rudeness to reject it. I began to eat, inwardly reflecting that my abstinence would nothing benefit those whose sufferings I had still in my memory; and improving on this reconciling thought, I presently detected myself holding my plate for a second supply. "O sentiment!" I mentally exclaimed, "what art thou when opposed to a breakfast?"
By the time we had disposed of our first cup of tea, we had got through the pious reflections which each of us had to offer on the particular occasion which had brought us together, and conversation started in a livelier vein. The gentleman who had assisted the ordinary, by praying with the culprits, gaily remarked to him, with a benevolent chuckle on his face, that they (meaning himself and the reverend gentleman) had succeeded in refuting the Unitarian principles which A—— (one of the sufferers) had for some time avowed. The look which answered this speech, reminded me, I know not why, of the organist's comment on the organ blower's assertion that they had played famously well.
"Ay," said the minister, "I knew it would be so. I told him so immediately after sentence. But, after all, what can we say for a recantation dictated by the dread of early death?"
"Very true!" was my exclamation, as the reverend gentleman looked as if he expected me to say something.
"At any rate," whispered a gentleman well-known in the city, with whom I had formerly done a little business in the funds, "it gives a man something of an option."
This technical application of a favourite stock-exchange word produced a general smile round the table, and I could not help contributing to lengthen it by replying—
"You mean, perhaps, that it gives him a call." But the lively sheriff, of whose witticisms I have already made honourable mention, cut me out of my share of applause altogether, as clean as a whistle, by instantly rejoining—
"The put you mean, for, in this case, the party was going for the fall."
Of course there was no standing this, and we all joined in the laugh.
We were however brought back to gravity through the alarm expressed by the minister, at the idea of his having taken cold through officiating that morning without his wig. This introduced, I cannot tell how, some remarks on the head, which led to a disquisition on craniology. On this subject the witty sheriff was very amusing. I said some tolerably lively things; but the ordinary beat us all hollow, when it was contended that the disposition and the mind might be known from the exterior of the skull, by remarking that he had now an additional reason to regret having come there without his wig.
With this epigrammatic touch he took his leave, I and the rest of the company laughing heartily, and having eaten as heartily as we then laughed. The facetious sheriff now had it all his own way, and said several things, nearly, or perhaps, quite as good as those which I have already placed on record. We were thus pleasantly engaged, when the aide-de-camp of the gallant officer in the blue and gold,—one of the city marshal's-men, entered to announce that it was past nine o'clock, and to ask if any of the company chose to see the bodies taken down.
"The bodies!" I repeated to myself, and the application of that word to those whom I had previously heard mentioned but by their names, recalled my thoughts which had somehow strayed from the business of the morning into unlooked-for cheerfulness, and presented, in that simple expression, an epitome of all that had moved my wonder, curiosity, and commiseration.
Again we passed through those parts of the prison which I had twice before traversed. We advanced with a quicker step than when following those whom we now expected to see brought to us. But with all the expedition we could use, on reaching the room from which the scaffold could be seen, we found the "bodies" already there. Nor was this, in my opinion, the least striking scene which the morning brought under my observation. The dead men were extended side by side, on the stone floor. The few persons present gazed on them in silence, duly impressed with the melancholy spectacle. But in this part of the building a copper is established, in which a portion of the provisions for its inmates is prepared. There was a savoury smell of soup, which we could not help inhaling while we gazed on death. The cooks too were in attendance, and though they, as became them, did all in their power to look decorously dismal, well as they managed their faces, they could not so divest themselves of their professional peculiarities, as not to awaken thoughts which involuntarily turned to ludicrous or festive scenes. Their very costume was at variance with the general gloom, and no sympathy could at once repress the jolly rotundity of their persons.
I turned my eyes from them, wishing to give myself wholly up to religious meditation during the moments of my stay. Just then the executioner approach, ed. Sir Thomas desired him to remove the cap from the face of one of the sufferers. He prepared to comply—but his first act was to place his hand on the more prominent features and press them together. This, on inquiry being made, I learned was done that the bystanders might not be shocked by witnessing any distortion of countenance. Sir Thomas smiled at the anxiety of the man to make it appear that his work had been well performed. The cap was then withdrawn. There was nothing terrific in the aspect of the deceased. I recognized the features of the young man who had been so wildly, so violently agitated, when about to suffer. Now pain was at an end, apprehension was no more, and he seemed in the enjoyment of sweet repose. His countenance was tranquil as that of a sleeping infant, and happier than the infant, his rest was not in danger of being disturbed. While reflecting on the change which a single hour had sufficed to produce, I could hardly help regarding as idle the the sorrow, the pity, and the self-reproach for momentary forgetfulness of these, which I had felt and breathed within that period. I almost accused the sufferers of weakness, for showing themselves depressed as they had been, while I felt disposed, seeing their griefs were, to all appearance, terminated for ever, to demand with the poet,
"And what is death we so unwisely fear?"
and to answer as he replies to himself,
"An end of all our busy tumults here."
Knight's Quarterly Magazine.