The Essays of Douglas Jerrold

by Douglas William Jerrold

And first for the Face of a Swindler. Men who set themselves up as judges of character—I have heard the sciolists—sometimes marvel that the sons of commerce should so frequently fall victims to some individual swindler; when he, the party swindling, is one of the most ingenuous creatures breathing; looking, in fact, the swindler that he is,—when from his eyebrows to the corners of his lips there is painted in the largest human capitals the calling of the professor. The truth is, the unsuspecting men accustomed to pore over day-books and ledgers have not had sufficient time to learn to read human faces. They can on the instant, if put to the test, tell a good guinea from a bad one; but though they shall stare in the features of a human counterfeit for an hour or more, they cannot, one in a hundred, discover the washed brass from the true gold. More; though they shall hear the counterfeit—though the ring of its voice shall be the truest Brummagem—the trading man shall complacently rub his hands, satisfied that he is hearing the sweetest sound of the mint.

I confess it, to the honour of the trading community of this commercial country, I confess it; the success of some faces of my brotherhood upon men behind counters has been to me startling evidence of the unsophisticated character of the tradesman. For instance; there is Nobrowns, Scarceamag, Fleeceington, and others I could name—shall I own it?—I have sometimes felt myself humiliated by their prosperity. I have felt the science lowered by the facility with which they have ingratiated themselves into the favour of the jeweller, the coachmaker, the tailor. Had I kept shop, I have thought I should have shown Nobrowns to the door at the first glance of his eye; and without looking at Scarceamag, but simply hearing his base-metal voice, I should have told him I had nothing in his way, and straightway ordered him across the threshold. And yet these men have flourished for a score of years; and, at this moment, are prosperous swindlers. How is the enigma to be explained—how the more than Arcadian innocency of the dwellers in Bond Street and Regent Street to be philosophically accounted for? Is it, that men immersed in the profound abstraction of £ s. d. lose somewhat of the sagacity inherited and often improved by poorer souls; that, too much rapt by the splendid visions of the future profits, they are less vigilant as to the danger of present credit? Providence, however, hath wisely partitioned its benefits. If it be given to Scarceamag, with his face, to swindle and be poor—it is also allotted to Puddingtête, the tradesman, to be swindled and grow rich. Take this, then, my dear pupil, for an axiom: you may—since you cannot help it—look the greatest swindler in life; but if you shall hold your own counsel, your face shall, at least to the acute men behind counters, never reveal it. Tradesmen can read anything but customers’ faces.[^[12]] This truth is every day borne out by the success of fellows whose features have gone far to vulgarise the science. Ragamuffins who ought never to have aspired beyond the pea-and-thimble board at a country fair—knaves marked and impressed by the truthful hand of nature for the lowest offices of legerdemain have, trusting to the simplicity, the unsuspecting ingenuousness of a money-getting generation, to the marvellous innocency of the commercial body, made for themselves a reputation of the first class, or of very nearly the first class of the highest profession. Ultimately, in the advancement of society, these vulgar upstarts will be met by a greater number of competitors, elevated and accomplished with the graces of life, and the term swindler will be, as it ought to be, synonymous with gentleman. The commercial faculty will, on the other hand, be rendered more acute in its observation of human character; hence it will require a greater delicacy of style—more imposing and a more winning manner to arrive at any distinction—indeed, even to make a clear paltry five hundred a year as a swindler, than in these times will suffice to ensure to a tolerably industrious man an income of a thousand. This is inevitable. When the tens of thousands of noble spirits, heretofore absorbed by the professions, are left to trade upon their wits—when all society is more strongly marked, more arbitrarily divided into two classes, the swindlers and the swindled—when, instead of a violent and ruthless division of property, as infamously as ignorantly insisted upon by certain firebrands—there is a graceful exchange of elegant patronage on the one side, and a profound expression of thanksgiving respect on the other, the character of the successful swindler will rise to its ordained and natural elevation, and a Whitefeather (pardon the honest vanity) take his place with many illustrious names sufficiently obvious to the philosophical reader. The time is happily passing away when brute violence is to achieve national good—when the price of bread is to be beaten down by a bludgeon, or wages raised upon a pike. It is therefore a matter of deep regret to the contemplative man, and such I am not ashamed to confess myself, to perceive how many gifted persons are, by a premature nativity, ill-placed. How many men at the present day breathing national arson and patriotic pillage—men who have so profoundly studied the meum, that they are entirely ignorant of that of tuum—would, born a few years hence, have shed a lustre, have conferred a dignity upon even an illustrious and dignified profession. Let me not be asked to enumerate examples—I eschew the personal for the general. It is enough that the eye of the philosopher can perceive in many a sulphureous patriot the indefatigable swindler; that the sage, pondering on the inevitable changes of society, can detect in a present Bull-ring Brutus all the misapplied qualities of a future Isaac Solomons!

[12]. I can scarcely believe that Captain Whitefeather was a reader of the Essays of David Hume; and yet a similar opinion—a friend of mine, a poor curate to whom I showed the Captain’s MS., pointed it out to me—is expressed by the sceptic philosopher, who, in his Essay on “Delicacy of Taste,” says:—“You will seldom find that mere men of the world, whatever strong sense they may be endowed with, are very nice in distinguishing characters, or in marking those insensible differences and gradations which make one man preferable to another.”—[John Jackdaw, Ed.]

Blissful time—glorious return of the golden age—when rapine and fire, and cutting and maiming shall no longer be the evils adopted by comprehensive minds to work out, as they conceive, a great good; but when one half of the people shall live peaceably upon the other; when the whole aim and end of every two men out of four shall be to possess themselves of their daily bread—(philosophers will receive the phrase in its more enlarged meaning)—by an art demanding in its exercise the highest and most chastened faculties of the moral creature. The two halves of society will then be fairly arrayed against each other; and for ruthless weapons—for sword, dagger, and pistol on one side, and bayonet, sabre, and carbine on the other—we shall have the more peaceful and courteous instruments, silvery words, blandest smiles, and the happiest self-possession, opposed by cautious interrogation, wary looks and silent heavy doubtings. Here then is a contest worthy of intellectual beings! This is indeed a duello of the immortal principle! How poor, how savage, how unworthy of a rational creature to break into the peaceful dwelling of an honest silversmith—to fire his bed-curtains—to bruise and batter his ornate cream-jugs, his chased candlesticks, and embossed tankards,—or, the spoil carried off amidst the exulting howl of barbarians, to fling it into the hospitable melting-pot—how loathsome, how degrading this brutal mode of a division of property, to that refined and gracious system, the cunning birth of better times—the fruit of a loftier and truer consideration of man’s dignity towards his fellow!

Let us consider the two pictures; let us contemplate the working of the different principles. How revolting the scene of violence! How debasing to our common nature to witness a mob of denaturalised creatures bursting in the good man’s door! How they scamper upstairs! Like festal savages they wave firebrands and torches about their heads as they rush into the sacred bedroom. The worthy man says a short prayer, and thinks of his stock—his wife and daughters, trembling for their lives, are horrified at being seen in nightcaps with their hair in paper! All the house is in consternation; and, a touch of humanity softening the mob, they benevolently suffer the silversmith and his family to escape, in their night-clothes, over the roof, and descend, like cats, into the gutter of their neighbour. The shop is ransacked of everything; and now a sanguinary fight is going on behind the counter between two of the ruffians for the plated top of a pepper-castor. This—this is one principle of a division of property; as if property was only to be divided by the blaze of torches and the crackling of rafters! Turn we to the ennobling contrast.

“Politely receives his destroyer”

Mark the swindler! How graciously he descends from his chariot—for the swindler of first-rate genius rarely marauds on foot—and with what a composed elegance, with what a perfect self-possession he enters the shop! There is something inexpressibly taking in his manner. Surveying him from head to foot, we cannot repress the opinion that the “age of chivalry” is not past. He is the knight of later times—the Chevalier Bayard in a round hat. Sans peur glows in his eyeball, and the whiteness of his kid gloves is sans reproche! Two or three centuries ago he had, with mailed hand, “shaken the bags of hoarding abbots,” and now comes he, with a condescending smile at his mouth, to deal with a silversmith. See! he crosses the threshold—treads the shop. It is impossible to resist the fascination of his lofty courtesy. The tradesman, wary as he is—suspicious as loss after loss has made him—despite of himself, confesses the supremacy of the stranger, and, with a smiling lip, a twinkling eye, folded palms, and inclined back, politely receives his destroyer. A conversation ensues; and the swindler—I am of course putting the case of a man of genius—fastens upon the tradesman, who every moment becomes more deeply impressed with the consequence of his patron; and therefore, having flung to the winds all low suspicion, is the most obsequious, the most humble servant of the swindler. There is nothing too costly for him—nothing too curious; no order too difficult to be met—no time too short for the accomplishment of his wishes. The swindler is evidently a man of the very highest consequence; and the silversmith, if I may adopt a homely expression, is inevitably done, ay, done—

“—as brown as a berry.”[^[13]]

[13]. It will be seen that the Captain had some knowledge of Chaucer.—[John Jackdaw, Ed.]