The Essays of Douglas Jerrold

by Douglas William Jerrold

“Any one of these names maybe confidently given to the night constable”

I say English, for I think we have had too long a peace to render the assumption of a foreign title and a foreign accent worth the trouble, the incessant watchfulness, the continual stretch of a man’s intellects: the call upon his faculties to keep up the character should be well rewarded, for the hazard of self-discovery is very great. I know a remarkable instance of the danger. There was Thaddeus Ballynamuck—he once, with merely a backward touch of his hand, broke the jaw of the manager of a minor theatre who dared to offer him terms to bring him out as a Patagonian giant—there was Thaddeus, who had made a splendid six weeks’ campaign at the West-end as an Italian count; how admirably did he with the lingua Toscana flavour his native Connaught! The Duke of Tuscany was his dear friend; and not without reason; for Thaddeus at a boar hunt had stood between the boar and the duke, receiving the tusks of the beast in his hunting jacket, for the which he had obtained a great many Italian orders, and on the strength of which he gave a great many English ones. Well, Thaddeus, though considered as true an Italian as the poet Asso,[^[17]] was one morning driven to the necessity of shaving himself, changing his southern name, and retiring for a few weeks to the privacy of Southend. He was betrayed into self-discovery by an excess of benevolence—the more was the pity. Thus it was. He always carried in his cab a beautiful dove-coloured Italian greyhound, its legs not much thicker than goose quills, and its tail like bent wire—the gift of the Marchesa di Lungabarba. The dog had leaped from the cab and followed its master into the office of Finings, the wine merchant. Thaddeus had before very considerably patronised Finings, and was about to give him a splendid order for some choice port to be shipped to his friend the duke—and how the eyes of Finings twinkled at the title of his highness!—when the cellarman, a brawny, heavy fellow from Somerset, shambled into the office and trod, with all his fourteen stone, upon the delicate toes of Angelo the greyhound: the dog howled with agony piercing enough to crack the parchment heart of an old maid, when the Captain—he was, at the moment, with the greatest difficulty endeavouring to make himself understood to the wine merchant—turned round, and, to the astonishment of Finings, fulminating a string of oaths in the very purest Connaught, dealt a blow on the breast of the cellarman that sent him prostrate on three dozen of choice brandy—picked samples for the dowager Lady Drinkwater—to their utter destruction, and to the exceeding surprise of the wine merchant, who had never in all his life heard an Italian count vituperate such beautiful, such unadulterate Irish. I will not continue the story: Thaddeus Ballynamuck, though an admirable artist, fell a victim to the exuberance of his feelings; as a swindler he was professionally killed by Angelo, the late Marchesa di Lungabarba’s greyhound.

[17]. The Captain doubtless means Tasso—[John Jackdaw, Ed.].

I have narrated this little history that it may serve as an illustration of the perils besetting an honest, simple, guileless Englishman who might wish to swindle as an exotic. There is, it must be allowed, unnecessary peril in the experiment; besides I question if it be not unpatriotic. Why defraud our mother country of the advantage of our reputation? Why, with ungrateful, with unfilial hand add a leaf to the laurel of Germany—of France—of Italy—of Russia? No; for a true born Briton to swindle as a noble from the Hartz mountains—as a count from Paris—a Roman count—or a prince from St Petersburg—is poor, shuffling, shabby, or, if I may use a term which I am proud to find of late very current among politicians and political writers (for the classes are more distinct than people are prone to imagine)—it is Un-English.

America, however, has her claims upon us. The swindler may, and with profit, prove his recollection of the ties that once bound Columbia to Britain—may gratefully acknowledge a sense of the relationship between the mother and the daughter country, by swindling as a gentleman with enormous possessions in New York, or, what is still better, in Virginia. Here the many-sided philosopher cannot fail to recognise a new advantage in a community of language. The soi-disant (hem! French again!), the soi-disant American swindler may avenge the injuries of a greyhound on the person of a cellarman, yet run no risk of discovery. He may still run up and down the gamut of execration and not betray himself. Think of this, youthful swindler. Besides, there is another great temptation to offer this passing honour to America. Her unsettled currency affords the swindler a hundred plausible excuses if—for such improprieties do occur at the London Hotel, Grillon’s, the Clarendon, all the very best of houses—if rudely pressed to show those credentials of gentility which even the rudest and the most illiterate never fail to acknowledge. Thus the swindler may for a time throw himself upon the banks: and this the more safely if he have displayed a handful of letters of introduction (a few to the royal household), all easily manufactured, and all, for the time, as good as letters of credit. There is another very practicable deceit. He may, on the night of his arrival in London, have his pocket picked of certain Government securities, and, having made the keeper of the hotel the depository of his secret, straightway advertise the loss in all the papers. This, I confess, is a ticklish experiment, demanding the finest self-possession, the greatest delicacy to carry it into successful operation; and if the youthful swindler have any doubts of himself, I charge him by his hopes of future profit and reputation not to think of hazarding it. Should he, however, succeed, and the landlord advance liberally, he may condescend to express his best wishes for the prosperity of his host, and more, may invite himself to dine with him. Great caution, however, is to be used before there be any advance to such familiarity; and yet I once knew a gentleman from Natchez who obtained unlimited credit from his host—the pot-house keeper was musical—by insisting upon it that he made Dibdin’s “Lovely Nan” by the very force of expression remarkably like Rossini. So far, all was well; but, forgetful of what was due to himself as a swindler,—in the genial atmosphere of a domestic hearth letting himself down to the level of his host—the foolish fellow suffered himself to play at cribbage with his landlord; a man who had spent at least half of his long and useful life, pegging. Game after game the landlord’s doubts increased: and at length he rose from the table with a blank in his face, and all the swindler’s bill in his heart. “I’m done—I know I’m done!” cried the host with a groan. “I must be done, for no true gentleman could ever beat me at cribbage.” At least one month’s board and lodging, besides the greatest of all advantages, the first-rate reference to shopkeepers, did my friend from Natchez lose by his skill at cribbage. It is true when hard pressed he talked a great deal about the last failure of the cotton crop—an excellent theme, by the way—but in this case he talked to the winds, or, what was much worse, to a man obstinate upon his bill. My friend had to make an ignominious retreat, leaving behind him all his goods generously subscribed for him by the ingenuous West-end shopkeepers.

Notwithstanding this, the swindler may for a time take America for his country. The trick is by no means over-done. If, however, the swindler make the election—if he resolve upon becoming a gentleman of enormous fortune from the United States—he had better choose the South, and, above all things, he must not forget the cotton crop. As it once happened at New Orleans, much execution may, even in London, be done upon the enemy from behind cotton bags. As for his rank, the swindler should not venture beyond that of colonel—yes, a colonel and a great grower of cotton.

We next come to a most important subject—the dress of the swindler. The present age judges of the condition of men as we judge of the condition of cats—by the sleekness, the gloss of their coats. Hence, in even what is called a respectable walk of life, with men of shallow pockets and deep principles, it is of the first importance to their success that, if they would obtain three hundred per annum, they must at least look as if they were in receipt of seven. Very many stoical privations are endured for this great purpose. How many a fine hungry fellow carries his dinner upon his back—his breakfast in his beaver—his supper in his boots! The Hottentot is not the only human animal that clothes itself with the cost of bowels. The swindler, however, is not—fate forbid that it should be so!—called upon to make the same sacrifice required every day in London of the poor, friendless student—of the miserable, unknown artist—the juvenile surgeon, panting for a practice—the barrister, without a fee—the curate, with lips hungering for even locusts and wild honey—the thousands of God’s most helpless creatures, gentlemen, born with a silver spoon, but left by fortune at their maturity without any employment for knife and fork—no, no, it is the purpose, the triumph of swindling to put its professors in purple and fine linen, and to make “their eyes red with wine and their teeth white with milk.” They have to dress well, not to keep up the barren name of gentleman, but to flourish as swindlers. Poor Dactyl, the poet—astonishing truth!—is too proud to take credit for a hat—too poor to buy one—and too high-spirited to nod to his old college friends in a rusty beaver. Will the reader listen to a fact? What does Dactyl? Why, he makes a compromise with his magnanimity—he over-persuades himself that his beaver is as yet tolerably jetty, since all the summer he has once a day sponged it with a damp sponge, and kept religiously upon the shady side of the pavement. I mention this wretched shift of a pusillanimous spirit to show to the young swindler what might be his fate if, with a pertinacity only found in simpletons of the very first class, he would resolve to live the gentleman upon the revenue of the chameleon; and, with not a sixpence in his pocket, would be sufficiently mad to rave about honour in his bosom. What is the reward of such obstinacy—what the goal of men so honourably idle—so perversely pure? What the end? Go,—ask it of the Thames! Put the question to the Serpentine—the New River—the canals! Mutter the query as you pause at the gunsmith’s—as you linger at the chemist’s! Ask, as you see whisk by you the chariot of the coroner!

I had not touched upon this mean-spirited class of bipeds—of the species, many of whom die off in honourable poverty, and many in a dishonourable horse-pond—did not swindling save a third portion of the body from a life of starvation and an end of vulgar misery. The good, indulgent parents who, in submission, as they conceive, to the high civilisation of the day, will rather let their sons be nothing if they cannot put them in a fair way to become archbishops, chancellors, and commanders-in-chief, owe much to swindling, for—urbane goddess!—how often does she take the pet of the fireside—the darling of the chimney corner—the pretty prodigal, when plucked of every feather by the jackdaws[^[18]] of the town, and make of him again a bird of finest plumage. Yes, thousands and thousands of young gentlemen, shamefully deserted by their parents when they had not a farthing more to leave them, and—wanting a calling—with nothing to do, have been received with open arms by the tenderest of foster-mothers; and not only once more set upon their legs, but, perhaps, for the first time in their lives, put into their own cabriolets! Little thinks the plodding tradesman, determined upon making Tom a gentleman, that his dear boy may owe all the external appearances of that character to nought but swindling. But I have wandered.

[18]. I persuade myself that Captain Whitefeather here meant nothing personal.—[John Jackdaw, Ed.]