It is quite evident then that Borrow does not advocate the open air, the tinkers’ trade, and a-roving-a-roving, for the sons of gentlemen. It is not apparent that the open air did his health much good. As for tinkering, it was, he declares, a necessity and for lack of anything better to do, and he realised that he was only playing at it. When he was looking for a subject for his pen he rejected Harry Simms and Jemmy Abershaw because both, though bold and extraordinary men, were “merely highwaymen.”
On the other hand, when he has known a “bad man” he cannot content himself with mere disapproval. Take, for example, his friends the murderers, Haggart and Thurtell. He shows Haggart as an ambitious lad too full of life, “with fine materials for a hero.” He calls the fatalist’s question: “Can an Arabian steed submit to be a vile drudge?”—nonsense, saying: “The greatest victory which a man can achieve is over himself, by which is meant those unruly passions which are not convenient to the time and place.” Then he exclaims:
“But peace to thee, poor David! why should a mortal worm be sitting in judgment over thee? The Mighty and Just One has already judged thee, and perhaps above thou hast received pardon for thy crimes, which could not be pardoned here below; and now that thy feverish existence has closed, and thy once active form become inanimate dust, thy very memory all but forgotten, I will say a few words about thee, a few words soon also to be forgotten. Thou wast the most extraordinary robber that ever lived within the belt of Britain; Scotland rang with thy exploits, and England, too, north of the Humber; strange deeds also didst thou achieve when, fleeing from justice, thou didst find thyself in the sister Isle; busy wast thou there in town and on curragh, at fair and race-course, and also in the solitary place. Ireland thought thee her child, for who spoke her brogue better than thyself?—she felt proud
of thee, and said, ‘Sure, O’Hanlon is come again.’ What might not have been thy fate in the far west in America, whither thou hadst turned thine eye, saying, ‘I will go there, and become an honest man!’ But thou wast not to go there, David—the blood which thou hadst shed in Scotland was to be required of thee; the avenger was at hand, the avenger of blood. Seized, manacled, brought back to thy native land, condemned to die, thou wast left in thy narrow cell, and told to make the most of thy time, for it was short; and there, in thy narrow cell, and thy time so short, thou didst put the crowning stone to thy strange deeds, by that strange history of thyself, penned by thine own hand in the robber tongue. Thou mightest have been better employed, David!—but the ruling passion was strong with thee, even in the jaws of death. Thou mightest have been better employed!—but peace be with thee, I repeat, and the Almighty’s grace and pardon.”
He makes the jockey speak in the same fashion of Thurtell whom he went to see hanged, according to an old agreement:
“I arrived at H--- just in the nick of time. There was the ugly jail—the scaffold—and there upon it stood the only friend I ever had in the world. Driving my Punch, which was all in a foam, into the midst of the crowd, which made way for me as if it knew what I came for, I stood up in my gig, took off my hat, and shouted, ‘God Almighty bless you, Jack!’ The dying man turned his pale grim face towards me—for his face was always somewhat grim, do you see—nodded and said, or I thought I heard him say, ‘All right, old chap.’ The next moment . . . my eyes water. He had a high heart, got into a scrape whilst in the Marines, lost his half-pay, took to the turf, ring, gambling, and at last cut the throat of a villain who had robbed him of nearly all he had. But he had good qualities, and I know for certain that he never did half the
bad things laid to his charge; for example, he never bribed Tom Oliver to fight cross, as it was said he did, on the day of the awful thunderstorm. Ned Flatnose fairly beat Tom Oliver, for though Ned was not what’s called a good fighter, he had a particular blow, which if he could put in he was sure to win. His right shoulder, do you see, was two inches farther back than it ought to have been, and consequently his right fist generally fell short; but if he could swing himself round, and put in a blow with that right arm, he could kill or take away the senses of anybody in the world. It was by putting in that blow in his second fight with Spring that he beat noble Tom. Spring beat him like a sack in the first battle, but in the second Ned Painter—for that was his real name—contrived to put in his blow, and took the senses out of Spring; and in like manner he took the senses out of Tom Oliver.
“Well, some are born to be hanged, and some are not; and many of those who are not hanged are much worse than those who are. Jack, with many a good quality, is hanged, whilst that fellow of a lord, who wanted to get the horse from you at about two-thirds of his value, without a single good quality in the world, is not hanged, and probably will remain so. You ask the reason why, perhaps. I’ll tell you: the lack of a certain quality called courage, which Jack possessed in abundance, will preserve him; from the love which he bears his own neck he will do nothing that can bring him to the gallows.”
Isopel Berners, with Moses and David in her mind, expresses Borrow’s private opinion more soberly when she says:
“Fear God, and take your own part. There’s Bible in that, young man; see how Moses feared God, and how he took his own part against everybody who meddled with him. And see how David feared God, and took his own part against all the bloody enemies which surrounded him—