Society manifests a most inordinate and pernicious curiosity in respect to criminals who perpetrate an unusual offence. This curiosity passes all legitimate bounds. The newspapers, with a natural attention to pecuniary interests, obey the cravings of that feeling by serving up the most highly-seasoned food to suit the peculiar appetite. Portraits of the guilty one are exhibited in every picture-shop. Apposite allusions are introduced into dramatic representations; and even the presiding genius of a "Punch and Judy show" mingles the subject with his humorous outpourings. If the criminal make an attack upon royalty, he goes through the important but mysterious ordeal of an examination at the Home Office, whence the reporters for the press are excluded. On his appearance at Bow Street, the magisterial tribunal is "crowded with gentlemen and ladies, who were accommodated with seats upon the bench," as the journals say; and when the finale comes at the Central Criminal Court, the fees for admission to the gallery rise to two or three guineas for each individual.
Thus the criminal is made into a hero!
Now is not all this sufficient to turn the head of one whose mind is already partially unhinged?
Society, then, is to blame in many ways for the development of those morbid feelings which, in the present instance, actuated Henry Holford in his desperate purpose.
[35]. From Evans' and Forbes' "Geographical Grammar." Edition of 1814.
CHAPTER CCXI.
THE DEED.
Crankey Jem was at dinner, in the afternoon of the day which followed the night of Holford's sad historical studies, when the young man entered his room.
"Oh! so you've turned up at last," said Jem, pointing to a seat, and pushing a plate across the table in the same direction. "What have you been doing with yourself for the last two days? But sit down first, and get something to eat; for you look as pale and haggard as if you'd just been turned out of a workhouse."
"I am not well, Jem," replied Holford, evasively; "and I cannot eat—thank you all the same. But I will take a glass of beer: it may refresh me."