And she groaned even in that way which aged people do when their wickedness is brought home to them; for that there was a complicity in these old people with Harvey, I had no doubt, even from the conduct of the harridan,—a conclusion confirmed by the assertion of Campbell himself that Harvey was his nephew.
I now took Mr Harvey back to the Police Office, thinking, as I went, upon the small amount of real happiness enjoyed by these adventurers among the rocks that lie in the midst of civilisation. Harvey’s domestic comforts may be guessed from the account I have given. He was a man, and could bear the want of ease at night, in consideration of his privilege of walking the streets in a fine dress, and dining in the “Rainbow,” with respectable people next box. But what are we to say for the women, with apparently delicate forms, and at least so much of feminine feeling as we might see shining through their really handsome faces? One might sum up all their pleasure in saying, that it consisted in promenading the streets in a silk gown. Even then they cannot be, and are not, devoid of fear. The same fear follows them home to an extinct fire, a truckle-bed with a few thin clothes, into which they huddle themselves, and try in sleep to get away from their own thoughts,—which thoughts sometimes go into the forms of dreams, wherein they take their own way, rejoicing in the tricks of a horrible nightmare. Such a being is everything but the woman she was intended to be,—her enjoyments everything but the affections and sympathies she was made to feel. Of course, I am assuming here, and I go upon appearances, that Miss Matilda Jerome and Miss Elizabeth Jackson were not originally Arabs. I might make another estimate in that case, for these are seldom touched by fear; and being against society, as society is against them, there is some inversion in them, the true nature of which, in enabling them to seek some strange kind of happiness, we cannot understand,—at least I could never understand it, and I have seen them in all humours. I suspect, however, that what we here sometimes call happiness, is only a kind of accommodation of misery. Thus they take the sign for the thing; and when they are roaring over the tankard, they think they are enjoying themselves. Perhaps they have more of the real thing in the hardness of their rebellion; for I think I have read somewhere, that man (and woman too, I suspect) is such a strange being that he can feel a pleasure in the very spite of pleasure. I can’t say I would relish that happiness very much.
Well, I find I am at my old trade of spinning morals, without a touch of which I suspect my experiences would not be of much service to mankind; and if I had had no hope of that, I doubt if I would have been at the trouble of opening my black book of two thousand detections. I have little more to say about my grandees. They were brought to trial before the High Court, where, on the evidence of Richardson and his wife, the urchins who found the pieces, our own testimony, and the tale told by the utensils, they were found guilty. This was not, as I have said, the first, nor the second, nor the third time for the gentleman; but the ladies had never been handled so roughly before. Harvey got eight years’ penal servitude, and the two belles five years each. As they sat at the bar, I could not help thinking of their appearance that day I took them for ladies of rank on a mission of charity and mercy. Surely our real LADIES, in their present rage for finery, never think how easily, and by what base copyists, they are imitated.
One word more on this subject. I am certainly not over-fastidious as regards female dress. I have seen it in all its varieties, from the scanty cincture that adorned our first mother Eve, to the ingenious complications of modern taste and refinement; but I must observe, with all proper deference to the LADIES, that, in adopting the prevalent redundancy of skirt, the imitated have become the imitators, as the first of these “circumambient amplitudes” that I ever saw in Edinburgh, was sported by one of the most distinguished “Nightingales” that ever walked Princes Street. In fact, after the experience of thirty years, I find it almost impossible to distinguish the maiden from the matron,—the human vehicle for smuggled or surreptitiously acquired property from the sonsy housekeeper,—or the frail Magdalene, who knows there is a living secret to conceal, from the robust “habitante” just returned from an annual visit to her country cousins; nay, Paterfamilias himself, I have heard, on entering a cab or a box at the theatre, has breathed, if he did not utter, a heartfelt and pocketfelt anathema against such a superabundant and inconvenient display of hoop and crinoline.
Without attempting to quote the words of Pope as to “ribs of whale,” I would simply say to all LADIES, as Hamlet said to the players, “I pray you avoid it.”
The Society-Box.
THE way by which the ranks of thieves and robbers are recruited is by the old teaching the young the figure system. Yes, there is a proselytism of evil as well as of good. Society is always straining after the making of parties, and while churches are working for members, the old thieves are busy enlisting the young. The advantage, I fear, is with the latter, for there’s something more catching in the example of taking another man’s property than that of praying for grace. Of course I am here looking to the young, and I make this statement without caring much how your beetle-browed critic may take it.
I have known a good many of those dominies of the devil’s lore, not a few of them with streaks of grey on their heads, who, having themselves been taught at the same desk, have taken up the trade as a kind of natural calling, and raised their pupils according to the old morality, “The sweet morsel of another person’s property is pleasant to roll under the tongue;” and perhaps the more pleasant, too, that the tongue that sucks is the tongue that lies. There was Hugh Thomson, about the cleverest thief in my day, that rogue brought up as many youngsters in the faith as would have filled a conventicle; and what a glorious grip that was I got of him, just as he was trying to reap the fruits of his lesson, through the ingenuity of one of his scholars, William Lang! I would not have exchanged it for the touch of a bride’s hand, with the marriage ring upon her finger.
In 1841, there was a Mr Brown who kept a spirit shop in the Low Calton, nearly opposite Trinity College Church. One of those modern unions called “Yearly Societies” was kept in his house, the members paying their contributions on the Monday evenings, which contributions, the produce of toil and sweat of poor, hard-working men, were deposited in the society box, and secured under lock and key. One Monday evening, I was passing down the Calton on my way to Leith Wynd homeward, to get myself refreshed with a cup of tea. In the mouth of an entry, on the other side of the street called the North Back of the Canongate, I observed Hugh and his scholar Lang, engaged, no doubt, in the mutual offices of teaching and learning. I thought I might learn something too, and stepping into the recess of Trinity Church gate, I watched their movements. Shortly, Lang came out—he had become a man by this time, recollect—and having mixed with the workmen, who were going into Brown’s shop to make their weekly payments, he went in among the rest.
At first, I confess, I could not understand this. The thief could make nothing of the workmen, even if unknown to them as a thief, which in all likelihood he was, and the idea of his trying the pocket line among fustian jackets never entered my head. But that there was some play to go on, where Thomson was patronising, I could have no doubt whatever. After a time, during which I took care that Thomson should not see me, Lang came out, and, having joined Thomson, the two went off together, with something that sounded in my ears as a laugh, and the meaning of which was made clear to me by a happy thought that occurred to me on the instant like a flash. I now wanted to see Brown by himself, but as the workmen were still going in and coming out, I was obliged to wait a considerable time. Selecting at length a moment when the coast was tolerably clear, I entered the shop. There, in the back room, was the sacred box, devoted to benevolence, and from which some widow and orphans might, before the year expired, receive something that would make her tear less scorching and their cry less shrill—some broken bones, too, broken through the labour and toil of the poor man for the rich one, might have less pain through the charm of that box. Thoughts these pretty enough to some minds, but to such as Thomson quaint, if not funny.