by James McLevy
“What more?”
“Why, then you might deliver me up to the London authorities, and I will not care much, because if they have nothing I have taken to bring against me, they cannot convict me.”
“Very good,” replied I; “but then I just fear that SOME ONE may convict me. Because you are acquainted with the devil, perhaps you think there is no God. No, no, my young friend, that’s not my way of doing business. You forget I am a messenger of Justice, and you would bribe her.”
He hung down his head on his breast, nor lifted it again during all the time of our journey.
On our arrival, I got him locked up; and perhaps my sorrow for my Jacques was a good deal modified by the recollection of his wish to tamper with my honesty, which had heretofore stood proof against all the temptations of glittering watches and diamond rings. The whole of my intercourse with this young man had been curious; but, I confess, there was one incident I was more concerned with than all the rest. Was it possible that I could find out, from his luggage, anything to satisfy me in regard to the mysterious handkerchief? I could have no peace till I should have gone over the whole; and this I did, but was again disappointed. I had next recourse to the young man himself, and, taking the article with me,
“You remember,” said I, “the loss of your handkerchief at the Post-office?”
“Yes,” said he; “a thief picked my pocket, and the letter fell out. I snatched up the letter.”
“Which I have got,” said I.
“Yes, but it did not tell you much.”
“No, I confess it did not, because it is directed to your assumed address; but the handkerchief, it is that I wish to speak to.”
“Well, what of that? I am in for it at any rate, and I don’t care now what I say to you, if you will not use it against me.”
“There is so much against you,” said I, “that anything you may add will make no difference.”
Some sighing again, which rather went to my heart, in spite of my recollection of the attempt to bribe me.
“Well, here is the handkerchief,” said I; “and I wish you to tell me, only to gratify my own curiosity, whether that formed a part of the articles you carried off from the pawn-office?”
“Yes,” said he, taking it into his hand; “it’s one of a piece; and I had another of the same in my pocket when I was apprehended.”
“Well,” said I, “this is an extraordinary circumstance, and might teach you that there are higher powers than detective-officers. Upon that handkerchief, which was taken from you by the boy, I could have got you convicted, though I had not discovered another item of evidence against you.”
“Most wonderful!” he ejaculated.
“Yes,” said I; “but this is only one example out of many I have witnessed of such strange interpositions in my favour, that I have been often inclined to get on my knees in the street in reverent awe of that Eye which sees all, and of that Hand which can point Justice to her object, while all the time we are thinking that we ourselves are the only agents.”
The London officers came and took Milstead up for trial. I was present, and I need not say that the case was hollow against him, without my bit of miraculous discovery. Neither did I take any notice of the bribe, for I did not want to bear hardly against him. But the case was viewed as a serious breach of trust,—far worse, in one view, than robbery with force,—insomuch that an end of confidence between master and servant is an end to business—that very thing on which the greatness of Britain depends. He was sentenced to transportation for seven years.
The Monkey-Jacket
❖
If it be true, that which has been so often said, that we are, in our passage through life, all actors on the stage of the world, so must it be true that we are not always doomed to tragedy or melo-drama. No man, so far as I have been able to see, is limited or can limit himself to one part. Many who with their long faces and lugubrious speech seem cut out by nature for deep tragedy, can play broad farce very successfully, though it is not always they wish to be seen or get any applause for their performance. Even reverend gentlemen, I am sorry to say, do not always confine themselves to serious pieces; and certain it is, on the other hand, that many who seem to be formed for harlequins come off with great effect in tragedy, though often not with their own good will. If it were all quite voluntary, every one would know his cue and do it well, but it really is not that in most cases, and this makes the scene to an onlooker or philosopher the more queer, insomuch that we see every day broad grins changed into heavy chops, and hear roars of mirth dying away to rise in deep groans—tears of joy changed into those of grief, and so forth, and then t’other way as well. As for me, I play all kinds of parts, but then my feelings are merely of the sympathetic kind, seldom moved except in a professional way, so I have here an advantage. Even in my pity for criminals there is often mixed traits of enlivenment, and I have known, as I am now to relate, the gambols of a real monkey mixed with the griefs and sorrows of those who make worse than monkeys of themselves.
Some time in 1845 my good friend James Bell having got wearied of the routine of catching and being caught in turn—always the same thing over again—the rollicking and drinking among depraved women, and then a long course of solitary meditation in the college of training at the Calton—merry and sad, and sad and merry alternately—took a strange fancy into his head that he might change all this into something like respectable uniformity, if not uniform respectability. But how was he to effect the change? He couldn’t get work. If he had gone to the Tron, as he said to me, and bawled out, “A thief to let—what will you give for him?—quite reformed, I assure you—reads his Bible, and tried a revival once—five shillings a-week—who says?—the article’s at your service,” he wouldn’t have much chance of being employed. Then he couldn’t work except as a labourer, and even as such he could do little; for a steady shovel man requires both perseverance and a certain some other thing for which we have no name, but which in its result becomes apparent when you examine what he does by Hoppus. But why talk about a thief becoming a sweaty-browed, hard-palmed labourer? Bless you, the thing is impossible! James Bell knew this, and even when he wanted a change, didn’t wish to work. He would be an easy gentleman, no longer disturbed by detectives; but how was this to be effected in an old country like Great Britain?
Well, the plan adopted by him will show. James had had his envy roused by these easy-going gentlemen who go about with an organ and a monkey. It was doubtful, so various are tastes, if James thought any creature higher or happier on earth than such a musical artist, actor, merrymaker, traveller, drawer of pennies, and free-and-easy liver, always abroad during the day, and at night nobody knows where. But, alas! every trade, except authorship and thieving, requires some capital. How was James to get the organ, the monkey, and the velvet coat? Ay, but there’s an old saying, that nobody ever “bode for a silk gown but aye got a sleeve o’t,” and all things need only a beginning. “The Little Warbler”, it is said, was the origin of a publishing firm in Edinburgh, which ultimately realised an income to the tune of ten thousand a-year, and James would try a small beginning in his musical way. Lobby nobs did not wear these nobby togas, velvet coats, and, after all, the monkey was of greater importance. Now, there was a caravan in the Grassmarket, on the front boards of which a small homuncle, with a red jacket and a blue ribbon on his tail, played such gambols that he extorted the laughter of the youngsters of that part of the old town to an extent which induced James to believe that a fortune might be made out of him. If he could just get hold of that little hairy man he would give up thieving, and become a respectable member of society. But how was he to get him? The question was a difficult one, and he knew it by the very efforts he made to solve it as he stood in the front of the stage lights, and admired these wonderful evolutions, and meditated for hours together on the means whereby he could make the wonderful tumbler, posture-maker, and merry-andrew his own, without paying a penny for him, which penny he had not to pay
.
But all James’s cogitations came back to his professional notions, according as these did with a certain ancient maxim, that
He should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can.
There was nothing for it but to steal the little African and reduce him to slavery. If little things are great to little minds, what must great things be? And surely it couldn’t be considered a small thing to steal an actor whose powers of laughter-compelling were equal to those of any comedian at the time on the boards, not excepting Sam Cowell himself, whom, indeed, in so far as regarded the pushing of the burlesque, he in some degree resembled. And steal him James did. Seizing an opportunity when the peripatetic inhabitants of the caravan had gone out to get some refreshment, after the late labours of the night, he contrived to open a door, to go in where the worn-out actor was reposing in well-earned sleep, and, seizing the unconscious victim, rolled him up in a piece of horsecloth, to prevent scratching and screaming, and fairly kidnapped him. We are at no liberty to indulge in philanthropic reflections as to the feelings of the victim, only that he had feelings we must be pretty certain, when he found himself
Forced from home and all its pleasures,
To increase a stranger’s treasures;
the last consideration being the only one that James thought of any importance. Neither need we try to fancy the surprise of the show-folk when they found him gone, on whom all their hopes of success in this world mainly depended.
Nor had James secured his prey without knowing where to take it—nowhere but to Lucky Gibb’s in the Anchor Close, where there resided a number of the softer sex, yet not softer than the male who was to become their associate, and not inappropriately either, if we look to dispositions and habits, and compare the language of the one with the silence of the other. Nay, the comparison might be carried so as to be honourable to the new comer, insomuch as Mrs Gibb’s female chimpanzees did not limit their actions to innocent frolic like their little relative, nor were they even true to their nearer kind, the ourangs, whom they cheated, seduced, and preyed upon, and small pity to these ourangs in particular.
There came next day the show-people to complain to us of the loss of their principal actor, a commodity in our way which you might suppose to be the most easily traced of all stolen things in the world. Not so fast. Jacko was not pawnable, neither could he be sold like a stolen nigger, nor was this disgrace intended to be put upon him. Then the women were so true to their human fancy, and so fond of the inhuman—we cannot say inhumane, for fear of ugly comparisons—that they kept him a kind of “lady’s prisonier,” so that I could not discover him any way. In addition to these difficulties there was a fair at Glasgow, where our showmen behoved to be, and as they left, no doubt with suitable feelings of sorrow, a day or two after, we were left without a proprietor to whom we could have restored the property.
Having made this auspicious beginning, the next part of James’s stock-in-trade to be looked after was the organ. One might have thought that this was an article more easily got at than the live property, and yet, when you consider a little, you are apt to come to the conclusion, that to steal an organ-grinder’s musical-box is a little more difficult than to get at Mr Jackson’s. At least, so it appeared to James, an individual far better able to judge of both the difficulties and facilities of an adventure of this kind than you, I sincerely hope, can be, or with such as I before the eyes of your most ardent fancies ever will be. And then I might suggest the additional danger arising from the tell-tale nature of the article, as where it has been known to play a tune, such as “The Blue Bells of Scotland”, too well known to the grinder himself or some one in his confidence. But an organ, though it could not be easily stolen, might be easily bought with stolen money, or the proceeds of stolen articles, and James saw in this direction his way to fortune. I fairly admit, that, in such calculations, his hope of being entirely independent of me was not consistent with his earlier aspirations, but he had it in his power, with the means of acting the gentleman always with him, of getting beyond my beat, away into the sunnier regions of England, or even into the vineyards of France, where he could feed himself and Jacko on grapes, and get the vintage-girls to dance a country-dance, with their castanets, to the strains of his organ.
That James did not consider the getting of the necessary funds a difficult affair turned out to be clear enough. Even I soon came to have evidence of this in the letter of Mr G——r from Polmont, which informed me that a shop in that place had been broken open, and a great quantity of soft goods taken therefrom, besides the contents of the till, amounting to five pounds. The robbers had gone thirds, and it was supposed they had proceeded with the booty to Edinburgh. The account of their persons led me to a suspicion, nothing more, that my hopeful organ-grinder was one, and, if I was right there, I could not be far wrong in regard to his associates, one of whom, James M’Kenzie, could not be absent when my James was in the way of doing what he called “good”. But, mark, I didn’t know all this time that James was working up to the organ and monkey pitch. That I ascertained afterwards, and, if I was right as to my man, I had just the present charge against him. With some notion that I had a right at least to these two, I set about seeking for these hard goods as well as the soft, and after some time began to suspect that they preferred Glasgow to their native city, perhaps because they didn’t like me. Yet I persevered in the old way, trying every likely place, till at last I thought of Mrs Gibb, as good a customer to me as the lady of “The Cock and Trumpet”. So one night I went to pay my respects—we never do use cards—and found the good lady in excellent spirits. I was introduced to her damsels, all collected in what she called her saloon, a barn-like room of considerable dimensions, plentifully lighted with gas, and having, you couldn’t expect it in the Anchor Close, an old piano, worth thirty shillings, upon which some of her children, who aspired to be musical, could play a few notes, something like “Nid-noddin’ ”.
And upon this instrument one was accordingly trying to play amidst a roar of laughter which I could not for some time comprehend the meaning of, for the object of their mirth was in the midst of them.
“Well, lasses,” said I, “what’s all the fun?”
“It’s Jacko,” said Mrs Gibb by my side. “They’ve learned him to dance.”
“Oh, my own Jacko!” said I to myself, getting on the instant as keen as any of them.
“It’s Jim Bell’s,” cried Bell Ramsay, a small cricket of a girl, who, having a hold of the monkey, was dancing with him a kind of minuet to the notes of the rickety instrument.
“And who gave him that fine scarlet coat and silk sash?” said I.
“Jim, to be sure,” cried another, a fat wench, Bess Brunton, who I knew was a favourite of Jim’s.
“He’s going to be an organ-grinder, James is,” added the landlady, “and Jacko is to go about with him.”
And the rest of her speech was lost in another roar, as Jacko, in remembrance of his former performances on the boards, got upon the back of Miss Ramsay, and began plucking her hair, screaming the while at the top of his voice.
“He’s the merriest little devil in the world,” continued Mrs Gibb. “I don’t know what we would do without him, and then he’s such an amusement to the gentlemen.”
“And the ladies, too,” said I.
“Ay,” cried the fat one, “Jacko is as good as a budge. He keeps us from ‘the horrors.’ ”
“And that’s not easily done,” said I; “but where is James? does he live here?”
“Oh, you’ve nothing against him now?” cried the favourite again. “He’s quite taken up now that he’s to begin on the honest hook. He’ll soon get the organ, and I’m to go with him to England.”
“Oh, indeed!” said I, while my thoughts followed James further away. “You’ll have a jolly time of it all three. James will play the organ, you the tambourine, and Jacko will dance.”
“The very thing! and shan’t we get the money?”<
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“But who made the jacket?” said I, getting so far professional as to presume, in the midst of so much fun, to think of the soft goods from Polmont.
“Me,” replied the lusty one again.
“And you got the cloth from James?”
“Yes,” and then “No,” was the reply, as she began to gather her wits; “No, I bought it, for we wanted to make the little devil nobby. Stand up, you wretch, and let the gentleman see your scarlet coat.”
And Jacko was immediately on the top of the piano, dancing in the way he no doubt did when with his old friends in the Grassmarket.
“Well,” said I, “this is so funny a little imp, that I have taken a fancy to him as well as to his scarlet coat,” and laying hold of him, while he screamed louder than the laugh of the girls, “I’ll take him with me.”
And to be sure the laugh was changed into a cry of perfect amazement as well as anger when they saw me inclined to carry off the very soul, as it seemed, of their “happy land”.
“And what right?” cried she of the tambourine, who probably saw her hopes in as great jeopardy as Jacko.
“Never you mind that, lass,” said I; “you will get Jim to comfort you in the absence of the monkey.”
So I carried off my little man amidst as loud a shout of grief as was ever heard at an Irish wake; nor was it an easy matter, for he did not seem to like to leave his happy quarters among the women, who spoiled him; and I was not ill pleased when I got my prisoner—an innocent one in this case—deposited in a cell.
Now was my time for James. He would get information from his associate of the fate of the monkey,—and if it was true, as I suspected, that the red jacket was made by the girl out of some of the Polmont soft goods, he would see his danger, independently of the old charge for pug, and be off. I set a watch at the Anchor Close, though I did not expect much from a quarter whence he would get information of my seizure of his friend. I had better reasons for finding him somewhere else. At least I was now sure of him after knowing he was in Edinburgh. Being up to an old haunt of his in West Nicolson Street, I kept pacing there for nearly an entire day, and there accordingly, about four o’clock in the afternoon, I got my eye upon him. He was groggy, and in that devil-may-care state which comes on like a fever, after a great enterprise, such as the robbing of a shop.