A parting glance at such of the actors in this little history
as it has not, in the course of its events, dismissed, will bring it to an end.
Mr Haredale fled that night. Before pursuit could be begun, indeed before Sir
John was traced or missed, he had left the kingdom. Repairing straight to a
religious establishment, known throughout Europe for the rigour and severity of
its discipline, and for the merciless penitence it exacted from those who sought
its shelter as a refuge from the world, he took the vows which thenceforth shut
him out from nature and his kind, and after a few remorseful years was buried in
its gloomy cloisters.
Two days elapsed before the body of Sir John was found. As soon as it was
recognised and carried home, the faithful valet, true to his master's creed,
eloped with all the cash and movables he could lay his hands on, and started as
a finished gentleman upon his own account. In this career he met with great
success, and would certainly have married an heiress in the end, but for an
unlucky check which led to his premature decease. He sank under a contagious
disorder, very prevalent at that time, and vulgarly termed the jail fever.
Lord George Gordon, remaining in his prison in the Tower until Monday the
fifth of February in the following year, was on that day solemnly tried at
Westminster for High Treason. Of this crime he was, after a patient
investigation, declared Not Guilty; upon the ground that there was no proof of
his having called the multitude together with any traitorous or unlawful
intentions. Yet so many people were there, still, to whom those riots taught no
lesson of reproof or moderation, that a public subscription was set on foot in
Scotland to defray the cost of his defence.
For seven years afterwards he remained, at the strong intercession of his
friends, comparatively quiet; saving that he, every now and then, took occasion
to display his zeal for the Protestant faith in some extravagant proceeding
which was the delight of its enemies; and saving, besides, that he was formally
excommunicated by the Archbishop of Canterbury, for refusing to appear as a
witness in the Ecclesiastical Court when cited for that purpose. In the year
1788 he was stimulated by some new insanity to write and publish an injurious
pamphlet, reflecting on the Queen of France, in very violent terms. Being
indicted for the libel, and (after various strange demonstrations in court)
found guilty, he fled into Holland in place of appearing to receive sentence:
from whence, as the quiet burgomasters of Amsterdam had no relish for his
company, he was sent home again with all speed. Arriving in the month of July at
Harwich, and going thence to Birmingham, he made in the latter place, in August,
a public profession of the Jewish religion; and figured there as a Jew until he
was arrested, and brought back to London to receive the sentence he had evaded.
By virtue of this sentence he was, in the month of December, cast into Newgate
for five years and ten months, and required besides to pay a large fine, and to
furnish heavy securities for his future good behaviour.
After addressing, in the midsummer of the following year, an appeal to the
commiseration of the National Assembly of France, which the English minister
refused to sanction, he composed himself to undergo his full term of punishment;
and suffering his beard to grow nearly to his waist, and conforming in all
respects to the ceremonies of his new religion, he applied himself to the study
of history, and occasionally to the art of painting, in which, in his younger
days, he had shown some skill. Deserted by his former friends, and treated in
all respects like the worst criminal in the jail, he lingered on, quite cheerful
and resigned, until the 1st of November 1793, when he died in his cell, being
then only three- and-forty years of age.
Many men with fewer sympathies for the distressed and needy, with less
abilities and harder hearts, have made a shining figure and left a brilliant
fame. He had his mourners. The prisoners bemoaned his loss, and missed him; for
though his means were not large, his charity was great, and in bestowing alms
among them he considered the necessities of all alike, and knew no distinction
of sect or creed. There are wise men in the highways of the world who may learn
something, even from this poor crazy lord who died in Newgate.
To the last, he was truly served by bluff John Grueby. John was at his side
before he had been four-and-twenty hours in the Tower, and never left him until
he died. He had one other constant attendant, in the person of a beautiful
Jewish girl; who attached herself to him from feelings half religious, half
romantic, but whose virtuous and disinterested character appears to have been
beyond the censure even of the most censorious.
Gashford deserted him, of course. He subsisted for a time upon his traffic in
his master's secrets; and, this trade failing when the stock was quite
exhausted, procured an appointment in the honourable corps of spies and
eavesdroppers employed by the government. As one of these wretched underlings,
he did his drudgery, sometimes abroad, sometimes at home, and long endured the
various miseries of such a station. Ten or a dozen years ago--not more--a
meagre, wan old man, diseased and miserably poor, was found dead in his bed at
an obscure inn in the Borough, where he was quite unknown. He had taken poison.
There was no clue to his name; but it was discovered from certain entries in a
pocket-book he carried, that he had been secretary to Lord George Gordon in the
time of the famous riots.
Many months after the re-establishment of peace and order, and even when it
had ceased to be the town-talk, that every military officer, kept at free
quarters by the City during the late alarms, had cost for his board and lodging
four pounds four per day, and every private soldier two and twopence halfpenny;
many months after even this engrossing topic was forgotten, and the United
Bulldogs were to a man all killed, imprisoned, or transported, Mr Simon
Tappertit, being removed from a hospital to prison, and thence to his place of
trial, was discharged by proclamation, on two wooden legs. Shorn of his graceful
limbs, and brought down from his high estate to circumstances of utter
destitution, and the deepest misery, he made shift to stump back to his old
master, and beg for some relief. By the locksmith's advice and aid, he was
established in business as a shoeblack, and opened shop under an archway near
the Horse Guards. This being a central quarter, he quickly made a very large
connection; and on levee days, was sometimes known to have as many as twenty
half-pay officers waiting their turn for polishing. Indeed his trade increased
to that extent, that in course of time he entertained no less than two
apprentices, besides taking for his wife the widow of an eminent bone and rag
collector, formerly of MilIbank. With this lady (who assisted in the business)
he lived in great domestic happiness, only chequered by those little storms
which serve to clear the atmosphere of wedlock, and brighten its horizon. In
some of these gusts of bad weather, Mr Tappertit would, in the assertion of his
prerogative, so far forget himself, as to correct his lady with a brush, or
boot, or shoe; while she (but only in extreme cases) would retaliate by taking
off his legs, and leaving him exposed to the derision of those urchins who
delight in mischief.
Miss Miggs, baffled in all her schemes, matrimonial and otherwise, and cast
upon a thankless, undeserving world, turned very sharp and sour; and did at
length become so acid, and did so pinch and slap and tweak the hair and noses of
the youth of Golden Lion Court, that she was by one consent expelled that
sanctuary, and desired to bless some other spot of earth, in preference. It
chanced at that moment, that the justices of the peace for Middlesex proclaimed
by public placard that they stood in need of a female turnkey for the County
Bridewell, and appointed a day and hour for the inspection of candidates. Miss
Miggs attending at the time appointed, was instantly chosen and selected from
one hundred and twenty-four competitors, and at once promoted to the office;
which she held until her decease, more than thirty years afterwards, remaining
single all that time. It was observed of this lady that while she was inflexible
and grim to all her female flock, she was particularly so to those who could
establish any claim to beauty: and it was often remarked as a proof of her
indomitable virtue and severe chastity, that to such as had been frail she
showed no mercy; always falling upon them on the slightest occasion, or on no
occasion at all, with the fullest measure of her wrath. Among other useful
inventions which she practised upon this class of offenders and bequeathed to
posterity, was the art of inflicting an exquisitely vicious poke or dig with the
wards of a key in the small of the back, near the spine. She likewise originated
a mode of treading by accident (in pattens) on such as had small feet; also very
remarkable for its ingenuity, and previously quite unknown.
It was not very long, you may be sure, before Joe Willet and Dolly Varden
were made husband and wife, and with a handsome sum in bank (for the locksmith
could afford to give his daughter a good dowry), reopened the Maypole. It was
not very long, you may be sure, before a red-faced little boy was seen
staggering about the Maypole passage, and kicking up his heels on the green
before the door. It was not very long, counting by years, before there was a
red-faced little girl, another red-faced little boy, and a whole troop of girls
and boys: so that, go to Chigwell when you would, there would surely be seen,
either in the village street, or on the green, or frolicking in the
farm-yard--for it was a farm now, as well as a tavern--more small Joes and small
Dollys than could be easily counted. It was not a very long time before these
appearances ensued; but it WAS a VERY long time before Joe looked five years
older, or Dolly either, or the locksmith either, or his wife either: for
cheerfulness and content are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of
youthful looks, depend upon it.
It was a long time, too, before there was such a country inn as the Maypole,
in all England: indeed it is a great question whether there has ever been such
another to this hour, or ever will be. It was a long time too--for Never, as the
proverb says, is a long day-- before they forgot to have an interest in wounded
soldiers at the Maypole, or before Joe omitted to refresh them, for the sake of
his old campaign; or before the serjeant left off looking in there, now and
then; or before they fatigued themselves, or each other, by talking on these
occasions of battles and sieges, and hard weather and hard service, and a
thousand things belonging to a soldier's life. As to the great silver snuff-box
which the King sent Joe with his own hand, because of his conduct in the Riots,
what guest ever went to the Maypole without putting finger and thumb into that
box, and taking a great pinch, though he had never taken a pinch of snuff
before, and almost sneezed himself into convulsions even then? As to the
purple-faced vintner, where is the man who lived in those times and never saw
HIM at the Maypole: to all appearance as much at home in the best room, as if he
lived there? And as to the feastings and christenings, and revellings at
Christmas, and celebrations of birthdays, wedding-days, and all manner of days,
both at the Maypole and the Golden Key,--if they are not notorious, what facts
are?
Mr Willet the elder, having been by some extraordinary means possessed with
the idea that Joe wanted to be married, and that it would be well for him, his
father, to retire into private life, and enable him to live in comfort, took up
his abode in a small cottage at Chigwell; where they widened and enlarged the
fireplace for him, hung up the boiler, and furthermore planted in the little
garden outside the front-door, a fictitious Maypole; so that he was quite at
home directly. To this, his new habitation, Tom Cobb, Phil Parkes, and Solomon
Daisy went regularly every night: and in the chimney-corner, they all four
quaffed, and smoked, and prosed, and dozed, as they had done of old. It being
accidentally discovered after a short time that Mr Willet still appeared to
consider himself a landlord by profession, Joe provided him with a slate, upon
which the old man regularly scored up vast accounts for meat, drink, and
tobacco. As he grew older this passion increased upon him; and it became his
delight to chalk against the name of each of his cronies a sum of enormous
magnitude, and impossible to be paid: and such was his secret joy in these
entries, that he would be perpetually seen going behind the door to look at
them, and coming forth again, suffused with the liveliest satisfaction.
He never recovered the surprise the Rioters had given him, and remained in
the same mental condition down to the last moment of his life. It was like to
have been brought to a speedy termination by the first sight of his first
grandchild, which appeared to fill him with the belief that some alarming
miracle had happened to Joe. Being promptly blooded, however, by a skilful
surgeon, he rallied; and although the doctors all agreed, on his being attacked
with symptoms of apoplexy six months afterwards, that he ought to die, and took
it very ill that he did not, he remained alive--possibly on account of his
constitutional slowness-- for nearly seven years more, when he was one morning
found speechless in his bed. He lay in this state, free from all tokens of
uneasiness, for a whole week, when he was suddenly restored to consciousness by
hearing the nurse whisper in his son's ear that he was going. 'I'm a-going,
Joseph,' said Mr Willet, turning round upon the instant, 'to the
Salwanners'--and immediately gave up the ghost.
He left a large sum of money behind him; even more than he was supposed to
have been worth, although the neighbours, according to the custom of mankind in
calculating the wealth that other people ought to have saved, had estimated his
property in good round numbers. Joe inherited the whole; so that he became a man
of great consequence in those parts, and was perfectly independent.
Some time elapsed before Barnaby got the better of the shock he had
sustained, or regained his old health and gaiety. But he recovered by degrees:
and although he could never separate his condemnation and escape from the idea
of a terrific dream, he became, in other respects, more rational. Dating from
the time of his recovery, he had a better memory and greater steadiness of
purpose; but a dark cloud overhung his whole previous existence, and never
cleared away.
He was not the less happy for this, for his love of freedom and interest in
all that moved or grew, or had its being in the elements, remained to him
unimpaired. He lived with his mother on the Maypole farm, tending the poultry
and the cattle, working in a garden of his own, and helping everywhere. He was
known to every bird and beast about the place, and had a name for every one.
Never was there a lighter-hearted husbandman, a creature more popular with young
and old, a blither or more happy soul than Barnaby; and though he was free to
ramble where he would, he never quitted Her, but was for evermore her stay and
comfort.
It was remarkable that although he had that dim sense of the past, he sought
out Hugh's dog, and took him under his care; and that he never could be tempted
into London. When the Riots were many years old, and Edward and his wife came
back to England with a family almost as numerous as Dolly's, and one day
appeared at the Maypole porch, he knew them instantly, and wept and leaped for
joy. But neither to visit them, nor on any other pretence, no matter how full of
promise and enjoyment, could he be persuaded to set foot in the streets: nor did
he ever conquer this repugnance or look upon the town again.
Grip soon recovered his looks, and became as glossy and sleek as ever. But he
was profoundly silent. Whether he had forgotten the art of Polite Conversation
in Newgate, or had made a vow in those troubled times to forego, for a period,
the display of his accomplishments, is matter of uncertainty; but certain it is
that for a whole year he never indulged in any other sound than a grave,
decorous croak. At the expiration of that term, the morning being very bright
and sunny, he was heard to address himself to the horses in the stable, upon the
subject of the Kettle, so often mentioned in these pages; and before the witness
who overheard him could run into the house with the intelligence, and add to it
upon his solemn affirmation the statement that he had heard him laugh, the bird
himself advanced with fantastic steps to the very door of the bar, and there
cried, 'I'm a devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil!' with extraordinary rapture.
From that period (although he was supposed to be much affected by the death
of Mr Willet senior), he constantly practised and improved himself in the vulgar
tongue; and, as he was a mere infant for a raven when Barnaby was grey, he has
very probably gone on
talking to the present time.
End
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