A Story

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by William Makepeace Thackeray

grovelling among the stones, gibbering and writhing in a fit of

  epilepsy.

  Catherine started forward and looked up. She had been standing

  against a post, not a tree--the moon was shining full on it now; and

  on the summit strangely distinct, and smiling ghastly, was a livid

  human head.

  The wretched woman fled--she dared look no more. And some hours

  afterwards, when, alarmed by the Count's continued absence, his

  confidential servant came back to seek for him in the churchyard, he

  was found sitting on the flags, staring full at the head, and

  laughing, and talking to it wildly, and nodding at it. He was taken

  up a hopeless idiot, and so lived for years and years; clanking the

  chain, and moaning under the lash, and howling through long nights

  when the moon peered through the bars of his solitary cell, and he

  buried his face in the straw.

  * * *

  There--the murder is out! And having indulged himself in a chapter

  of the very finest writing, the author begs the attention of the

  British public towards it; humbly conceiving that it possesses some

  of those peculiar merits which have rendered the fine writing in

  other chapters of the works of other authors so famous.

  Without bragging at all, let us just point out the chief claims of

  the above pleasing piece of composition. In the first place, it is

  perfectly stilted and unnatural; the dialogue and the sentiments

  being artfully arranged, so as to be as strong and majestic as

  possible. Our dear Cat is but a poor illiterate country wench, who

  has come from cutting her husband's throat; and yet, see! she talks

  and looks like a tragedy princess, who is suffering in the most

  virtuous blank verse. This is the proper end of fiction, and one of

  the greatest triumphs that a novelist can achieve: for to make

  people sympathise with virtue is a vulgar trick that any common

  fellow can do; but it is not everybody who can take a scoundrel, and

  cause us to weep and whimper over him as though he were a very

  saint. Give a young lady of five years old a skein of silk and a

  brace of netting-needles, and she will in a short time turn you out

  a decent silk purse--anybody can; but try her with a sow's ear, and

  see whether she can make a silk purse out of THAT. That is the work

  for your real great artist; and pleasant it is to see how many have

  succeeded in these latter days.

  The subject is strictly historical, as anyone may see by referring

  to the Daily Post of March 3, 1726, which contains the following

  paragraph:

  "Yesterday morning, early, a man's head, that by the freshness of it

  seemed to have been newly cut off from the body, having its own hair

  on, was found by the river's side, near Millbank, Westminster, and

  was afterwards exposed to public view in St. Margaret's churchyard,

  where thousands of people have seen it; but none could tell who the

  unhappy person was, much less who committed such a horrid and

  barbarous action. There are various conjectures relating to the

  deceased; but there being nothing certain, we omit them. The head

  was much hacked and mangled in the cutting off."

  The head which caused such an impression upon Monsieur de

  Galgenstein was, indeed, once on the shoulders of Mr. John Hayes,

  who lost it under the following circumstances. We have seen how Mr.

  Hayes was induced to drink. Mr. Hayes having been encouraged in

  drinking the wine, and growing very merry therewith, he sang and

  danced about the room; but his wife, fearing the quantity he had

  drunk would not have the wished-for effect on him, she sent away for

  another bottle, of which he drank also. This effectually answered

  their expectations; and Mr. Hayes became thereby intoxicated, and

  deprived of his understanding.

  He, however, made shift to get into the other room, and, throwing

  himself upon the bed, fell asleep; upon which Mrs. Hayes reminded

  them of the affair in hand, and told them that was the most proper

  juncture to finish the business. *

  * * *

  * The description of the murder and the execution of the culprits,

  which here follows in the original, was taken from the newspapers of

  the day. Coming from such a source they have, as may be imagined,

  no literary merit whatever. The details of the crime are simply

  horrible, without one touch of even that sort of romance which

  sometimes gives a little dignity to murder. As such they precisely

  suited Mr. Thackeray's purpose at the time--which was to show the

  real manners and customs of the Sheppards and Turpins who were then

  the popular heroes of fiction. But nowadays there is no such

  purpose to serve, and therefore these too literal details are

  omitted.

  * * *

  Ring, ding, ding! the gloomy green curtain drops, the dramatis

  personae are duly disposed of, the nimble candle snuffers put out

  the lights, and the audience goeth pondering home. If the critic

  take the pains to ask why the author, who hath been so diffuse in

  describing the early and fabulous acts of Mrs. Catherine's

  existence, should so hurry off the catastrophe where a deal of the

  very finest writing might have been employed, Solomons replies that

  the "ordinary" narrative is far more emphatic than any composition

  of his own could be, with all the rhetorical graces which he might

  employ. Mr. Aram's trial, as taken by the penny-a-liners of those

  days, had always interested him more than the lengthened and

  poetical report which an eminent novelist has given of the same.

  Mr. Turpin's adventures are more instructive and agreeable to him in

  the account of the Newgate Plutarch, than in the learned Ainsworth's

  Biographical Dictionary. And as he believes that the professional

  gentlemen who are employed to invest such heroes with the rewards

  that their great actions merit, will go through the ceremony of the

  grand cordon with much more accuracy and despatch than can be shown

  by the most distinguished amateur; in like manner he thinks that the

  history of such investitures should be written by people directly

  concerned, and not by admiring persons without, who must be ignorant

  of many of the secrets of Ketchcraft. We very much doubt if Milton

  himself could make a description of an execution half so horrible as

  the simple lines in the Daily Post of a hundred and ten years since,

  that now lies before us--"herrlich wie am ersten Tag,"--as bright

  and clean as on the day of publication. Think of it! it has been

  read by Belinda at her toilet, scanned at "Button's" and "Will's,"

  sneered at by wits, talked of in palaces and cottages, by a busy

  race in wigs, red heels, hoops, patches, and rags of all variety--a

  busy race that hath long since plunged and vanished in the

  unfathomable gulf towards which we march so briskly.

  Where are they? "Afflavit Deus"--and they are gone! Hark! is not

  the same wind roaring still that shall sweep us down? and yonder

  stan
ds the compositor at his types who shall put up a pretty

  paragraph some day to say how, "Yesterday, at his house in Grosvenor

  Square," or "At Botany Bay, universally regretted," died So-and-So.

  Into what profound moralities is the paragraph concerning Mrs.

  Catherine's burning leading us!

  Ay, truly, and to that very point have we wished to come; for,

  having finished our delectable meal, it behoves us to say a word or

  two by way of grace at its conclusion, and be heartily thankful that

  it is over. It has been the writer's object carefully to exclude

  from his drama (except in two very insignificant instances--mere

  walking-gentlemen parts), any characters but those of scoundrels of

  the very highest degree. That he has not altogether failed in the

  object he had in view, is evident from some newspaper critiques

  which he has had the good fortune to see; and which abuse the tale

  of "Catherine" as one of the dullest, most vulgar, and immoral works

  extant. It is highly gratifying to the author to find that such

  opinions are abroad, as they convince him that the taste for Newgate

  literature is on the wane, and that when the public critic has right

  down undisguised immorality set before him, the honest creature is

  shocked at it, as he should be, and can declare his indignation in

  good round terms of abuse. The characters of the tale ARE immoral,

  and no doubt of it; but the writer humbly hopes the end is not so.

  The public was, in our notion, dosed and poisoned by the prevailing

  style of literary practice, and it was necessary to administer some

  medicine that would produce a wholesome nausea, and afterwards bring

  about a more healthy habit.

  And, thank Heaven, this effect HAS been produced in very many

  instances, and that the "Catherine" cathartic has acted most

  efficaciously. The author has been pleased at the disgust which his

  work has excited, and has watched with benevolent carefulness the

  wry faces that have been made by many of the patients who have

  swallowed the dose. Solomons remembers, at the establishment in

  Birchin Lane where he had the honour of receiving his education,

  there used to be administered to the boys a certain cough-medicine,

  which was so excessively agreeable that all the lads longed to have

  colds in order to partake of the remedy. Some of our popular

  novelists have compounded their drugs in a similar way, and made

  them so palatable that a public, once healthy and honest, has been

  well-nigh poisoned by their wares. Solomons defies anyone to say

  the like of himself--that his doses have been as pleasant as

  champagne, and his pills as sweet as barley-sugar;--it has been his

  attempt to make vice to appear entirely vicious; and in those

  instances where he hath occasionally introduced something like

  virtue, to make the sham as evident as possible, and not allow the

  meanest capacity a single chance to mistake it.

  And what has been the consequence? That wholesome nausea which it

  has been his good fortune to create wherever he has been allowed to

  practise in his humble circle.

  Has anyone thrown away a halfpennyworth of sympathy upon any person

  mentioned in this history? Surely no. But abler and more famous

  men than Solomons have taken a different plan; and it becomes every

  man in his vocation to cry out against such, and expose their errors

  as best he may.

  Labouring under such ideas, Mr. Isaac Solomons, junior, produced the

  romance of Mrs. Cat, and confesses himself completely happy to have

  brought it to a conclusion. His poem may be dull--ay, and probably

  is. The great Blackmore, the great Dennis, the great Sprat, the

  great Pomfret, not to mention great men of our own time--have they

  not also been dull, and had pretty reputations too? Be it granted

  Solomons IS dull; but don't attack his morality; he humbly submits

  that, in his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no man

  shall allow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to enter his

  bosom for any character of the piece: it being, from beginning to

  end, a scene of unmixed rascality performed by persons who never

  deviate into good feeling. And although he doth not pretend to

  equal the great modern authors, whom he hath mentioned, in wit or

  descriptive power; yet, in the point of moral, he meekly believes

  that he has been their superior; feeling the greatest disgust for

  the characters he describes, and using his humble endeavour to cause

  the public also to hate them.

  Horsemonger Lane: January 1840.

 

 

 


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