Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General Part 8

"And are you, sir, such a scoundrel--such an a.s.sa.s.sin--as to ask a man to your table in order to betray him?"

"These are strong epithets, F., and I'll not discuss them; but if you ask, Are you going to dine here today? I'd say, No. And if you should ask, Where are, you likely to pa.s.s the evening? I'd hint, In the city jail."

At this F. lost all command over himself, and broke out into a torrent of the wildest abuse. He was strong of epithets, and did not spare them. He stormed, he swore, he threatened, he vociferated; but L., imperturbable throughout all, only interposed with an occasional mild remonstrance--a subdued hint--that his language was less than polite or parliamentary. At length the door opened, two gendarmes appeared, and N.

F. was consigned to their hands and removed.

The accusations against him were manifold; from before and since the day of the governesses, he had been living a life of dishonesty and fraud.

German law proceedings are not characterised by any rash impetuosity; the initial steps in F.'s case took about eighteen months, during which he remained a prisoner. At the end of this time the judges discovered some informality in his committal; and as L. was absent from Munich, and no one at the Legation much interested in the case, the man was liberated on signing a declaration--to which Bavarian authorities, it would seem, attach value--that he was "a rogue and a vagabond;"

confessions which the Captain possibly deemed as absurd an act of "surplusage" as though he were to give a written declaration that he was a vertebrated animal and a biped.

He went forth once more, and, difficult as it appears to the intelligence of honest and commonplace folk, he went forth to prosper and live luxuriously--so gullible is the world, so ready and eager to be cheated and deceived. Sir Edward Lytton has somewhere declared that a single number of the 'Times' newspaper, taken at random, would be the very best and most complete picture of our daily life--the fullest exponent of our notions, wants, wishes, and aspirations. Not a hope, nor fear, nor prejudice--not a particle of our blind trustfulness, or of our as blind unbelief, that would not find its reflex in the broadsheet. R.

N. F. had arrived at the same conclusion, only in a more limited sense.

The advertis.e.m.e.nt columns were all to him. What cared he for foreign wars, or the state of the Funds? as little did he find interest in railway intelligence, or "our own correspondent." What he wanted was, the people who inquired after a missing relative--a long-lost son or brother, who was supposed to have died in the Mauritius or Mexico: an affectionate mother who desired tidings as to the burial-place of a certain James or John, who had been travelling in a particular year in the south of Spain: an inquirer for the will of Paul somebody: or any one who could supply evidence as to the marriage of Sarah Meekins _alias_ Crouther, supposed to have been celebrated before her Majesty's Vice-Consul at Kooroobakaboo--these were the paragraphs that touched him.

Never was there such a union of intelligence and sympathy as in him! He knew everybody, and seemed not alone to have been known to, but actually beloved by, every one. It was in _his_ arms poor Joe died at Aden. _He_ gave away Maria at Tunis. He followed Tom to his grave at Corfu; and he was the mysterious stranger who, on board the P. and O. boat, offered his purse to Edward, and was almost offended at being denied. The way in which this man tracked the stories of families through the few lines of a newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt was positively marvellous. Whatever was wanting in the way of evidence of this, or clue to that, came at once into his attributions.

A couple of years ago, an English lady, the wife of a clergyman, pa.s.sed a winter at Rome with her daughter, and in the mixed society of that capital made acquaintance with a Polish Count of most charming manners and fascinating address. The acquaintance ripened into intimacy, and ended in an attachment which led to the marriage of the young lady with the distinguished exile.

On arriving in England, however, it was discovered that the accomplished Count was a common soldier, and a deserter from the Prussian army; and means were accordingly had recourse to in order to obtain a divorce, and the breach of a marriage accomplished under a fraudulent representation.

While the proceedings were but in the initiative, there came a letter from Oneglia, near Nice, to the afflicted mother of the young lady, recalling to her mind the elderly gentleman with the blue spectacles who usually sat next her at the English Church at Rome. He was the writer of the present letter, who, in turning over the columns of the 'Times' read the melancholy story of her daughter's betrayal and misery. By one of those fortunate accidents more frequent in novels than in life, he had the means of befriending her, and very probably of rescuing her from her present calamity. He, the writer, had actually been present at the wedding, and as a witness had signed the marriage-certificate of that same _soi-disant_ Count Stanislaus Sobieski Something-or-other, at Lemberg, in the year '49, and knew that the unhappy but deserted wife was yet living. A certain momentary pressure of money prevented his at once coming to England to testify to this fact; but if a small sum, sufficient to pay a little balance he owed his innkeeper and wherewithal to make his journey to England, were forwarded to the address of Frederick Brooks, Esq., or lodged to his account at the Bank of French & Co., Florence, he would at once hasten to London and depose formally to every fact he had stated. By the merest accident I myself saw this letter, which the lady had, for more accurate information about the writer, sent to the banker at Florence, and in an instant I detected the fine Roman hand of R. N. F. It is needless to say that this shot went wide of the mark.

But that this fellow has lived for upwards of twenty years, travelling the Continent in every direction, eating and drinking at the best hotels, frequenting theatres, cafes, and public gardens, denying himself nothing, is surely a shame and a disgrace to the police of Europe, which has been usually satisfied to pa.s.s him over a frontier, and suffer him to continue his depredations on the citizens of another state. Of the obloquy he has brought upon his own country I do not speak. We must, I take it, have our scoundrels like other people; the only great grievance here is, that the fellow's ubiquity is such that it is hard to believe that the swindler who walked off with the five watches from Hamburg is the same who, in less than eight days afterwards, borrowed fifty ducats from a waiter at Naples, and "bolted."

Of late I have observed he has dropped his second _prenom_ of Napoleon, and does not call himself by it. There is perhaps in this omission a delicate forbearance, a sense of refined deference to the other bearer of that name, whom he recognises as his master.

In the ingenuity of his manifold devices even religion has not escaped him, and it would be impossible to count how often he has left the "Establishment" for Rome, been converted, reconverted, reconciled, and brought home again--always, be it noted, at the special charge of so much money from the Church Fund, or a subscription from the faithful, ever zealous and eager to a.s.sist a really devout and truly sincere convert!

That this man is an aspiring and ambitious vagabond may be seen in the occasional raids he makes into the very best society, without having, at least to ordinary eyes, anything to obtain in these ventures, beyond the triumph of seeing himself where exposure and detection would be certain to be followed by the most condign punishment. At Rome, for instance--how, I cannot say--he obtained admission to the Duc de Grammont's receptions; and at Florence, under the pretext of being a proprietor, and "a most influential" one, of the 'Times,' he breakfasted, by special invitation, with Baron Ricasoli, and had a long and most interesting conversation with him as to the conditions--of course political--on which he would consent to support Italian unity.

These must have been done in pure levity; they were imaginative excursions, thrown off in the spirit of those fanciful variations great violinists will now and then indulge in, as though to say, "Is there a path too intricate for me to thread, is there a pinnacle too fine for me to balance on?"

A great deal of this fellow's long impunity results from the shame men feel in confessing to have been "done" by him. n.o.body likes the avowal, acknowledging, as it does, a certain defect in discrimination, and a natural reluctance to own to having been the dupe of one of the most barefaced and vulgar rogues in Europe.

There is one circ.u.mstance in this case which might open a very curious psychological question; it is this: F.'s victims have not in general been the frank, open, free-giving, or trustful cla.s.s of men; on the contrary, they have usually been close-fisted, cold, cautious people, who weigh carefully what they do, and are rarely the dupes of their own impulsiveness. F. is an Irishman, and yet his successes have been far more with English--ay, even with Scotchmen--than with his own countrymen.

In part this may be accounted for by the fact that F. did not usually present himself as one in utter want and completely dest.i.tute; his appeal for money was generally made on the ground of some speculation that was to repay the lender; it was because he knew "something to your advantage" that he asked for that 10. He addressed himself, in consequence, to the more mercantile spirit of a richer community--to those, in fact, who, more conversant with trade, better understood the meaning of an investment.

But there was another, and, as I take it, a stronger and less fallible ground for success. This fellow has, what all Irishmen are more or less gifted with, an immense amount of vitality, a quality which undeniably makes a man companionable, however little there may be to our taste in his manner, his education, or his bearing. This same vitality imparts itself marvellously to the colder temperaments of others, and gives out its own warmth to natures that never of themselves felt the glow of an impulse, or the glorious furnace-heat of a rash action.

This was the magnetism he worked with. "Canny" Scotchmen and shrewd Yankees--ay, even Swiss innkeepers--felt the touch of his quality.

There was, or there seemed to be, a geniality in the fellow that, in its apparent contempt for all worldliness, threw men off their guard, and it would have smacked of meanness to distrust a fellow so open and unguarded.

Now Paddy has seen a good deal of this at home, and could no more be humbugged by it than he could believe a potato to be a truffle.

F. was too perfect an artist ever to perform in an Irish part to an Irish audience, and so he owes little or nothing to the land of his birth.

Apart from his unquestionable success, which of course settles the question, I would not have called him a great performer--indeed, my astonishment has always been how he succeeded, or with whom.

"Don't tell me of Beresford's blunders," said the Great Duke after Albuera. "Did he beat Soult? if so, he was a good officer."

This man's triumphs are some twenty odd years of expensive living, with occasional excursions into good society. He wears broadcloth, and dines on venison, when his legitimate costume had been the striped uniform of the galleys, and his diet the black bread of a convict.

The injury these men do in life is not confined to the misery their heartless frauds inflict, for the very humblest and poorest are often their victims: they do worse, in the way they sow distrust and suspicion of really deserving objects, in the pretext they afford the miserly man to draw closer his purse-strings, and "not be imposed on;" and, worst of all, in the ill repute they spread of a nation which, not attractive by the graces of manner or the charms of a winning address, yet cherished the thought that in truthfulness and fair dealing there was not one could gainsay it.

As I write, I have just heard tidings of R. N. F. One of our most distinguished travellers and discoverers, lately returning from Venice to the South, pa.s.sed the night at Padua, and met there what he described as an Indian officer--Major Newton--who was travelling, he said, with a nephew of Lord Palmer-ston's.

The Major was a man fall of anecdote, and abounded in knowledge of people and places; he had apparently been everywhere with everybody, and, with a communicativeness not always met with in old soldiers, gave to the stranger a rapid sketch of his own most adventurous life. As the evening wore on, he told too how he was waiting there for a friend, a certain N. F., who was no other than himself, the nephew of Lord Palmerston being represented by his son, an apt youth, who has already given bright promise of what his later years may develop.

N. F. retired to bed at last, so much overcome by brandy-and-water that my informant escaped being asked for a loan, which I plainly see he would not have had the fort.i.tude to have refused; and the following morning he started so early that N. F., wide awake as he usually is, was not vigilant enough to have antic.i.p.ated.

I hope these brief details, _pour servir a l'histoire de Monsieur R. N.

F._, may save some kind-hearted traveller from the designs of a thorough blackguard, and render his future machinations through the press more difficult to effect and more certain of exposure.

I had scarcely finished this brief, imperfect sketch, when I read in 'Galignani' the following:--

"Swindling on the Continent.--A letter from Venice of March 29 gives us the following piece of information which may still be of service to some of our readers, though, from the fact with which it concludes, it would seem that the proceedings, of the party have been brought to a standstill, at least for some time. This is not, however, it may be recollected, the first occasion we have had to bring the conduct of the individual referred to under the notice of our readers for similar practices:--

"'I am informed that one Mr Newton, _alias_ Neville, _alias_ Fane, and with a dozen other _aliases_, has been arrested at Padua for swindling.

This ubiquitous gentleman has been travelling for some years at the expense of hotel-keepers, and other geese easily fleeced, on the Continent In the year 1862, Mr Neville and his two sons made their suspicious appearance at Venice, and they now, minus the younger son, have visited Padua as Mr Robert N. Newton and son, taking up their residence at the Stella d'Oro. They arrived without luggage and without money, both of which had been lost in the Danube; but they expected remittances from India! The obliging landlord lent money, purchased clothes, fed them gloriously, and contrived, between the 8th Feb.

and 25th of March, to become the creditor of Newton and son for 1000 swanzig. The expenses continued, but the remittances never came.

The patient landlord began to lose that virtue, and denounced these _aliases_ as swindlers. The police of Vienna, hearing of the event, sent information that these two accommodating gentlemen had practised the victimising art for two months in December last at the Hotel Regina Inghilterre, at Pesth, run up a current account of 700 florins, and decamped; and a hotel-keeper recognised the scamps as having re-resided at the Luna, in Venice, in 1862, and "plucked some profit from that pale-faced moon." Mr Newton's handwriting proved him to be in 1863 one Major Fane, who had generously proposed to bring all his family, consisting of ten persons, to pa.s.s the winter at the Barbesi Hotel at Venice, if the proprietor would forward him 700 fr., as, owing to his wife's prolonged residence at Rome and Naples, he was short of money, which, however, he expected, would cease on the arrival of supplies from Calcutta. These gentlemen are now in durance vile, and there is no doubt but that this letter will lead to their recognition by many other victims.'"

Let no sanguine enthusiast for the laws of property imagine, however, that this great man's career is now ended, and that R. N. F. will no more go forth as of old to plunder and to rob. Imprisonment for debt is a grievous violation of personal liberty certainly, but it is finite; and some fine morning, when the lark is carolling high in heaven, and the bright rivulets are laughing in the gay sunlight, R. N. F. will issue from his dungeon to taste again the sweets of liberty, and to partake once more of the fleshpots of some confiding landlord. F. is a man of great resources, doubtless. When he repeats a part, he feels the same sort of repugnance that Fechter would to giving a fiftieth representation of Hamlet, but he would bow to the necessity which a clamorous public imposes, however his own taste might rebel against the dreariness of the task. Still, I feel a.s.sured that he will next appear in a new part. We shall hear of him--that is certain. He will be in search of a lost will, by which he would inherit millions, or a Salvator Rosa that he has been engaged to buy for the Queen, or perhaps he will be a missionary to a.s.sist in that religious movement now observable in Italy. How dare I presume, in my narrow inventiveness, to suggest to such a master of the art as he is? I only know that, whether he comes before the world as the friend of Sir Hugh Rose, a proprietor of the 'Times,' the agent of Lord Palmerston, or a recent convert from Popery, he will sustain his part admirably; and that same world that he has duped, robbed, and swindled for more than a quarter of a century will still feed and clothe him--still believe in the luggage that never comes, and the remittance that will never turn up.

After all, the man must be a greater artist than I was willing to believe him to be. He must be a deep student of the human heart--not, perhaps, in its highest moods; and he must well understand how to touch certain chords which give their response in unlimited confidence and long credit.

No doubt there must be some wondrous fascination in these changeful fortunes--these ups and downs of life--otherwise no man could have gone, as he has, for nigh thirty years, hunted, badgered, insulted, and imprisoned in almost every capital of Europe, and yet no sooner liberated than, like a giant refreshed, he again returns to his old toil, never weary wherever the bread of idleness can be eaten, and where a lie will pay for his liquor.

Talk of novel-writers--this is the great master of fiction--the man who brings the product of imagination to the real test of credibility--the actual interest of his public. Let him fail in his description, his narrative, the progress of his events, or their probability, and he is ruined at once. He must not alone arrange the circ.u.mstances of his story, but he must perform the hero, and that, too, as we saw lately at Padua, without any advent.i.tious aid of dress or costume. I can fancy what a sorry figure some of our popular tale-writers would present if they had to appeal to an innkeeper with this poor story of their luggage lost in the Danube. What a contempt the rascal must have had for Italian notions of geography, too, when he adopted a river so remote from where he stood! And yet I'd swear he was as cool, as collected, and as self-sustained at that moment, as ever was Mr Gladstone in the House as he rose to move a motion of supply.

Well, he is in Padua now, doubtless dreaming of fresh conquests, and not impossibly speculating on a world whose gullibility is indeed infinite, and which actually seems to take the same pleasure in being cheated in Fact as it does in being deceived in Fiction. Who knows if the time is not coming when, instead of sending a box of new novels to the country, some Mr Mudie will despatch one of these R. N. F. folk by a fast train, with a line to say, "A great success: his Belgian rogueries most amusing; the exploit at Madrid equal to anything in 'Gil Bias'."

GaRIBaLDI

We had a very witty Judge in Ireland, who was not very scrupulous about giving hard knocks to his brothers on the bench, and who, in delivering a judgment in a cause, found that he was to give the casting-vote between his two colleagues, who were diametrically opposed to each other, and who had taken great pains to lay down the reasons for their several opinions at considerable length. "It now comes to my turn," said he, "to declare my view of this case, and fortunately I can afford to be brief. I agree with my brother B. from the irresistible force of the admirable argument of my brother M."

The story occurred to me as I thought over Garibaldi and the enthusiastic reception you gave him in England; for I really felt, if it had not been for Carlyle, I might have been a bit of a hero-wors.h.i.+pper myself The grand frescoes in caricature of the popular historian have, however, given me a hearty and wholesome disgust to the whole thing; not to say that, however enthusiastic a man may feel about his idol, he must be sorely ashamed of his fellow-wors.h.i.+ppers. "Lie down with dogs, and you'll get up with fleas," says an old Irish adage; but what, in the name of all entomology, is a man to get up with who lies down with these votaries of Garibaldi? So fine a fellow, and so mangy a following, it would be hard to find. The opportunity for all the blatant balderdash of shopkeeping eloquence, of that high "Falootin" style so popular over the Atlantic, of those grand-sounding periods about freedom and love of country, was not to be lost by a set of people who, in all their enthusiasm for Garibaldi, are intently bent on making themselves foreground figures in the tableau that should have been filled by himself alone.

"Sir Francis Burdett call _you_ his friend!--as well call a Bug his bedfellow!" said the st.u.r.dy old yeoman, whose racy English I should like to borrow, to characterise the stupid incongruity between Garibaldi and his wors.h.i.+ppers. It is not easy to conceive anything finer, simpler, more thoroughly unaffected, or more truly dignified, than the man himself. His n.o.ble head; his clear, honest, brown eye; his finely-traced mouth, beautiful as a woman's, and only strung up to sternness when anything ign.o.ble or mean had outraged him; and, last of all, his voice contains a fascination perfectly irresistible, allied, as you knew and felt these graces were, with a thoroughly pure, untarnished nature. The true measure of the man lies in the fact that, though his life has been a series of the boldest and most daring achievements, his courage is about the very last quality uppermost in your mind when you meet him.

It is of the winning softness of his look and manner, his kind thoughtfulness for others, his sincere pity for all suffering, his gentleness, his modesty, his manly sense of brotherhood with the very humblest of the men who have loved him, that you think: these are the traits that throw all his heroism into shadow; and all the glory of the conqueror pales before the simple virtues of the man.

He never looked to more advantage than in that humble life of Caprera, where people came and went--some, old and valued friends, whose presence warmed up their host's heart; others, mere pa.s.sing acquaintances, or, as it might be, not even that; wors.h.i.+ppers or curiosity-seekers--living where and how they could in that many-roomed small house; diving into the kitchen to boil their coffee; sallying out to the garden to pluck their radishes; down to the brook for a cress, or to the seaside to catch a fish,--all more or less busy in the midst of a strange idleness; for there was not--beyond providing for the mere wants of the day--anything to be done. The soil would not yield anything. There was no cultivation outside that little garden, where the grand old soldier delved, or rested on his spade-handle as he turned his gaze over the sea, doubtless thinking of the dear land beyond it.

At dinner--and what a strange meal it was--all met, full of the little incidents of an uneventful day. The veriest trifles they were, but of interest to those who listened, and to none more than Garibaldi himself, who liked to hear who had been over to Maddalena, and what sport they had; or whether Albanesi had taken any mullet, and who it was said he could mend the boat? and who was to paint her? Not a word was spoken of the political events of the world, and every mention of them was as rigidly excluded as though a government spy had been seated at the table.

He rarely spoke himself, but was a good listener--not merely hearing with attention, but showing, by an occasional suggestion or a hint, how his mind speculated on the subject before him. If, however, led to speak of himself or his exploits, the unaffected ease and simplicity of the man became at once evident. Never, by any chance, would an expression escape him that redounded to his own share in any achievement; without any studied avoidance the matter would somehow escape, or, if accidentally touched on, be done so very lightly as to make it appear of no moment whatever.