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The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 written by Charles Lamb

C >> Charles Lamb >> The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4




Ask the married man, who has been so but for a short space of time,
if those blue eyes where, during so many years of anxious courtship,
truth, sweetness, serenity, seemed to be written in characters which
could not be misunderstood--ask him if the characters which they now
convey be exactly the same?--if for truth he does not _read_ a dull
virtue (the mimic of constancy) which changes not, only because it
wants the judgment to make a preference?--if for sweetness he does
not _read_ a stupid habit of looking pleased at everything?--if for
serenity he does not _read_ animal tranquillity, the dead pool of the
heart, which no breeze of passion can stir into health? Alas! what is
this book of the countenance good for, which when we have read so
long, and thought that we understood its contents, there comes a
countless list of heart-breaking errata at the end!

But these are the pitiable mistakes to which love alone is subject. I
have inadvertently wandered from my purpose, which was to expose
quite an opposite blunder, into which we are no less apt to fall,
through hate. How ugly a person looks upon whose reputation some
awkward aspersion hangs, and how suddenly his countenance clears up
with his character! I remember being persuaded of a man whom I had
conceived an ill opinion of, that he had a very bad set of teeth;
which, since I have had better opportunities of being acquainted with
his face and facts, I find to have been the very reverse of the
truth. _That crooked old woman_, I once said, speaking of an ancient
gentlewoman, whose actions did not square altogether with my notions
of the rule of right. The unanimous surprise of the company before
whom I uttered these words soon convinced me that I had confounded
mental with bodily obliquity, and that there was nothing tortuous
about the old lady but her deeds.

This humor of mankind to deny personal comeliness to those with whose
moral attributes they are dissatisfied, is very strongly shown in
those advertisements which stare us in the face from the walls of
every street, and, with the tempting bait which they hang forth,
stimulate at once cupidity and an abstract love of justice in the
breast of every passing peruser: I mean, the advertisements offering
rewards for the apprehension of absconded culprits, strayed
apprentices, bankrupts who have conveyed away their effects, debtors
that have run away from their bail. I observe, that in exact
proportion to the indignity with which the prosecutor, who is
commonly the framer of the advertisement, conceives he has been
treated, the personal pretensions of the fugitive are denied, and his
defects exaggerated.

A fellow whose misdeeds have been directed against the public in
general, and in whose delinquency no individual shall feel himself
particularly interested, generally meets with fair usage. A coiner or
a smuggler shall get off tolerably well. His beauty, if he has any,
is not much underrated, his deformities are not much magnified. A
runaway apprentice, who excites perhaps the next least degree of
spleen in his prosecutor, generally escapes with a pair of bandy
legs; if he has taken anything with him in his flight, a hitch in his
gait is generally superadded. A bankrupt, who has been guilty of
withdrawing his effects, if his case be not very atrocious, commonly
meets with mild usage. But a debtor, who has left his bail in
jeopardy, is sure to be described in characters of unmingled
deformity. Here the personal feelings of the bail, which may be
allowed to be somewhat poignant, are admitted to interfere; and, as
wrath and revenge commonly strike in the dark, the colors are laid on
with a grossness which I am convinced must often defeat its own
purpose. The fish that casts an inky cloud about him that his enemies
may not find him, cannot more obscure himself by that device than the
blackening representations of these angry advertisers must inevitably
serve to cloak and screen the persons of those who have injured them
from detection. I have before me at this moment one of these bills,
which runs thus:--

"FIFTY POUNDS REWARD.

"Run away from his bail, John Tomkins, formerly resident in Princes
Street, Soho, but lately of Clerkenwell. Whoever shall apprehend, or
cause to be apprehended and lodged in one of his Majesty's jails, the
said John Tomkins, shall receive the above reward. He is a thick-set,
sturdy man, about five foot six inches high, halts in his left leg,
with a stoop in his gait, with coarse red hair, nose short and cocked
up, with little gray eyes, (one of them bears the effect of a blow
which he has lately received,) with a pot-belly; speaks with a thick
and disagreeable voice; goes shabbily drest; had on when he went away
a greasy shag great-coat with rusty yellow buttons."

Now, although it is not out of the compass of possibility that John
Tomkins aforesaid may comprehend in his agreeable person all the
above-mentioned aggregate of charms, yet, from my observation of the
manner in which these advertisements are usually drawn up, though I
have not the pleasure of knowing the gentleman, yet would I lay a
wager, that an advertisement to the following effect would have a
much better chance of apprehending and laying by the heels this John
Tomkins than the above description, although penned by one who, from
the good services which he appears to have done for him, has not
improbably been blessed with some years of previous intercourse with
the said John. Taking, then, the above advertisement to be true, or
nearly so, down to the words "left leg" inclusive, (though I have
some doubt if the blemish there implied amount to a positive
lameness, or be perceivable by any but the nearest friends of John,)
I would proceed thus:--

--"Leans a little forward in his walk; his hair thick and inclining
to auburn; his nose of the middle size, a little turned up at the
end; lively hazel eyes (the contusion, as its effects are probably
gone off by this time, I judge better omitted); inclines to be
corpulent; his voice thick, but pleasing, especially when he sings;
had on a decent shag great-coat with yellow buttons."

Now I would stake a considerable wager (though by no means a positive
man) that some such mitigated description would lead the beagles of
the law into a much surer track for finding this ungracious varlet,
than to set them upon a false scent after fictitious ugliness and
fictitious shabbiness; though, to do those gentlemen justice, I have
no doubt their experience has taught them in all such cases to abate
a great deal of the deformity which they are instructed to expect,
and has discovered to them that the Devil's agents upon this earth,
like their master, are far less ugly in reality than they are
painted.

I am afraid, Mr. Reflector, that I shall be thought to have gone wide
of my subject, which was to detect the practical errors of
physiognomy, properly so called; whereas I have introduced physical
defects, such as lameness, the effects of accidents upon a man's
person, his wearing apparel, &c., as circumstances on which the eye
of dislike, looking askance, may report erroneous conclusions to the
understanding. But if we are liable, through a kind or an unkind
passion, to mistake so grossly concerning things so exterior and
palpable, how much more are we likely to err respecting those nicer
and less perceptible hints of character in a face whose detection
constitutes the triumph of the physiognomist!

To revert to those bestowers of unmerited deformity, the framers of
advertisements for the apprehension of delinquents, a sincere desire
of promoting the end of public justice induces me to address a word
to them on the best means of attaining those ends. I will endeavor to
lay down a few practical, or rather negative, rules for their use,
for my ambition extends no further than to arm them with cautions
against the self-defeating of their own purposes:--

1. Imprimis, then, Mr. Advertiser! If the culprit whom you are
willing to recover be one to whom in times past you have shown
kindness, and been disposed to think kindly of him yourself, but he
has deceived your trust, and has run away, and left you with a load
of debt to answer for him,--sit down calmly and endeavor to behold
him through the spectacles of memory rather than of present conceit.
Image to yourself, before you pen a tittle of his description, the
same plausible, good-looking man who took you in, and try to put away
from your mind every intrusion of that deceitful spectre which
perpetually obtrudes itself in the room of your former friend's known
visage. It will do you more credit to have been deceived by such a
one; and depend upon it, the traitor will convey to the eyes of the
world in general much more of that first idea which you formed
(perhaps in part erroneous) of his physiognomy, than of that
frightful substitute which you have suffered to creep in upon your
mind and usurp upon it; a creature which has no archetype except in
your own brain.

2. If you be a master that have to advertise a runaway apprentice,
though the young dog's faults are known only to you, and no doubt his
conduct has been aggravating enough, do not presently set him down as
having crooked ankles. He may have a good pair of legs, and run away
notwithstanding. Indeed, the latter does rather seem to imply the
former.

3. If the unhappy person against whom your laudable vengeance is
directed be a thief, think that a thief may have a good nose, good
eyes, good ears. It is indispensable to his profession that he be
possessed of sagacity, foresight, vigilance; it is more than
probable, then, that he is endued with the bodily types or
instruments of these qualities to some tolerable degree of
perfectness.

4. If petty larceny be his offence, I exhort you, do not confound
meanness of crime with diminutiveness of stature. These things have
no connection. I have known a tall man stoop to the basest action, a
short man aspire to the height of crime, a fair man be guilty of the
foulest actions, &c.

5. Perhaps the offender has been guilty of some atrocious and
aggravated murder. Here is the most difficult case of all. It is
above all requisite that such a daring violator of the peace and
safety of society should meet with his reward, a violent and
ignominious death. But how shall we get at him? Who is there among us
that has known him before he committed the offence, that shall take
upon him to say he can sit down coolly and pen a dispassionate
description of a murderer? The tales of our nursery,--the reading of
our youth,--the ill-looking man that was hired by the Uncle to
despatch the Children in the Wood,--the grim ruffians who smothered
the babes in the Tower,--the black and beetle-browed assassin of Mrs.
Ratcliffe,--the shag-haired villain of Mr. Monk Lewis,--the Tarquin
tread, and mill-stone dropping eyes, of Murder in Shakspeare,--the
exaggerations of picture and of poetry,--what we have read and what
we have dreamed of,--rise up and crowd in upon us such eye-scaring
portraits of the man of blood, that our pen is absolutely
forestalled; we commence poets when we should play the part of
strictest historians, and the very blackness of horror which the deed
calls up, serves as a cloud to screen the doer. The fiction is
blameless, it is accordant with those wise prejudices with which
nature has guarded our innocence, as with impassable barriers,
against the commission of such appalling crimes; but, meantime, the
criminal escapes; or if,--owing to that wise abatement in their
expectation of deformity, which, as I hinted at before, the officers
of pursuit never fail to make, and no doubt in cases of this sort
they make a more than ordinary allowance,--if, owing to this or any
accident, the offender is caught and brought to his trial, who that
has been led out of curiosity to witness such a scene has not with
astonishment reflected on the difference between a real committer of
a murder, and the idea of one which he has been collecting and
heightening all his life out of books, dreams, &c.? The fellow,
perhaps, is a sleek, smug-looking man, with light hair and
eyebrows,--the latter by no means jutting out or like a crag,--and
with none of those marks which our fancy had pre-bestowed upon him.

I find I am getting unawares too serious; the best way on such
occasions is to leave off, which I shall do by generally recommending
to all prosecuting advertisers not to confound crimes with ugliness;
or rather, to distinguish between that physiognomical deformity,
which I am willing to grant always accompanies crime, and mere
_physical ugliness_,--which signifies nothing, is the opponent of
nothing, and may exist in a good or bad person indifferently.

CRITO.




ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING FROM
BEING HANGED.

* * * * *

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REFLECTOR."

Sir,--I am one of those unhappy persons whose misfortunes, it seems,
do not entitle them to the benefit of pure pity. All that is bestowed
upon me of that kindest alleviator of human miseries comes dashed
with a double portion of contempt. My griefs have nothing in them
that is felt as sacred by the bystanders. Yet is my affliction, in
truth, of the deepest grain--the heaviest task that was ever given to
mortal patience to sustain. Time, that wears out all other sorrows,
can never modify or soften mine. Here they must continue to gnaw as
long at that fatal mark----

Why was I ever born? Why was innocence in my person suffered to be
branded with a stain which was appointed only for the blackest guilt?
What had I done, or my parents, that a disgrace of mine should
involve a whole posterity in infamy? I am almost tempted to believe,
that, in some preexistent state, crimes to which this sublunary life
of mine hath been as much a stranger as the babe that is newly born
into it, have drawn down upon me this vengeance, so disproportionate
to my actions on this globe.

My brain sickens, and my bosom labors to be delivered of the weight
that presses upon it, yet my conscious pen shrinks from the avowal.
But out it must----

O, Mr. Reflector! guess at the wretch's misery who now writes this to
you, when, with tears and burning blushes, he is obliged to confess
that he has been--HANGED----

Methinks I hear an involuntary exclamation burst from you, as your
imagination presents to you fearful images of your correspondent
unknown--_hanged!_

Fear not, Mr. Editor. No disembodied spirit has the honor of
addressing you. I am flesh and blood, an unfortunate system of bones,
muscles, sinews, arteries, like yourself.

_Then, I presume, you mean to be pleasant.--That expression of yours,
Mr. Correspondent, must be taken somehow in a metaphorical sense----_

In the plainest sense, without trope or figure--Yes, Mr. Editor! this
neck of mine has felt the fatal noose,--these hands have tremblingly
held up the corroborative prayer-book,--these lips have sucked the
moisture of the last consolatory orange,--this tongue has chanted the
doleful cantata which no performer was ever called upon to
repeat,--this face has had the veiling nightcap drawn over it----

But for no crime of mine.--Far be it from me to arraign the justice
of my country, which, though tardy, did at length recognize my
innocence. It is not for me to reflect upon judge or jury, now that
eleven years have elapsed since the erroneous sentence was
pronounced. Men will always be fallible, and perhaps circumstances
did appear at the time a little strong----

Suffice it to say, that after hanging four minutes (as the spectators
were pleased to compute it,--a man that is being strangled, I know
from experience, has altogether a different measure of time from his
friends who are breathing leisurely about him,--I suppose the minutes
lengthen as time approaches eternity, in the same manner as the miles
get longer as you travel northward),--after hanging four minutes,
according to the best calculation of the bystanders, a reprieve came,
and I was CUT DOWN--

Really I am ashamed of deforming your pages with these technical
phrases--if I knew how to express my meaning shorter--

But to proceed.--My first care after I had been brought to myself by
the usual methods (those methods that are so interesting to the
operator and his assistants, who are pretty numerous on such
occasions,--but which no patient was ever desirous of undergoing a
second time for the benefit of science), my first care was to provide
myself with an enormous stock or cravat to hide the place--you
understand me; my next care was to procure a residence as distant as
possible from that part of the country where I had suffered. For that
reason I chose the metropolis, as the place where wounded honor (I
had been told) could lurk with the least danger of exciting inquiry,
and stigmatized innocence had the best chance of hiding her disgrace
in a crowd. I sought out a new circle of acquaintance, and my
circumstances happily enabling me to pursue my fancy in that respect,
I endeavored, by mingling in all the pleasures which the town
affords, to efface the memory of what I had undergone.

But, alas! such is the portentous and all-pervading chain of
connection which links together the head and members of this great
community, my scheme of lying perdu was defeated almost at the
outset. A countryman of mine, whom a foolish lawsuit had brought to
town, by chance met me, and the secret was soon blazoned about.

In a short time I found myself deserted by most of those who had been
my intimate friends. Not that any guilt was supposed to attach to my
character. My officious countryman, to do him justice, had been
candid enough to explain my perfect innocence.

But, somehow or other, there is a want of strong virtue in mankind.
We have plenty of the softer instincts, but the heroic character is
gone. How else can I account for it, that of all my numerous
acquaintance, among whom I had the honor of ranking sundry persons of
education, talents, and worth, scarcely here and there one or two
could be found who had the courage to associate with a man that had
been hanged.

Those few who did not desert me altogether were persons of strong but
coarse minds; and from the absence of all delicacy in them I suffered
almost as much as from the superabundance of a false species of it in
the others. Those who stuck by me were the jokers, who thought
themselves entitled by the fidelity which they had shown towards me
to use me with what familiarity they pleased. Many and unfeeling are
the jests that I have suffered from these rude (because faithful)
Achateses. As they passed me in the streets, one would nod
significantly to his companion and say, pointing to me, Smoke his
cravat, and ask me if I had got a wen, that I was so solicitous to
cover my neck. Another would inquire, What news from * * * Assizes?
(which you may guess, Mr. Editor, was the scene of my shame,) and
whether the sessions was like to prove a maiden one? A third would
offer to insure me from drowning. A fourth would tease me with
inquiries how I felt when I was swinging, whether I had not something
like a blue flame dancing before my eyes? A fifth took a fancy never
to call me anything but _Lazarus_. And an eminent bookseller and
publisher,--who, in his zeal to present the public with new facts,
had he lived in those days, I am confident, would not have scrupled
waiting upon the person himself last mentioned, at the most critical
period of his existence, to solicit a _few facts relative to
resuscitation_,--had the modesty to offer me--guineas per sheet, if I
would write, in his magazine, a physiological account of my feelings
upon coming to myself.

But these were evils which a moderate fortitude might have enabled me
to struggle with. Alas! Mr. Editor, the women,--whose good graces I
had always most assiduously cultivated, from whose softer minds I had
hoped a more delicate and generous sympathy than I found in the
men,--the women began to shun me--this was the unkindest blow of all.

But is it to be wondered at? How couldst thou imagine, wretchedest of
beings, that that tender creature Seraphina would fling her pretty
arms about that neck which previous circumstances had rendered
infamous? That she would put up with the refuse of the rope, the
leavings of the cord? Or that any analogy could subsist between the
knot which binds true lovers, and the knot which ties malefactors?

I can forgive that pert baggage Flirtilla, who, when I complimented
her one day on the execution which her eyes had done, replied, that,
to be sure, Mr. * * * was a judge of those things. But from thy more
exalted mind, Celestina, I expected a more unprejudiced decision. The
person whose true name I conceal under this appellation, of all the
women that I was ever acquainted with had the most manly turn of
mind, which she had improved by reading and the best conversation.
Her understanding was not more masculine than her manners and whole
disposition were delicately and truly feminine. She was the daughter
of an officer who had fallen in the service of his country, leaving
his widow, and Celestina, an only child, with a fortune sufficient to
set them above want, but not to enable them to live in splendor. I
had the mother's permission to pay my addresses to the young lady,
and Celestina seemed to approve of my suit.

Often and often have I poured out my overcharged soul in the presence
of Celestina, complaining of the hard and unfeeling prejudices of the
world; and the sweet maid has again and again declared, that no
irrational prejudice should hinder her from esteeming every man
according to his intrinsic worth. Often has she repeated the
consolatory assurance, that she could never consider as essentially
ignominious an _accident_, which was indeed to be deprecated, but
which might have happened to the most innocent of mankind. Then would
she set forth some illustrious example, which her reading easily
furnished, of a Phocion or a Socrates unjustly condemned; of a
Raleigh or a Sir Thomas More, to whom late posterity had done
justice; and by soothing my fancy with some such agreeable parallel,
she would make me almost to triumph in my disgrace, and convert my
shame into glory.

In such entertaining and instructive conversations the time passed
on, till I importunately urged the mistress of my affections to name
the day for our union. To this she obligingly consented, and I
thought myself the happiest of mankind. But how was I surprised one
morning on the receipt of the following billet from my charmer:--

SIR,--You must not impute it to levity, or to a worse failing,
ingratitude, if, with anguish of heart, I feel myself compelled by
irresistible arguments to recall a vow which I fear I made with too
little consideration. I never can be yours. The reasons of my
decision, which is final, are in my own breast, and you must
everlastingly remain a stranger to them. Assure yourself that I can
never cease to esteem you as I ought.


CELESTINA.

At the sight of this paper, I ran in frantic haste to Celestina's
lodgings, where I learned, to my infinite mortification, that the
mother and daughter were set off on a journey to a distant part of
the country, to visit a relation, and were not expected to return in
less than four months.

Stunned by this blow, which left me without the courage to solicit an
explanation by letter, even if I had known where they were, (for the
particular address was industriously concealed from me,) I waited
with impatience the termination of the period, in the vain hope that
I might be permitted to have a chance of softening the harsh decision
by a personal interview with Celestina after her return. But before
three months were at an end, I learned from the newspapers that my
beloved had----given her hand to another.

Heart-broken as I was, I was totally at a loss to account for the
strange step which she had taken; and it was not till some years
after that I learned the true reason from a female relation of hers,
to whom it seems Celestina had confessed in confidence, that it was
no demerit of mine that had caused her to break off the match so
abruptly, nor any preference which she might feel for any other
person, for she preferred me (she was pleased to say) to all mankind;
but when she came to lay the matter closer to her heart, she found
that she never should be able to bear the sight--(I give you her very
words as they were detailed to me by her relation)--the sight of a
man in a nightcap who had appeared on a public platform--it would
lead to such a disagreeable association of ideas! And to this
punctilio I was sacrificed.

To pass over an infinite series of minor mortifications, to which
this last and heaviest might well render me callous, behold me here,
Mr. Editor! in the thirty-seventh year of my existence, (the twelfth,
reckoning from my reanimation,) cut off from all respectable
connections: rejected by the fairer half of the community,--who in my
case alone seem to have laid aside the characteristic pity of their
sex; punished because I was once punished unjustly: suffering for no
other reason than because I once had the misfortune to suffer without
any cause at all. In no other country, I think, but this, could a man
have been subject to such a life-long persecution, when once his
innocence had been clearly established.