CHAPTER III

OF THE FACE NECESSARY TO A SWINDLER—(AN INCIDENTAL SPECULATION ON THE “DIVISION OF PROPERTY”)—AND OF THE USE AND ABUSE OF MUSTACHIOS

Itis a homely expression, often used in reply to a sarcasm on a personal deformity, “that we did not make ourselves.” Not even a Professor of Political Economy can argue away this conviction, rooted as it is in the depths of the human heart. Much, however, can be done with the rude lump—if indeed it be rude—whereof man finds himself the ill-starred possessor. Hence, let no one moderately deformed despair of his fitness to join our brotherhood Hump backs, club feet, and bow shins have, it must be owned, their disadvantages for the service—notwithstanding, the genius of their owners may triumph over such outward obstacles. A fine face tastefully set in hair may be considered a blessing for the profession; yet it would be to inflict a great injustice on the higher uses of the science to suppose a mere face so framed all-sufficient. No; “we work by wit and not by whiskers.” The outward man goes far, but he must depend upon the ethereal spark—upon the inward intelligence—for self-distinction.

And first for theFace of a Swindler. Men who set themselves up as judges of character—I have heard the sciolists—sometimes marvel that the sons of commerce should so frequently fall victims to some individual swindler; when he, the party swindling, is one of the most ingenuous creatures breathing; looking, in fact, the swindler that he is,—when from his eyebrows to the corners of his lips thereis painted in the largest human capitals the calling of the professor. The truth is, the unsuspecting men accustomed to pore over day-books and ledgers have not had sufficient time to learn to read human faces. They can on the instant, if put to the test, tell a good guinea from a bad one; but though they shall stare in the features of a human counterfeit for an hour or more, they cannot, one in a hundred, discover the washed brass from the true gold. More; though they shall hear the counterfeit—though the ring of its voice shall be the truest Brummagem—the trading man shall complacently rub his hands, satisfied that he is hearing the sweetest sound of the mint.

I confess it, to the honour of the trading community of this commercial country, I confess it; the success of some faces of my brotherhood upon men behind counters has been to me startling evidence of the unsophisticated character of the tradesman. For instance; there is Nobrowns, Scarceamag, Fleeceington, and others I could name—shall I own it?—I have sometimes felt myself humiliated by their prosperity. I have felt the science lowered by the facility with which they have ingratiated themselves into the favour of the jeweller, the coachmaker, the tailor. HadIkept shop, I have thought I should have shown Nobrowns to the door at the first glance of his eye; and without looking at Scarceamag, but simply hearing his base-metal voice, I should have told him I had nothing in his way, and straightway ordered him across the threshold. And yet these men have flourished for a score of years; and, at this moment, are prosperous swindlers. How is the enigma to be explained—how the more than Arcadian innocency of the dwellers in Bond Street and Regent Street to be philosophically accounted for? Is it, that men immersed in the profound abstraction of £ s. d. lose somewhat of the sagacity inherited and often improved by poorer souls; that, too much rapt by the splendidvisions of the future profits, they are less vigilant as to the danger of present credit? Providence, however, hath wisely partitioned its benefits. If it be given to Scarceamag, withhisface, to swindle and be poor—it is also allotted to Puddingtête, the tradesman, to be swindled and grow rich. Take this, then, my dear pupil, for an axiom: you may—since you cannot help it—look the greatest swindler in life; but if you shall hold your own counsel, your face shall, at least to the acute men behind counters, never reveal it. Tradesmen can read anything but customers’ faces.[12]This truth is every day borne out by the success of fellows whose features have gone far to vulgarise the science. Ragamuffins who ought never to have aspired beyond the pea-and-thimble board at a country fair—knaves marked and impressed by the truthful hand of nature for the lowest offices of legerdemain have, trusting to the simplicity, the unsuspecting ingenuousness of a money-getting generation, to the marvellous innocency of the commercial body, made for themselves a reputation of the first class, or of very nearly the first class of the highest profession. Ultimately, in the advancement of society, these vulgar upstarts will be met by a greater number of competitors, elevated and accomplished with the graces of life, and the term swindler will be, as it ought to be, synonymous with gentleman. The commercial faculty will, on the other hand, be rendered more acute in its observation of human character; hence it will require a greater delicacy of style—moreimposing and a more winning manner to arrive at any distinction—indeed, even to make a clear paltry five hundred a year as a swindler, than in these times will suffice to ensure to a tolerably industrious man an income of a thousand. This is inevitable. When the tens of thousands of noble spirits, heretofore absorbed by the professions, are left to trade upon their wits—when all society is more strongly marked, more arbitrarily divided into two classes, the swindlers and the swindled—when, instead of a violent and ruthless division of property, as infamously as ignorantly insisted upon by certain firebrands—there is a graceful exchange of elegant patronage on the one side, and a profound expression of thanksgiving respect on the other, the character of the successful swindler will rise to its ordained and natural elevation, and a Whitefeather (pardon the honest vanity) take his place with many illustrious names sufficiently obvious to the philosophical reader. The time is happily passing away when brute violence is to achieve national good—when the price of bread is to be beaten down by a bludgeon, or wages raised upon a pike. It is therefore a matter of deep regret to the contemplative man, and such I am not ashamed to confess myself, to perceive how many gifted persons are, by a premature nativity, ill-placed. How many men at the present day breathing national arson and patriotic pillage—men who have so profoundly studied themeum, that they are entirely ignorant of that oftuum—would, born a few years hence, have shed a lustre, have conferred a dignity upon even an illustrious and dignified profession. Let me not be asked to enumerate examples—I eschew the personal for the general. It is enough that the eye of the philosopher can perceive in many a sulphureous patriot the indefatigable swindler; that the sage, pondering on the inevitable changes of society, can detect in a present Bull-ring Brutus all the misapplied qualities of a future Isaac Solomons!

12.I can scarcely believe that Captain Whitefeather was a reader of the Essays of David Hume; and yet a similar opinion—a friend of mine, a poor curate to whom I showed the Captain’s MS., pointed it out to me—is expressed by the sceptic philosopher, who, in his Essay on “Delicacy of Taste,” says:—“You will seldom find that mere men of the world, whatever strong sense they may be endowed with, are very nice in distinguishing characters, or in marking those insensible differences and gradations which make one man preferable to another.”—[John Jackdaw, Ed.]

Blissful time—glorious return of the golden age—when rapine and fire, and cutting and maiming shall no longer be the evils adopted by comprehensive minds to work out, as they conceive, a great good; but when one half of the people shall live peaceably upon the other; when the whole aim and end of every two men out of four shall be to possess themselves of their daily bread—(philosophers will receive the phrase in its more enlarged meaning)—by an art demanding in its exercise the highest and most chastened faculties of the moral creature. The two halves of society will then be fairly arrayed against each other; and for ruthless weapons—for sword, dagger, and pistol on one side, and bayonet, sabre, and carbine on the other—we shall have the more peaceful and courteous instruments, silvery words, blandest smiles, and the happiest self-possession, opposed by cautious interrogation, wary looks and silent heavy doubtings. Here then is a contest worthy of intellectual beings! This is indeed a duello of the immortal principle! How poor, how savage, how unworthy of a rational creature to break into the peaceful dwelling of an honest silversmith—to fire his bed-curtains—to bruise and batter his ornate cream-jugs, his chased candlesticks, and embossed tankards,—or, the spoil carried off amidst the exulting howl of barbarians, to fling it into the hospitable melting-pot—how loathsome, how degrading this brutal mode of a division of property, to that refined and gracious system, the cunning birth of better times—the fruit of a loftier and truer consideration of man’s dignity towards his fellow!

Let us consider the two pictures; let us contemplate the working of the different principles. How revolting the scene of violence! How debasing to our common nature to witness a mob of denaturalised creatures bursting in the good man’s door! How they scamper upstairs! Like festal savages they wave firebrands and torches about their heads as they rush into the sacred bedroom. The worthyman says a short prayer, and thinks of his stock—his wife and daughters, trembling for their lives, are horrified at being seen in nightcaps with their hair in paper! All the house is in consternation; and, a touch of humanity softening the mob, they benevolently suffer the silversmith and his family to escape, in their night-clothes, over the roof, and descend, like cats, into the gutter of their neighbour. The shop is ransacked of everything; and now a sanguinary fight is going on behind the counter between two of the ruffians for the plated top of a pepper-castor. This—this is one principle of a division of property; as if property was only to be divided by the blaze of torches and the crackling of rafters! Turn we to the ennobling contrast.

“Politely receives his destroyer”

Mark the swindler! How graciously he descends from his chariot—for the swindler of first-rate genius rarely marauds on foot—and with what a composed elegance, with what a perfect self-possession he enters the shop! There is something inexpressibly taking in his manner. Surveying him from head to foot, we cannot repress the opinion that the “age of chivalry” isnotpast. He is the knight of later times—the Chevalier Bayard in a round hat.Sans peurglows in his eyeball, and the whiteness of his kid gloves issans reproche! Two or three centuries ago he had, with mailed hand, “shaken the bags of hoarding abbots,” and now comes he, with a condescending smile at his mouth, to deal with a silversmith. See! he crosses the threshold—treads the shop. It is impossible to resist the fascination of his lofty courtesy. The tradesman, wary as he is—suspicious as loss after loss has made him—despite of himself, confesses the supremacy of the stranger, and, with a smiling lip, a twinkling eye, folded palms, and inclined back, politely receives his destroyer. A conversation ensues; and the swindler—I am of course putting the case of a man of genius—fastens upon the tradesman, who every moment becomes more deeply impressed with theconsequence of his patron; and therefore, having flung to the winds all low suspicion, is the most obsequious, the most humble servant of the swindler. There is nothing too costly for him—nothing too curious; no order too difficult to be met—no time too short for the accomplishment of his wishes. The swindler is evidently a man of the very highest consequence; and the silversmith, if I may adopt a homely expression, is inevitablydone, ay, done—

“—as brown as a berry.”[13]

13.It will be seen that the Captain had some knowledge of Chaucer.—[John Jackdaw, Ed.]

The swindler whirls away from the tradesman, who has attended him, bareheaded, to the kerbstone, and then the man of precious metals returns to his shop in that delightful serenity of mind, apt, I am told, to possess people with profits ranging from fifty to seventy-five in the hundred.

What—it will be asked—what, does Mr Giltspur, the silversmith, without further questions put, trust his service of plate, besides a magnificent suite of amethysts (for which the honourable Mr Thug expressed a sudden liking), to the honour of his customer? To be sure he does; and his blood simmering with a sense of profit, he orders them to be delivered at “——— Hotel,” where Mr Thug is staying; but which delightful and convenient hostelry he, shortly afterwards, suddenly leaves on the most imperative business. A thousand instances bear out the probability of Thug’s success and Giltspur’s discomfiture. People may talk about the innocence of a pastoral age: I am, from long experience, convinced of it, that the most innocent, the most unsuspecting, the most easily-taken biped on the face of the earth is—your London shopkeeper. Armed with proper weapons, it is almost impossible that he can escape you. The poor creature is weakness, imbecility itself; “Wear your eye thus,” and as surely as the fluttering bird drops into themouth of the snake, as surely fall the tribe of Giltspurs into the folds of the Thugs.

Well, and is it not delightful that it should be so? Here is Giltspur, for a certain number of days at least, made very happy; he has delivered his goods, and has already calculated to the odd sevenpence-halfpenny the amount of profit. Thug has conferred upon him a great pleasure—passing, it must be owned—but sweet, very sweet, whilst it endures.

Does the reader still remember the picture of violence drawn in a former page? Does he still behold the pallid silversmith—his fainting wife—and blushing daughters? Does he yet hear the roar of the flames, as they come up the staircase—the fury of pillage in the shop below?

The same effect is produced by the swindler, but how different the cause! The “division of property” is just as complete—the fine, deep philosophy that preaches it equally well honoured; and yet, what grace on one side—what civility on the other; and, to one party at least, what tangible, enduring satisfaction! Who, then, with the smallest spark of human dignity within him would stoop to violence when he may “divide” with ease? The “multiplication” of the human animal is, indeed, according to the modern school-men, “vexation”; but the “division” of property—unless divided on the bland principles of swindling—would be infinitely worse. In the progress of society, then, it is by swindling, and by swindling only, that we shall escape the most grievous revolution.

To proceed with the personal qualifications necessary to a Swindler. He must have a face of purest brass. If handsome, all the better; yet, perhaps, expression is of greater importance than the mere proportion of feature. If, however, helooka Swindler—if to the contemplative men who peruse human lines, printed in the blackest ink on some human faces, he look his profession—his success withthe sages of trade is certain. It is, however, of the first importance that there should be no alloy in the face. It should, for instance, be as incapable of emotion as the bull hide on the shield of Ajax.[14]This, youthful Swindler, is the besetting danger; hence, bend all your energies to obtain a stony look of self-possession. Though a constable should put his “dead hand” upon your shoulder, and your very marrow should thrill at the touch—your face must remain motionless as the face of the Apollo Belvidere—your eye unquenched—your voice with not a crack in it. I will not disguise the difficulties of arriving at this super-human placidity. Talk of the self-possession of a Cæsar—the coolness of a Napoleon—quackery all! What is there in the composure of a man who takes snuff whilst hundreds of other men’s limbs are being blown into the air (to be wept over by the spirits of glory), with at the most asauve qui peutfor it; whilst, in the scale of advantage, there is a laurel wreath and a triumphant entry and civic addresses,—what is all this to the quiet dignity demanded of a swindler in a perilous situation—his splendid cabriolet, perhaps, waiting at the shop—whilst, sneaked out at the back door, Bob the apprentice has run for Police Officer Snatchem, F. No. 20, to attend immediately to our hero, who at his approach beholds a no dim vision of the very handsome police omnibus—the prison barber with his ignominious shears—and hears, or thinks he hears, the pathetic, admonitory address of Common Sergeant or Recorder? It may, according to a worn metaphor, take nerves of iron to direct an army; but they must be brass, and of the finest brass too, to swindle. Fighting is, indeed, a mechanic trade; millions can fight,—but how few can gracefully swindle! We know that the result of bothoperations is often the same, but how inferior one to the other! Bonaparte brought afewpictures from Italy, which the world—Heaven knows!—made noise enough about. In warlike phrase he “took them” from a vanquished people: a poor, shabby act to brag of; but had he, unassisted by squadrons and battalions, and parks of artillery—had he, by the unassisted efforts of his own mind, with no other masked battery, no other weapon than his own hand and his own tongue,—had he robbed one dealer of a Correggio—another of a Raphael—a third of a Titian—a fourth of a Murillo—and so on,—it had indeed been an achievement to boast of; but to crack of the incident as one of the trophies of the army of Italy was the sublime of gasconading! My late friend Featherfinger—he died, poor fellow, having burst a blood-vessel from intense study at Macquarrie Harbour—had a magnificent bronze clock; a superb thing! a thing to make a man value time. Had I not pledged my honour to secrecy, I could write a history touching his possession of that clock, which, of itself, is enough to immortalise any one man. My honour, however, is sacred; and my lips are hushed. This much, probably, I may be permitted to observe: The industry—nay, that is a poor, unworthy term—the genius manifested by the indefatigable Featherfinger to possess that clock—methinks I see him now; poor fellow! seated with his Greek cap, his black satin morning gown figured with pink poppies—an Indian shawl (thegage d’amourof an Italian countess) about his waist—his feet in bead-embroidered slippers, the work, as he protested, of some heart-devoted heiress—his meerschaum in his mouth—in his hand a book,Satanor theLives of Highwaymen(for he was passionately fond of light literature)—his tiger page, only three feet high, and warranted to grow no taller, in green and gold, with a breast-plate of best double gilt buttons, standing at a reverential distance—whilst thebronze clock on the mantelpiece vibrated with its monitory, moralising—yes, moralising—tick, tick!Methinks I see him as I enter raise one eye from the page, nod, smile—and such a smile!—there was only one shopkeeper, and he was a philosophical member of the Society of Friends and dealer invirtu, that ever stood against it—smile, and then cast the other eye towards the clock itself with a look of touching reproach at my delay, or with a glance of approving pleasure at my punctuality. Methinks I see him—Gracious powers! That such a man should die at Macquarrie Harbour, taxed beyond his strength of study, a victim to—but no; loyalty to the Ministry was ever a virtue of the Whitefeathers, and I breathe no word against the Whigs! To hurry from the theme. Much has been said about the boldness, the fine contempt of public opinion shown by Napoleon when he took the horses of St Mark from Venice to place them on his own palace gate in Paris. Well, the act was not without its merit, but did I dare to write the story of Featherfinger’s clock, the theft of Napoleon would, in comparison to the genius manifested by my friend, sink to the petty larceny committed by schoolboys upon apple stalls. But so it is; the finest history remains, and ever will remain, unwritten. The Venice horses have been celebrated by poets and historians, but posterity is left to bewilder itself with guesses on Featherfinger’s clock. Yet—and I am prepared to meet the consequences of such an assertion—I am convinced that great as the conqueror was in all the varieties of the science, Buonaparte’s horses must pass from the recollection of the earth; whereas Featherfinger’s clock, duly chronicled, was a thing for time! It may be cited as an illustration of the injustice of Fortune—of the tricks she plays with the noble and the man—when the reader is informed that the tiger page of my dear friend—of him whose bones aremouldering (for hewasburied) in a foreign earth—of him born, as the poet says—

“To steal a grace beyond the reach of art”—

that that little cab-page—that tiger-moth fluttering as I have seen him withbillet-douxabout the carriage-lamps and round the torches of an opera night,—that he has at this moment a country-seat and grounds at Hackney, purchased and supported by the precarious profits of a night-house—that is, of a mansion hospitably open in the vicinity of Drury Lane, for the refreshment of travellers with beer, beef and oysters, from eleven at night until six in the morning. But so it is; a genius, like my departed friend, dies beggared at the last; whilst mere industry at forty-five grows his own pine apples!

14.I may, by the way, observe that the Captain, whose education was not equal to his parts, is indebted for a few of his classical allusions to another pen.—[John Jackdaw, Ed.]

I have, I trust, been sufficiently minute in my description of the face requisite to be put upon Swindling. In conclusion, I have only to enforce the necessity of the most rigid self-discipline to prevent even the most evanescent exhibition of what is conveniently called modesty; for the swindler who can blush is lost. His must be a brow whereon

“Shame is ashamed to sit.”

A money-lender, a courtier, steeped to the lips in broken promises—a pick-pocket caught in the act, all of these may, if they can, blush and not be ruined; but woe to the swindler whose cheek admits the self-accusing tint! His face, like the face of the man in the moon, must look down upon all sorts of acted abominations, yet blench not.

Mustachios.—Thesewerepretty things for the profession; but I grieve to say it, lawyers’ clerks, linen-drapers’ apprentices, players out of place, and even pedestrian vendors of lucifer matches, have detracted from their exclusive importance; hence, I would counsel the youthful, sanguine swindler to eschew what indeed vulgar usage hasrendered a very questionable advantage, and to swindle with clean lips. It is enough to break the heart of a rabbi to see how one of “Heaven’s best gifts,” the human beard, is in these hirsute days cut and notched according to the impudence or ignorance of the wearer. It is said of the French that they have a thousand ways of cooking an egg: let it be our boast that we have as many modes of dressing the chin. I have, I hope, a love of the picturesque, as the world will one day know from a work of mine still, unhappily, in manuscript.[15]I, therefore, am a passionate admirer of the beard of patriarchal growth; but for your nasty, stunted, straggly, ragged, edgy things—now like the skin of a dog with the mange, now like the end of a skein of whitey-brown thread, now as if culled from chopped hay, and now as if cut from a singed blanket—pah!—were I caliph for a day—but no matter, let me not wander to legislation, but stick to my higher subject—Swindling. I say, then, to my disciple, eschew mustachios. At best they are a doubtful good. If, however, you are determined to wear them, let me hope that their hue is black as death. If, on the contrary, Heaven has awarded you a pair of pale gold or deep carrot colour, tamper not with them, but shave. Never, like Richard, think to stand “the hazard of thedie”; if so, your case is desperate. I knew three promising young fellows, all of whom laid their ruin at the door of Mr Rowland. But—for I like to anticipate—it may be asked, Do you always, Captain Whitefeather, walk abroad with unrazored lips? To this I boldly answer that—for I was justified in the vanity—I did wear an adorned mouth; more, that a lady, who shall be nameless, was in hysterics (of course at intervals) for three days, when my mustachios fell; but no, I could not condescend to wear them when I saw—yes, I confess it—even a better pairthan my own upon the face of a fellow in the Surrey gallery, selling play-bills, Spanish nuts, and ginger beer. What the revolution of society may in time produce it would of course be impudence in me, who am not a Paternoster Row astrologer, to declare; but, for the next five-and-twenty years, mustachios will, I think, be a dangerous decoration for the swindler. So much business has been done with them that suspicion will have scarcely subsided under at least another quarter of a century. The horse-tails of Ibrahim Pacha have not been more triumphant; but victory will not always perch upon the same banner.

15.The Handbook of Ratcliffe Highway, an inestimable work (when printed) for the stranger in London.—[John Jackdaw, Ed.]

The swindler should not at the present day hope to take the Philistines by the strength of his hair. No; let him shave, and put the barest face upon the dignity of his profession—it cannot betoobare.

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