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It carried him back, upon the instant, to a certain day in a fishers' village: a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed, garishly colored: Brownrigg with her apprentice; the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes.
Have I not seen you dash off dungeon in the Castle of Udolpho with all the vigour of Rembrandt, roll it forward on the stage with the strength of Hercules, and then murder the turnkey in it with the power and elegance of Thurtell?
He proves also from newspapers of 1820 that the fight, in the twenty sixth chapter of "Lavengro," ended in a thunderstorm like that described by Borrow and used by Petulengro to forecast the violent end of Thurtell. Now a brute memory like that, which cannot be gainsaid, is not an entirely good servant to a man who will not put down everything he can, like a boy at an examination.
It contains half of Chancellor Clarendon's famous collection the other half is at Bothwell Castle. William Elliot Lockhart of Cleghorn and Borthwick-brae, long M.P. for Selkirkshire. Weare, Thurtell, and the rest were professed gamblers. See ante, July 10, 1826, and Life, vol. viii. p. 381. The first volume had just been published in 1828. The book was completed in 6 vols. in 1840. June 1.
It is said that Weare, as is the habit of such men, always carried about his person, and between his flannel waistcoat and shirt, a sum of ready money, equal to £1500 or £2000. No such money was ever recovered, and as the sum divided by Thurtell among his accomplices was only about £20, he must, in slang phrase, have bucketed his pals. We came on as far as Alconbury, where we slept comfortably.
Tom gave the slug that killed Perceval, the lemon that Wilkes squeezed for Doctor Johnson, the pork-chop which Thurtell ate after he had murdered Weare, and Sir Charles Macarthy's jaw which was sent by the Ashantees as a present to George the Fourth. "Some one mentioned an acquaintance who had gone to the West Indies, hoping to make money, but had only ruined the complexions of his daughters.
He slept well through his last night, and said: "I have dreamt many odd things, but I never dreamt anything about this business since I have been in Hertford." Pierce Egan described the trial and execution, and how Thurtell bowed in a friendly and dignified manner to someone "we believe, Mr. Pierce Egan" in the crowd about the gallows.
Herne, and the evil sprite Leonora, Thurtell, the fighting men, the Irish outlaw Jerry Grant, who was suspected of raising a storm by "something Irish and supernatural" to win a fight, Murtagh, that wicked innocent, the old apple-woman, Blazing Bosville, Isopel Berners, the jockey who drove one hundred and ten miles in eleven hours to see "the only friend he ever had in the world," John Thurtell, and say, "God Almighty bless you, Jack!" before the drop fell, the old gentleman who had learned "Sergeant Broughton's guard" and knocked out the bullying coachman, the Welsh preacher and his wife, the Arcadian old bee-keeper, the rat-catcher all these and their companions are woven into one piece by the genius of their creator, Borrow.
The case of the M'Keands I consider far beyond the vaunted performance of Thurtell, indeed above all praise; and bearing that relation, in fact, to the immortal works of Williams, which the Æneid bears to the Iliad.
The daughter showed Lady Sinclair a well in the midst of a small bog, of great depth, into which, like Thurtell and Probert, they used to thrust the bodies of their victims till they had an opportunity of burying them. Lady Sinclair stooped to taste the water, but the young woman said, with a strong expression of horror, "You would not drink it?"
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