Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
again--‘will no charitable person go and tell them!’
‘Mr Akerman,’ said a gentleman who stood by, after a moment’s pause,
‘since it may possibly produce in this unhappy man a better frame of
mind, even at this last minute, let me assure him that he was well known
to have been the hangman, when his sentence was considered.’
‘--But perhaps they think on that account that the punishment’s not so
great,’ cried the criminal, shuffling towards this speaker on his knees,
and holding up his folded hands; ‘whereas it’s worse, it’s worse a
hundred times, to me than any man. Let them know that, sir. Let them
know that. They’ve made it worse to me by giving me so much to do. Stop
my execution till they know that!’
The governor beckoned with his hand, and the two men, who had supported
him before, approached. He uttered a piercing cry:
‘Wait! Wait. Only a moment--only one moment more! Give me a last chance
of reprieve. One of us three is to go to Bloomsbury Square. Let me be
the one. It may come in that time; it’s sure to come. In the Lord’s name
let me be sent to Bloomsbury Square. Don’t hang me here. It’s murder.’
They took him to the anvil: but even then he could be heard above the
clinking of the smiths’ hammers, and the hoarse raging of the crowd,
crying that he knew of Hugh’s birth--that his father was living, and
was a gentleman of influence and rank--that he had family secrets in his
possession--that he could tell nothing unless they gave him time, but
must die with them on his mind; and he continued to rave in this sort
until his voice failed him, and he sank down a mere heap of clothes
between the two attendants.
It was at this moment that the clock struck the first stroke of twelve,
and the bell began to toll. The various officers, with the two sheriffs
at their head, moved towards the door. All was ready when the last chime
came upon the ear.
They told Hugh this, and asked if he had anything to say.
‘To say!’ he cried. ‘Not I. I’m ready.--Yes,’ he added, as his eye fell
upon Barnaby, ‘I have a word to say, too. Come hither, lad.’
There was, for the moment, something kind, and even tender, struggling
in his fierce aspect, as he wrung his poor companion by the hand.
‘I’ll say this,’ he cried, looking firmly round, ‘that if I had ten
lives to lose, and the loss of each would give me ten times the agony
of the hardest death, I’d lay them all down--ay, I would, though you
gentlemen may not believe it--to save this one. This one,’ he added,
wringing his hand again, ‘that will be lost through me.’
‘Not through you,’ said the idiot, mildly. ‘Don’t say that. You were
not to blame. You have always been very good to me.--Hugh, we shall know
what makes the stars shine, NOW!’
‘I took him from her in a reckless mood, and didn’t think what harm
would come of it,’ said Hugh, laying his hand upon his head, and
speaking in a lower voice. ‘I ask her pardon; and his.--Look here,’ he
added roughly, in his former tone. ‘You see this lad?’
They murmured ‘Yes,’ and seemed to wonder why he asked.
‘That gentleman yonder--’ pointing to the clergyman--‘has often in the
last few days spoken to me of faith, and strong belief. You see what
I am--more brute than man, as I have been often told--but I had faith
enough to believe, and did believe as strongly as any of you gentlemen
can believe anything, that this one life would be spared. See what he
is!--Look at him!’
Barnaby had moved towards the door, and stood beckoning him to follow.
‘If this was not faith, and strong belief!’ cried Hugh, raising his
right arm aloft, and looking upward like a savage prophet whom the near
approach of Death had filled with inspiration, ‘where are they! What
else should teach me--me, born as I was born, and reared as I have
been reared--to hope for any mercy in this hardened, cruel, unrelenting
place! Upon these human shambles, I, who never raised this hand in
prayer till now, call down the wrath of God! On that black tree, of
which I am the ripened fruit, I do invoke the curse of all its victims,
past, and present, and to come. On the head of that man, who, in his
conscience, owns me for his son, I leave the wish that he may never
sicken on his bed of down, but die a violent death as I do now, and have
the night-wind for his only mourner. To this I say, Amen, amen!’
His arm fell downward by his side; he turned; and moved towards them
with a steady step, the man he had been before.
‘There is nothing more?’ said the governor.
Hugh motioned Barnaby not to come near him (though without looking in
the direction where he stood) and answered, ‘There is nothing more.’
‘Move forward!’
‘--Unless,’ said Hugh, glancing hurriedly back,--‘unless any person here
has a fancy for a dog; and not then, unless he means to use him well.
There’s one, belongs to me, at the house I came from, and it wouldn’t
be easy to find a better. He’ll whine at first, but he’ll soon get over
that.--You wonder that I think about a dog just now,’ he added, with a
kind of laugh. ‘If any man deserved it of me half as well, I’d think of
HIM.’
He spoke no more, but moved onward in his place, with a careless air,
though listening at the same time to the Service for the Dead, with
something between sullen attention, and quickened curiosity. As soon as
he had passed the door, his miserable associate was carried out; and the
crowd beheld the rest.
Barnaby would have mounted the steps at the same time--indeed he would
have gone before them, but in both attempts he was restrained, as he
was to undergo the sentence elsewhere. In a few minutes the sheriffs
reappeared, the same procession was again formed, and they passed
through various rooms and passages to another door--that at which the
cart was waiting. He held down his head to avoid seeing what he knew his
eyes must otherwise encounter, and took his seat sorrowfully,--and yet
with something of a childish pride and pleasure,--in the vehicle. The
officers fell into their places at the sides, in front and in the rear;
the sheriffs’ carriages rolled on; a guard of soldiers surrounded the
whole; and they moved slowly forward through the throng and pressure
toward Lord Mansfield’s ruined house.
It was a sad sight--all the show, and strength, and glitter, assembled
round one helpless creature--and sadder yet to note, as he rode along,
how his wandering thoughts found strange encouragement in the crowded
windows and the concourse in the streets; and how, even then, he felt
the influence of the bright sky, and looked up, smiling, into its deep
unfathomable blue. But there had been many such sights since the riots
were over--some so moving in their nature, and so repulsive too, that
they were far more calculated to awaken pity for the sufferers, than
respect for that law whose strong arm seemed in more than one case to be
as wantonly stretched forth now that all was safe, as it had been basely
paralysed in time of danger.
Two cripples--both mere boys--one with a leg of wood, one who dragged
his twisted limbs along by the help of a crutch, were hanged in this
same Bloomsbury Square. As the cart was about to glide from under them,
it was observed that they stood with their faces from, not to, the house
they had assisted to despoil; and their misery was protracted that this
omission might be remedied. Another boy was hanged in Bow Street; other
young lads in various quarters of the town. Four wretched women, too,
were put to death. In a word, those who suffered as rioters were, for
the most part, the weakest, meanest, and most miserable among them. It
was a most exquisite satire upon the false religious cry which had led
to so much misery, that some of these people owned themselves to be
Catholics, and begged to be attended by their own priests.
One young man was hanged in Bishopsgate Street, whose aged grey-headed
father waited for him at the gallows, kissed him at its foot when he
arrived, and sat there, on the ground, till they took him down. They
would have given him the body of his child; but he had no hearse, no
coffin, nothing to remove it in, being too poor--and walked meekly away
beside the cart that took it back to prison, trying, as he went, to
touch its lifeless hand.
But the crowd had forgotten these matters, or cared little about them
if they lived in their memory: and while one great multitude fought
and hustled to get near the gibbet before Newgate, for a parting look,
another followed in the train of poor lost Barnaby, to swell the throng
that waited for him on the spot.
Chapter 78
On this same day, and about this very hour, Mr Willet the elder sat
smoking his pipe in a chamber at the Black Lion. Although it was hot
summer weather, Mr Willet sat close to the fire. He was in a state of
profound cogitation, with his own thoughts, and it was his custom
at such times to stew himself slowly, under the impression that that
process of cookery was favourable to the melting out of his ideas,
which, when he began to simmer, sometimes oozed forth so copiously as to
astonish even himself.
Mr Willet had been several thousand times comforted by his friends and
acquaintance, with the assurance that for the loss he had sustained in
the damage done to the Maypole, he could ‘come upon the county.’ But as
this phrase happened to bear an unfortunate resemblance to the popular
expression of ‘coming on the parish,’ it suggested to Mr Willet’s mind
no more consolatory visions than pauperism on an extensive scale, and
ruin in a capacious aspect. Consequently, he had never failed to receive
the intelligence with a rueful shake of the head, or a dreary stare, and
had been always observed to appear much more melancholy after a visit of
condolence than at any other time in the whole four-and-twenty hours.
It chanced, however, that sitting over the fire on this particular
occasion--perhaps because he was, as it were, done to a turn; perhaps
because he was in an unusually bright state of mind; perhaps because
he had considered the subject so long; perhaps because of all these
favouring circumstances, taken together--it chanced that, sitting over
the fire on this particular occasion, Mr Willet did, afar off and in
the remotest depths of his intellect, perceive a kind of lurking hint or
faint suggestion, that out of the public purse there might issue funds
for the restoration of the Maypole to its former high place among the
taverns of the earth. And this dim ray of light did so diffuse itself
within him, and did so kindle up and shine, that at last he had it as
plainly and visibly before him as the blaze by which he sat; and, fully
persuaded that he was the first to make the discovery, and that he had
started, hunted down, fallen upon, and knocked on the head, a perfectly
original idea which had never presented itself to any other man, alive
or dead, he laid down his pipe, rubbed his hands, and chuckled audibly.
‘Why, father!’ cried Joe, entering at the moment, ‘you’re in spirits
to-day!’
‘It’s nothing partickler,’ said Mr Willet, chuckling again. ‘It’s
nothing at all partickler, Joseph. Tell me something about the
Salwanners.’ Having preferred this request, Mr Willet chuckled a third
time, and after these unusual demonstrations of levity, he put his pipe
in his mouth again.
‘What shall I tell you, father?’ asked Joe, laying his hand upon his
sire’s shoulder, and looking down into his face. ‘That I have come back,
poorer than a church mouse? You know that. That I have come back, maimed
and crippled? You know that.’
‘It was took off,’ muttered Mr Willet, with his eyes upon the fire, ‘at
the defence of the Salwanners, in America, where the war is.’
‘Quite right,’ returned Joe, smiling, and leaning with his remaining
elbow on the back of his father’s chair; ‘the very subject I came to