Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty
that first hope which you converted into grief and desolation, you have
stood, like an adverse fate, between me and peace. In all, you have ever
been the same cold-blooded, hollow, false, unworthy villain. For the
second time, and for the last, I cast these charges in your teeth, and
spurn you from me as I would a faithless dog!’
With that he raised his arm, and struck him on the breast so that he
staggered. Sir John, the instant he recovered, drew his sword, threw
away the scabbard and his hat, and running on his adversary made a
desperate lunge at his heart, which, but that his guard was quick and
true, would have stretched him dead upon the grass.
In the act of striking him, the torrent of his opponent’s rage had
reached a stop. He parried his rapid thrusts, without returning them,
and called to him, with a frantic kind of terror in his face, to keep
back.
‘Not to-night! not to-night!’ he cried. ‘In God’s name, not tonight!’
Seeing that he lowered his weapon, and that he would not thrust in turn,
Sir John lowered his.
‘Not to-night!’ his adversary cried. ‘Be warned in time!’
‘You told me--it must have been in a sort of inspiration--’ said Sir
John, quite deliberately, though now he dropped his mask, and showed his
hatred in his face, ‘that this was the last time. Be assured it is! Did
you believe our last meeting was forgotten? Did you believe that your
every word and look was not to be accounted for, and was not well
remembered? Do you believe that I have waited your time, or you mine?
What kind of man is he who entered, with all his sickening cant of
honesty and truth, into a bond with me to prevent a marriage he affected
to dislike, and when I had redeemed my part to the spirit and the
letter, skulked from his, and brought the match about in his own time,
to rid himself of a burden he had grown tired of, and cast a spurious
lustre on his house?’
‘I have acted,’ cried Mr Haredale, ‘with honour and in good faith. I do
so now. Do not force me to renew this duel to-night!’
‘You said my “wretched” son, I think?’ said Sir John, with a smile.
‘Poor fool! The dupe of such a shallow knave--trapped into marriage by
such an uncle and by such a niece--he well deserves your pity. But he
is no longer a son of mine: you are welcome to the prize your craft has
made, sir.’
‘Once more,’ cried his opponent, wildly stamping on the ground,
‘although you tear me from my better angel, I implore you not to come
within the reach of my sword to-night. Oh! why were you here at all! Why
have we met! To-morrow would have cast us far apart for ever!’
‘That being the case,’ returned Sir John, without the least emotion, ‘it
is very fortunate we have met to-night. Haredale, I have always despised
you, as you know, but I have given you credit for a species of brute
courage. For the honour of my judgment, which I had thought a good one,
I am sorry to find you a coward.’
Not another word was spoken on either side. They crossed swords, though
it was now quite dusk, and attacked each other fiercely. They were
well matched, and each was thoroughly skilled in the management of his
weapon.
After a few seconds they grew hotter and more furious, and pressing on
each other inflicted and received several slight wounds. It was directly
after receiving one of these in his arm, that Mr Haredale, making a
keener thrust as he felt the warm blood spirting out, plunged his sword
through his opponent’s body to the hilt.
Their eyes met, and were on each other as he drew it out. He put his
arm about the dying man, who repulsed him, feebly, and dropped upon the
turf. Raising himself upon his hands, he gazed at him for an instant,
with scorn and hatred in his look; but, seeming to remember, even then,
that this expression would distort his features after death, he tried
to smile, and, faintly moving his right hand, as if to hide his bloody
linen in his vest, fell back dead--the phantom of last night.
Chapter the Last
A parting glance at such of the actors in this little history as it has
not, in the course of its events, dismissed, will bring it to an end.
Mr Haredale fled that night. Before pursuit could be begun, indeed
before Sir John was traced or missed, he had left the kingdom. Repairing
straight to a religious establishment, known throughout Europe for the
rigour and severity of its discipline, and for the merciless penitence
it exacted from those who sought its shelter as a refuge from the world,
he took the vows which thenceforth shut him out from nature and
his kind, and after a few remorseful years was buried in its gloomy
cloisters.
Two days elapsed before the body of Sir John was found. As soon as
it was recognised and carried home, the faithful valet, true to his
master’s creed, eloped with all the cash and movables he could lay his
hands on, and started as a finished gentleman upon his own account. In
this career he met with great success, and would certainly have married
an heiress in the end, but for an unlucky check which led to his
premature decease. He sank under a contagious disorder, very prevalent
at that time, and vulgarly termed the jail fever.
Lord George Gordon, remaining in his prison in the Tower until Monday
the fifth of February in the following year, was on that day solemnly
tried at Westminster for High Treason. Of this crime he was, after a
patient investigation, declared Not Guilty; upon the ground that there
was no proof of his having called the multitude together with any
traitorous or unlawful intentions. Yet so many people were there, still,
to whom those riots taught no lesson of reproof or moderation, that a
public subscription was set on foot in Scotland to defray the cost of
his defence.
For seven years afterwards he remained, at the strong intercession of
his friends, comparatively quiet; saving that he, every now and then,
took occasion to display his zeal for the Protestant faith in some
extravagant proceeding which was the delight of its enemies; and saving,
besides, that he was formally excommunicated by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, for refusing to appear as a witness in the Ecclesiastical
Court when cited for that purpose. In the year 1788 he was stimulated by
some new insanity to write and publish an injurious pamphlet, reflecting
on the Queen of France, in very violent terms. Being indicted for the
libel, and (after various strange demonstrations in court) found guilty,
he fled into Holland in place of appearing to receive sentence: from
whence, as the quiet burgomasters of Amsterdam had no relish for his
company, he was sent home again with all speed. Arriving in the month of
July at Harwich, and going thence to Birmingham, he made in the latter
place, in August, a public profession of the Jewish religion; and
figured there as a Jew until he was arrested, and brought back to London
to receive the sentence he had evaded. By virtue of this sentence he
was, in the month of December, cast into Newgate for five years and ten
months, and required besides to pay a large fine, and to furnish heavy
securities for his future good behaviour.
After addressing, in the midsummer of the following year, an appeal to
the commiseration of the National Assembly of France, which the English
minister refused to sanction, he composed himself to undergo his full
term of punishment; and suffering his beard to grow nearly to his waist,
and conforming in all respects to the ceremonies of his new religion, he
applied himself to the study of history, and occasionally to the art
of painting, in which, in his younger days, he had shown some skill.
Deserted by his former friends, and treated in all respects like the
worst criminal in the jail, he lingered on, quite cheerful and resigned,
until the 1st of November 1793, when he died in his cell, being then
only three-and-forty years of age.
Many men with fewer sympathies for the distressed and needy, with less
abilities and harder hearts, have made a shining figure and left a
brilliant fame. He had his mourners. The prisoners bemoaned his loss,
and missed him; for though his means were not large, his charity was
great, and in bestowing alms among them he considered the necessities of
all alike, and knew no distinction of sect or creed. There are wise men
in the highways of the world who may learn something, even from this
poor crazy lord who died in Newgate.
To the last, he was truly served by bluff John Grueby. John was at his
side before he had been four-and-twenty hours in the Tower, and never
left him until he died. He had one other constant attendant, in the
person of a beautiful Jewish girl; who attached herself to him
from feelings half religious, half romantic, but whose virtuous and
disinterested character appears to have been beyond the censure even of
the most censorious.
Gashford deserted him, of course. He subsisted for a time upon his
traffic in his master’s secrets; and, this trade failing when the stock
was quite exhausted, procured an appointment in the honourable corps
of spies and eavesdroppers employed by the government. As one of these
wretched underlings, he did his drudgery, sometimes abroad, sometimes at
home, and long endured the various miseries of such a station. Ten or a
dozen years ago--not more--a meagre, wan old man, diseased and miserably
poor, was found dead in his bed at an obscure inn in the Borough, where
he was quite unknown. He had taken poison. There was no clue to his
name; but it was discovered from certain entries in a pocket-book he
carried, that he had been secretary to Lord George Gordon in the time of
the famous riots.
Many months after the re-establishment of peace and order, and even when
it had ceased to be the town-talk, that every military officer, kept at
free quarters by the City during the late alarms, had cost for his board
and lodging four pounds four per day, and every private soldier two and
twopence halfpenny; many months after even this engrossing topic was
forgotten, and the United Bulldogs were to a man all killed, imprisoned,
or transported, Mr Simon Tappertit, being removed from a hospital
to prison, and thence to his place of trial, was discharged by
proclamation, on two wooden legs. Shorn of his graceful limbs, and
brought down from his high estate to circumstances of utter destitution,
and the deepest misery, he made shift to stump back to his old master,
and beg for some relief. By the locksmith’s advice and aid, he was
established in business as a shoeblack, and opened shop under an archway
near the Horse Guards. This being a central quarter, he quickly made a
very large connection; and on levee days, was sometimes known to have
as many as twenty half-pay officers waiting their turn for polishing.
Indeed his trade increased to that extent, that in course of time he
entertained no less than two apprentices, besides taking for his wife
the widow of an eminent bone and rag collector, formerly of Millbank.
With this lady (who assisted in the business) he lived in great domestic
happiness, only chequered by those little storms which serve to clear
the atmosphere of wedlock, and brighten its horizon. In some of these
gusts of bad weather, Mr Tappertit would, in the assertion of his
prerogative, so far forget himself, as to correct his lady with a brush,
or boot, or shoe; while she (but only in extreme cases) would retaliate
by taking off his legs, and leaving him exposed to the derision of those
urchins who delight in mischief.
Miss Miggs, baffled in all her schemes, matrimonial and otherwise, and
cast upon a thankless, undeserving world, turned very sharp and sour;
and did at length become so acid, and did so pinch and slap and tweak
the hair and noses of the youth of Golden Lion Court, that she was by