—Stark, errant, downright beggars. Ay,
Without equivocation, statute beggars,
Couchant and passant, guardant, rampant beggars;
Current and vagrant, stockant, whippant beggars!1
Each sunburnt varlet started from his shed; each dusky dame, with her brown, half-naked urchins, followed at his heels; each “ripe young maiden, with the glossy eye,” lingered but to sleek her raven tresses, and to arrange her straw bonnet, and then overtook the others; each wrinkled beldame hobbled as quickly after as her stiffened joints would permit; while the ancient patrico, the priest of the crew (who joined the couples together by the hedge-side, “with the nice custom of dead horse between”2) brought up the rear, all bent on one grand object, that of having a peep at the “foremost man of all this prigging world!”
Dick Turpin, at the period of which we treat, was in the zenith of his reputation. His deeds were full blown; his exploits were in every man’s mouth; and a heavy price was set upon his head. That he should show himself thus openly, where he might be so easily betrayed, excited no little surprise amongst the craftiest of the crew, and augured an excess of temerity on his part. Rash daring was the main feature of Turpin’s character. Like our great Nelson, he knew fear only by name; and when he thus trusted himself into the hands of strangers, confident in himself and in his own resources, he felt perfectly easy as to the result. He relied also in the continuance of his good fortune, which had as yet never deserted him. Possessed of the belief that his hour was not yet come, he cared little or nothing for any risk he might incur; and though he might, undoubtedly, have some presentiment of the probable termination of his career, he never suffered it to militate against his present enjoyment, which proved that he was no despicable philosopher.
Turpin was the ultimus Romanorum, the last of a race, which (we were almost about to say we regret) is now altogether extinct.
Several successors he had, it is true, but no name worthy to be recorded after his own. With him expired the chivalrous spirit which animated successively the bosoms of so many knights of the road; with him died away that passionate love of enterprise, that high spirit of devotion to the fair sex, which was first breathed upon the highway by the gay, gallant Claude Du-Val, the Bayard of the road—le filou sans peur et sans reproche—but which was extinguished at last by the cord that tied the heroic Turpin to the remorseless tree.
It were a subject well worthy of enquiry, to trace this decline and fall of the empire of the tobymen to its remoter causes; to ascertain the why and the wherefore, that—with so many half-pay captains; so many poor curates; so many lieutenants, of both services, without hopes of promotion; so many penny-a-liners and fashionable novelists; so many damned dramatists, and damning critics; so many Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviewers; so many detrimental brothers and younger sons; when there are horses to be hired, pistols to be borrowed, purses to be taken, and mails are as plentiful as partridges—it were worth serious investigation, we repeat, to ascertain why, with the best material imaginable for a new race of highwaymen, we have none, not so much as an amateur.
Why do not some of these choice spirits quit the salons of Pall-Mall, and take to the road? the air of the heath is more bracing and wholesome, we should conceive, than that of any “hell” whatever, and the chances of success incomparably greater. We throw out this hint, without a doubt of seeing it followed up. Probably the solution of our enquiry may be, that the supply is greater than the demand; that, in the present state of things, embryo highwaymen way be more abundant than purses; and then, have we not the horse-patrol? With such an admirably-organised system of conservation, it is vain to anticipate a change. The highwaymen, we fear, like their Irish brothers, the Rapparees, went out with the Tories. They were averse to reform, and eschewed emancipation.
Lest anyone should think we have overrated the pleasures of the highwayman’s existence, they shall hear what “the right villanous” Jack Hall, a celebrated tobyman of his day, has got to say on the subject. “His life (the highwayman’s) has, generally, the most mirth and the least care in it of any man’s breathing, and all he deals for is clear profit: he has that point of good conscience, that he always sells as he buys, a good pennyworth, which is something rare, since he trades with so small a stock. The fence3 and he are like the devil and the doctor, they live by one another; and, like traitors, ’tis best to keep each other’s counsel.