Читать книгу The Collected Novels - William Harrison Ainsworth - Страница 93

Table of Contents

Our tale is told. Yet, perhaps, we may be allowed to add a few words respecting two of the subordinate characters of our drama — melodrama we ought to say — namely Jerry Juniper and the knight of Malta. What became of the Caper Merchant’s son after his flight from Kilburn Wells we have never been able distinctly to ascertain. Juniper, however, would seem to be a sort of Wandering Jew, for certain it is, that somebody very like him is extant still, and to be met with at Jerry’s old haunts; indeed, we have no doubt of encountering him at the ensuing meetings of Ascot and Hampton.

As regards the knight of Malta — Knight of Roads—“Rhodes”— he should have been — we are sorry to state that the career of the Ruffler terminated in a madhouse, and thus the poor knight became in reality a Hospitaller! According to the custom observed in those establishments, the knight was deprived of his luxuriant locks, and the loss of his beard rendered his case incurable; but, in the mean time, the barber of the place made his fortune by retailing the materials of all the black wigs he could collect to the impostor’s dupes.

Such is the latest piece of intelligence that has reached us of the Arch-hoaxer of Canterbury!

Turpin — why disguise it? — was hanged at York in 1739. His firmness deserted him not at the last. When he mounted the fatal tree his left leg trembled; he stamped it impatiently down, and, after a brief chat with the hangman, threw himself suddenly and resolutely from the ladder. His sufferings would appear to have been slight: as he himself sang,

He died, not as other men, by degrees, But at once, without wincing, and quite at his ease!

We may, in some other place, lay before the reader the particulars — and they are not incurious — of the “night before Larry was stretched.”

The remains of the vagrant highwayman found a final resting-place in the desecrated churchyard of Saint George, without the Fishergate postern, a green and grassy cemetery, but withal a melancholy one. A few recent tombs mark out the spots where some of the victims of the pestilence of 1832-33 have been interred; but we have made vain search for Turpin’s grave — unless — as is more than probable — the plain stone with the simple initials R. T. belongs to him.

The gyves by which he was fettered are still shown at York Castle, and are of prodigious weight and strength; and though the herculean robber is said to have moved in them with ease, the present turnkey was scarcely able to lift the ponderous irons. An old woman of the same city has a lock of hair, said to have been Turpin’s, which she avouches her grandfather cut off from the body after the execution, and which the believers look upon with great reverence. O rare Dick Turpin!

We shall, perhaps, be accused of dilating too much upon the character of the highwayman, and we plead guilty to the charge. But we found it impossible to avoid running a little into extremes. Our earliest associations are connected with sunny scenes in Cheshire, said to have been haunted by Turpin; and with one very dear to us — from whose lips, now, alas! silent, we have listened to many stories of his exploits — he was a sort of hero. We have had a singular delight in recounting his feats and hairbreadth escapes; and if the reader derives only half as much pleasure from the perusal of his adventures as we have had in narrating them, our satisfaction will be complete. Perhaps, we may have placed him in too favorable a point of view — and yet we know not. As upon those of more important personages, many doubts rest upon his history. Such as we conceive him to have been, we have drawn him — hoping that the benevolent reader, upon finishing our Tale, will arrive at the same conclusion; and, in the words of the quaint old Prologue to the Prince of Prigs’ Revels,

—————— Thank that man,

Can make each thief a complete Roscian!