Before all things he respected the profession which his left hand made


A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS
inevitable, and which he pursued with unconquerable pride Nor in his
inspired youth was plunder his sole ambition: he cultivated the garden of
his style with the natural zeal of the artist; he frowned upon the bungler
with a lofty contempt His materials were simplicity itself: his forks,
which were always with him, and another's well-filled pocket, since,
sensible of danger, he cared not to risk his neck for a purse that did not
contain so much as would `sweeten a grawler' At its best, his method
was always witty--that is the single word which will characterise it--witty
as a piece of Heine's prose, and as dangerous He would run over a man's
pockets while he spoke with him, returning what he chose to discard
without the lightest breath of suspicion `A good workman,' his
contemporaries called him; and they thought it a shame for him to be idle
Moreover, he did not blunder unconsciously upon his triumph; he tackled
the trade in so fine a spirit of analysis that he might have been the very
Aristotle of his science `The keek-cloy,' he wrote, in his hints to young
sportsmen, `is easily picked If the notes are in the long fold just tip them
the forks; but if there is a purse or open money in the case, you must link
it' The breast-pocket, on the other hand, is a severer test `Picking the
suck is sometimes a kittle job,' again the philosopher speaks `If the coat
is buttoned it must be opened by slipping past Then bring the lil down
between the flap of the coat and the body, keeping your spare arm across
your omega usa man's breast, and so slip it to a comrade; then abuse the fellow for
jostling you'
Not only did he master the tradition of thievery; he vaunted his
originality with the familiar complacence of the scoundrel Forgetting
that it was by burglary that he was undone, he explains for his public
glorification that he was wont to enter the houses of Leith by forcing the
small window above the outer door This artifice, his vanity grumbles, is
now common; but he would have all the world understand that it was his
own invention, and he murmurs with the pedantry of the convicted
criminal that it is now set forth for the better protection of honest citizens
No less admirable in his own eyes was that other artifice which induced
him to conceal such notes as he managed to filch in the collar of his coat
Thus he eluded the vigilance of the police, which searched its prey in



A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS
those days with a sorry lack of cunning In truth, Haggart's wits were as
nimble as his fingers, and he seldom failed to render a profitable account
of his talents He beguiled one of his sojourns in gaol by manufacturing
tinder wherewith to light the prisoners' pipes, and it is not astonishing that
he won a general popularity In Ireland, when the constables would take
him for a Scot, he answered in high Tipperary, and saved his skin for a
while by a brogue which would not have shamed a modern patriot But
quick as were his wits, his vanity always outstripped them, and no hero
ever bragged of his achievements with a louder effrontery
Now all you ramblers in mourning go, For the prince of
ramblers is lying low, And chanel logo earrings all you maidens that love the game,
Put on your mourning veils again
Thus he celebrated his downfall in a ballad that has the true Newgate
ring, and verily in his own eyes he was a hero who carried to the scaffold a
dauntless spirit unstained by treachery
He believed himself an adept in all the arts; as a squire of dames he
held himself peerless, and he assured the ineffable Combe, who recorded
his flippant utterance with a credulous respect, that he had sacrificed
hecatombs of innocent virgins to his importunate lust Prose and verse
trickled with equal facility from his pen, and his biography is a
masterpiece Written in the pedlar's French as it was misspoken in the
hells of Edinburgh, it is a narrative of uncommon simplicity and directness,
marred now and again by such superfluous reflections as are the natural
result of thievish sentimentality He tells his tale without paraphrase or
adornment, and the worthy Writer to the Signet, who prepared the work
for the Press, would have asked three times the space to record one-half
the adventures `I sunk upon it with my forks and brought it with me';
`We obtained thirty-three pounds by this affair'--is there not the stalwart
flavour of the epic in these plain, unvarnished sentences?
His other accomplishments are pallid in the light of his brilliant left
hand Once, at Derry--he attended a cock- fight, and beguiled an interval
by emptying the pockets of a lucky bookmaker An expert, who watched
the exploit in admiration, could not withhold a compliment `You are the
Switcher,' he exclaimed; `some take all, but you leave nothing' And it is

A BOOK OF prada clutch SCOUNDRELS
as the Switcher that Haggart keeps his memory green

II GENTLEMAN HARRY
`DAMN ye both! stop, or I will blow your brains out!' Thus it was
that Harry Simms greeted his victims, proving in a phrase that the heroic
age of the rumpad was no more Forgotten the debonair courtesy of
Claude Duval! Forgotten the lightning wit, the swift repartee of the
incomparable Hind! No longer was the hightoby-gloak a `gentleman' of
the road; he was a butcher, if not a beggar, on horseback; a braggart
without the courage to pull a trigger; a swashbuckler, oblivious of that
ancient style which converted the misery of surrender into a privilege
Yet Harry Simms, the supreme adventurer of his age, was not without
distinction; his lithe form and his hard-ridden horse were the common
dread of England; his activity was rewarded with a princely treasure; and
if his method were lacking in urbanity, the excuse is that he danced not to
the brilliant measure of the Cavaliers, but limped to the clumsy fiddle-
scraping of the early Georges
At Eton, where a too-indulgent grandmother had placed him, he
ransacked the desks of his school-fellows, and avenged a birching by
emptying his master's pockets Wherefore he lost the hope of a polite
education, and instead of proceeding with a clerkly dignity to King's
College, in the University of Cambridge, he was ignominiously
apprenticed to a breeches-maker The one restraint was as irksome as the
other, and Harry Simms abandoned the needle, as he had scorned the
grammar, to go upon the pad Though his early companions were
scragged at Tyburn, the light-fingered rascal was indifferent to their fate,
and squandering such booty as fell to his share, he bravely ladies omega watches `turned out' for
more Tottenham Court Fair was the theatre of his childish exploits, and
there he gained some little skill in the picking of pockets But a spell of
bad trade brought him to poverty, and he attempted to replenish an empty
pocket by the childish expedient of a threatening letter
The plan was conceived and executed with a futility which ensured an
instant capture The bungler chose a stranger at haphazard, commanding

A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS
him, under penalty of death, to lay five guineas upon a gun in Tower
Wharf; the guineas were cunningly deposited, and the rascal, caught with
his hand upon the booty, was committed to Newgate Youth, and the
intercession of his grandmother, procured a release, unjustified by the
infamous stupidity of the trick Its very clumsiness should have sent him
over sea; and it is wonderful that from a beginning of so little promise, he
should have climbed even the first slopes of greatness However, the
memory of gaol forced him to a brief interlude of honesty; for a while he
wore the pink coat of Colonel Cunningham's postillion, and presently was
promoted to the independence of a hackney coach
Thus employed, he became acquainted with the famous Cyprians of
Covent Garden, who, loving him for his handsome face and sprightly
gesture, seduced him to desert his cab for an easier profession So long
as the sky was fair, he lived under their amiable protection; but the
summer having chased the smarter gentry from town, the ladies could
afford him no more than would purchase a horse and a pair of pistols, so
that Harry was compelled to challenge fortune on the high road His first
journey was triumphantly vintage chanel jewelry successf