Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General
“How provoking!” said the Captain, as he bit his lip. “They will be so impatient in England,” muttered he to himself, “and I know Sidney Herbert is sure to blame me.” Then he added aloud, “I am at a dead-lock here. I have come from the Crimea with despatches, and expected to find money here to carry me on to England; and these stupid people at the War Office have forgotten all about it. Is it not enough to provoke a saint?”
“I don’t know; I never was a saint,” said the impassive attaché.
“Well, it’s trying to a sinner,” said F., with a slight laugh; for he was one of those happy-natured dogs who are not indifferent to the absurd side of even their own mishaps. “How long does the post take to England?”
“Three days.”
“And three back – that makes six; a week – an entire week.”
“Omitting Sunday,” said the grave attaché, who really felt an interest in the other’s dilemma.
“All I can say is, it was no fault of mine,” cried F., after a moment. “If I am detained here through their negligence, they must make the best excuse they can. Have you got a cigar?” This was said with his eyes fixed on a roll of Cubans on the table.
“Take one,” said the other.
“Thanks,” said F., as he selected three. “I’ll drop in to-morrow, and hope to have better luck.”
“How much money do you want?” asked Mr L.
“Enough to carry me to London.”
“How much is that?”
“Let me see. Strasbourg – Paris, a day at Paris; Cowley might detain me two days: fifteen or twenty pounds would do it amply.”
“You shall have it.”
“All right,” said F., who walked to the fire, and, lighting his cigar, smoked away; while the other took some notes from a table-drawer and counted them.
“Shall I give you a formal receipt for this?” asked F.
“You can tell them at the Office,” said L., as he dipped his pen into the ink and continued the work he had been previously engaged in. F. said a few civil words – the offhand gratitude of a man who was fully as much in the habit of bestowing as of receiving favours, and withdrew. L. scarcely noticed his departure; he was deep in his despatch, and wrote on. At length he came to the happy landing-place, that spot of rest for the weary foot – “I have the honour to be, my Lord,” and he arose and stood at the fire.
As L. smoked his cigar he reflected, and as he reflected he remembered; and, to refresh his memory, he took out some papers from a pigeon-hole, and at last finding what he sought, sat down to read it. The document was a despatch, dated a couple of years back, instructing H.M.‘s representative at the Court of Munich to secure the person of a certain N. F., and hold him in durance till application should be made to the Bavarian Government for his extradition and conveyance to England. Then followed a very accurate description of the individual – his height, age, general looks, voice, and manner – every detail of which L. now saw closely tallied with the appearance of his late visitor.
He pondered for a while over the paper, and then looked at his watch. It was five o’clock! The first train to Augsburg was to start at six. There was little time, consequently, to take the steps necessary to arrest a person on suspicion; for he should first of all have to communicate with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who should afterwards back his application to the Prefect of Police. The case was one for detail, and for what the Germans insist upon, much writing – and there was very little time to do it in. L., however, was not one to be easily defeated.
If baffled in one road, he usually found out another. He therefore wrote a brief note to the Minister, stating that he might require his assistance at a later hour of the evening, and at a time not usually official. This done, he despatched another note to Captain E. F., saying familiarly it was scarcely worth while trying to catch the mail-train that night, and that perhaps instead he would come over and take a tétè-à-tête dinner with him at the Legation.
F. was overjoyed as he read it! No man ever felt a higher pleasure in good company, nor knew better how to make it profitable. If he had been asked to choose, he would infinitely rather have had the invitation to dine than the twenty pounds he had pocketed in the morning. The cognate men of the world – and all members of the diplomatic career are to a certain extent in this category – were in F.‘s estimation the “trump cards” of the pack, with which he could “score tricks” innumerable, and so he accepted at once; and, in a very few minutes after his acceptance, made his appearance in a correct dinner-dress and a most unexceptionable white tie.
“Couldn’t refuse that pleasant offer of yours, L.” (he was familiar at once, and called him L.), “and here I am!” said he, as he threw himself into an easy-chair with all the bland satisfaction of one who looked forward to a good dinner and a very enjoyable evening.
“I am happy to have secured you,” said L., with a little laugh to himself at the epigram of his phrase. “Do you like caviar?”
“Delight in it!”
“I have just got some fresh from St Petersburg, and our cook here is rather successful in his caviar soup. We have a red trout from the Tegen See, a saddle of Tyrol mutton, and a pheasant —voilà votre diner! but I can promise you a more liberal carte in drinkables; just say what you like in the way of wine!”
F.‘s face beamed over with ecstasy. It was one of the grand moments of his life; and if he could, hungry as he was, he would have prolonged it! To be there the guest of her Majesty’s mission; to know, to feel, that the arms of England were over the door! that he was to be waited on by flunkies in the livery of the Legation, fed by the cook who had ministered to official palates, his glass filled with wine from the cellar of him who represented royalty! These were very glorious imaginings; and little wonder that F., whose whole life was a Poem in its way, should feel that they almost overcame him. In fact, like the woman in the nursery song, he was ready to exclaim, “This is none of me!” but still there were abundant evidences around him that all was actual, positive, and real.
“By the way,” said L., in a light, careless way, “did you ever in your wanderings chance upon a namesake of yours, only that he interpolates another Christian name, and calls himself R. Napoleon F.?”
The stranger started: the fresh, ruddy glow of his cheek gave way to a sickly yellow, and, rising from his chair, he said, “Do you mean to ‘split’ on me, sir?”
“I’m afraid, F.,” said the other, jauntily, “the thing looks ugly. You are R. N. F.!”
“And are you, sir, such a scoundrel – such an assassin – as to ask a man to your table in order to betray him?”
“These are strong epithets, F., and I’ll not discuss them; but if you ask, Are you going to dine here today? I’d say, No. And if you should ask, Where are, you likely to pass the evening? I’d hint, In the city jail.”
At this F. lost all command over himself, and broke out into a torrent of the wildest abuse. He was strong of epithets, and did not spare them. He stormed, he swore, he threatened, he vociferated; but L., imperturbable throughout all, only interposed with an occasional mild remonstrance – a subdued hint – that his language was less than polite or parliamentary. At length the door opened, two gendarmes appeared, and N. F. was consigned to their hands and removed.
The accusations against him were manifold; from before and since the day of the governesses, he had been living a life of dishonesty and fraud. German law proceedings are not characterised by any rash impetuosity; the initial steps in F.‘s case took about eighteen months, during which he remained a prisoner. At the end of this time the judges discovered some informality in his committal; and as L. was absent from Munich, and no one at the Legation much interested in the case, the man was liberated on signing a declaration – to which Bavarian authorities, it would seem, attach value – that he was “a rogue and a vagabond;” confessions which the Captain possibly deemed as absurd an act of “surplusage” as though he were to give a written declaration that he was a vertebrated animal and a biped.
He went forth once more, and, difficult as it appears to the intelligence of honest and commonplace folk, he went forth to prosper and live luxuriously – so gullible is the world, so ready and eager to be cheated and deceived. Sir Edward Lytton has somewhere declared that a single number of the ‘Times’ newspaper, taken at random, would be the very best and most complete picture of our daily life – the fullest exponent of our notions, wants, wishes, and aspirations. Not a hope, nor fear, nor prejudice – not a particle of our blind trustfulness, or of our as blind unbelief, that would not find its reflex in the broadsheet. R. N. F. had arrived at the same conclusion, only in a more limited sense. The advertisement columns were all to him. What cared he for foreign wars, or the state of the Funds? as little did he find interest in railway intelligence, or “our own correspondent.” What he wanted was, the people who inquired after a missing relative – a long-lost son or brother, who was supposed to have died in the Mauritius or Mexico: an affectionate mother who desired tidings as to the burial-place of a certain James or John, who had been travelling in a particular year in the south of Spain: an inquirer for the will of Paul somebody: or any one who could supply evidence as to the marriage of Sarah Meekins alias Crouther, supposed to have been celebrated before her Majesty’s Vice-Consul at Kooroobakaboo – these were the paragraphs that touched him.
Never was there such a union of intelligence and sympathy as in him! He knew everybody, and seemed not alone to have been known to, but actually beloved by, every one. It was in his arms poor Joe died at Aden. He gave away Maria at Tunis. He followed Tom to his grave at Corfu; and he was the mysterious stranger who, on board the P. and O. boat, offered his purse to Edward, and was almost offended at being denied. The way in which this man tracked the stories of families through the few lines of a newspaper advertisement was positively marvellous. Whatever was wanting in the way of evidence of this, or clue to that, came at once into his attributions.
A couple of years ago, an English lady, the wife of a clergyman, passed a winter at Rome with her daughter, and in the mixed society of that capital made acquaintance with a Polish Count of most charming manners and fascinating address. The acquaintance ripened into intimacy, and ended in an attachment which led to the marriage of the young lady with the distinguished exile.
On arriving in England, however, it was discovered that the accomplished Count was a common soldier, and a deserter from the Prussian army; and means were accordingly had recourse to in order to obtain a divorce, and the breach of a marriage accomplished under a fraudulent representation. While the proceedings were but in the initiative, there came a letter from Oneglia, near Nice, to the afflicted mother of the young lady, recalling to her mind the elderly gentleman with the blue spectacles who usually sat next her at the English Church at Rome. He was the writer of the present letter, who, in turning over the columns of the ‘Times’ read the melancholy story of her daughter’s betrayal and misery. By one of those fortunate accidents more frequent in novels than in life, he had the means of befriending her, and very probably of rescuing her from her present calamity. He, the writer, had actually been present at the wedding, and as a witness had signed the marriage-certificate of that same soi-disant Count Stanislaus Sobieski Something-or-other, at Lemberg, in the year ‘49, and knew that the unhappy but deserted wife was yet living. A certain momentary pressure of money prevented his at once coming to England to testify to this fact; but if a small sum, sufficient to pay a little balance he owed his innkeeper and wherewithal to make his journey to England, were forwarded to the address of Frederick Brooks, Esq., or lodged to his account at the Bank of French & Co., Florence, he would at once hasten to London and depose formally to every fact he had stated. By the merest accident I myself saw this letter, which the lady had, for more accurate information about the writer, sent to the banker at Florence, and in an instant I detected the fine Roman hand of R. N. F. It is needless to say that this shot went wide of the mark.
But that this fellow has lived for upwards of twenty years, travelling the Continent in every direction, eating and drinking at the best hotels, frequenting theatres, cafés, and public gardens, denying himself nothing, is surely a shame and a disgrace to the police of Europe, which has been usually satisfied to pass him over a frontier, and suffer him to continue his depredations on the citizens of another state. Of the obloquy he has brought upon his own country I do not speak. We must, I take it, have our scoundrels like other people; the only great grievance here is, that the fellow’s ubiquity is such that it is hard to believe that the swindler who walked off with the five watches from Hamburg is the same who, in less than eight days afterwards, borrowed fifty ducats from a waiter at Naples, and “bolted.”
Of late I have observed he has dropped his second prénom of Napoleon, and does not call himself by it. There is perhaps in this omission a delicate forbearance, a sense of refined deference to the other bearer of that name, whom he recognises as his master.
In the ingenuity of his manifold devices even religion has not escaped him, and it would be impossible to count how often he has left the “Establishment” for Rome, been converted, reconverted, reconciled, and brought home again – always, be it noted, at the special charge of so much money from the Church Fund, or a subscription from the faithful, ever zealous and eager to assist a really devout and truly sincere convert!
That this man is an aspiring and ambitious vagabond may be seen in the occasional raids he makes into the very best society, without having, at least to ordinary eyes, anything to obtain in these ventures, beyond the triumph of seeing himself where exposure and detection would be certain to be followed by the most condign punishment. At Rome, for instance – how, I cannot say – he obtained admission to the Duc de Grammont’s receptions; and at Florence, under the pretext of being a proprietor, and “a most influential” one, of the ‘Times,’ he breakfasted, by special invitation, with Baron Ricasoli, and had a long and most interesting conversation with him as to the conditions – of course political – on which he would consent to support Italian unity. These must have been done in pure levity; they were imaginative excursions, thrown off in the spirit of those fanciful variations great violinists will now and then indulge in, as though to say, “Is there a path too intricate for me to thread, is there a pinnacle too fine for me to balance on?”
A great deal of this fellow’s long impunity results from the shame men feel in confessing to have been “done” by him. Nobody likes the avowal, acknowledging, as it does, a certain defect in discrimination, and a natural reluctance to own to having been the dupe of one of the most barefaced and vulgar rogues in Europe.
There is one circumstance in this case which might open a very curious psychological question; it is this: F.‘s victims have not in general been the frank, open, free-giving, or trustful class of men; on the contrary, they have usually been close-fisted, cold, cautious people, who weigh carefully what they do, and are rarely the dupes of their own impulsiveness. F. is an Irishman, and yet his successes have been far more with English – ay, even with Scotchmen – than with his own countrymen.
In part this may be accounted for by the fact that F. did not usually present himself as one in utter want and completely destitute; his appeal for money was generally made on the ground of some speculation that was to repay the lender; it was because he knew “something to your advantage” that he asked for that £10. He addressed himself, in consequence, to the more mercantile spirit of a richer community – to those, in fact, who, more conversant with trade, better understood the meaning of an investment.
But there was another, and, as I take it, a stronger and less fallible ground for success. This fellow has, what all Irishmen are more or less gifted with, an immense amount of vitality, a quality which undeniably makes a man companionable, however little there may be to our taste in his manner, his education, or his bearing. This same vitality imparts itself marvellously to the colder temperaments of others, and gives out its own warmth to natures that never of themselves felt the glow of an impulse, or the glorious furnace-heat of a rash action.
This was the magnetism he worked with. “Canny” Scotchmen and shrewd Yankees – ay, even Swiss innkeepers – felt the touch of his quality. There was, or there seemed to be, a geniality in the fellow that, in its apparent contempt for all worldliness, threw men off their guard, and it would have smacked of meanness to distrust a fellow so open and unguarded.
Now Paddy has seen a good deal of this at home, and could no more be humbugged by it than he could believe a potato to be a truffle.
F. was too perfect an artist ever to perform in an Irish part to an Irish audience, and so he owes little or nothing to the land of his birth.
Apart from his unquestionable success, which of course settles the question, I would not have called him a great performer – indeed, my astonishment has always been how he succeeded, or with whom.
“Don’t tell me of Beresford’s blunders,” said the Great Duke after Albuera. “Did he beat Soult? if so, he was a good officer.”
This man’s triumphs are some twenty odd years of expensive living, with occasional excursions into good society. He wears broadcloth, and dines on venison, when his legitimate costume had been the striped uniform of the galleys, and his diet the black bread of a convict.
The injury these men do in life is not confined to the misery their heartless frauds inflict, for the very humblest and poorest are often their victims: they do worse, in the way they sow distrust and suspicion of really deserving objects, in the pretext they afford the miserly man to draw closer his purse-strings, and “not be imposed on;” and, worst of all, in the ill repute they spread of a nation which, not attractive by the graces of manner or the charms of a winning address, yet cherished the thought that in truthfulness and fair dealing there was not one could gainsay it.
As I write, I have just heard tidings of R. N. F. One of our most distinguished travellers and discoverers, lately returning from Venice to the South, passed the night at Padua, and met there what he described as an Indian officer – Major Newton – who was travelling, he said, with a nephew of Lord Palmer-ston’s.
The Major was a man fall of anecdote, and abounded in knowledge of people and places; he had apparently been everywhere with everybody, and, with a communicativeness not always met with in old soldiers, gave to the stranger a rapid sketch of his own most adventurous life. As the evening wore on, he told too how he was waiting there for a friend, a certain N. F., who was no other than himself, the nephew of Lord Palmerston being represented by his son, an apt youth, who has already given bright promise of what his later years may develop.
N. F. retired to bed at last, so much overcome by brandy-and-water that my informant escaped being asked for a loan, which I plainly see he would not have had the fortitude to have refused; and the following morning he started so early that N. F., wide awake as he usually is, was not vigilant enough to have anticipated.
I hope these brief details, pour servir à l’histoire de Monsieur R. N. F., may save some kind-hearted traveller from the designs of a thorough blackguard, and render his future machinations through the press more difficult to effect and more certain of exposure.
I had scarcely finished this brief, imperfect sketch, when I read in ‘Galignani’ the following: —
“Swindling on the Continent. – A letter from Venice of March 29 gives us the following piece of information which may still be of service to some of our readers, though, from the fact with which it concludes, it would seem that the proceedings, of the party have been brought to a standstill, at least for some time. This is not, however, it may be recollected, the first occasion we have had to bring the conduct of the individual referred to under the notice of our readers for similar practices: —
“‘I am informed that one Mr Newton, alias Neville, alias Fane, and with a dozen other aliases, has been arrested at Padua for swindling. This ubiquitous gentleman has been travelling for some years at the expense of hotel-keepers, and other geese easily fleeced, on the Continent In the year 1862, Mr Neville and his two sons made their suspicious appearance at Venice, and they now, minus the younger son, have visited Padua as Mr Robert N. Newton and son, taking up their residence at the Stella d’Oro. They arrived without luggage and without money, both of which had been lost in the Danube; but they expected remittances from India! The obliging landlord lent money, purchased clothes, fed them gloriously, and contrived, between the 8th Feb. and 25th of March, to become the creditor of Newton and son for 1000 swanzig. The expenses continued, but the remittances never came. The patient landlord began to lose that virtue, and denounced these aliases as swindlers. The police of Vienna, hearing of the event, sent information that these two accommodating gentlemen had practised the victimising art for two months in December last at the Hotel Regina Inghilterre, at Pesth, run up a current account of 700 florins, and decamped; and a hotel-keeper recognised the scamps as having re-resided at the Luna, in Venice, in 1862, and “plucked some profit from that pale-faced moon.” Mr Newton’s handwriting proved him to be in 1863 one Major Fane, who had generously proposed to bring all his family, consisting of ten persons, to pass the winter at the Barbesi Hotel at Venice, if the proprietor would forward him 700 fr., as, owing to his wife’s prolonged residence at Rome and Naples, he was short of money, which, however, he expected, would cease on the arrival of supplies from Calcutta. These gentlemen are now in durance vile, and there is no doubt but that this letter will lead to their recognition by many other victims.’”
Let no sanguine enthusiast for the laws of property imagine, however, that this great man’s career is now ended, and that R. N. F. will no more go forth as of old to plunder and to rob. Imprisonment for debt is a grievous violation of personal liberty certainly, but it is finite; and some fine morning, when the lark is carolling high in heaven, and the bright rivulets are laughing in the gay sunlight, R. N. F. will issue from his dungeon to taste again the sweets of liberty, and to partake once more of the fleshpots of some confiding landlord. F. is a man of great resources, doubtless. When he repeats a part, he feels the same sort of repugnance that Fechter would to giving a fiftieth representation of Hamlet, but he would bow to the necessity which a clamorous public imposes, however his own taste might rebel against the dreariness of the task. Still, I feel assured that he will next appear in a new part. We shall hear of him – that is certain. He will be in search of a lost will, by which he would inherit millions, or a Salvator Rosa that he has been engaged to buy for the Queen, or perhaps he will be a missionary to assist in that religious movement now observable in Italy. How dare I presume, in my narrow inventiveness, to suggest to such a master of the art as he is? I only know that, whether he comes before the world as the friend of Sir Hugh Rose, a proprietor of the ‘Times,’ the agent of Lord Palmerston, or a recent convert from Popery, he will sustain his part admirably; and that same world that he has duped, robbed, and swindled for more than a quarter of a century will still feed and clothe him – still believe in the luggage that never comes, and the remittance that will never turn up.
After all, the man must be a greater artist than I was willing to believe him to be. He must be a deep student of the human heart – not, perhaps, in its highest moods; and he must well understand how to touch certain chords which give their response in unlimited confidence and long credit.
