 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. Haerdale fled that night. Before pursuit could be begun, indeed before Sir John was traced or missed, he had left the kingdom. Preparing straight to a religious establishment, known throughout Europe for the rigor 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 recognized 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 remained 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 him to Holland, in place of appearing to receive sentence. From Wentz, as the quiet burgamasters 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 then 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 first 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 arms 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 Groobie. 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 and 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 sensorious. Gashford deserted him, of course. He subsisted for a time upon his traffic in his master's and, this trade failing when the stock was quite exhausted, procured an appointment in the honourable core 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, one 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 three-quarters by the city during the later alarms had cost for his board and lodging four pounds four per day, and every private soldier two and tuppence hapenny. Many months after even this engrossing topic was forgotten, and the united bulldogs were to a man all killed, imprisoned or transported, Mr. Simon Tepetit, 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 shoe-black, and opened shop under an archway near the horse-guards. This being a central quarter he quickly made a very large connection, and on levy 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 Milbank. With this lady, who assisted in the business, he lived in great domestic happiness, only checkered by those little storms which served to clear the atmosphere of wedlock and brighten its horizon. In some of these gusts of bad weather, Mr. Tepetit 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 mist-chief. 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 one consent, expelled that sanctuary, and desired to bless some other spot of earth in preference. It chanced at that moment at the justices of the peace for Middlesex, proclaimed by public placard, that they stood in need of a female turnkey for the county bridewell, and appointed a day and hour for the inspection of candidates. Miss Miggs, attending at the time appointed, was instantly chosen, and selected from one hundred and twenty-four competitors, and it once promoted to the office, which she held until her deceased more than thirty years afterwards, remaining single all that time. It was observed of this lady that while she was inflexible and grim to all her female flock, she was particularly so to those who could establish any claim to beauty, and it was often remarked, as a proof of her indomitable virtue and severe chastity, that to such as had been frail she showed no mercy, always falling upon them on the slightest occasion, or on no occasion at all, was the fullest measure of her wrath. Among other useful inventions which she practised upon this class of offenders, and bequeathed to posterity, was the art of inflicting an exquisitely vicious poke or dig with the wards of a key in the small of the back near the spine. She likewise originated a mode of treading by accident in patterns on such as had small feet, also very remarkable for its ingenuity, and previously quite unknown. It was not very long, you may be sure, before Joe Willet and Dolly Varden were made husband and wife, and with a handsome sum in bank, for the locksmith could afford to give his daughter a good dowry, reopened the maypole. It was not very long, you may be sure, before a red-faced little boy was seen staggering about the maypole passage and kicking up his heels on the green before the door. It was not very long, counting by years, before there was a red-faced little girl, another red-faced little boy, and a whole troupe of girls and boys, so that, go to Chigwell, when you would, there would surely be seen, either in the village street, or on the green, or frolicking in the farmyard, for it was a farm now, as well as a tavern, more small Joes and small Dollies than could be easily counted. It was not a very long time before these appearances ensued, but it was a very long time before Joe looked five years older, or Dolly either, or the locksmith either, or his wife either, for cheerfulness and content are great beautifiers, and our famous preservers of youthful looks depend upon it. It was a long time, too, before there was such a country in as the maypole in all England. Indeed, it is a great question whether there has ever been such another to this hour, or ever will be. It was a long time, too, for never, as the proverb says, is a long day, before they forgot to have an interest in wounded soldiers at the maypole, or before Joe omitted to refresh them for the sake of his old campaign, or before the sergeant left off looking in there now and then, or before they fatigued themselves or each other by talking on these occasions of battles and sieges, and hard weather and hard service, and a thousand things belonging to a soldier's life. As to the great silver snuff-box which the king sent Joe with his own hand, because of his conduct and the riots, what guest ever went to the maypole without putting finger and thumb into that box, and taking a great pinch, though he had never taken a pinch of snuff before, and almost sneezed himself into convulsions even then. As to the purple-faced vintner, where is the man who lived in those times and never saw him at the maypole, to all appearance as much at home in the best room as if he lived there? And as to the feastings and christenings and revelings at Christmas and celebrations of birthdays, wedding-days, and all manner of days, both at the maypole and the golden-key, if they are not notorious, what facts are? Mr. Willet, the elder, having been by some extraordinary means possessed with the idea that Joe wanted to be married, and that it would be well for him, his father, to retire into private life, and enable him to live in comfort, took up his abode in a small cottage at Chigwell, where they widened and enlarged the fireplace for him, hung up the boiler, and furthermore planted in the little garden outside the front door a fictitious maypole, so that he was quite at home directly. To this his new habitation, Tom Cobb, Phil Parks, and Solomon Daisy went regularly every night, and in the chimney-corner they all forkwafed and smoked and prosed and dozed as they had done of old. It being accidentally discovered after a short time that Mr. Willet still appeared to consider himself a landlord by profession, Joe provided him with a slate, upon which the old man regularly scored up vast accounts for meat, drink, and tobacco. As he grew older this passion increased upon him, and it became a delight to chalk against the name of each of his cronies a sum of enormous magnitude and impossible to be paid, and such was his secret joy in these entries that he would be perpetually seen going behind the door to look at them, and coming forth again suffused with the liveliest satisfaction. He never recovered the surprise the rioters had given him, and remained in the same mental condition down to the last moment of his life. It was like to have been brought to a speedy termination by the first sight of his first grandchild, which appeared to fill him with the belief that some alarming miracle had happened to Joe. Being promptly blooded, however, by a skilful surgeon, he rallied, and although the doctors all agreed on his being attacked with symptoms of apoplexy six months afterwards that he ought to die, and took it very ill that he did not, he remained alive, possibly on account of his constitutional slowness, for nearly seven years more, when he was one morning found speechless in his bed. He lay in this state, free from all tokens of uneasiness, for a whole week, when he was suddenly restored to consciousness by hearing the nurse whisper in his son's ear that he was going, I'm a-going, Joseph, said Mr. Willet, turning round upon the instant, to the cell-wanners, and immediately gave up the ghost. He left a large sum of money behind him, even more than he was supposed to have been worth, although the neighbours, according to the custom of mankind and calculating the wealth that other people ought to have saved, had estimated his property in good round numbers. Joe inherited the whole, so that he became a man of great consequence in those parts, and was perfectly independent. Some time elapsed before Barnaby got the better of the shock he had sustained, or regained his old health and gaiety. But he recovered by degrees, and although he could never separate his condemnation and escape from the idea of a terrific dream, he became, in other respects, more rational. Dating from the time of his recovery, he had a better memory and greater steadiness of purpose. But a dark cloud overhung his whole previous existence, and never cleared away. He was not the less happy for this, for his love of freedom and interest in all that moved or grew, or had its being in the elements, remained to him unimpaired. He lived with his mother on the Maypole farm, tending the poultry and the cattle, working in a garden of his own, and helping everywhere. He was known to every bird and beast about the place, and had a name for every one. Never was there a lighter-hearted husbandman, a creature more popular with young and old, a blither or more happy soul than Barnaby, and though he was free to ramble where he would, he never quitted her, but was for evermore her stay and comfort. It was remarkable that although he had that dim sense of the past, he sought out Hugh's dog, and took him under his care, and that he never could be tempted into London. And the riots were many years old, and Edward and his wife came back to England with a family almost as numerous as Dolly's, and one day appeared at the Maypole porch, he knew them instantly, and wept and left for joy. But neither to visit them, nor in any other pretence, no matter how full of promise and enjoyment could he be persuaded to set foot in the streets, nor did he ever conquer this repugnance or look upon the town again. Grip soon recovered his looks, and became as glossy and sleek as ever, but he was profoundly silent. Whether he had forgotten the art of polite conversation in Newgate, or had made a vow in those troubled times to forego for a period the display of his accomplishments is matter of uncertainty, but certain it is that for a whole year he never indulged in any other sound than a grave, decorous croak. At the expiration of that term, the morning being very bright and sunny, he was heard to address himself to the horses and the stable upon the subject of the kettle, so often mentioned in these pages, and before the witness who overheard him could run into the house with the intelligence and add to it upon his solemn affirmation the statement that it heard him laugh. The bird himself advanced with fantastic steps to the very door of the bar, and there cried, I'm a devil, I'm a devil, I'm a devil, with extraordinary rapture. From that period, although he was supposed to be much affected by the death of Mr. Willet Sr., he constantly practised and improved himself in the vulgar tongue, and as he was a mere infant for a raven, when Barnaby was grey, he has very probably gone on talking to the present time. End of Chapter 82. End of Barnaby Rudge, A Tale of the Riots of 80 by Charles Dickens. Recorded by Mill Nicholson. Website www.act number two scnumberthree.com