A Book of Scoundrels | Page 3

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A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS
by CHARLES WHIBLEY

To the Greeks FOOLISHNESS

I desire to thank the Proprietors of the `National Observer,' the `New
Review,' the `Pall Mall Gazette,' and `Macmillan's Magazine,' for

courteous permission to reprint certain chapters of this book.

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION
CAPTAIN HIND
MOLL CUTPURSE AND JONATHAN WILD I. MOLL CUTPURSE
II. JONATHAN WILD III. A PARALLEL
RALPH BRISCOE
GILDEROY AND SIXTEEN-STRING JACK I. GILDEROY II.
SIXTEEN-STRING JACK III. A PARALLEL
THOMAS PURENEY
SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE I. JACK SHEPPARD II.
LOUIS-DOMINIQUE CARTOUCHE III. A PARALLEL
VAUX
GEORGE BARRINGTON
THE SWITCHER AND GENTLEMAN HARRY I. THE SWITCHER
II. GENTLEMAN HARRY III. A PARALLEL
DEACON BRODIE AND CHARLES PEACE I. DEACON BRODIE
II. CHARLES PEACE III. A PARALLEL
THE MAN IN THE GREY SUIT
MONSIEUR L'ABB

INTRODUCTION
There are other manifestations of greatness than to relieve suffering or
to wreck an empire. Julius Csar and John Howard are not the only
heroes who have smiled upon the world. In the supreme adaptation of
means to an end there is a constant nobility, for neither ambition nor
virtue is the essential of a perfect action. How shall you contemplate
with indifference the career of an artist whom genius or good guidance
has compelled to exercise his peculiar skill, to indulge his finer
aptitudes? A masterly theft rises in its claim to respect high above the
reprobation of the moralist. The scoundrel, when once justice is quit of
him, has a right to be appraised by his actions, not by their effect; and
he dies secure in the knowledge that he is commonly more
distinguished, if he be less loved, than his virtuous contemporaries.
While murder is wellnigh as old as life, property and the pocket
invented theft, late-born among the arts. It was not until avarice had
devised many a cunning trick for the protection of wealth, until

civilisation had multiplied the forms of portable property, that thieving
became a liberal and an elegant profession. True, in pastoral society,
the lawless man was eager to lift cattle, to break down the barrier
between robbery and warfare. But the contrast is as sharp between the
savagery of the ancient reiver and the polished performance of Captain
Hind as between the daub of the pavement and the perfection of
Velasquez.
So long as the Gothic spirit governed Europe, expressing itself in
useless ornament and wanton brutality, the more delicate crafts had no
hope of exercise. Even the adventurer upon the road threatened his
victim with a bludgeon, nor was it until the breath of the Renaissance
had vivified the world that a gentleman and an artist could face the
traveller with a courteous demand for his purse. But the age which
witnessed the enterprise of Drake and the triumph of Shakespeare knew
also the prowess of the highwayman and the dexterity of the cutpurse.
Though the art displayed all the freshness and curiosity of the
primitives, still it was art. With Gamaliel Ratsey, who demanded a
scene from Hamlet of a rifled player, and who could not rob a
Cambridge scholar without bidding him deliver an oration in a wood,
theft was already better than a vulgar extortion. Moll Cutpurse, whose
intelligence and audacity were never bettered, was among the bravest
of the Elizabethans. Her temperament was as large and as reckless as
Ben Jonson's own. Neither her tongue nor her courage knew the curb of
modesty, and she was the first to reduce her craft to a set of wise and
imperious rules. She it was who discovered the secret of discipline, and
who insisted that every member of her gang should undertake no other
enterprise than