THEY plied the same trade, each with incomparable success. By her, as by
him, the art of the fence was carried to its ultimate perfection. In their
hands the high policy of theft wanted nor dignity nor assurance. Neither
harboured a single scheme which was not straightway translated into
action, and they were masters at once of Newgate and the Highway. As none
might rob without the encouragement of his emperor, so none was hanged at
Tyburn while intrigue or bribery might avail to drag a half-doomed neck
from the halter; and not even Moll herself was more bitterly tyrannical in
the control of a reckless gang than the thin-jawed, hatchet-faced Jonathan
Wild.
They were statesmen rather than warriors—happy if they might direct
the enterprises of others, and determined to punish the lightest
disobedience by death. The mind of each was readier than his right arm,
and neither would risk an easy advantage by a misunderstood or unwonted
sleight of hand. But when you leave the exercise of their craft to
contemplate their character with a larger eye, it is the woman who at
every point has the advantage. Not only was she the peerless inventor of a
new cunning; she was at home (and abroad) the better fellow. The
suppression of sex was in itself an unparalleled triumph, and the most
envious detractor could not but marvel at the domination of her womanhood.
Moreover, she shone in a gayer, more splendid epoch. The worthy
contemporary of Shakespeare, she had small difficulty in performing feats
of prowess and resource which daunted the intrepid ruffians of the
eighteenth century. Her period, in brief, gave her an eternal superiority;
and it were as hopeless for Otway to surpass the master whom he disgraced,
as for Wild to o'ershadow the brilliant example of Moll Cutpurse.
Tyrants both, they exercised their sovereignty in accordance with their
varying temperament. Hers was a fine, fat, Falstaffian humour, which,
while it inspired Middleton, might have suggested to Shakespeare an equal
companion of the drunken knight. His was but a narrow, cynic wit, not
edged like the knife, which wellnigh cut his throat, but blunt and
scratching like a worn-toothed saw.
She laughed with a laugh that echoed from Ludgate to Charing Cross, and
her voice drowned all the City. He grinned rarely and with malice; he
piped in a voice shrill and acid as the tricks of his mischievous
imagination. She knew no cruelty beyond the necessities of her life, and
none regretted more than she the inevitable death of a traitor. He lusted
after destruction with a fiendish temper, which was a grim anticipation of
De Sade; he would even smile as he saw the noose tighten round the necks
of the poor innocents he had beguiled to Tyburn. It was his boast that he
had contrived robberies for the mere glory of dragging his silly victims
to the gallows. But Moll, though she stood half-way between the robber and
his prey, would have sacrificed a hundred well-earned commissions rather
than see her friends and comrades strangled. Her temperament compelled her
to the loyal support of her own order, and she would have shrunk in horror
from her rival, who, for all his assumed friendship with the thief, was a
staunch and subtle ally of justice.
Before all things she had the genius of success. Her public offences were
trivial and condoned. She died in her bed, full of years and of honours,
beloved by the light-fingered gentry, reverenced by all the judges on the
bench. He, for all the sacrifices he made to a squint-eyed law, died
execrated alike by populace and police. Already Blueskin had done his
worst with a pen-knife; already Jack Sheppard and his comrades had warned
Drury Lane against the infamous thief-catcher. And so anxious, on the
other hand, was the law to be quit of their too zealous servant, that an
Act of Parliament was passed with the sole object of placing Jonathan's
head within the noose. His method, meagre though masterly, lulled him too
soon to an impotent security. She, with her larger view of life, her
plumper sense of style, was content with nothing less than an ultimate
sovereignty, and manifestly did she prove her superiority.
Though born for the wimple, she was more of a man than the breeched and
stockinged Jonathan, whose only deed of valiance was to hang,
terrier-like, by his teeth to an evasive enemy. While he cheated at cards
and cogged the dice, she trained dogs and never missed a bear-baiting. He
shrank, like the coward that he was, from the exercise of manly sports;
she cared not what were the weapons—quarterstaff or broadsword—so
long as she vanquished her opponent. She scoured the town in search of
insult; he did but exert his cunning when a quarrel was put upon him. Who,
then, shall deny her manhood? Who shall whisper that his style was the
braver or the better suited to his sex?
As became a hero, she kept the best of loose company: her parlour was ever
packed with the friends of loyalty and adventure. Are not Hind and Mull
Sack worth a thousand Blueskins? Moreover, plunder and wealth were not the
only objects of her pursuit: she was not merely a fence but a patriot, and
she would have accounted a thousand pounds well lost, if she did but
compass the discomfiture of a Parliament-man. Indeed, if Jonathan, the
thief-catcher, limped painfully after his magnificent example, Jonathan
the man and the sportsman confessed a pitiful inferiority to the valiant
Moll. Thus she avenged her sex by distancing the most illustrious of her
rivals; and if he pleads for his credit a taste for theology, hers is the
chuckle of contemptuous superiority. She died a patriot, bequeathing a
fountain of wine to the champions of an exiled king; he died a casuist,
setting crabbed problems to the Ordinary. Here, again, the advantage is
evident: loyalty is the virtue of men; a sudden attachment to religion is
the last resource of the second-rate citizen and of the trapped criminal.
