John Leech, His Life and Work Volume I Part 6

"'Back, slaves, for your lives!' shouted the infuriated Grabalotti, throwing himself in front of me. 'One moment more, and, by the blood-stained power of the thundering Avalanche, the foremost of you dies!'

"Cowering in cream-like humility, each individual reversed his implement of death--all but one. A ball from the pistol of Grabalotti instantly crashed through his brain. For a moment he writhed in sable pangs; then all was over, and darkness mantled over his impetuosity for ever. Then, turning towards me, the brigand chief gave me a civil invitation to spend the day with him, which, under existing circ.u.mstances, I thought it best to accept. On our way I took the opportunity thus furnished me to survey my lawless companion. He was at least six feet and a half, independent of the coverings of his feet, in height; his air was stern and commanding; raven ringlets cl.u.s.tered down to his shoulders. Premature intensity glowed in his volcanic eyes; his nose was Roman, and he wore mustachios. The lines in the lower part of his face were indicative of death-fraught concentration; and the teeth, frequently disclosed by his smile of pervading bitterness, were remarkably white. The gloom of his conical hat was mocked by gay ribands. He wore a jacket of green velvet (an expensive article), l.u.s.trously gemmed with gold b.u.t.tons; and those portions of his dress for which our language has no proper appellation were richly meandered with superior lace. His legs were variously swathed in the manner so characteristic of his profession. The carbine that slept in a snowy belt at his back; the pistols bickering in his girdle; and the stiletto reposing, like candid innocence, in its silver sheath, with its ivory handle protruding from his sash, were all of the most ornamental and valuable description."

This extraordinary robber and the artist arrive at "the dwelling of the bandit, which was eligibly situate among the most romantic scenery."

Signor Grabalotti conducted his visitor to a "table groaning with fruit, and supporting six sacramental chalices filled with the richest wine."

The brigand has made a great haul of prisoners, whose friends have not shown the alacrity in rescuing them required by their captor, who, by way of entertaining his guest, orders them all, to the amount of a dozen, into his presence, and, arranging them in a row "along a trench in the background," with the a.s.sistance of twelve of his men, has them all shot.

"Almost ere the smoke had cleared away, the earth was shovelled over the bodies.

"'And now,' said the chief, 'for a dance in honour of our guest.'

"Four-and-twenty brisk young bandits, clad in jackets, green array, were instantly joined by as many maidens, each wearing the square _coiffure_, short dress, and _pet.i.te_ ap.r.o.n, and otherwise fully attired in the costume of the country. Each robber provided himself with a partner, and a festive dance was performed with great spirit to a popular air.

"Their gaiety was at its height, when suddenly the sound of a distant bell stole with milky gentleness on the ear. In an instant all present fell on their knees, and, with their arms devoutly crossed upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, raised, in heavenly unison, their hymn of votive praise to the Virgin."

Here endeth the first chapter of the "Emerald Monster of the Deep Dell."

As "a satire on the literary absurdities of the day," to quote its author, this capital fooling could not be surpa.s.sed; indeed, to those who remember, as the present writer can distinctly, the effusions in prose and verse--or, as Jerrold called it, "prose and worse"--that more or less filled the pages of the Keepsakes, the Books of Gems and Beauty of a long bygone time, the "Monster of the Deep Dell" is scarcely a caricature.

But I have not yet done with him. The second chapter is devoted to an account in Grabalotti language of the early life and loves of the interesting bandit:

"Rino Grabalotti is my name," he says. "Italy is my nation; the Deep Dell is my dwelling-place, and--but no! never shall monkish cant pollute the lips to baleful imprecation attuned for ever. Let the blue and hideous glare of the lightning, and the ghastly gleam of the hag-ridden meteor, illumine the deeds of my doing. Growl, ye thunders! Roar, ye tempests! Yell, ye fiends, and howl in hideous harmony a prelude to my tale!"

He then proceeds to inform the artist (who, with an eye for copy, ventures to hint "that an outline of his history would be interesting") that he was the son of a priest, and born in Naples; and naturally much annoyed by the scandalous irregularity of his birth, he devotes his life to robbing and murdering as many of his fellow-creatures as good fortune places in his hands in the practice of his profession.

But I antic.i.p.ate. Grabalotti declines to say much about his infancy; he seems to have been pretty often reminded of the scandal of his birth, and as often he registered a vow that, sooner or later, he would close for ever the mouths of the slanderers.

"It was in my sixteenth summer," he continues, "that I really began to live. Though in years a boy, I was in all else a man. Pa.s.sion hurtled in my darkening eye, and plunged my heart in lava. I loved; what Italian at my age does not? Yes; I--the ruthless, the scathed, the smouldering, the sanguinary, the Emerald Monster of the Deep Dell--I, even I, gasped with tortuous anguish in the maddening transports of Cupid."

Giulia is the name of the fair creature who has caused the eruption of this volcanic pa.s.sion; and on what the bandit-lover calls "an evening of rosy gladness," he seeks his fair enslaver's window, guitar in hand. But the voice, "which was the best at a barcarole of any in Naples," had raised a very few love notes, when a rough voice exclaims:

"'What dost thou here, spurious offspring of sacrilege?' accompanying the inquiry by an equally rough salutation from behind (oh, madness!)--'begone!'

"Confusion simmered in my brain. Frenzied, I turned; one stroke of my stiletto, and my wounded honour was salved--with gore. It was that of Giulia's father!"

This sudden death of the author of her being offended Giulia, and she solemnly renounced young Grabalotti for ever. This intimation, conveyed in a mixture of "indignation mingled with scorn," had an extraordinary effect. Says the lover:

"Twisting in bitterness awhile I lingered, then rushed distracted from the spot, and fled hissing with desperation to the mountains."

The beauties of the Deep Dell produced no soothing effect on the desperate bitterness that twisted the soul of Grabalotti; he issued from the Dell to "soak and steep his heart in blood."

"The dewy wail of infancy, the piercing zest of female innocence, and the tremulous pleading of piping feebleness, all mocked at the radiance of the crimson steel, have poured their bootless incense o'er my breast.... Ha, ha! The nun, her dove-like innocence devastated, has broiled like a chestnut amid the ashes of her convent," etc.

More "copy" in the style of the above is imparted to the artist. But an interruption takes place. A brigand enters, and so irritates the monster by the abruptness of his appearance that, had not the pistol with which his impatient master received him missed fire, his brains would have been scattered to the winds of heaven.

"'Ha! dost thou dare to break in upon my mood?' roared Grabalotti.

"'Come to tell you,' said the robber (speaking in the greatest possible haste), 'that the nun who escaped the sacking of the convent has been taken.'

"'Do as you list with her, and chop her head off! Stay, I would fain see it when it is done; and here, take this purse for the risk thou hast encountered.'"

Yet another interruption--this time in the person of a brigand spy disguised as a peasant. The chief antic.i.p.ates startling and perhaps unpleasant news, and saying: "'Excuse me, signor, for a few moments,' he retires with his emissary."

Grabalotti was absent some little time, during which the artist "added another sketch to his small collection," when the monster returned, and informed his guest "in a lively tone" that they were about to have "some fun."

"'Of what description?' inquired the artist.

"'In an hour's time we shall be attacked by the military,'" to whom he promises a warm reception; and in the event of the robbers being overpowered by numbers, "a train communicates with the magazine below."

"Here the head of the unfortunate nun made its appearance on a silver dish. Its loveliness, even in death, was intensely overpowering. With a grin of fiendish malice, Grabalotti seized it by the hair, but no sooner did the features meet his eye, than he relinquished his hold and fell, senseless, backwards, faintly gasping, like a dying echo, ''Tis she!

'Tis Giulia!!'"

Unless the artist guest was possessed of courage uncommon among our fraternity, he could not have contemplated being blown into the air with the robbers, or being shot by the soldiers, with equanimity; and he must have been much relieved in any case by Grabalotti, who, when "the violence of frantic ferocity" had given way to "the calm profundity of despair," muttered in a low and suppressed tone: "Nay, thou shalt live to tell the world my story!" and to enable his guest to do this eventually, "in a tone of sweetest melancholy" he said:

"Stranger, hence! thy further stay is perilous. Yon by-path will conduct thee to the valleys."

Rising from "the valleys" was a crag, to the summit of which half an hour's walk would take the artist, and from thence he was a.s.sured that "if he turned his gaze backwards he should see something worth seeing."

The narrator tells us that he reached the crag in twenty-nine minutes exactly.

"For one minute I gazed in the direction of the Brigands' Haunt, from which, precisely at the expiration of that time, a vivid flash of flame, shooting into the air, accompanied by a dense column of smoke, and followed by a terrific explosion, proclaimed too plainly the last achievement of the Emerald Monster of the Deep Dell."

Mr. Percival Leigh contributes a second story to the "Fiddle-Faddle Fashion-book," in which the novel of fashionable life, not uncommon fifty years ago, is satirized under the t.i.tle of "Belleville: a Tale of Fashionable Life," not less happily than the sanguinary and terribly romantic writers are treated in the burlesque of Grabalotti. The "Clara Matilda poets" of the Keepsake time are also amusingly parodied in some short poems, which, with comic advertis.e.m.e.nts, occasionally very humorous, fill up the literary portion of the "Fiddle-Faddle Fashion-book."

This book is not the only one in which Leech's powers have been enlisted--I was nearly saying prost.i.tuted--in publications devoted to eccentricities in dress and the caprices of fashion. In ill.u.s.trations by him of the tale of fashionable life, or of Grabalotti, the genius of that great artist would have had full play; but as the draughtsman of fashion-plates it was, in my opinion, degraded. In vindication of my judgment I present my readers with two plates from the "Fiddle-Faddle"

book, in which Leech portrays--no doubt under direction--caprices of fashion which could only have existed in his own imagination, and produced with a feeling of caricature that is so conspicuous by its absence in his usual work.

I now return to the paper which Mr. Leigh wrote with a view to this memoir.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

That Leigh and Leech first met as students at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, I have noted elsewhere; and the details of his apprenticeship to the eccentric surgeon, which Mr. Leigh heard from Leech himself, I have also given, with the exception of one incident of which I was ignorant.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"In his dispensary," says Mr. Leigh, "the doctor had one drawer amongst his boxes, in which there were pills of gentle efficacy, intended to be served out (they were made, I believe, of bread and soap) to the generality of his customers. This receptacle bore the label of 'Pil.

Hum.,'--abbreviation of humbug--or, as their concoctor used to call them, 'Humbugeraneous Pills.' The Dr. c.o.c.kle to whom, Mr. Leigh says, Leech went after he left Mr. Whittle, was the son of the inventor of c.o.c.kle's Pills.

"No sooner had he become of age," continues Mr. Leigh, "than he was induced, in order to meet difficulties for which he was not responsible, to accept an accommodation bill, which the drawer of, when it fell due, failed to supply the means of meeting. Leech was consequently arrested for debt at the suit of this discounter, and lodged in a sponging-house kept by a sheriff's officer, a Jew, by name (I think) of Levi, in Newman Street. There he remained about a fortnight, supporting himself in the meanwhile by drawing cartoons and caricatures. He lithographed them on stone for Spooner, in the Strand, at a guinea each, a _friend_ having negotiated their sale.

"At last, an advance of money on a projected publication sufficient to discharge the debt having been obtained, he was liberated. But not long after, a second sc.r.a.pe--a repet.i.tion of the first--cost him another temporary sojourn with another Jew in another sponging-house in Cursitor Street. This detention, however, lasted but a few days. _From that period to the close of his life_ he remained subject to repeated demands for pecuniary a.s.sistance under continued pressure, which, as at the outset, he could not withstand. The deficits he had to defray were always heavy; the last of them, as I understand, a thousand pounds. It cost him very hard work to make it good. Excess of generosity was his greatest failing."

I have no means of knowing, nor do I desire to know, who the borrowers were to whom Percival Leigh alludes; but his revelations make the fact of Leech having died a comparatively poor man comprehensible enough. If ever man was killed by overwork, Leech was that man, and this must be a painful reflection for those whose incessant demands upon him made it only possible for him to meet them by the incessant exertions which destroyed him.

Mr. Leigh's paper concludes with the anecdote that follows: