Chapter V: Part III: In London (2)

But Hackman replied that “the murderer of her whom he preferred, far preferred, to life, suspects the hand from which he has just received such an offer as he neither desires nor deserves. His wishes are for death, not for life. One wish he has. Could he be pardoned in this world by the man he has most injured—oh, my Lord, when I meet her in another world, enable me to tell her (if departed spirits are ignorant of earthly things) that you forgive us both, that you will be a father to her dear infants!”

J.H.

* * * * *

During the trial, Hackman’s brother-in-law, Mr. Booth, who was too agitated to remain in court, waited outside until the verdict should be delivered. The officious Boswell was the first person to inform him that the death sentence had been passed upon his relative. “How did Hackman behave?” asked Booth, eagerly.

“As well, sir,” answered Boswell, with an echo of the Johnsonian pomposity in his words, “as you or any of his friends could wish; with decency, propriety, and in such a manner as to interest every one present. He might have pleaded that he shot Miss Reay by accident, but he fairly told the truth, that in a moment of frenzy he did intend it.”

“Well,” said Booth, “I would rather have found him guilty with truth and honour, than escape by a mean evasion.”

“Which” (says the chronicler of the above conversation, the author of a pamphlet containing a full report of the trial) “was a sentiment truly noble, bursting from a heart rent with anguish!”

Boswell says, in his “Life of Johnson,” that “the Doctor was much interested by my account of what passed, and particularly with his prayer for the mercy of heaven. He said, in a solemn, fervid tone, ‘I hope he _shall_ find mercy.’”

Horace Walpole wrote the same day to the Rev. Mr. Cole:

“I do not know whether our clergy are growing Mahometans or not: they certainly are not what they profess themselves; but as you and I should not agree, perhaps, in assigning the same defects to them, I will not enter on a subject which I have promised you to drop. All I allude to now is the shocking murder of Miss Reay by a divine. In my own opinion we are growing more fit for Bedlam than for Mahomet’s paradise. The poor criminal, I am persuaded, is mad, and the misfortune is the law does not know how to define the shades of madness; and thus there are twenty out-pensioners of Bedlam, for one that is confined.”

The Countess of Upper Ossory, in a letter to George Selwyn, mentions that Hackman and Miss Reay were the sole topic of the town. She adds that Hackman’s behaviour during his trial was wonderfully touching.

The following disconnected papers, which were written by Hackman in the condemned cell, show that as the date of his execution grew nearer, he became resigned to his fate, and earnestly desired to die.

* * * * *

+Newgate+, Saturday Night.
_April 17, 1779_.

+My Dear Charles+,

The clock has just struck eleven. All has, for some time, been quiet within this sad abode. Would that all were so within my sadder breast!

That gloominess of my favourite, Young’s “Night Thoughts” which was always so congenial to my soul, would have been still heightened had he ever been wretched enough to hear St. Paul’s clock thunder through the still ear of night in the condemned walls of Newgate. The sound is truly solemn, it seems the sound of death.

Oh that it were death’s sound! How greedily would my impatient ears devour it!

And yet, but one day more. Rest, rest, perturbed spirit, till then.

And then!

My God, my creator, my first father! Thou who madest me as I am, with these feelings, these passions, this heart! Thou who art all might, and all mercy! Well Thou knowest I did not, like too many of Thy creatures, persuade myself there was no God before I persuaded myself I had a right over my life. Oh, then, my Father, put me not eternally from Thy paternal presence! It is not punishments, nor pains, nor hell I fear: what man can bear, I can. My fear is to be deemed ungrateful to Thy goodness, to be thought unworthy of Thy presence, to be driven from the light of Thy countenance.

Well Thou knowest I could not brook the thoughts of wanting gratitude to things beneath me in Thy creation, to a dog, a horse, almost to things inanimate, a tree, a book, and thinkest Thou that I could bear the charge of want of gratitude to _Thee!_

And might, oh might I resign the joys of the other world, which neither eye can see, nor tongue can speak, nor imagination dream, for an eternal existence of love and bliss with her, whom——

Presumptuous murderer! The bliss you ask were paradise.

My Father who art in heaven, I bow before Thy mercy, and patiently abide my sentence.

These papers, which will be delivered to you after my death, my dear friend, are not letters. Nor know I what to call them. They will exhibit, however, the picture of a heart which has ever been yours more than any other man’s.

+Newgate+, Sunday, _April 18, 1779_.
Four in the Morning.

O, Charles, Charles—torments, tortures! Hell, and worse than hell!

When I finished my last scrap of paper, I thought I felt myself composed, resigned. Indeed I was so—I am so now.

I threw my wearied body—wearied, Heaven knows, more than any labourer’s, with the workings of my mind—upon the floor of my dungeon.

Sleep came uncalled, but only came to make me more completely cursed.

The world was past, the next was come; but, after that, no other world. All was revealed to me. My eternal sentence of mental misery (from which there was no flight), of banishment from the presence of my Father, or more than poetry ever feigned or weakness feared, was past, irrevocably past.

Her verdict, too, of punishment was pronounced. Yes, Charles—she, she was punished—and by whose means punished?

Even in her angel mind were failings, which it is not wonderful I never saw, since Omniscience, it seemed, could hardly discern them. O, Charles, these foibles, so few, so undiscernible, were still, I thought in my dream, to be expiated. For my hand sent her to heaven before her time, with all her few foibles on her head.

Charles, I saw the expiation—these eyes beheld her undergo the heavenly punishment.

That past, she was called, I thought, to the reward of her ten thousand virtues.

Then, in very deed, began my hell, my worse than woman ever dreamed of hell. Charles, I saw her, as plainly as I see the bars of my dungeon, through which the eye of day looks upon me now for almost the last time. Her face, her person were still more divine than when on earth—they were cast anew, in angel moulds. Her mind, too, I beheld as plainly as her face, and all its features. That was the same—that was not capable of alteration for the better.

But, what saw I else? That mind, that person, that face, that angel—was in the bosom of another angel. Between us was a gulf, a gulf impassible! I could not get to her, neither could she come to me.

Nor did she wish it. There was the curse.

Charles, she saw me, where I was, steeped to the lips in misery. She saw me; but without a tear, without one sigh.

One sigh from her, I thought, and I could have borne all my sufferings.

A sigh, a tear! She smiled at all my sufferings. Yes, she, even she, enjoyed the tortures, the wrackings of my soul. She bade her companion angel, too, enjoy them. She seemed to feast upon my griefs; and only turned away her more than damning eyes to turn them on her more than blest companion.

Flames and brimstone, corporeal sufferance, were paradise to such eternal mental hell as this.

Oh! how I rejoiced, how I wept, sobbed with joy, when I awoke, and discovered it was only a dream, and found myself _in the condemned cell of Newgate_.

* * * * *

Mr. H. and Dr. V., neither of whom you know, I believe, are exceedingly kind to me. The latter writes to me, the former sees me, continually. Your poor Hackman finds more friends than he merits.

+Newgate+, Sunday, _April 18, 1779_.
Five o’clock in the afternoon.

Since I wrote to you this morning I have more than once taken up my pen. For what can I do, that affords me more pleasure than writing to such a friend as you are, and have been, to me?

_Pleasure!_ Alas! what business has such a wretch as I with such a word as that? However, pouring myself out to you thus upon paper is, in some measure, drawing off my sorrows; it is not thinking.

Cruel Galli! And yet I can excuse her. She knew not of what materials I was made. Lord Sandwich wished to preserve a treasure which any one would have prized. Galli was employed to preserve the treasure. And she suspected not that my soul, my existence were wrapped up in it.

O, my dear Charles, that you could prevail upon yourself to visit this sad place! And yet, our mutual feelings would render the visit useless. So it is better thus.

Now, perhaps, you are enjoying a comfortable and happy meal. There, again, my misfortunes! Of happiness and comfort, for the present, I have robbed you. H. has murdered happiness.

But this is the hour of dinner. How many are now comfortable and happy? While I——

How many, again, with everything to make them otherwise, are at this moment miserable!

The meat is done too little, or too much. (Should the pen of fancy ever take the trouble to invent letters for me, I should not be suffered to write to you thus, because it would seem _unnatural_. Alas! they know not how gladly a wretch like me forgets himself). The servant, I say, has broken something—some friend (as the phrase is) does not make his promised appearance, and, consequently, is not eye-witness of the unnecessary dishes which the family pretends to be able to afford—or some _friend_ (again) drops in unexpectedly, and surprises the family with no more dishes upon the table than are necessary.

Ye home-made wretches, ye ingenious inventors of ills, before ye suffer yourselves to be soured and made miserable, for the whole remainder of this Sunday, by some trifle or another, which does not deserve the name of accident, look here—behold, indeed, that misery of which your discontentedness complains!

Peep through the grate of this my only habitation, ye who have town-houses and country-houses. Look into my soul—recollect in how few hours I am to die, die in what manner, die for what offence!

I was obliged to lay down my pen. Such a picture as this, in which myself made the principal figure, was rather too much.

* * * * *

Good God! to look back over the dreadful interval between to-day and last October two years. What a tale would it make of woe! Take warning from me, my fellow-creatures, and do not love like H.

Still +Sunday+. 7 o’clock.

When these loose, incoherent papers shall come into your hands, after my death, it will afford you some consolation to know my temper of mind at last.

Charles, as the awful moment approaches, I feel myself more and more and more composed, and calm and resigned.

It always, you know, was my opinion that man could bear a great load of affliction better than a small one. I thought so then—now I am sure of it. This day se’nnight, I was mad, perfectly mad. This afternoon I am all mildness.

This day se’nnight! To look back is death, is hell. It is almost worse than to look forward.

But—is there not a God? Did not that God create me? Does not that God know my heart, my whole heart? Oh! yes, yes, yes!

To-morrow, then. And let to-morrow come. I am prepared.

God (who knows my heart, and will judge me, I trust, by that heart) knows it is not with a view to diminish my own guilt, the magnitude and enormity whereof I acknowledge—but let those, who survive me, flatter themselves that all the guilt of mankind goes to the grave, to the gallows (gracious Heaven!) with H.

I shall leave behind me culprits _of the same kind as myself_—culprits who will not make my trifling atonement of an ignominious death. Oh, may they see their crimes, and weep over them before they are confronted with the injured parties at the footstool of the throne of the God of heaven!

These are crimes (as indeed are all the crimes of men, however noiseless or inaudible) with which the listening angel flies up to Heaven’s chancery, but these are not they upon which the recording angel drops a tear as he notes them down. The pencil of eternity engraves such crimes as these on adamantine tablets, which shall endure to the end of time. Mine, mine, perhaps may head the list.

Be merciful, O God! be merciful!

Reflection in this world is almost worst than the worst which offended Omnipotence can inflict upon me in the next. I must fly from it.

And are there not crimes as bad as mine? It is far from my intention to argue away the badness of my crime; but there surely are, and worse.

Let that gallant, gay, young gentleman yonder hold up his hand. Yes, sir; you I first arraign. Not for breach of friendship, not for false oaths to credulous virgins, not for innocence betrayed—these are no longer crimes; these are the accomplishments of our age. Sir, you are indicted for slow and deliberate murder. Put not on that confident air, that arrogant smile of contempt and defiance. Demand not with a sneer to have the witnesses produced, who were present when you struck the stroke of death. Call not aloud for the blood-stained dagger, the dry-drawn bowl, the brain-splashed pistol—are these the only instruments of death? You know they are not. Murder is never at a loss for weapons.

Sir, produce your wife. See, see! what indignation flashes in his eyes! A murderer, and the murderer of his wife! May the calumniator—— Sir, no imprecations, no oaths; those are what betrayed that wife. You did not plant a dagger in her breast; but you planted there grief, disease, death. She, sir, who gave you all, was destroyed, was murdered by your ill-usage. And not suddenly, not without giving her time to know what was to happen. She saw the lingering stroke, she perceived the impossibility to avoid it; she felt it tenfold from the hands of a much-loved husband.

* * * * *

Were these scraps of paper to be seen by any other eye than yours, common people would wonder that, in proportion as the moment drew nearer, I got further and further from myself. It may be contrary to the rules of critics, but so it is. To think, or to write about myself, is death, is hell. My feelings will not suffer me to date these different papers any more.

Let me pay a small tribute of praise. How often have you and I complained of familiarity’s blunting the edge of every sense on which she lays her hand? At her bidding, beauty fades even in the eye of love; and the son of pity smiles at sorrow’s bleeding breast. In her presence, who is he that still continues to behold the scene of delight, or that still hears the voice of mourning? What, then, is the praise of that gaoler, who in the midst of misery, and crimes, and death, sets familiarity at defiance, and still preserves the feelings of a man? The author of the life of Savage gives celebrity to the Bristol gaoler, by whose humanity the latter part of that strange man’s life was rendered more comfortable. Shall no one give celebrity to the present keeper of Newgate? Mr. Akerman marks every day of his existence by more than one such deed as this. Know, ye rich and powerful, ye who might save hundreds of your fellow-creatures from starving by the sweepings of your tables—know that, among the various feelings of almost every wretch who quits Newgate for Tyburn, a concern neither last nor least is that which he feels upon leaving the gaol of which _this man_ is the keeper.

But I can now no longer fly from myself. In a few short hours, the hand which is now writing to you, the hand which——

I will not distress either you or myself. My life I owe to the laws of my country, and I will pay the debt. How I felt for poor Dodd! Well, you shall hear that I died like a man and a Christian. I cannot have a better trust than in the mercy of an all-just God. And, in your letters, when you shall these unhappy deeds relate, tell of me as I am. I forget the passage, it is in Othello.

You must suffer me to mention the tenderness and greatness of mind of my dear Booth. The last moments of my life cannot be better spent than in recording this complicated act of friendship and humanity. When we parted, a task too much for us both, he asked me if there was anything for which I wished to live. Upon his pressing me, I acknowledged I was uneasy, very uneasy, lest Lord Sandwich might withdraw an allowance of fifty pounds a year, which I knew he made to her father. “Then,” said Booth, squeezing my hand, bursting into tears, and hurrying out of the room, “I will allow it him.” The affectionate manner in which he spoke of my sister would have charmed you. God for ever bless and prosper him! And my sister and you!

* * * * *

While he was in Newgate he received, says the author of Hackman’s “Case and Memoirs,” many anonymous letters, one, as the handwriting showed, was from Galli, saying:

“O! Mr. Hackman, for God’s sake, die in the Roman Catholick faith!”

He also had a letter from a woman he did not know, saying that she had long privately loved him, but that her love was hopeless because she was poor, without beauty, and had nothing to boast of. The author of the “Case and Memoirs” goes on to say that Hackman also received many letters from “those superabundant good Christians called Methodists, who, negligent of themselves, affect the highest concern for the future welfare of others.... Bedlam is the place for such men to rave in, rather than the chamber of an invalid, or the apartments of a condemned prisoner.”

Hackman spent the evening preceding his execution with his friend, Mr. Porter; he went to bed at eleven, and slept for some hours. At five he arose, and after he was dressed, drank a “bason of tea” and remained in prayer until half-past seven. Mr. Porter and Mr. Vilette, the prison chaplain, then went to him, and led him to the chapel, where they remained until nine. By this time the sheriffs were waiting, and Hackman was taken to the press-yard, where a rope was fastened round his shoulders and under his arms. He was, however, spared the additional degradation of having a rope put round his neck, and his hands were not tied at the wrists. He was then brought out and put into a coach, and, accompanied by the two clergymen and a sheriff’s officer, the dreary progress to Tyburn commenced. Owing to the enormous crowds that blocked the streets he did not arrive there until eleven o’clock. In a second coach were seated the Earl of Carlisle and Boswell—the latter, however, did not deem it expedient to mention this fact to Dr. Johnson. As soon as he was in the cart, which in those days took the place of a fixed platform, he spent some time in prayer, kneeling down with his face towards Paddington. His friends then took leave of him, and it is recorded that he behaved with the utmost fortitude, although Mr. Porter was so moved by his emotions that he had to be supported. Hackman, desiring that he might drop his handkerchief as a signal when he was ready, kneeled down again, and, amid the silence and suspense of the largest crowd that had ever witnessed an execution at Tyburn, prayed for five minutes. When he dropped the handkerchief it fell underneath the cart, causing a delay of half a minute while the executioner and his assistants scrambled for it. Then the horses were whipped up, and James Hackman paid the last earthly penalty for the crime of having loved Martha Reay so passionately that he was irresistibly impelled to murder her. In his last moments he scribbled a few words in pencil to his friend, Mr. Porter:

“Farewell for ever in this world! I die a sincere Christian and penitent, and everything I hope that you can wish me. Would it prevent my example’s having any bad effect if the world should know how I abhor my former ideas of suicide, my crime ... will be the best judge. Of her fame I charge you to be careful. My poor sister will....”