EGOMET BONMOT was represented by Mr.Erle and Sir William Follet,and the Attorney-General and Sir Frederick Pollock appeared for the other side.The plaintiff,unfortunately,was unable to be present at either of the trials.The refusal of the companies to give him the 18,000pounds had placed him in a position of most painful pecuniary embarrassment.Indeed,a few months after the murder of Helen Abercrombie,he had been actually arrested for debt in the streets of London while he was serenading the pretty daughter of one of his friends.This difficulty was got over at the time,but shortly afterwards he thought it better to go abroad till he could come to some practical arrangement with his creditors.He accordingly went to Boulogne on a visit to the father of the young lady in question,and while he was there induced him to insure his life with the Pelican Company for 3000pounds.As soon as the necessary formalities had been gone through and the policy executed,he dropped some crystals of strychnine into his coffee as they sat together one evening after dinner.He himself did not gain any monetary advantage by doing this.His aim was simply to revenge himself on the first office that had refused to pay him the price of his sin.His friend died the next day in his presence,and he left Boulogne at once for a sketching tour through the most picturesque parts of Brittany,and was for some time the guest of an old French gentleman,who had a beautiful country house at St.
Omer.From this he moved to Paris,where he remained for several years,living in luxury,some say,while others talk of his 'skulking with poison in his pocket,and being dreaded by all who knew him.'In 1837he returned to England privately.Some strange mad fascination brought him back.He followed a woman whom he loved.
It was the month of June,and he was staying at one of the hotels in Covent Garden.His sitting-room was on the ground floor,and he prudently kept the blinds down for fear of being seen.Thirteen years before,when he was making his fine collection of majolica and Marc Antonios,he had forged the names of his trustees to a power of attorney,which enabled him to get possession of some of the money which he had inherited from his mother,and had brought into marriage settlement.He knew that this forgery had been discovered,and that by returning to England he was imperilling his life.Yet he returned.Should one wonder?It was said that the woman was very beautiful.Besides,she did not love him.
It was by a mere accident that he was discovered.A noise in the street attracted his attention,and,in his artistic interest in modern life,he pushed aside the blind for a moment.Some one outside called out,'That's Wainewright,the Bank-forger.'It was Forrester,the Bow Street runner.
On the 5th of July he was brought up at the Old Bailey.The following report of the proceedings appeared in the TIMES:-Before Mr.Justice Vaughan and Mr.Baron Alderson,Thomas Griffiths Wainewright,aged forty-two,a man of gentlemanly appearance,wearing mustachios,was indicted for forging and uttering a certain power of attorney for 2259pounds,with intent to defraud the Governor and Company of the Bank of England.
There were five indictments against the prisoner,to all of which he pleaded not guilty,when he was arraigned before Mr.Serjeant Arabin in the course of the morning.On being brought before the judges,however,he begged to be allowed to withdraw the former plea,and then pleaded guilty to two of the indictments which were not of a capital nature.
The counsel for the Bank having explained that there were three other indictments,but that the Bank did not desire to shed blood,the plea of guilty on the two minor charges was recorded,and the prisoner at the close of the session sentenced by the Recorder to transportation for life.
He was taken back to Newgate,preparatory to his removal to the colonies.In a fanciful passage in one of his early essays he had fancied himself 'lying in Horsemonger Gaol under sentence of death'for having been unable to resist the temptation of stealing some Marc Antonios from the British Museum in order to complete his collection.The sentence now passed on him was to a man of his culture a form of death.He complained bitterly of it to his friends,and pointed out,with a good deal of reason,some people may fancy,that the money was practically his own,having come to him from his mother,and that the forgery,such as it was,had been committed thirteen years before,which,to use his own phrase,was at least a CIRCONSTANCE ATTENUANTE.The permanence of personality is a very subtle metaphysical problem,and certainly the English law solves the question in an extremely rough-and-ready manner.
There is,however,something dramatic in the fact that this heavy punishment was inflicted on him for what,if we remember his fatal influence on the prose of modern journalism,was certainly not the worst of all his sins.
While he was in gaol,Dickens,Macready,and Hablot Browne came across him by chance.They had been going over the prisons of London,searching for artistic effects,and in Newgate they suddenly caught sight of Wainewright.He met them with a defiant stare,Forster tells us,but Macready was 'horrified to recognise a man familiarly known to him in former years,and at whose table he had dined.'
Others had more curiosity,and his cell was for some time a kind of fashionable lounge.Many men of letters went down to visit their old literary comrade.But he was no longer the kind light-hearted Janus whom Charles Lamb admired.He seems to have grown quite cynical.
To the agent of an insurance company who was visiting him one afternoon,and thought he would improve the occasion by pointing out that,after all,crime was a bad speculation,he replied:
