BURKE AND HARE
Assassins
by Marcel Schwob
Mr. William Burke rose from the meanest obscurity to eternal renown. Born in Ireland, he started life as a shoemaker, later practicing his trade for several years in Edinburgh where he made the acquaint¬ ance of Mr. Hare, on whom he had the greatest influence. In the collaboration of Messrs. Burke and Hare the inventive and analytic powers belonged, no doubt, to Mr. Burke, but their two names remain inseparable in art, as inseparable as the names of Beaumont and Fletcher. Together they lived, together they worked and they were finally taken together. Mr. Hare never protested against the popular favor particularly attached to the person of Mr. Burke.
Disinterestedness so complete seldom has its recompense. It was Mr. Burke who bequeathed his name to the special process that brought the two collaborators into fame. The monosyllable “Burke” will live long on the lips of men, while even now Hare’s personality seems to have disappeared into that oblivion which spreads unjustly over obscure labors.Into his work Mr. Burke brought the fairie fancy of the green island where he was born. His soul was evidently steeped in old tales and folklore, and there was something like a far-away, musty odor of the Arabian Nights in all he did. Like a caliph pacing a nocturnal garden in Bagdad, he desired mysterious adventures, curious for the glamour of strange people and unknown things. Like a huge black slave armed with a heavy scimitar, he found for his voluptuousness no more fitting conclusion than the death of others, but his Anglo-Saxon originality led him to succeed in drawing the most practical ends from his fanciful Celtic prowlings. When his artistic joy is sated what does the black slave do with his headless carcasses? With barbarity entirely Arab, he slices them into quarters and salts them down in the cellar. What good does he get from that? Nothing. Mr. Burke was infinitely superior.
Somehow Mr. Hare served him as a sort of Dinarzade. It seemed as if the inventive powers of Mr. Burke were especially excited by the presence of his friend. The broad illusion of their dream permitted them to lodge their most pompous visions in a garret. Mr. Hare had a small chamber on the sixth floor of a tall house filled very full of Edinburghers. A sofa, a large desk and several toilet utensils were undoubtedly all the furnishings, including a bottle of whisky with three glasses on a little table. It was Mr. Burke’s rule to invite some passerby at nightfall, but he never received more than one at a time and never twice the same. He would walk through the streets examining all faces that piqued his curiosity. Frequently he chose at random, addressing the stranger with as much politeness as one could ask of a Haroun-al-Raschid. The stranger would then stumble up six flights of stairs to Mr. Hare’s garret where they gave him the sofa and offered him Scotch whisky to drink. Then Mr. Burke would ask him about the most surprising incidents of his life. He was an insatiable listener, was Mr. Burke. The stranger’s recital was always interrupted before daybreak by Mr. Hare, whose manner of interrupting was invariably the same and very impressive. He had a habit of passing behind the sofa and putting his hands over the speaker’s mouth while Mr. Burke would suddenly sit down on the gentleman’s chest at the same moment. The two of them would remain thus, motionless, imagining the conclusion they never heard. In this manner Messrs. Burke and Hare terminated a large number of histories the world has never learned.
When the tale was definitely stopped with the suffocation of the teller, they would explore the mystery, stripping the unknown man, admiring his jewelry, counting his money, reading his letters. Certain items of correspondence were often not without inerest. Then they would lay the corpse away to cool in Mr. Hare’s big desk. And now Mr. Burke would demonstrate the practical force of his genius.
To waste none of the adventure’s pleasure, he held that the body should be fresh but not warm.
In the first years of the nineteenth century medical students had a passion for anatomy, though religious prejudices made it difficult for them to secure subjects for dissection. Mr. Burke’s clear mind had taken note of this scientific dilemma. No one knows how he first established an alliance with that venerable and learned practitioner, Dr. Knox, of the faculty of Edinburgh. Perhaps Mr. Burke had followed his public lectures in spite of the fact that his imagination inclined rather to artistic things. It is certain, however, that he promised to aid Dr. Knox as best he could, and that Dr. Knox agreed to pay him for his pains. The scale of prices varied, declining from the choice corpses of young men to the less desirable remains of the aged. The latter interested Dr. Knox only moderately and Mr. Burke held the same opinion, for old men, he claimed, always had less imagination. Dr. Knox came to be known among his colleagues for his splendid knowledge of anatomy. This dilettante life, led so enjoyably by Messrs. Burke and Hare, brought them to what was certainly the classic period of their career.
For the power of Mr. Burke’s genius soon led him beyond rules and regulations of a tragedy in which he had always a story to listen to and a confidence to keep. Alone he progressed (it is useless to consider the influence of Mr. Hare) towards a sort of romanticism. No longer satisfied with the setting provided by Mr. Hare’s garret, he invented a procedure to make use of the nocturnal fogs. Numerous imitators have somewhat sullied the originality of his manner, but here is the veritable tradition of the master.
Mr. Burke’s fertile imagination had grown weary of tales eternally reverting to human experiences. The result never equaled his expectation. So he came at last to value only the actual aspect of death . . . for him unfailingly varied. He concentrated his drama in the denouement. The quality of the actors no longer mattered; he trained them at random, and his only property of the theater was a canvas mask filled with pitch. Mask in hand, he would walk out on foggy nights accompanied by Mr. Hare. Approaching the first individual who chanced to pass, he would walk a few steps in front, then turn and place the mask quickly and firmly over the subject’s face. Immediately Messrs. Burke and Hare would grasp the arms of their actor, one on each side. The mask full of pitch presented simply a genial instrument for stifling cries and strangling. It was tragic. The fog muffled the gestures of the role and softened them. Some of the actors seemed to mimic drunken men. This short scene over, Messrs. Burke and Hare would take a cab in which they would disrobe their guest, Mr. Hare caring for the costumes while Mr. Burke delivered the cadaver fresh and clean to Dr. Knox.
Unlike most biographers it is here I leave Messrs. Burke and Hare, at the peak of their glory. Why destroy such an artistic effect by requiring them to languish along to the end of their lives, revealing their defects and their deceptions? We need only remember them, mask in hand, walking abroad on foggy nights. For their end was sordid like so many others. One of them, it appears, was hanged and Dr. Kncx was forced to quit Edinburgh. Mr. Burke left no other works.
Marcel Schwob
Imaginary Lives
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