A Prince of Swindlers Read online

  A Prince of Swindlers also serves as a subversive critique of the class-based economic system in late-Victorian Britain. The “brilliant season” in London that is described as the backdrop to Simon Carne’s criminal exploits, the reader is told, acts as an attraction to the wealthy (and those who prey on the wealthy). The implication behind Carne’s various successful schemes against London’s social elite is that the privileged are a group of blithering idiots undeserving of their great wealth and privilege, because although a supposedly superior social class they are, in fact, easily duped by false appearances and insincere grace. Great wealth functions in these stories as a burden rather than as a privilege, something that can make you both a fool and a victim. By implication, in Carne’s ridiculing narrative, wealth and social standing are something to be wary of; however, no practical alternative to the pursuit of wealth and social standing is ever given. Boothby’s criticism is not of wealth itself, but of the incompetent upper-crust fools who mismanage the financial responsibilities of their elevated position in society.

  Though Carne follows his own personal code of honor (he does not steal from Amberley, his sponsor in London society), he is nevertheless guilty of the sin of pride, as exemplified by the boastful tone in which he celebrates his deeds. The physical existence of his confessional manuscript detailing his criminal exploits is emblematic of his tremendous ego and prideful nature. One would imagine that a “professional” thief would want to attract as little attention as possible to his crimes, but for Simon Carne the success of his various schemes is apparently only part of his ambitions. He also wants to embarrass the British high society that could so easily be taken in by his acting, a performance that underscores the duality of his nature as a person and as a gentleman thief.

  This duality is best represented by his physical appearance. Simon Carne masks his inward moral deformity with his hunchback disguise. By implication, then, Carne’s false outward appearance of fortune and social position masks his actual, inner wicked nature. Beauty and deformity—both physical and spiritual—are transposed with each other, and ultimately become confusing to the hapless victims of Carne’s schemes. Boothby, however, also employs a wonderful sense of humor with this character, as illustrated in the ironic description of Carne’s portrait in the book’s Preface, which offers an amusingly blunt clue about Carne’s pretend physical deformity that the obtuse Earl of Amberley fails to recognize. Carne is thus having a wonderful joke on the social elite that he swindles, a knowing wink and tip of the hat that establishes a sympathetic relationship with the working-class readers of his adventures who perhaps also would like to perceive their social superiors as silly fools and buffoons.

  The gentleman thief is ultimately an undermining representation of the perceived moral and social virtues of the English public (that is, private) school system, which was (and is) upper-class biased, maintaining a set of ethical standards above and apart from the working classes. Stories featuring the gentleman thief thus are the inverted mirror and moral opposite of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Both Holmes and Simon Carne appeared in similar periodicals in England and America. Both were successful “amateurs” in their respective professions. But what makes this comparison between Holmes and Simon Carne even more interesting is the fact that they each represent entirely different moral stances at the turn of the twentieth century: the light and the dark, the acceptable and the unacceptable, the condoned and the outlawed that were emblematic of a Victorian worldview that was depicted in the similar literary examination of the duality of human nature found in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).

  But lest the reader begin to take Boothby’s commentary on London’s comical social elites too seriously, with his framing-device Preface the author also layers another structuring element on Carne’s sneering confessions: that of the traditional fairy tale. Note, for example, the use of the exotic, fantasy-like setting of the Indian island mansion where Amberley first encounters Simon Carne. Boothby amuses his reader at the start of the narrative by lightening the grand deus ex machina entrance of Carne in the book with what is conceivably a playful nudge at the British Empire and its governing relationship with its perceived “exotic” Indian subjects; Boothby, the well-traveled writer, brings an outsider’s perspective to the British sense of imperialist superiority. This nudge and wink at the reader cautions us not to take the following events in Carne’s narrative with too much gravity. The negative consequences of Carne’s felonious behavior are not intended to be taken at face value. Rather, his criminal enterprises are designed to serve as an elaborate metaphor that parallels the “happy Prince” and “enchanted castle” (language employed by Boothby to describe the setting of Carne’s Indian residence in the Preface) of the children’s fairy tale, where important life lessons are taught, but only as a footnote to simple escapist pleasure. A fairy-tale beginning to Simon Carne’s upcoming escapades softens the otherwise cruel mockery of London’s privileged late-Victorian society. The book’s Introduction, set in Calcutta and relating Simon Carne’s conspiracy with the mysteriously sinister Trincomalee Liz, outlines for the reader his intended scheme to pilfer the “untold wealth” in London, and also reinforces this fairy-tale subtext, reminding the reader that cruel social criticism in the popular escapist fiction of the time could only rock the boat of convention so far without capsizing it.

  In the most frequently anthologized Simon Carne story, “The Duchess of Wiltshire’s Diamonds” (first published in the February 1897 issue of Pearson’s Magazine), Boothby ably demonstrates a talent for literary parody. The author not only caricatures the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that were so popular with readers in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Britain and America; he satirizes the very form of the amateur detective story itself. In London, Carne adopts the elaborate disguise of the “famous private detective” Klimo, who “has won for himself the right to be considered as great as Lecocq, or even the late lamented Sherlock Holmes.” With Klimo, Boothby is obviously responding to the absurdity of the amateur consulting detective, a character who appears uninterested in money, and who works outside of the police, to whom he is vastly superior. Boothby punctuates his parody by stating that Klimo “made his profession pay him well. . . .” Boothby was well aware that no such individual could actually exist in the real world, and that it required a substantial willing suspension of disbelief for the reader to accept a Sherlock Holmes at face value. By having Simon Carne employ his Klimo disguise, Boothby is playfully delineating the unequal contest of intellect and skill between his perceptions of both the amateur consulting detective and the gentleman thief.

  The remaining adventures in A Prince of Swindlers are equally entertaining. Like all good authors of popular fiction, Boothby’s writing style is compelling. The plotting moves along at a brisk pace. The reader is enticed to discover what Simon Carne’s latest spectacular caper will be, every one representing a level of danger that not only threatens to bring Carne to justice, but also (and even more humiliating for a late-Victorian British audience) to expose Carne for a fraud and a cad. Yet Carne has ever the steady hand during his daring exploits, being a master of disguise and trickery, as well as an expert on human nature. High society serves as both his access to wealth and his masquerade. He plans his schemes with bravado, and he never fails. While sailing away from England following Carne’s daring theft of the Emperor of Westphalia’s expensive gold plate in “An Imperial Finale,” his valet, Belton, states, “. . . I must confess I should like to know what they will say when the truth comes out.” Carne’s reply is both proud and defiant: “I think they’ll say that, all things considered, I have won the right to call myself ‘A Prince of Swindlers.’”

  The spirit of Simon Carne and the gentleman thief has resided within our popular culture in fiction, film, and television for generations. Edward D. Hoch’s assortment of Nick Velvet tales—collected in The Thefts of Nick
Velvet (1978) and The Velvet Touch (2000)—offers a perfect example of the gentleman thief’s continuing prosperity in popular crime fiction. Noted American crime fiction writer Lawrence Block contributed his own version of the gentleman thief with his Bernie Rhodenbarr novels, which include Burglars Can’t Be Choosers (1977), The Burglar in the Closet (1978), and The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling (1979), among others. The Alfred Hitchcock film To Catch a Thief (1955) starring Cary Grant as the former cat burglar John Robie (based on the 1952 novel by David Dodge); The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), directed by Norman Jewison and starring Steve McQueen as Thomas Crown (remade in 1999 starring Pierce Brosnan); and the popular television series It Takes a Thief, starring Robert Wagner and broadcast from 1968 to 1970 on ABC: these are but several of many examples that illustrate the continuing influence and charm of the gentleman thief protagonist. The safecracker Frank (played by James Caan) in director Michael Mann’s caper thriller Thief (1981) offers a bleak perspective on the gentleman thief protagonist, while director Blake Edwards’s first Inspector Jacques Clouseau film, The Pink Panther (1963), presents actor David Niven’s Sir Charles Lytton (otherwise known as the notorious thief the Phantom) as a comic figure. A more recent incarnation of the gentleman thief in film is Danny Ocean (played by George Clooney) in director Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven (2001), which was originally released in 1960 starring Frank Sinatra and other members of the famous Hollywood “Rat Pack.” Soderbergh’s remake was commercially successful enough to inspire two sequels, Ocean’s Twelve (2004) and Ocean’s Thirteen (2007).

  Why do readers and moviegoers continue to thrill at the exploits of the gentleman thief? Perhaps the answer lies in the fundamentally entertaining and impermissible quality of the story that features a villain as the central character, which also may paradoxically reinforce our appreciation for law, order, and the detection and normalization of the aberrant. Maybe we also enjoy reading about the exploits of fictional devils who delight in breaking morally proscribed social taboos. Conceivably it is because we just admire their panache and charisma. We find ourselves charmed by Simon Carne’s suave manner and gentlemanly mannerisms, just as his victims are enchanted. At one point, Lord Amberley says of Carne: “His society was like chloral; the more I took of it the more I wanted.” As Mark Twain jokes: “[Go to] heaven for climate, hell for company!” Similarly, as readers of crime fiction, we may appreciate the world inhabited by Sherlock Holmes, but sometimes we simply can’t resist the company and con of Simon Carne.

  Works Cited

  “Boothby, Guy Newell (1867–1905).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 7, 1979. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/boothby-guy-newell-5293.

  “Death of Guy Boothby.” New York Times, February 28, 1905. Source: ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851–2009), p. 9.

  Depasquale, Paul. Guy Boothby: His Life and Work. Seacombe Gardens, Australia: Pioneer Books, 1985.

  ———. Guy Boothby: The Science Fiction Connection. Seacombe Gardens, Australia: Pioneer Books, 1985.

  Obituaries Australia. “Boothby, Guy Newell (1867–1905).” From Advertiser (Adelaide). http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/boothby-guy-newell-5293.

  Orwell, George. “Raffles and Miss Blandish.” The Complete Short Stories of Raffles—The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Hornung. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984, 25–38.

  Preface

  BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL OF AMBERLEY, for many years Governor of the Colony of New South Wales, and sometime Viceroy of India

  After no small amount of deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that it is only fit and proper I should set myself right with the world in the matter of the now famous 18— swindles. For, though I have never been openly accused of complicity in those miserable affairs, yet I cannot rid myself of the remembrance that it was I who introduced the man who perpetrated them to London society, and that in more than one instance I acted, innocently enough, Heaven knows, as his Deus ex machinâ, in bringing about the very results he was so anxious to achieve. I will first allude, in a few words, to the year in which the crimes took place, and then proceed to describe the events that led to my receiving the confession which has so strangely and unexpectedly come into my hands.

  Whatever else may be said on the subject, one thing at least is certain—it will be many years before London forgets that season of festivity. The joyous occasion which made half the sovereigns of Europe our guests for weeks on end, kept foreign princes among us until their faces became as familiar to us as those of our own aristocracy, rendered the houses in our fashionable quarters unobtainable for love or money, filled our hotels to repletion, and produced daily pageants the like of which few of us have ever seen or imagined, can hardly fail to go down to posterity as one of the most notable in English history. Small wonder, therefore, that the wealth, then located in our great metropolis, should have attracted swindlers from all parts of the globe.

  That it should have fallen to the lot of one who has always prided himself on steering clear of undesirable acquaintances, to introduce to his friends one of the most notorious adventurers our capital has ever seen, seems like the irony of fate. Perhaps, however, if I begin by showing how cleverly our meeting was contrived, those, who would otherwise feel inclined to censure me, will pause before passing judgment, and will ask themselves whether they would not have walked into the snare as unsuspectingly as I did.

  It was during the last year of my term of office as Viceroy, and while I was paying a visit to the Governor of Bombay, that I decided upon making a tour of the northern Provinces, beginning with Peshawur, and winding up with the Maharajah of Malar-Kadir. As the latter potentate is so well known, I need not describe him. His forcible personality, his enlightened rule, and the progress his state has made within the last ten years, are well known to every student of the history of our magnificent Indian Empire.

  My stay with him was a pleasant finish to an otherwise monotonous business, for his hospitality has a world-wide reputation. When I arrived he placed his palace, his servants, and his stables at my disposal to use just as I pleased. My time was practically my own. I could be as solitary as a hermit if I so desired; on the other hand, I had but to give the order, and five hundred men would cater for my amusement. It seems therefore the more unfortunate that to this pleasant arrangement I should have to attribute the calamities which it is the purpose of this series of stories to narrate.

  On the third morning of my stay I woke early. When I had examined my watch I discovered that it wanted an hour of daylight, and, not feeling inclined to go to sleep again, I wondered how I should employ my time until my servant should bring me my chota hazri, or early breakfast. On proceeding to my window I found a perfect morning, the stars still shining, though in the east they were paling before the approach of dawn. It was difficult to realize that in a few hours the earth which now looked so cool and wholesome would be lying, burnt up and quivering, beneath the blazing Indian sun.

  I stood and watched the picture presented to me for some minutes, until an overwhelming desire came over me to order a horse and go for a long ride before the sun should make his appearance above the jungle trees. The temptation was more than I could resist, so I crossed the room and, opening the door, woke my servant, who was sleeping in the antechamber. Having bidden him find a groom and have a horse saddled for me, without rousing the household, I returned and commenced my toilet. Then, descending by a private staircase to the great courtyard, I mounted the animal I found awaiting me there, and set off.

  Leaving the city behind me I made my way over the new bridge with which His Highness has spanned the river, and, crossing the plain, headed towards the jungle, that rises like a green wall upon the other side. My horse was a waler of exceptional excellence, as every one who knows the Maharajah’s stable will readily understand, and I was just in the humour for a ride. But the coolness was not destined to last long, for, by the time I had l
eft the second village behind me, the stars had given place to the faint grey light of dawn. A soft breeze stirred the palms and rustled the long grass, but its freshness was deceptive; the sun would be up almost before I could look round, and then nothing could save us from a scorching day.

  After I had been riding for nearly an hour it struck me that, if I wished to be back in time for breakfast, I had better think of returning. At the time I was standing in the centre of a small plain, surrounded by jungle. Behind me was the path I had followed to reach the place; in front, and to right and left, others leading whither I could not tell. Having no desire to return by the road I had come, I touched up my horse and cantered off in an easterly direction, feeling certain that, even if I had to make a divergence, I should reach the city without very much trouble.

  By the time I had put three miles or so behind me the heat had become stifling, the path being completely shut in on either side by the densest jungle I have ever known. For all I could see to the contrary, I might have been a hundred miles from any habitation.

  Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when, on turning a corner of the track, I suddenly left the jungle behind me, and found myself standing on the top of a stupendous cliff, looking down upon a lake of blue water. In the centre of this lake was an island, and on the island a house. At the distance I was from it the latter appeared to be built of white marble, as indeed I afterwards found to be the case. Anything, however, more lovely than the effect produced by the blue water, the white building, and the jungle-clad hills upon the other side, can scarcely be imagined. I stood and gazed at it in delighted amazement. Of all the beautiful places I had hitherto seen in India this, I could honestly say, was entitled to rank first. But how it was to benefit me in my present situation I could not for the life of me understand.