§ 9 Criminal Literature and Art
M. Joly has made some interesting investigations (which he has recorded recently in the Archives de l’Anthropologie Criminelle) concerning the favourite reading of French prisoners. He found that such criminals do not read either Molière or Voltaire. Nor do they care for the psychological novel of character and analysis; they have no taste and no capacity for introspection; they prefer the rococo style, and an old romance in five or six volumes called Épreuves du Sentiment is a great favourite at La Grande Roquette. This is what we should expect from that sentimentalism which has already been noted. But among the favourite prison novelists Alexandre Dumas is facile princeps. We must not seek to explain this by finding in Dumas a response to specific criminal instincts. In this matter prisoners are at one with a very large body of non-prisoners, with George Sand, Tolstoï, and Rossetti at their head. It is the universally human quality in the prolific novelist, the anodyne of his entrancing and unflagging interest, the satisfaction which he offers to the love of adventure, by which Dumas fetters the criminal as well as the man of genius. The female prisoners at Saint Lazare, unlike the male prisoners, are constantly asking for Voltaire’s books, which, however, the sisters are not able to supply. They are very fond of Henri Conscience, the Flemish Walter Scott, a preference which is also by no means shared by the men, and they delight in all sorts of innocent and sentimental love-stories, although their marginal annotations to these do not always admit of reproduction.
If the favourite reading of those whose criminal career is decided is of so innocent a character, the same cannot always be said of the literature read by the immature. There is ample and unquestionable evidence to show that a low-class literature in which the criminal is glorified, as well as the minute knowledge of criminal arts disseminated by newspapers, have a very distinct influence in the production of young criminals.72 Tropmann, a notorious French murderer, was influenced by novels. The famous criminal Lacenaire, who glorified himself and was glorified by others, has had an influence in the production of crime down to our own day. After every celebrated or startling crime, some weak-minded and impressionable persons go and commit the like, or give themselves up to the police under the impression that they have been guilty of the crime. It is youths and children who are especially prone to the imitation of criminal events from books or from real life. After the murders associated with the name of Jack the Ripper several murders by young children took place throughout the country.
It is not, usually, until he is in prison that the criminal tries to find literary expression for himself. This expression takes chiefly the form of verse, nearly always of a rude character, often affected or boastful, but not seldom vigorous or pathetic. A criminal has been known to declaim from the scaffold a poem on his own death; another asked and obtained permission to present his defence in verse. It would be difficult to give stronger proof of a predilection for verse forms.
A song, of which this is a translation, was heard in a Russian prison:—
“In this spot where infamy has placed for ever her dwelling, two angels pant, having in their hands a cross.... But at night, with measured steps, slowly, slowly, watching the prison, the sentinels turn. Within these walls are sadness and terror. Without are life, gold, and liberty.... But the black echo of that slow, slow step warns me: Thou shalt stay, stay.” This was written and most sweetly sung by a man who had cruelly murdered his wife.
The poetic productions of English criminals, however numerous, are of no great interest; they seem to appear at their best in the inscriptions already given. Mr. Davitt has a chapter on “Prison ‘Poets,’” but what he has to say of them is not encouraging, although he tells us that Portsmouth has the reputation of being “a community of imprisoned songsters,” and such a specimen as the following does not produce much desire for more—
“’Twas one fine morning I left Wakefield Jail,
Myself and comrades we did cry our fill,” etc.
One could write as well as that without being a convict.
Lamb and other good judges thought well of Thomas Wainewright, the forger and poisoner. As a man of letters he enjoyed considerable reputation as a critic, and was certainly a man of refined artistic tastes.73 It is to-day not easy to detect in him many signs of critical insight or fine literary ability. He was one of the writers of that “Dandy and Silver Fork School” of whom Hazlitt says:—“Macassar Oil, Eau de Cologne, Hock and Seltzer Water, Atta of Roses, Pomade Divine, glance through the page in inexhaustible confusion, and make your head giddy.” His writing is but the vain froth of a nauseous life. The following extract is fairly characteristic:—“It appears to us that the time requireth not the hand of genius to give it a gusto for the tastes and feelings of what are called the lower orders,—rather the reverse! We want more macaroni and champagne, less boxing and bull beef. Now, Mr. Drama [Hazlitt] of the London seems determined to show his readers that his stomach is hearty—that he can relish bread and cheese and porter, which certainly are very fine things in the country, and—when we can get nothing else—and so far, all this is very well. But surely, in the centre of fashion, we might be now and then indulged with more elegant fare,—something that would suit better with the diamond rings on our fingers, the antique cameos in our breast-pins, our cambric pocket-handkerchief breathing forth Attargul, our pale lemon-coloured kid gloves! some chicken fricaseed white, for instance; a bottle of Hock or Moselle, and a glass of Maraschino.” These things and the like of these were for Wainewright the only things in the world that seemed desirable, and his passion for them lay at the root of his crimes.
In Italy we meet with a genuine, and often traditional body of criminal songs which is of great interest. It is found in chief perfection in Italy and the large neighbouring islands, Sardinia, Corsica, and especially Sicily, where the civilisation is more primitive, and the level of criminality much higher. In the Canti Siculi of the able and enthusiastic folklorist, Pitré, there are twenty-seven which he describes as Prison Songs; with others rather similar in the same collection, the total amounts to forty-one (4 per cent. of the whole), mostly declarations of vengeance, laments for lost liberty, imprecations against judges and police. Some are in praise of prison, as the following:—
“Carcere, vita mia, cara, felice!
Lo starmi entro di te come mi piace!
Se spiechi il capo a quel che mal ne dice,
O pensa che far perdere la pace.
Qua sol travi i fratelli e qua gli amici,” etc.
There are also fine notes of despair, and sweet recollections of the absent mother or sweetheart. Sardinia, a land of brigandism and assassination, has produced numerous criminal songs of interest. “The Corsican songs collected by Tommaseo,” remarks Lombroso, “might be said to be almost all the creation of brigands. Nearly all breathe vengeance for a slain friend, or hatred against an enemy, and admiration for murder.” A ferocious Corsican brigand, named Peverone, who used to leave his mark behind by covering his victim with capsicums (peperoni), wrote verses which, says Lombroso, “would not be unworthy of Laura’s sweet singer.” In such a case as that of Corsica, we must, however, be very cautious how we use the word “criminal.” In that land barbarous conceptions still rule; a child is brought up from its earliest days in an atmosphere of robbery and bloodshed; what in a more civilised country we call “crime” is there to a large extent the normal social state. It is in Corsica that a parish may vote a pension to a brigand (the commune of Ciammance, for example, in 1886); that more than half the persons liable to serve as jurymen in an arrondissement (4400 out of 8000 in one instance) may themselves have appeared behind the bar; and where a mayor (arrondissement of Sartène) may issue a proclamation in the following terms:—“Art. I. The carrying of arms is formally forbidden on the territory of the commune of Levie. Art. II. Exception is made in the case of persons notoriously in a state of enmity.”
As a specimen of French criminal literature I will give a poem by Lebiez, the young murderer spoken of in Chapter I.; it is addressed to a young girl’s skull:—
“De quelque belle enfant restes froids et sans vie,
Beau crâne apprêté par mes mains,
Dont j’ai sali les os et la surface blanchie
D’un tas de noms grecs et latins,
Compagnon triste et froid de mes heures d’étude,
Toi que je viens de rejeter
Dans un coin, ah! reviens tromper ma solitude,
Réponds à ma curiosité.
Dis-moi combien de fois ta bouche s’est offerte
Aux doux baisers de ton amant;
Dis-moi quels jolis mots de ta bouche entr’ ouverte
Dans des heurs d’égarement...
Insensé!... Tu ne peux répondre, pauvre fille;
Ta bouche est close maintenant,
Et la mort, en passant, de sa triste faucille
A brisé tes charmes naissants.
Triste leçon pour nons, qui croyons que la vie
Peut durer pendant de longs jours!
Et jeunesse, et bonheur, et beauté qu’on envie,
Tout passe ainsi que les amours!
Aussi, quand, vers le soir, âpre et dur à la tache,
Je travaille silencieux,
Mon esprit suit le monde et, tout inquiet, s’attache
A des pensers plus sérieux,
Je rêve au temps qui passe... alors je te regarde,
Et, songeant aux coups de destin,
Sur ton front nu je crois lire en tremblant: ‘Prends garde,
Mortel, ton tour viendra demain.’”
When his papers were returned to him by the police, Lebiez wrote on the margin of this: “Poor verses! but, bad as they are, they are a faithful picture of the state of my mind in moments of solitude. In the world I am amiable and gay. I am taken for a wild fellow, who mocks at everything; but if they knew my character thoroughly, if they were aware that when I laugh and joke I have just come out of a solitude of despair and tears! If they knew that there are sobs at the bottom of my heart when smiles cover my lips, they would not say that I mock at everything. My gaiety is only a mask which hides the anguish which has for so long torn my heart.”
There are one or two examples of newspapers written and conducted by prisoners. The Abbé Crozes, in his Souvenirs de la Petite et de la Grande Roquette, gives us specimens and a facsimile page of one of these, the Tam-Tam, which, however, only lasted a very short time. Here are a couple of fragments from this remarkable journal:—
Fable Express.
“Un grand tambour-major, pressé par la famine,
Dinait d’une maigre sardine
Et s’en régalait sur ma foi!
Morale.—On a souvent besoin d’un plus petit que soi.”
Echos et Bruits.
“Nons apprenons avec plaisir à nos lecteurs le projet formé par la Société Agricole de France, de se servir des oreilles de Transparent, pour se livrer à des essais sur la culture des champignons.
L’abondance et la qualité du fumier que contiennent ces vastes esgourdes, leur grandeur, leur système d’aération promettent aux amateurs de cèpes les résultats les plus satisfaisants.”
Very different from the Tam-Tam is the Summary, a newspaper published at the Elmira Reformatory, New York. This newspaper, largely written by prisoners and, at one time at all events, edited by a prisoner, contains, besides original contributions and the news of the Reformatory, a summary of general news; and by its tone and its method of selection, it compares favourably, as it has been said, with many newspapers published outside prison-walls. The following contribution to the Summary is from “a bright young burglar,” about eighteen years old, and is entitled “God and the Robin”; it has an allegorical and personal significance:—
“Early in the morning, long before the lazy cock crows, you may hear the robin singing his welcome to the sun. He has been watching through the darkness for the first rays of coming day, and as they appear he pours forth the melody as an expression of his joy. All is quiet till his music rends the air, and as you listen you are inspired with thoughts of Him who made the robin and you. Perhaps the sweet song is a prayer of thanks to God for sheltering him from the dangers of the night. Do they know of God? Who can tell? Perhaps He is the cause of what we in our ignorance call instinct. Once as I listened to their music I fell asleep, and dreamt of a house near the sea. It had a lawn in front, on which was a robin hopping in search of food for her young. But as she hopped about the sky seemed to grow darker. I knew that a storm was approaching, and when it came I saw the robin cling to the tree for shelter. But the wind was fierce, and it tore her from the branch, and in spite of all her efforts it bore her away out over the ocean, farther and farther from the land, till at last, when its energy was spent, its fury gone, it left her on the ocean with no land in sight to guide her to her home; and as she flew she thought of her little ones at home, and of her mate. She thought she was flying to them, but every little effort was taking her farther away, though she knew it not. When at last she began to tire, she looked at the restless waters, but they offered her no relief; and in her frightened cry I seemed to hear her say, ‘O where shall I rest my weary wing?’ But in the murmuring of the ocean she heard no reply, so she could but fly on till darkness came, when, utterly exhausted, she fell upon the cruel waves and died. And He who made her will receive her when the course of life is past. Cannot the little robin find in that house of many mansions a place to rest her weary wing? Is heaven made for man alone? Are not these little creatures who never offend God, but worship Him with the purity and happiness of their little hearts, entitled to the joys of hereafter? Who can doubt it?”
The following interesting dialogue in the Socratic manner—“An Imaginary Conversation between two Members of the Casuistry Class”—is also by a very young criminal, who was also something of a poet:—
“Did you not agree last Sunday with the member of our class who said that life in prison is a state of slavery?
No, I did not. In fact, I am astonished at your question. I rather think it is not a state of slavery.
That is a very curious belief.
It may appear to be; but I think it can be proved to be logical. You say that imprisonment for wrong-doing is slavery; but what is slavery?
I should define it to be the involuntary subjection of one person to the will of another.
But cannot a person be a slave to passion and to other qualities of mind as well as to persons?
Yes.
Then your definition is obviously incorrect. I would define slavery as a state in which one’s actions are regulated by some power over which he has no control. Would you agree with me?
Well, I think I would.
Very well. Having agreed upon a definition of slavery, we will discuss whether life in prison is slavery. Now, let me ask, why are men sent to prison?
Usually for violating the law.
Well, do you believe that men steal, for instance, voluntarily?
Undoubtedly.
Your tone is rather confident, so I daresay you can tell me why men steal?
In order to get certain articles that will enable them to live more comfortably, or which they desire to have.
That is, you mean that they have certain feelings—such as laziness, love of gain, etc.—which they wish to gratify?
Well, yes.
But if a man had not these feelings he would not steal?
I think not.
Then these feelings regulate his conduct in stealing?
It seems so.
But you agreed that he whose conduct is regulated by some power other than his own free will is a slave.
Well, I am afraid you have caught me again.
But do you admit it?
I do.
Then he who prevents this man from stealing is emancipating him, not enslaving him?
I see you are right.
Then one who is in prison for wrong-doing is a free man, not a slave?
Yes. But suppose that the man has been sent to prison unjustly; what then?
To answer your question, I should have to know what your conception of true freedom is. True freedom is, as it appears to me, the triumphing of the spirit or better part of man over the flesh or weaker part; that is, acting according to one’s highest conception of what is right. Do you agree with me?
I do.
Then do you not think that the truly righteous man, be he in prison or out, is free? Do you not see that a man who does right, even though he lose fortune or life by doing so, is freer than the one who allows his conduct to be regulated by fear, malice, or other passions? Remember that a man may be free in a dungeon and bound down with chains, and that he may be an abject slave and be clothed in purple.”
The Summary perhaps does something to encourage priggishness, but priggishness, it need scarcely be said, indicates a far higher moral level than the vacuous brutality which lies behind so large a proportion of prison inscriptions.
So far we have been dealing with writers who are first and above all criminals. It is necessary to mention a few artists and men of letters who, while distinctly criminals, are not primarily criminals. Villon is generally named at the head of these, and with good reason, as he has himself supplied the evidence by which he must be counted a criminal. But Villon was a poet, and a great poet; his crimes never degraded his art. It is worth noting that almost the only passage74 which Lombroso quotes to prove such degradation is, on independent grounds and apparently with good reason, regarded by Jannet, Villon’s editor, as spurious.
Cellini, as self-revealed in his wonderful autobiography, bears more distinct marks than Villon of instinctive criminality. Crime is, however, rare among great sculptors; on the other hand it has been, as Lombroso points out, very common among painters; numerous are the examples of murder, cruelty, theft, sexual offences, among distinguished painters; alcoholism is also very common.
Casanova, a man of various and extraordinary abilities, has in his Memoirs, of which the strict historical accuracy is now generally accepted, produced one of the most valuable and interesting records of the eighteenth century, and at the same time a most complete and complaisant history of his own criminal offences. It is difficult to say whether in him the criminal or the man of genius is most prominent.
A living poet of some eminence, M. Paul Verlaine, furnishes an interesting example of the man of genius who is also distinctly a criminal. M. Verlaine is the chief of the so-called “Decadant” school. The precise rank that he will ultimately take as a poet is not yet clear; while on the one hand he has been unduly neglected, on the other he has been unduly extolled. At his best he excels in delicate passages of vague and mystic reverie, in sudden lines of poignant emotion. His style, a curious mixture of simplicity and obscurity, is studded with words borrowed from the criminal’s argot. His latest volume75 contains poems which well show his curious power of expressing the most delicate nuances of sentiment side by side with the crudest, most unabashed impulses of cynical depravity, self-revelations of sexual perversity, which might have earned for the book a title in a line of its own, “L’embarquement pour Sodome et Gomorrhe.” I do not propose to quote any of these but from a short but interesting series written during an imprisonment of several years at Brussels. Here is a poem describing the life of the prisoner:—
“La cour se fleurit de souci
Comme le front
De tous ceux-ci
Qui vont en rond
En flageolant sur leur fémur
Debilité
Le long du mur
Fou de clartè.
Tournez, Samsons sans Dalila,
Sans Philistin,
Tournez bien la
Meule au destin.
Vaincu risible de la loi,
Mouds tour à tour
Ton cœur, ta foi
Et ton amour!
Ils vont! et leurs pauvres souliers
Font un bruit sec,
Humiliés,
La pipe au bec.
Pas un mot ou bien le cachot,
Pas un soupir.
Il fait si chand
Qu’on croit mourir.
J’en suis de ce cirque effaré,
Soumis d’ailleurs
Et préparé
A tous malheurs.
Et pourquir si j’ai contristé
Ton vœu tetu,
Société,
Me choierais tu?
Allons, frères, bons vieux voleurs,
Doux vagabonds,
Filons en fleur,
Mes chers, mes bons,
Fumons philosophiquement,
Promenons-nous
Paisiblement:
Rien faire est doux.”
I do not know any more interesting document in criminal literature than one poem, Læti et Errabundi, contained in this volume. Fully to understand the significance of this remarkable poem, it is necessary to state that Verlaine’s imprisonment was due to an attempt on the life of his comrade in sexual perversity, himself also a poet of some note. The latter left Europe, and it is not now known whether he is alive or dead. To him Læti et Errabundi is addressed.
I quote the concluding lines:—
“On vous dit mort, vous. Que le Diable
Emporte avec qui la colporte
La nouvelle irrémédiable
Qui vient ainsi battre ma porte!
Je n’y veux rien croire. Mort, vous,
Toi, dieu parmi les demi-dieux!
Ceux qui le disent sont des fous.
Mort, mon grand péché radieux.
Tout ce passé brûlant encore
Dans mes veines et ma cervelle
Et qui rayonne et qui fulgore
Sur ma ferveur toujours nouvelle!
Mort tout ce triomphe inouï
Retentissant sans frein ni fin
Sur l’air jamais évanoui
Que bat mon cœur qui fut divin!
Quoi le miraculeux poème
Et la toute-philosophie,
Et ma patrie et ma bohème
Morts? Allons donc! tu vis ma vie!”
Verlaine’s very remarkable head, though large, is the head of a criminal much more than of a man of genius, with its heavy jaw, projecting orbital arches and acrocephalic occiput, with central ridge—the head which the acute Lauvergne called Satanic, and which, in its extreme form, he believed to announce the monstrous alliance of the most eminent faculty of man, genius, with the most pronounced tendencies to crime. M. Verlaine has long been a victim to chronic alcoholism, and the author of the Fêtes Galantes and of some of the most tender lines written in our day is now most often found within the wards of Parisian hospitals.
“Je compte parmi les maladroits.
J’ai perdu ma vie et je sais bien
Que tout blâme sur moi s’en va fondre:
A cela je ne puis que répondre
Qui je suis vraiment né Saturnien.”
A few words may be added concerning criminal art as shown in design. Lombroso reproduces numerous drawings, etc., made in prison. They are generally very rough and slight, never beautiful, but frequently expressive, rendering character, now and then, in face and attitude, with ease and felicity. Scenes of murder or robbery, law courts, men hanging from the gallows, women, mostly nude, with huge or pendent breasts, men or women in extravagantly perverse sexual attitudes—these are the visions which come to the criminal in prison, and to which he seeks, by such means as may be within his reach, to give artistic expression. Sexual imagery, not beautiful but gross and ugly, undoubtedly has the chief part in these designs; but it is scarcely necessary to point out that the artificial conditions under which the prisoner lives is largely responsible for this characteristic of his art, although not for its generally deliberate ugliness.
Dr. Laurent, in his work, Les Habitués des Prisons, has treated this matter more completely than any other writer known to me, and has reproduced some very characteristic and instructive examples of this art, although he has not dared to reproduce the more extravagant designs which he describes. What has chiefly impressed him among the large number of drawings by prisoners which have passed through his hands is the absence of any elevated thought, of any noble sentiment. In the erotic designs there is occasionally an imaginative audacity, but love is always regarded as a purely physiological act, and everywhere else the design is pathetically commonplace; it is naturalistic in the lowest sense of the word, adding nothing, suppressing nothing; and these drawings have therefore a remarkable family likeness. If there is any great artist of whom they ever remind us it is Ostade, with his perpetual research of the mean and degraded, physically and morally, in humanity. Dr. Laurent draws special attention to a design which appears to represent some winged angel of hope; there is something in the bold, predaceous face of this vulgar fairy, in the coarse firm attitude, so suggestive of the things that alone have left a firm impress on the artist’s mind, that is very pathetic. In one of those designs only is it possible to catch a glimpse of the ideal; it is the figure of a woman by a clerk of some education, and possessed of personal qualities which brought him into relation with women of a somewhat superior type. The face in this drawing has a tender and melancholy air; even here, however, the body is drawn in too crude and realistic a manner. Where these artists succeed best is in the photographic delineation of commonplace or unpleasant human types, such as may be seen in large cities, especially after nightfall. There is usually something hard, cynical, degraded in these types, in their whole bodies as well as their faces; they remind us of what was said of portraits executed by Wainewright, that he had contrived to put the expression of his own wickedness into them.
These artists also do not succeed in caricature, and rarely attempt it. To be successful here involves some judgment, delicacy, and insight, and these the prison artists do not appear to possess.
In the nude, as I have already mentioned, prison artists take great delight, and they even achieve a certain amount of success. There is a certain Hogarthian vigour and ease with which the faces and forms of these coarse, low-browed, animal, energetic women, with their large pendent breasts, are brought before us. The only prison sketch I have seen showing anything more than a crude sense of beauty, any real appeal to the imagination, or distinct science of form and composition, is a group of nude women in extravagant attitudes, which Dr. Laurent reproduces; he says nothing of the artist, except that he was probably a Saint Anthony by necessity, who, in this scene as of a Sabbath of witches, has given expression to the dreams that tormented him. It is a genuine piece of fantastic art, and seems to recall certain designs of the Belgian artist, Félicien Rops. This design escapes to some extent—and to some extent only—from the judgment which Dr. Laurent pronounces on the treatment of sex by criminals:—“Sex is not for them a sacred and mysterious thing, a mystic rose hidden beneath the obscure vault of the body, like a strange and precious talisman enclosed in a tabernacle. For them it is a thing of ugliness, which they drag into the light of day and laugh at.”