The Timeless Allure of the Gentleman-Crook

While history and literature can boast many examples of courteous thieves, notably Robin Hood, and while rogues have often pretended to be law-abiding citizens—think of Balzac’s sinister Vautrin, who sometimes disguises himself as a prelate of the church—the first criminal of modern literature to be labeled a gentleman-thief and master of disguise is Colonel Clay, who appears in Grant Allen’s An African Millionaire (1897). Today, Grant Allen is mainly remembered for his once-scandalous account of unmarried love, The Woman Who Did (1895). But he was also, in the words of a modern biography, “the busiest man in England,” turning out scientific studies (of flowers, evolution), socialist tracts, tales of the supernatural, even a novel of proto science fiction. In this last, a time traveler from the future visits 1895; the novel’s blunt title reveals its theme: The British Barbarians.

Grant Allen’s African millionaire is Sir Charles Vandrift, who made his fortune in South African diamonds. Vandrift regards himself as a clever businessman, and he can certainly be a ruthless one. The narrator of the stories is his secretary and brother-in-law, Seymour Wilbraham Wentworth, who tells us straight-off that “I have only known one rogue impose upon Sir Charles, and that one rogue, as the Commissary of Police at Nice remarked, would doubtless have imposed upon a syndicate of Vidocq, Robert Houdin, and Cagliostro.” This is, of course, Colonel Clay. As a French policeman explains:

In the opening chapter, Vandrift is vacationing on the Riviera when he hears about the occult powers of a certain Antonio Herrera. This gentle Mexican psychic impresses everyone with his quiet dignity and slightly naïve manner: At a dinner party “[t]he Seer gazed about him, and smiled blankly at a person or two whose face he seemed to recognize from a previous existence.” Herrera performs a number of impressive feats, one of which is built around Vandrift’s signature. A few days later, the millionaire learns that £5,000 has been withdrawn from his bank account. How was it done?

An African Millionaire carries the subtitle “Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay,” so the remainder of the book shows us how this artful dodger swindles Vandrift over and over again: “ ’The worst of the man is he has a method,’ ” says his repeated victim. “ ’He doesn’t go out of his way to cheat us; he makes us go out of ours to be cheated. He lays a trap, and we tumble headlong into it.’ ”

Most readers, and sometimes even Vandrift and Wentworth, will guess the latest disguises of the Colonel and his pretty female accomplice, nicknamed White Heather. There is nonetheless a pleasing variety to the plotting and geography of the stories, since adventures take place in Scotland, the Tyrol, America, and London. At the end of each successful coup, the Colonel writes mockingly to Vandrift and once he even explains himself a bit:

In a grotesque image, Clay then sums up their association: “You are my host; I am your parasite.” More emphatically, the book also makes repeated jabs at Vandrift’s unbridled, capitalist greed. For example, the Colonel signs one of his mocking epistles “Cuthbert Clay, Practical Socialist.” An unnamed magazine editor takes an even more jaundiced view of the millionaire and his ilk: “ ’Don’t believe that nonsense about fortunes being made by industry and ability,’ he said. ‘In life, as at cards, two things go to produce success—the first is chance, the second is cheating.’ ”

Throughout, this thread of satirical wit gives these pages much of their bounce. On board ship, Vandrift encounters Dr. Elihu Quackenboss, a multitalented American able to shoe a mule or translate “a Polish work on the ‘Application of Hydrocyanic Acid to the Cure of Leprosy.’ ” Could he be another avatar of Colonel Clay? At a bachelor party, Vandrift is introduced to Algernon Coleyard, “the famous poet, and leader of the Briar-rose school of West-country fiction.” Might he be the Colonel in disguise? As Wentworth says, “We were beginning to suspect him everywhere.”

All in all, this is a delightful book, with several bravura passages. In New York, after a respite from the Colonel’s attention, Wentworth notes that the long-suffering Vandrift “began to fancy his tormentor must have succumbed to yellow fever, then raging in New Orleans, or eaten himself ill, as we nearly did ourselves, on a generous mixture of clam-chowder, terrapin, soft-shelled crabs, Jersey peaches, canvas-backed ducks, Catawba wine, winter cherries, brandy cocktails, strawberry-shortcake, ice-creams, corn-dodger, and a judicious brew commonly known as a Colorado corpse-reviver.”

Just before the advent of E. W. Hornung’s Raffles—that beau idéal of the gentleman-burglar—Pearson’s magazine published a series of stories later collected in 1900 as A Prince of Swindlers. Their author, Guy Boothby, is now mainly remembered as the creator of the hypnotic criminal mastermind (and seeker after the elixir of immortality) Dr. Nikola. Here, though, his protagonist is Simon Carne, who possesses the face of an angel—and a noticeable hump. Despite his apparent physical debility, this expert on Asian art, who normally resides in India, quickly conquers London society with his charm, wit, and consummate good taste. He also executes five extraordinary crimes, each a “Mission: Impossible” scam. No one ever suspects Carne. After all, what criminal would live right next door to the great detective Klimo, said to be the equal of Lecoq and Sherlock Holmes?

Carne, of course, is Klimo. Yet another master of disguise—you didn’t think that hump was real, did you?—he regularly passes through a passage way between the two buildings, assuming whichever identity he needs. More than once, Carne commits a robbery and the victim then hires Klimo to solve it. Somehow, the dastardly perpetrator always ends up getting away, though Klimo’s sterling reputation never suffers.

What makes these stories so engaging is, again, their lighthearted tone and Carne’s approach to larceny as a game: “[I]t was scarcely a robbery he was planning, but an artistic trial of skill, in which he pitted his wits and cunning against the forces of society in general.” How this daring thief purloins the Duchess of Wiltshire’s diamonds, wins the Derby, upsets an Irish dynamite plot (and appropriates the terrorists’ war chest), robs a country house, and impersonates the Emperor of Westphalia should be left for happy readers to discover.

I’m not sure if Arthur Conan Doyle ever met Guy Boothby, but he was definitely a close friend of Grant Allen, as well as the brother-in-law of E. W. Hornung. Did he, perhaps, introduce the creator of Colonel Clay to the future creator of Raffles? It would be pretty to think so. Hornung himself always maintained that A. J. Raffles was, in part, derived from Sherlock Holmes. The dedication page of The Amateur Cracksman (1899) even reads “To A. C. D, this form of flattery.” A cracksman, by the way, is British slang for a burglar or housebreaker. When these stories were published in America, the Scribner’s blurb summed them up perfectly:

The first story, “The Ides of March,” recounts how a bankrupt and suicidal “Bunny” Manders came to be Raffles’s partner and chronicler. In those early days, the noted cricketer and secret cracksman was living in high style at the Albany, smoking only Sullivan cigarettes and looking for all the world like a languid minor poet. “Again I see him,” recalls Bunny, “leaning back in one of the luxurious chairs with which his room was furnished. I see his indolent, athletic figure; his pale, sharp, clean-shaven features; his curly black hair; his strong, unscrupulous mouth. And again I feel the clear beam of his wonderful eye, cold and luminous as a star, shining into my brain—sifting the very secrets of my heart.”

At least during the early phases of his career, Raffles is half thrill-seeker, half aesthete: “Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together?” Of course, he blithely adds, stealing is “very wrong, but we can’t all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with.” Besides, there is such a thing as art for art’s sake: “Does the writer only write when the wolf is at the door? Does the painter paint for bread alone? Must you and I be driven to crime like Tom of Bow and Dick of Whitechapel?”

Of course not. To fail to exercise one’s talents would sap the spirit from any man.

The three collections of stories about this stylish robber—The Amateur Cracksman, The Black Mask (1901, in America Raffles), and A Thief in the Night (1905)—proved immensely popular for a long while, especially in England. Graham Greene wrote a play called The Return of A. J. Raffles and George Orwell titled a celebrated essay on the changing nature of crime fiction “Raffles and Miss Blandish.” Anthony Powell thought Hornung as good a story-teller “for construction and excitement” as Conan Doyle.

Perhaps. But there’s no getting round the fact that Bunny hero-worships Raffles to a somewhat creepy degree: More than one reader has suspected a homosexual subtext. Some have even claimed that Raffles and Bunny were modeled after Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. Yet while he feels piqued at being condescended to by vulgar aristocrats, Raffles is less a social leveler than a disappointingly unimaginative opportunist. He steals a necklace by simply dashing into a room and taking it. He absconds with a painting by—ho-hum—making a duplicate key to a lock. He employs the most obvious means to purloin a pearl from a shipboard cabin (ventilators) and, when caught, casually leaves Bunny to go to prison while he escapes. In one story, he actually plans a cold-blooded murder—which must be against the code of any self-respecting gentleman-burglar—and in another allows real criminals, including a murderer, to escape. He even lies and exploits a young woman into thinking he’s in love with her.

If, initially, Raffles and Bunny often act like schoolboys larking about and cocking a snook at authority, Hornung makes clear that they are not immune to the ravages of time. When Raffles reappears in the second volume of stories, he has lost his health and his heart has been broken by a tragic love affair. He now lives in squalor as the decrepit, white-haired invalid Mr. Maturin. (Are we meant to think of the disgraced Wilde who called himself Sebastian Melmoth, a name derived from the Gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Robert Maturin?)

At this point, Bunny has served 18 months in prison and begun writing exposés of the contemporary penal system. Has he grown wiser or, perhaps, even grown up? Not at all. The poor rabbit jumps at the chance to rejoin Raffles in new larcenous ventures, though his idol now regards crime with the serious eye of a professional. This second volume ends with the redemptive death of Raffles, who behaves heroically during the Boer War. The third volume, A Thief in the Night, collects some additional stories, firmly set back in the period when Raffles and Bunny were still just gentleman-pranksters off on a spree.

All in all, though Hornung’s cracksman is world-famous, I find Simon Carne a much more ingenious thief and Colonel Clay a more likable character. That said, none of these Englishmen can match the charm and Gallic savoir faire of Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin. He is inimitable. One night, after breaking into Baron Schormann’s mansion, the rogue deliberately went away empty-handed, leaving his visiting card—”Arsène Lupin: Gentleman-Burglar”—and the scribbled message: “Will return when your things are genuine.”

In The Exploits of Arsène Lupin (1907)—the first collection of stories about the master criminal—we learn that Lupin “worked at his profession for a living, but also for his amusement. He gave the impression of a dramatist who thoroughly enjoys his own plays and who stands in the wings laughing heartily at the comic dialogue and diverting situations which he himself has invented.” His carefully staged capers are related from various narrative viewpoints: by Lupin himself, in the third person, or as the testimony of a journalist friend. Always, Leblanc manages to surprise us, since his charming antihero assumes many names and disguises. Nothing, however, can mask his sense of humor.

For instance, the wealthy Baron Cahorn receives a letter headed “Prison de la Santé, Paris.” In it, Lupin—who is locked in a maximum security cell awaiting trial—kindly requests that the Baron pack up certain of his art works and send them in Lupin’s name and “carriage paid” to the Gare de Batignolles within the week, “failing which I will myself see to their removal on the night of Wednesday, the 27th instant. In the latter case, as is only fair, I shall not be content with the above-mentioned objects.” And as if such chutzpah weren’t sufficient, Lupin adds a P. S.

I do not care either to have the Louis XV chatelaine, which appears to me to be of doubtful authenticity.

Of course, the Baron refuses to surrender his treasures and, of course, they all vanish on the announced Wednesday, the 27th, even though he has enlisted the protective services of Lupin’s nemesis, the great French detective Ganimard.

In later stories, we learn a few tantalizing oddments about Arsène Lupin’s past and how he first became a thief. To perfect his skills, he deliberately apprenticed himself to a conjurer and later served as an assistant to a famous scientist. He also seems to have taught Japanese wrestling and been a champion cyclist. Might he have spent time in the theater? Lupin certainly displays a flair for the melodramatic. In “The Seven of Hearts,” a journalist returns home late one evening and, climbing into bed, picks up the book on his nightstand. To his surprise, he finds his page marked with an envelope inscribed “Urgent.” How could it have gotten there? Unsealing the envelope, he reads the brief note inside: “From the moment when you open this letter, whatever happens, whatever you may hear, do not stir, do not make a movement, do not utter a sound. If you do you are lost.”

Almost immediately, noises rock the house and he seems to glimpse a threatening figure behind a curtain; but the frightened journalist never moves a muscle. The next morning, however, everything seems untouched and quite normal. Was it all merely a dream? Just then a stranger knocks at the door and begs to spend two minutes alone in the study. At the end of those two minutes a shot is fired; the stranger has committed suicide. Why? What did he find, or not find, in that room?

The last story of the Exploits is titled “Holmlock Shears Arrives Too Late.” (For legal reasons, Leblanc was prohibited from using the name Sherlock Holmes.) By this time, Lupin has grown so famous that he is referred to in the story as France’s “national thief.” With his usual adroitness, he arranges a seemingly impossible robbery only to be confronted by an emotionally upsetting figure from his past. Worse still, he encounters a new and greater threat in England’s national detective:

Shears took a view of him from head to foot with an eye at once so all-embracing and so piercing that Arsène Lupin felt himself seized, caught, and registered by that glance more exactly and more essentially than he had ever been by any photographic apparatus.

Needless to say, the pair will face off again in subsequent episodes of Lupin’s long and colorful career.

Colonel Clay, Simon Carne, A. J. Raffles, and Arsène Lupin all first appeared at the turn of the last century. Today, paperback compilations of their raffish skullduggery are readily available, those published by Penguin being the most attractive. Still, this criminal quartet could easily be expanded into a small orchestra. Barry Pain’s Constantine Dix works as a prominent lay preacher by day and a thief when occasion allows. In William Le Queux’s The Count’s Chauffeur, George Ewart narrates the scams and capers of his employer, the Italian nobleman Bindo di Ferraris. Then there are the tales of Louis Joseph Vance’s Michael Lanyard, known as The Lone Wolf, and Frank L. Packard’s Jimmie Dale, alias the Gray Seal. By the late 1920s young Leslie Charteris had introduced his bright buccaneer, Simon Templar, the Saint.

While the adventures of well-mannered gentleman-crooks may be viewed as subtly supporting (or consciously criticizing) society’s class system, for most casual readers today they largely function as escapist wish-fulfillment, adult fairy tales of cleverness defeating might and brawn. They also transport us back to a better time when great criminals could be rapscallions rather than mass murderers. Or is believing that just another fantasy? If so, it’s a fantasy worth indulging now and then, if only as a temporary respite from the 21st-century’s often nightmarish realities.

Michael Dirda is the author, most recently, of Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting, and Living with Books and the Edgar Award-winning On Conan Doyle.