Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/589

 12 S.X.JUNE 24, 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 483 where he was remarked for the " singularity of his person," and recognized as the forme Warrington tutor. That he escaped t( Dublin, was there arrested, posing, accord ing to one account, as a German Count, anc imprisoned for six months, then transferrec to Oxford, where, in March, 1777, he was tried for the robbery, displaying during the proceeding a considerable knowledge of law and procedure. That he was sentenced to the hulks at Woolwich, where he was again recog nized as the Warrington tutor. That in April, 1777, fourteen of the Woolwich convicts escaped, and six were not recaptured. Thai in 1786 one John White set up as a teacher oi tambouring in Edinburgh, contracted debts, fled to Newcastle, was arrested, brought back to Edinburgh, found to be the same person as the Warrington and Oxford " Le Maitre, alias Mara," and after release left Scotland early in 1787. That John White was of diminutive size, turbulent and ill-looking, but possessed of an uncommon share of legal knowledge, and called his children " Marat," which he said was his family name. That in December, 1787, one " Maratt Amiatt," who had practised in several English towns " a teacher and quack doctor," set up as as a bookseller in Bristol, was imprisoned for debt, released by a benevolent society, and afterwards recognized by one of its members in Paris as the revolutionary Marat. Also that a Mr. Harford did, and a Mr. Bush could, remember " this villain " as the French tutor at Warrington in 1772 ; that the same Mr. Harford and a Mr. Lloyd had already recognized him as the Woolwich convict ; and that the servant of a Mr. Ireland, a friend of Mr. Harford, pointed out Marat in Paris in 1792 to his master as the person they had befriended at Bristol. It will be noticed that Le Maitre, though originally spelling his alias as " Mara," afterwards adds the letter t to it at Edin- burgh and Bristol. Turning now to the real Jean Paul Marat, we find, as connecting him with the " Le Maitre, alias Mara," of Warrington, that his name also was originally Mara ; that he had been a teacher of French at several other northern towns ; that, like his father and brother, he worked largely incognito and under aliases ; that his father being known as le maitre de langiies, and he himself ful- filling that description, the pseudonym " Le Maitre " was no unlikely choice ; and that he was actually remembered by Mr. Harford and probably by Mr. Bush as having been at Warrington in 1772. With regard to Oxford, we find that he lived in London shortly before the Ashmolean robbery, and so was within easy enough reach of the former city ; also that he was in chronically and perhaps acutely straitened circumstances at the time. We have learnt something of his general moral character from the preceding pages, but his special views on larceny are best conveyed in his own words : All human rights issue from physical wants. [f a man has nothing, he has a right to any surplus with which another gorges himself. What do I say ? He has a right to seize the indispensable and rather than die of hunger he may cut another's throat and eat his throbbing flesh. Man has a right to self-preservation, to the property, the liberty and even the lives of his fellow-creatures. He is free to do what he pleases to ensure his own happiness ( Declara- tion of the Bights of Man,' Paris, 1789). We find at Oxford, as at Warrington, that Jean Paul's real name, like the prisoner's, is Mara, that he is a teacher of French, adopts an alias, and shares the other's " singularity of person." Further, a curious point, that he admits having spent something like the prisoner's six months in Dublin, for in his main itinerary, after his "ten years in Eng- land," he speaks of having passed. " one year in Dublin," a period that subsequently he somewhat shortened. Now, as he had no Irish diploma, never claimed to have prac- tised there, and neither he nor his bio- graphers, so far as we are aware, ever explain, or elsewhere even mention, this particular sojourn, the Le Maitre imprison- ment supplies at all events a not improbable solution of the reference. A minor coinci- dence, indeed, supports it, for the Dublin fugitive who posed as a " German Count " was afterwards faithfully duplicated by the Parisian doctor who also posed as a count and sealed his letters with a coronet. As connecting the real Jean Paul with the Edinburgh and Newcastle adventures of ' John White," we know that these two cities were, after London, his favourite spots ; and that he was* in fact absent from France at this particular time ; while he is urther identified with John White in being of diminutive size (appreciably under five eet), turbulent, ill-looking, as well as pos- sessed of an uncommon share of legal know- edge. It will be recalled also that John White stated that Marat was his family name. Finally, with regard to Bristol, the real Jean Paul is identified with "Maratt Amiatt " in having himself of later years added a t to his original name ; in having,