Garasse was right; for there goes far more to the composition of an
individual character, than of an individual face. It has sometimes
happened that the portrait of one person has proved also to be a good
likeness of another. Mr. Hazlitt recognized his own features and
expression in one of Michael Angelo's devils. And in real life two
faces, even though there be no relationship between the parties, may
be all but indistinguishably alike, so that the one shall frequently
be accosted for the other; yet no parity of character can be inferred
from this resemblance. Poor Capt. Atkins, who was lost in the Defence
off the coast of Jutland in 1811, had a double of this kind, that was
the torment of his life; for this double was a swindler, who having
discovered the lucky facsimileship, obtained goods, took up money, and
at last married a wife in his name. Once when the real Capt. Atkins
returned from a distant station, this poor woman who was awaiting him
at Plymouth, put off in a boat, boarded the ship as soon as it came to
anchor, and ran to welcome him as her husband.
The following Extraordinary Investigation, cut out of a Journal of the
day, would have excited our Doctor's curiosity, and have led him on to
remoter speculations.
“On Tuesday afternoon an adjourned inquest was held at the
Christchurch workhouse. Boundary-row, Blackfriars-road, before Mr. R.
Carter, on the body of Eliza Baker, aged 17, who was found drowned at
the steps of Blackfriars-bridge, on Saturday morning, by a police
constable. Mr. Peter Wood, an eating-house-keeper, in the Bermondsey
New-road, near the Brick-layers Arms, having seen a paragraph in one
of the Sunday newspapers, that the body of a female had been taken out
of the Thames on the previous day, and carried to the workhouse to be
owned, and, from the description given, suspecting that it was the
body of a young female who had lived in his service, but who had been
discharged by his wife on account of jealousy, he went to the
workhouse and recognized the body of the unfortunate girl. He was very
much agitated, and he cut off a lock of her hair, and kissed the
corpse. He immediately went to an undertaker, and gave orders for the
funeral. He then went to the deceased's parents, who reside in
Adelaide-place, Whitecross-street, Cripplegate, and informed them of
the melancholy fate of their daughter. They also went to the
workhouse, and, on being shown the body, were loud in their
lamentations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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