2.
II
JONATHAN WILD
WHEN Jonathan Wild and the Count La Ruse, in Fielding's
narrative, took a hand at cards, Jonathan picked his opponent's
pocket, though he knew it was empty, while the Count, from sheer
force of habit, stacked the cards, though Wild had not a farthing
to lose. And if in his uncultured youth the great man stooped to
prig with his own hand, he was early cured of the weakness: so
that Fielding's picture of the hero taking a bottle-screw from
the Ordinary's pocket in the very moment of death is entirely
fanciful. For `this Machiavel of Thieves,' as a contemporary
styled him, left others to accomplish what his ingenuity had
planned. His was the high policy of theft. If he lived on terms
of familiar intimacy with the mill-kens, the bridle-culls, the
buttock-and-files of London, he was none the less the friend and
minister of justice. He enjoyed the freedom of Newgate and the
Old Bailey. He came and went as he liked: he packed juries, he
procured bail, he manufactured evidence; and there was scarce an
assize or a sessions passed but he slew his man.
The world knew him for a robber, yet could not
refuse his brilliant service. At the Poultry Counter, you are
told, he laid the foundations of his future greatness, and to the
Poultry Counter he was committed for some trifling debt ere he
had fully served his apprenticeship to the art and mystery of
buckle-making. There he learned his craft, and at his
enlargement he was able forthwith to commence thief-catcher. His
plan was conceived with an effrontery that was nothing less than
genius. On the one side he was the factor, or rather the tyrant,
of the cross-coves: on the other he was the trusted agent of
justice, the benefactor of the outraged and the plundered. Among
his earliest exploits was the recovery of the Countess of G—d—
n's chair, impudently carried off when her ladyship had but just
alighted; and the courage wherewith he brought to justice the
murderers of one Mrs. Knap, who had been slain for some trifling
booty, established his reputation as upon a rock. He at once
advertised himself in the public prints as Thief-Catcher General
of Great Britain and Ireland, and proceeded to send to the
gallows every scoundrel that dared dispute his position.
His opportunities of gain were infinite. Even if he did
not organise the robbery which his cunning was presently to
discover, he had spies in every hole and corner to set him on the
felon's track. Nor did he leave a single enterprise to chance:
`He divided the city and suburbs into wards or divisions, and
appointed the persons who were to attend each ward, and kept them
strictly to their duty.' If a subordinate dared to
disobey or to shrink from murder, Jonathan hanged him at the next
assize, and happily for him he had not a single confederate whose
neck he might not put in the halter when he chose. Thus he
preserved the union and the fidelity of his gang, punishing by
judicial murder the smallest insubordination, the faintest
suspicion of rivalry. Even when he had shut his victim up in
Newgate, he did not leave him so long as there was a chance of
blackmail. He would make the most generous offers of evidence
and defence to every thief that had a stiver left him. But
whether or not he kept his bargain—that depended upon policy and
inclination. On one occasion, when he had brought a friend to
the Old Bailey, and relented at the last moment, he kept the
prosecutor drunk from the noble motive of self-interest, until
the case was over. And so esteemed was he of the officers of the
law that even this interference did but procure a reprimand.
His meanest action marked him out from his fellows, but it
was not until he habitually pillaged the treasures he afterwards
restored to their grateful owners for a handsome consideration,
that his art reached the highest point of excellence. The event
was managed by him with amazing adroitness from beginning to end.
It was he who discovered the wealth and habit of the victim; it
was he who posted the thief and seized the plunder, giving a
paltry commission to his hirelings for the trouble; it was he who
kept whatever valuables were lost in the transaction; and as he
was the servant of the Court, discovery or inconvenience
was impossible. Surely the Machiavel of Thieves is justified of
his title. He was known to all the rich and titled folk in town;
and if he was generally able to give them back their stolen
valuables at something more than double their value, he treated
his clients with a most proper insolence. When Lady M—n was
unlucky enough to lose a silver buckle at Windsor, she asked Wild
to recover it, and offered the hero twenty pounds for his
trouble. `Zounds, Madam,' says he, `you offer nothing. It cost
the gentleman who took it forty pounds for his coach, equipage,
and other expenses to Windsor.' His impudence increased with
success, and in the geniality of his cups he was wont to boast
his amazing rogueries: `hinting not without vanity at the poor
Understandings of the Greatest Part of Mankind, and his own
Superior Cunning.'
In fifteen years he claimed £10,000 for his dividend
of recovered plunderings, and who shall estimate the moneys which
flowed to his treasury from blackmail and the robberies of his
gang? So brisk became his trade in jewels and the precious
metals that he opened relations with Holland, and was master of a
fleet. His splendour increased with wealth: he carried a silver-mounted sword, and a footman tramped at his heels. `His table
was very splendid,' says a biographer: `he seldom dining under
five Dishes, the Reversions whereof were generally charitably
bestow'd on the Commonside felons.' At his second marriage with
Mrs. Mary D—n, the hempen widow of Scull D—n,
his humour was most happily expressed: he distributed white
ribbons among the turnkeys, he gave the Ordinary gloves and
favours, he sent the prisoners of Newgate several ankers of
brandy for punch. `Twas a fitting complaisance, since his
fortune was drawn from Newgate, and since he was destined
himself, a few years later, to drink punch—`a liquor nowhere
spoken against in the Scriptures'—with the same Ordinary whom he
thus magnificently decorated. Endowed with considerable courage,
for a while he had the prudence to save his skin, and despite his
bravado he was known on occasion to yield a plundered treasure to
an accomplice who set a pistol to his head. But it is certain
that the accomplice died at Tyburn for his pains, and on equal
terms Jonathan was resolute with the best. On the trail he was
savage as a wild beast. When he arrested James Wright for a
robbery committed upon the persons of the Earl of B—l—n and the
Lord Bruce, he held on to the victim's chin by his teeth—an
exploit which reminds you of the illustrious Tiger Roche.
Even in his lifetime he was generously styled the Great.
The scourge of London, he betrayed and destroyed every man that
ever dared to live upon terms of friendship with him. It was
Jonathan that made Blueskin a thief, and Jonathan screened his
creature from justice only so long as clemency seemed profitable.
At the first hint of disobedience Blueskin was committed to
Newgate. When he had stood his trial, and was being taken to the
Condemned Hole, he
beckoned to Wild as though to a conference, and cut his throat
with a penknife. The assembled rogues and turnkeys thought their
Jonathan dead at last, and rejoiced exceedingly therein.
Straightway the poet of
Newgate's Garland leaped into
verse:
Then hopeless of life,
He drew his penknife,
And made a sad widow of Jonathan's wife.
but forty pounds paid her, her grief shall appease,
and every man round me may rob, if he please.
But Jonathan recovered, and Molly, his wife, was destined a
second time to win the conspicuous honour that belongs to a
hempen widow.
As his career drew to its appointed close, Fortune
withheld her smiles. `People got so peery,' complained the great
man, `that ingenious men were put to dreadful shifts.' And then,
highest tribute to his greatness, an Act of Parliament was passed
which made it a capital offence `for a prig to steal with the
hands of other people'; and in the increase of public vigilance
his undoing became certain. On the 2nd of January, 1725, a day
not easy to forget, a creature of Wild's spoke with fifty yards
of lace, worth £40, at his Captain's bidding, and Wild,
having otherwise disposed of the plunder, was charged on the 10th
of March that he `did feloniously receive of Katharine Stetham
ten guineas on account and under colour of helping the said
Katharine Stetham to the said lace again, and did not then, nor
any time since, discover
or apprehend, or cause to be apprehended and brought to Justice,
the persons that committed the said felony.' Thus runs the
indictment, and, to the inexpressible relief of lesser men,
Jonathan Wild was condemned to the gallows.
Thereupon he had serious thoughts of `putting his house in
order'; with an ironical smile he demanded an explanation of the
text: `Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree'; but,
presently reflecting that `his Time was but short in this World,
he improved it to the best advantage in Eating, Drinking,
Swearing, Cursing, and talking to his Visitants.' For all his
bragging, drink alone preserved his courage: `he was very
restless in the Condemned Hole,' though `he gave little or no
attention to the condemned Sermon which the purblind Ordinary
preached before him,' and which was, in Fielding's immortal
phrase, `unto the Greeks foolishness.' But in the moment of
death his distinction returned to him. He tried, and failed, to
kill himself; and his progress to the nubbing cheat was a triumph
of execration. He reached Tyburn through a howling mob, and died
to a yell of universal joy.
The Ordinary has left a record so precious and so lying,
that it must needs be quoted at length. The great Thief-Catcher's confession is a masterpiece of comfort, and is so far
removed from the truth as completely to justify Fielding's
incomparable creation. `Finding there was no room for mercy (and
how could I expect mercy, who never showed any)'—thus does
the devil dodger dishonour our Jonathan's memory!—`as soon as I
came into the Condemned Hole, I began to think of making a
preparation for my soul. . . . To part with my wife, my dear
Molly, is so great an Affliction to me, that it touches me to the
Quick, and is like Daggers entering into my Heart.' How tame the
Ordinary's falsehood to the brilliant invention of Fielding, who
makes Jonathan kick his Tishy in the very shadow of the Tree!
And the Reverend Gentleman gains in unction as he goes: `In the
Cart they all kneeled down to prayers and seemed very penitent;
the Ordinary used all the means imaginable to make them think of
another World, and after singing a penitential Psalm, they cry'd
Lord Jesus Christ receive our Souls, the cart drew away and they
were all turned off. This is as good an account as can be given
by me.' Poor Ordinary! If he was modest, he was also
untruthful, and you are certain that it was not thus the hero met
his death.
Even had Fielding never written his masterpiece, Jonathan
Wild would still have been surnamed `The Great.' For scarce a
chap-book appeared in the year of Jonathan's death that did not
expose the only right and true view of his character. `His
business,' says one hack of prison literature, `at all times was
to put a false gloss upon things, and to make fools of mankind.'
Another precisely formulates the theory of greatness insisted
upon by Fielding with so lavish an irony and so masterly a wit.
While it is certain that The History of the Late Mr. Jonathan
Wild is as
noble a piece of irony as literature can show, while for the
qualities of wit and candour it is equal to its motive, it is
likewise true that therein you meet the indubitable Jonathan
Wild. It is an entertainment to compare the chap-books of the
time with the reasoned, finished work of art: not in any spirit
of pedantry—since accuracy in these matters is of small account,
but with intent to show how doubly fortunate Fielding was in his
genius and in his material. Of course the writer rejoiced in the
aid of imagination and eloquence; of course he embellished his
picture with such inspirations as Miss Laetitia and the Count; of
course he preserves from the first page to the last the highest
level of unrivalled irony. But the sketch was there before him,
and a lawyer's clerk had treated Jonathan in a vein of heroism
within a few weeks of his death. And since a plain statement is
never so true as fiction, Fielding's romance is still more
credible, still convinces with an easier effort, than the serious
and pedestrian records of contemporaries. Nor can you return to
its pages without realising that, so far from being `the
evolution of a purely intellectual conception,'
Jonathan
Wild is a magnificently idealised and ironical portrait of a
great man.
