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.