The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great

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THE WORKS OF HENRY FIELDING

VOLUME TEN

THE
HISTORY OF THE LIFE
OF THE LATE
MR. JONATHAN WILD
THE GREAT

WITH THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE, AND AN INTRODUCTION BY G. H. MAYNADIER,
Ph. D.

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION

Jonathan Wild, born about 1682 and executed at Tyburn in 1725, was
one of the most notorious criminals of his age. His resemblance to
the hero in Fielding's satire of the same name is general rather
than particular. The real Jonathan (whose legitimate business was
that of a buckle-maker) like Fielding's, won his fame, not as a
robber himself, but as an informer, and a receiver of stolen
goods. His method was to restore these to the owners on receipt of
a commission, which was generally pretty large, pretending that he
had paid the whole of it to the thieves, whom for disinterested
motives he had traced. He was a great organiser, and he controlled
various bands of robbers whose lives he did not hesitate to
sacrifice, when his own was in danger. Naturally he was so hated
by many of his underlings that it is a wonder he was able to
maintain his authority over them as many years as he did. His
rascality had been notorious a long time before his crimes could
actually be proved. He was executed at last according to the
statute which made receivers of stolen goods equally guilty with
the stealers.

Beyond this general resemblance, the adventures of the real
Jonathan, so far as we know them, are not much like those of the
fictitious. True, the real Jonathan's married life was unhappy,
though his quarrel with his wife did not follow so hard upon his
wedding as the quarrel of Fielding's hero and the chaste Laetitia.
Not until a year from his marriage did the real Jonathan separate
from his spouse, after which time he lived, like Fielding's, not
always mindful of his vows of faithfulness. Like Fielding's, too,
he was called upon to suppress rebellions in his gangs, and once
he came very near being killed in a court of justice by one Blake,
alias Blueskin. Apart from these misadventures, the experiences of
Fielding's Wild seem to be purely imaginary. "My narrative is
rather of such actions which he might have performed," the author
himself says, [Footnote: Introduction to Miscellanies, 1st ed., p.
xvii.] "or would, or should have performed, than what he really
did. ... The Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild, got out
with characteristic commercial energy by Defoe, soon after the
criminal's execution, is very different from Fielding's satirical
narrative, and probably a good deal nearer the truth."

Jonathan Wild was published as the third volume of the
Miscellanies "by Henry Fielding, Esq." which came out in the
spring of 1743. From the reference to Lady Booby's steward, Peter
Pounce, in Book II., it seems to have been, as Mr. Austin Dobson
has observed, and as the date of publication would imply, composed
in part at least subsequently to Joseph Andrews, which appeared
early in 1742. But the same critic goes on to say that whenever
completed, Jonathan Wild was probably "planned and begun before
Joseph Andrews was published, as it is in the highest degree
improbable that Fielding, always carefully watching the public
taste, would have followed up that fortunate adventure in a new
direction by a work so entirely different from it as Jonathan
Wild." [Footnote: Henry Fielding, 1900, p. 145.] Mr. Dobson's
surmise is undoubtedly correct. The "strange, surprising
adventures" of Mrs. Heartfree belong to a different school of
fiction from that with which we commonly associate Fielding. They
are such as we should expect one of Defoe's characters to go
through, rather than a woman whose creator had been gratified only
a year before at the favourable reception accorded to Fanny and
Lady Booby and Mrs. Slipslop.

That Jonathan Wild is for the most part a magnificent example of
sustained irony, one of the best in our literature, critics have
generally agreed. The comparison steadfastly insisted upon between
Jonathan Wild's greatness and the greatness which the world looks
up to, but which without being called criminal is yet devoid of
humanity, is admirable. Admirable, too, is the ironical humour, in
which Fielding so excelled, and which in Jonathan Wild he seldom
drops. It would take too long to mention all the particularly good
ironical passages, but among them are the conversation between
Wild and Count La Ruse, and the description of Miss Tishy Snap in
the first book; the adventures of Wild in the boat at the end of
the second book; and, in the last, the dialogue between the
ordinary of Newgate and the hero, the death of Wild, and the
chapter which sets forth his character and his maxims for
attaining greatness. And yet as a satire Jonathan Wild is not
perfect. Fielding himself hits upon its one fault, when, in the
last book, after the long narrative of Mrs. Heartfree's adventures
by sea and by land, he says, "we have already perhaps detained our
reader too long ... from the consideration of our hero." He has
detained us far too long. A story containing so much irony as
Jonathan Wild should be an undeviating satire like A Tale of a
Tub. The introduction of characters like the Heartfrees, who are
meant to enlist a reader's sympathy, spoils the unity. True, the
way they appear at first is all very well. Heartfree is "a silly
fellow," possessed of several great weaknesses of mind, being
"good-natured, friendly, and generous to a great excess," and
devoted to the "silly woman," his wife. But later Fielding becomes
so much interested in the pair that he drops his ironical tone.
Unfortunately, however, in depicting them, he has not met with his
usual success in depicting amiable characters. The exemplary
couple, together with their children and Friendly, are much less
real than the villain and his fellows. And so the importance of
the Heartfrees in Jonathan Wild seems to me a double blemish. A
satire is not truth, and yet in Mr. and Mrs. Heartfree Fielding
has tried--though not with success--to give us virtuous characters
who are truly human. The consequence is that Jonathan Wild just
fails of being a consistently brilliant satire.

As to its place among Fielding's works, critics have differed
considerably. The opinion of Scott found little in Jonathan Wild
to praise, but then it is evident from what he says, that Scott
missed the point of the satire. [Footnote: Henry Fielding in
Biographical and Critical Notices of Eminent Novelists. "It is not
easy to see what Fielding proposed to himself by a picture of
complete vice, unrelieved by anything of human feeling. ..."].
Some other critics have been neither more friendly than Sir
Walter, nor more discriminating, in speaking of Jonathan Wild and
Smollett's Count Fathom in the same breath, as if they were
similar either in purpose or in merit. Fathom is a romantic
picaresque novel, with a possibly edifying, but most unnatural
reformation of the villainous hero at the last; Jonathan Wild is a
pretty consistent picaresque satire, in which the hero ends where
Fathom by all rights should have ended,--on the gallows. Fathom is
the weakest of all its author's novels; Jonathan Wild is not
properly one of Fielding's novels at all, but a work only a little
below them. For below them I cannot help thinking it, in spite of
the opinion of a critic of taste and judgment so excellent as
Professor Saintsbury's. When this gentleman, in his introduction
to Jonathan Wild, in a recent English edition of Fielding's works,
says that: "Fielding has written no greater book," he seems to me
to give excessive praise to a work of such great merit that only
its deserved praise is ample.

A great satire, I should say, is never the equal of a great novel.
In the introductions which I have already written, in trying to
show what a great novel is, I have said that an essential part of
such a book is the reality of its scenes and characters. Now
scenes and characters will not seem real, unless there is in them
the right blend of pleasure and pain, of good and bad; for life is
not all either one thing or the other, nor has it ever been so.
Such reality is not found in a satire, for a satire, as
distinguished from a novel, both conceals and exaggerates: it
gives half-truths instead of whole truths; it shows not all of
life but only a part; and even this it cannot show quite truly,
for its avowed object is to magnify some vice or foible. In doing
so, a satire finds no means so effective as irony, which makes its
appeal wholly to the intellect. A good novel, on the contrary,
touches the head and the heart both; along with passages which
give keen intellectual enjoyment, it offers passages which move
its reader's tears. Still, a good novelist without appreciation of
irony cannot be imagined, for without the sense of humour which
makes irony appreciated, it is impossible to see the objects of
this world in their right proportions. Irony, then, which is the
main part of a satire, is essential to a good novel, though not
necessarily more than a small part of it. Intellectually there is
nothing in English literature of the eighteenth century greater
than A Tale of a Tub or the larger part of Gullivers Travels;
intellectually there is nothing in Fielding's works greater than
most of Jonathan Wild; but taken all in all, is not a novel like
Tom Jones, with its eternal appeal to the emotions as well as the
intellect, greater than a perfect satire? Even if this be not
admitted, Jonathan Wild, we have already seen, is not a perfect
satire. For a work of its kind, it is too sympathetically human,
and so suffers in exactly the opposite way from Vanity Fair, which
many people think is kept from being the greatest English novel of
the nineteenth century because it is too satirical.

No, I cannot agree with Professor Saintsbury that "Fielding has
written no greater book" than Jonathan Wild. It was unquestionably
the most important part of the Miscellanies of 1743. Its
brilliancy may make it outrank even that delightful Journal of the
Voyage to Lisbon. A higher place should not be claimed for it. Mr.
Dobson, in his Henry Fielding, has assigned the right position to
Jonathan Wild when he says that its place "in Fielding's works is
immediately after his three great novels, and this is more by
reason of its subject than its workmanship," which if not perfect,
is yet for the most part excellent.

G. H. MAYNADIER.

THE LIFE OF THE LATE

MR. JONATHAN WILD

BOOK I

CHAPTER ONE

SHEWING THE WHOLESOME USES DRAWN FROM RECORDING THE ACHIEVEMENTS
OF THOSE WONDERFUL PRODUCTIONS OF NATURE CALLED GREAT MEN.

As it is necessary that all great and surprising events, the
designs of which are laid, conducted, and brought to perfection by
the utmost force of human invention and art, should be produced by
great and eminent men, so the lives of such may be justly and
properly styled the quintessence of history. In these, when
delivered to us by sensible writers, we are not only most
agreeably entertained, but most usefully instructed; for, besides
the attaining hence a consummate knowledge of human nature in
general; of its secret springs, various windings, and perplexed
mazes; we have here before our eyes lively examples of whatever is
amiable or detestable, worthy of admiration or abhorrence, and are
consequently taught, in a manner infinitely more effectual than by
precept, what we are eagerly to imitate or carefully to avoid.

But besides the two obvious advantages of surveying, as it were in
a picture, the true beauty of virtue and deformity of vice, we may
moreover learn from Plutarch, Nepos, Suetonius, and other
biographers, this useful lesson, not too hastily, nor in the
gross, to bestow either our praise or censure; since we shall
often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character
that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate
inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns, for though
we sometimes meet with an Aristides or a Brutus, a Lysander or a
Nero, yet far the greater number are of the mixt kind, neither
totally good nor bad; their greatest virtues being obscured and
allayed by their vices, and those again softened and coloured over
by their virtues.

Of this kind was the illustrious person whose history we now
undertake; to whom, though nature had given the greatest and most
shining endowments, she had not given them absolutely pure and
without allay. Though he had much of the admirable in his
character, as much perhaps as is usually to be found in a hero, I
will not yet venture to affirm that he was entirely free from all
defects, or that the sharp eyes of censure could not spy out some
little blemishes lurking amongst his many great perfections.

We would not therefore be understood to affect giving the reader a
perfect or consummate pattern of human excellence, but rather, by
faithfully recording some little imperfections which shadowed over
the lustre of those great qualities which we shall here record, to
teach the lesson we have above mentioned, to induce our reader
with us to lament the frailty of human nature, and to convince him
that no mortal, after a thorough scrutiny, can be a proper object
of our adoration.

But before we enter on this great work we must endeavour to remove
some errors of opinion which mankind have, by the disingenuity of
writers, contracted: for these, from their fear of contradicting
the obsolete and absurd doctrines of a set of simple fellows,
called, in derision, sages or philosophers, have endeavoured, as
much as possible, to confound the ideas of greatness and goodness;
whereas no two things can possibly be more distinct from each
other, for greatness consists in bringing all manner of mischief
on mankind, and goodness in removing it from them. It seems
therefore very unlikely that the same person should possess them
both; and yet nothing is more usual with writers, who find many
instances of greatness in their favourite hero, than to make him a
compliment of goodness into the bargain; and this, without
considering that by such means they destroy the great perfection
called uniformity of character. In the histories of Alexander and
Caesar we are frequently, and indeed impertinently, reminded of
their benevolence and generosity, of their clemency and kindness.
When the former had with fire and sword overrun a vast empire, had
destroyed the lives of an immense number of innocent wretches, had
scattered ruin and desolation like a whirlwind, we are told, as an
example of his clemency, that he did not cut the throat of an old
woman, and ravish her daughters, but was content with only undoing
them. And when the mighty Caesar, with wonderful greatness of
mind, had destroyed the liberties of his country, and with all the
means of fraud and force had placed himself at the head of his
equals, had corrupted and enslaved the greatest people whom the
sun ever saw, we are reminded, as an evidence of his generosity,
of his largesses to his followers and tools, by whose means he had
accomplished his purpose, and by whose assistance he was to
establish it.

Now, who doth not see that such sneaking qualities as these are
rather to be bewailed as imperfections than admired as ornaments
in these great men; rather obscuring their glory, and holding them
back in their race to greatness, indeed unworthy the end for which
they seem to have come into the world, viz. of perpetrating vast
and mighty mischief?

We hope our reader will have reason justly to acquit us of any
such confounding ideas in the following pages; in which, as we are
to record the actions of a great man, so we have nowhere mentioned
any spark of goodness which had discovered itself either faintly
in him, or more glaringly in any other person, but as a meanness
and imperfection, disqualifying them for undertakings which lead
to honour and esteem among men.

As our hero had as little as perhaps is to be found of that
meanness, indeed only enough to make him partaker of the
imperfection of humanity, instead of the perfection of diabolism,
we have ventured to call him THE GREAT; nor do we doubt but our
reader, when he hath perused his story, will concur with us in
allowing him that title.

CHAPTER TWO

GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF AS MANY OF OUR HERO'S ANCESTORS AS CAN BE
GATHERED OUT OF THE RUBBISH OF ANTIQUITY, WHICH HATH BEEN
CAREFULLY SIFTED FOR THAT PURPOSE.

It is the custom of all biographers, at their entrance into their
work, to step a little backwards (as far, indeed, generally as
they are able) and to trace up their hero, as the ancients did the
river Nile, till an incapacity of proceeding higher puts an end to
their search.

What first gave rise to this method is somewhat difficult to
determine. Sometimes I have thought that the hero's ancestors have
been introduced as foils to himself. Again, I have imagined it
might be to obviate a suspicion that such extraordinary personages
were not produced in the ordinary course of nature, and may have
proceeded from the author's fear that, if we were not told who
their fathers were, they might be in danger, like prince
Prettyman, of being supposed to have had none. Lastly, and perhaps
more truly, I have conjectured that the design of the biographer
hath been no more than to shew his great learning and knowledge of
antiquity. A design to which the world hath probably owed many
notable discoveries, and indeed most of the labours of our
antiquarians.

But whatever original this custom had, it is now too well
established to be disputed. I shall therefore conform to it in the
strictest manner.

Mr. Jonathan Wild, or Wyld, then (for he himself did not always
agree in one method of spelling his name), was descended from the
great Wolfstan Wild, who came over with Hengist, and distinguished
himself very eminently at that famous festival, where the Britons
were so treacherously murdered by the Saxons; for when the word
was given, i.e. Nemet eour Saxes, take out your swords, this
gentleman, being a little hard of hearing, mistook the sound for
Nemet her sacs, take out their purses; instead therefore of
applying to the throat, he immediately applied to the pocket of
his guest, and contented himself with taking all that he had,
without attempting his life.

The next ancestor of our hero who was remarkably eminent was Wild,
surnamed Langfanger, or Longfinger. He flourished in the reign of
Henry III., and was strictly attached to Hubert de Burgh, whose
friendship he was recommended to by his great excellence in an art
of which Hubert was himself the inventor; he could, without the
knowledge of the proprietor, with great ease and dexterity, draw
forth a man's purse from any part of his garment where it was
deposited, and hence he derived his surname. This gentleman was
the first of his family who had the honour to suffer for the good
of his country: on whom a wit of that time made the following
epitaph:--

O shame o' justice! Wild is hang'd, For thatten he a pocket
fang'd, While safe old Hubert, and his gang, Doth pocket o' the
nation fang.

Langfanger left a son named Edward, whom he had carefully
instructed in the art for which he himself was so famous. This
Edward had a grandson, who served as a volunteer under the famous
Sir John Falstaff, and by his gallant demeanour so recommended
himself to his captain, that he would have certainly been promoted
by him, had Harry the fifth kept his word with his old companion.

After the death of Edward the family remained in some obscurity
down to the reign of Charles the first, when James Wild
distinguished himself on both sides the question in the civil
wars, passing from one to t'other, as Heaven seemed to declare
itself in favour of either party. At the end of the war, James not
being rewarded according to his merits, as is usually the case of
such impartial persons, he associated himself with a brave man of
those times, whose name was Hind, and declared open war with both
parties. He was successful in several actions, and spoiled many of
the enemy: till at length, being overpowered and taken, he was,
contrary to the law of arms, put basely and cowardly to death by a
combination between twelve men of the enemy's party, who, after
some consultation, unanimously agreed on the said murder.

This Edward took to wife Rebecca, the daughter of the above-
mentioned John Hind, esq., by whom he had issue John, Edward,
Thomas, and Jonathan, and three daughters, namely, Grace, Charity,
and Honour. John followed the fortunes of his father, and,
suffering with him, left no issue. Edward was so remarkable for
his compassionate temper that he spent his life in soliciting the
causes of the distressed captives in Newgate, and is reported to
have held a strict friendship with an eminent divine who solicited
the spiritual causes of the said captives. He married Editha,
daughter and co-heiress of Geoffry Snap, gent., who long enjoyed
an office under the high sheriff of London and Middlesex, by
which, with great reputation, he acquired a handsome fortune: by
her he had no issue. Thomas went very young abroad to one of our
American colonies, and hath not been since heard of. As for the
daughters, Grace was married to a merchant of Yorkshire who dealt
in horses. Charity took to husband an eminent gentleman, whose
name I cannot learn, but who was famous for so friendly a
disposition that he was bail for above a hundred persons in one
year. He had likewise the remarkable humour of walking in
Westminster-hall with a straw in his shoe. Honour, the youngest,
died unmarried: she lived many years in this town, was a great
frequenter of plays, and used to be remarkable for distributing
oranges to all who would accept of them.

Jonathan married Elizabeth, daughter of Scragg Hollow, of Hockley-
in-the-Hole, esq.; and by her had Jonathan, who is the illustrious
subject of these memoirs.

CHAPTER THREE

THE BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EDUCATION OF MR. JONATHAN WILD THE
GREAT.

It is observable that Nature seldom produces any one who is
afterwards to act a notable part on the stage of life, but she
gives some warning of her intention; and, as the dramatic poet
generally prepares the entry of every considerable character with
a solemn narrative, or at least a great flourish of drums and
trumpets, so doth this our Alma Mater by some shrewd hints pre-
admonish us of her intention, giving us warning, as it were, and
crying--

--Venienti occurrite morbo.

Thus Astyages, who was the grandfather of Cyrus, dreamt that his
daughter was brought to bed of a vine, whose branches overspread
all Asia; and Hecuba, while big with Paris, dreamt that she was
delivered of a firebrand that set all Troy in flames; so did the
mother of our great man, while she was with child of him, dream
that she was enjoyed in the night by the gods Mercury and Priapus.
This dream puzzled all the learned astrologers of her time,
seeming to imply in it a contradiction; Mercury being the god of
ingenuity, and Priapus the terror of those who practised it. What
made this dream the more wonderful, and perhaps the true cause of
its being remembered, was a very extraordinary circumstance,
sufficiently denoting something preternatural in it; for though
she had never heard even the name of either of these gods, she
repeated these very words in the morning, with only a small
mistake of the quantity of the latter, which she chose to call
Priapus instead of Priapus; and her husband swore that, though he
might possibly have named Mercury to her (for he had heard of such
an heathen god), he never in his life could anywise have put her
in mind of that other deity, with whom he had no acquaintance.

Another remarkable incident was, that during her whole pregnancy
she constantly longed for everything she saw; nor could be
satisfied with her wish unless she enjoyed it clandestinely; and
as nature, by true and accurate observers, is remarked to give us
no appetites without furnishing us with the means of gratifying
them; so had she at this time a most marvellous glutinous quality
attending her fingers, to which, as to birdlime, everything
closely adhered that she handled.

To omit other stories, some of which may be perhaps the growth of
superstition, we proceed to the birth of our hero, who made his
first appearance on this great theatre the very day when the
plague first broke out in 1665. Some say his mother was delivered
of him in an house of an orbicular or round form in Covent-garden;
but of this we are not certain. He was some years afterwards
baptized by the famous Mr. Titus Oates.

Nothing very remarkable passed in his years of infancy, save that,
as the letters TH are the most difficult of pronunciation, and the
last which a child attains to the utterance of, so they were the
first that came with any readiness from young master Wild. Nor
must we omit the early indications which he gave of the sweetness
of his temper; for though he was by no means to be terrified into
compliance, yet might he, by a sugar-plum, be brought to your
purpose; indeed, to say the truth, he was to be bribed to
anything, which made many say he was certainly born to be a great
man.

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