Read Ebook: The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honourable Colonel Jacque Commonly Called Colonel Jack by Defoe Daniel

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1309 lines and 146053 words, and 27 pages

Introduction Author's Preface The Life of Colonel Jacque The True-born Englishman The Shortest Way with the Dissenters

COLONEL JACQUE

PART I

Escaping with the purloined horse.

PART II

Colonel Jacque and the lady

Colonel Jacque's arrival is announced

INTRODUCTION

"With the sloop I sent letters to my wife and to my chief manager with orders to load her back, as I there directed, viz., that she should have two hundred barrels of flour, fifty barrels of pease; and, to answer my other views, I ordered a hundred bales to be made up of all sorts of European goods, such as not my own warehouses only would supply, but such as they could be supplied with in other warehouses where I knew they had credit for anything."

Defoe, in this reply to Tutchin's pamphlet, sought to prove that the king and his foreign friends had as good right to the esteem of the English as any patriots in the history of the country. In the first part of the "poem," as Defoe called his satire, he showed that William, with his Dutch blood, was as much entitled to the name of Englishman as any of his subjects, who came of mixed British, Pictish, Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman blood. In short, Defoe made the English out a hybrid race, and with excellent good sense showed that their national vigour was due largely to their being so. Much of what he said might well be said to-day of the people of the United States, as for instance, the following from Defoe's explanatory preface:--

"The multitudes of foreign nations who have taken sanctuary here, have been the greatest additions to the wealth and strength of the nation; the essential whereof is the number of its inhabitants. Nor would this nation ever have arrived to the degree of wealth and glory it now boasts of, if the addition of foreign nations . . . had not been helpful to it. This is so plain, that he who is ignorant of it is too dull to be talked with."

The other side to Defoe's picture is shown in verses which, with a few changes, would likewise be applicable to the United States to-day. Defoe is trying to prove that even with lapse of years the English race remains hybrid.

"And lest by length of time it be pretended The climate may this modern breed have mended, Wise Providence, to keep us where we are, Mixes us daily with exceeding care. We have been Europe's sink, the jakes where she Voids all her offal outcast progeny. From our fifth Henry's time, the strolling bands Of banish'd fugitives from neighb'ring lands Have here a certain sanctuary found: Th' eternal refuge of the vagabond, Where, in but half a common age of time, Borr'wing new blood and manners from the clime, Proudly they learn all mankind to contemn, And all their race are true-born Englishmen."

In the second part of the satire, Defoe tries to describe the nature of the English, their pride, and their ingratitude to their benefactors. Among the stanzas in which he hits off the faults of his countrymen, the following, more true than grammatical, is among the most forcible:--

"Surly to strangers, froward to their friend; Submit to love with a reluctant mind; Resolved to be ungrateful and unkind. If by necessity reduced to ask, The giver has the difficultest task; For what's bestow'd they awkwardly receive, And always take less freely than they give. The obligation is their highest grief; And never love, where they accept relief. So sullen in their sorrows, that 'tis known, They'll rather die than their afflictions own: And if relieved, it is too often true, That they'll abuse their benefactors too; For in distress their haughty stomach's such, They hate to see themselves obliged too much, Seldom contented, often in the wrong; Hard to be pleased at all, and never long."

G. H. Maynadier.

Sir,--It is so customary to write prefaces to all books of this kind, to introduce them with the more advantage into the world, that I cannot omit it, though on that account 'tis thought this work needs a preface less than any that ever went before it. The pleasant and delightful part speaks for itself; the useful and instructive is so large, and capable of so many improvements, that it would employ a book large as itself to make improvements suitable to the vast variety of the subject.

Here's room for just and copious observations on the blessings and advantages of a sober and well-governed education, and the ruin of so many thousands of youths of all kinds in this nation for want of it; also, how much public schools and charities might be improved to prevent the destruction of so, many unhappy children as in this town are every year bred up for the gallows.

The miserable condition of unhappy children, many of whose natural tempers are docible, and would lead them to learn the best things rather than the worst, is truly deplorable, and is abundantly seen in the history of this man's childhood; where, though circumstances formed him by necessity to be a thief, a strange rectitude of principles remained with him, and made him early abhor the worst part of his trade, and at last wholly leave it off. If he had come into the world with the advantage of education, and been well instructed how to improve the generous principles he had in him, what a man might he not have been!

The various turns of his fortunes in the world make a delightful field for the reader to wander in; a garden where he may gather wholesome and medicinal fruits, none noxious or poisonous; where he will see virtue and the ways of wisdom everywhere applauded, honoured, encouraged, rewarded; vice and all kinds of wickedness attended with misery, many kinds of infelicities; and at last, sin and shame going together, the persons meeting with reproof and reproach, and the crimes with abhorrence.

While these things, and such as these, are the ends and designs of the whole book, I think I need not say one word more as an apology for any part of the rest--no, nor for the whole. If discouraging everything that is evil, and encouraging everything that is virtuous and good--I say, if these appear to be the whole scope and design of the publishing this story, no objection can lie against it; neither is it of the least moment to inquire whether the Colonel hath told his own story true or not; if he has made it a History or a Parable, it will be equally useful, and capable of doing good; and in that it recommends itself without any introduction.--Your humble servant,

The Editor.

THE LIFE OF COLONEL JACQUE

Seeing my life has been such a chequer-work of nature, and that I am able now to look back upon it from a safer distance than is ordinarily the fate of the clan to which I once belonged, I think my history may find a place in the world as well as some who I see are every day read with pleasure, though they have in them nothing so diverting or instructing as I believe mine will appear to be.

My original may be as high as anybody's for aught I know, for my mother kept very good company; but that part belongs to her story more than to mine. All I know of it is by oral tradition, thus: My nurse told me my mother was a gentlewoman, that my father was a man of quality, and she had a good piece of money given her to take me off his hands, and deliver him and my mother from the importunities that usually attend the misfortune of having a child to keep that should not be seen or heard of.

My father, it seems, gave my nurse something more than was agreed for, at my mother's request, upon her solemn promise that she would use me well and let me be put to school; and charged her, that if I lived to come to any bigness, capable to understand the meaning of it, she should always take care to bid me remember that I was a gentleman; and this, he said, was all the education he would desire of her for me; for he did not doubt, he said, but that, some time or other, the very hint would inspire me with thoughts suitable to my birth, and that I would certainly act like a gentleman, if I believed myself to be so.

But my disasters were not directed to end as soon as they began. It is very seldom that the unfortunate are so but for a day; as the great rise by degrees of greatness to the pitch of glory in which they shine, so the miserable sink to the depth of their misery by a continued series of disasters, and are long in the tortures and agonies of their distressed circumstances, before a turn of fortune, if ever such a thing happens to them, gives them a prospect of deliverance.

My nurse was as honest to the engagement she had entered into as could be expected from one of her employment, and particularly as honest as her circumstances would give her leave to be; for she bred me up very carefully with her own son, and with another son of shame like me, whom she had taken upon the same terms.

My name was John, as she told me, but neither she or I knew anything of a surname that belonged to me; so I was left to call myself Mr. Anything, what I pleased, as fortune and better circumstances should give occasion.

It happened that her own son was called John too; and about two years after she took another son of shame, as I called it above, to keep as she did me, and his name was John too.

As we were all Johns, we were all Jacques, and soon came to be called so; for at that part of the town where we had our breeding, viz., near Goodman's Fields, the Johns are generally called Jacque; but my nurse, who may be allowed to distinguish her own son a little from the rest, would have him called captain, because, forsooth, he was the eldest.

I was provoked at having this boy called captain, and I cried, and told my nurse I would be called captain; for she told me I was a gentleman, and I would be a captain, that I would. The good woman, to keep the peace, told me, ay, ay, I was a gentleman, and therefore I should be above a captain, for I should be a colonel, and that was a great deal better than a captain; "for, my dear," says she, "every tarpauling, if he gets but to be lieutenant of a press smack, is called captain, but colonels are soldiers, and none but gentlemen are ever made colonels. Besides," says she, "I have known colonels come to be lords and generals, though they were bastards at first, and therefore you shall be called colonel."

Well, I was hushed indeed with this for the present, but not thoroughly pleased, till, a little while after, I heard her tell her own boy that I was a gentleman, and therefore he must call me colonel; at which her boy fell a-crying, and he would be called colonel. That part pleased me to the life, that he should cry to be called colonel, for then I was satisfied that it was above a captain: so universally is ambition seated in the minds of men that not a beggar-boy but has his share of it.

So here was Colonel Jacque and Captain Jacque. As for the third boy, he was only plain Jacque for some years after, till he came to preferment by the merit of his birth, as you shall hear in its place.

We were hopeful boys, all three of us, and promised very early, by many repeated circumstances of our lives, that we would be all rogues; and yet I cannot say, if what I have heard of my nurse's character be true, but the honest woman did what she could to prevent it.

Before I tell you much more of our story, it would be very proper to give you something of our several characters, as I have gathered them up in my memory, as far back as I can recover things, either of myself or my brother Jacques, and they shall be brief and impartial.

Captain Jacque was the eldest of us all, by a whole year. He was a squat, big, strong-made boy, and promised to be stout when grown up to be a man, but not to be tall. His temper was sly, sullen, reserved, malicious, revengeful; and, withal, he was brutish, bloody, and cruel in his disposition. He was, as to manners, a mere boor, or clown, of a carman-like breed; sharp as a street-bred boy must be, but ignorant and unteachable from a child. He had much the nature of a bull-dog, bold and desperate, but not generous at all. All the schoolmistresses we went to could never make him learn--no, not so much as to make him know his letters; and as if he was born a thief, he would steal everything that came near him, even as soon almost as he could speak; and that not from his mother only, but from anybody else, and from us too that were his brethren and companions. He was an original rogue, for he would do the foulest and most villainous things, even by his own inclination; he had no taste or sense of being honest--no, not, I say, to his brother rogues, which is what other thieves make a point of honour of; I mean that of being honest to one another.

The other, that is to say, the youngest of us Johns, was called Major Jacque, by the accident following: The lady that had deposited him with our nurse had owned to her that it was a major of the Guards that was the father of the child, but that she was obliged to conceal his name, and that was enough. So he was at first called John the Major, and afterwards the Major; and at last, when we came to rove together, Major Jacque, according to the rest, for his name was John, as I have observed already.

Major Jacque was a merry, facetious, pleasant boy, had a good share of wit, especially off-hand-wit, as they call it; was full of jests and good humour, and, as I often said, had something of a gentleman in him. He had a true manly courage, feared nothing, and could look death in the face without any hesitation; and yet, if he had the advantage, was the most generous and most compassionate creature alive. He had native principles of gallantry in him, without anything of the brutal or terrible part that the captain had; and, in a word, he wanted nothing but honesty to have made him an excellent man. He had learned to read, as I had done; and as he talked very well, so he wrote good sense and very handsome language, as you will see in the process of his story.

I passed among my comrades for a bold, resolute boy, and one that durst fight anything; but I had a different opinion of myself, and therefore shunned fighting as much as I could, though sometimes I ventured too, and came off well, being very strong made and nimble withal. However, I many times brought myself off with my tongue, where my hands would not have been sufficient, and this as well after I was a man as while I was a boy.

I was wary and dexterous at my trade, and was not so often catched as my fellow-rogues--I mean while I was a boy, and never after I came to be a man; no, not once for twenty-six years, being so old in the trade, and still unhanged, as you shall hear.

The good woman being dead, we, the three Jacques, were turned loose to the world. As to the parish providing for us, we did not trouble ourselves much about that; we rambled about all three together, and the people in Rosemary Lane and Ratcliff, and that way, knowing us pretty well, we got victuals easily enough and without much begging.

For my particular part, I got some reputation for a mighty civil, honest boy; for if I was sent off an errand, I always did it punctually and carefully, and made haste again; and if I was trusted with any thing, I never touched it to diminish it, but made it a point of honour to be punctual to whatever was committed to me, though I was as arrant a thief as any of them in all other cases.

In like case, some of the poorer shopkeepers would often leave me at their door, to look after their shops till they went up to dinner, or till they went over the way to an alehouse, and the like, and I always did it freely and cheerfully, and with the utmost honesty.

Captain Jacque, on the contrary, a surly, ill-looking, rough boy, had not a word in his mouth that savoured either of good manners or good humour; he would say "Yes" and "No," just as he was asked a question, and that was all, but nobody got any thing from him that was obliging in the least. If he was sent off an errand he would forget half of it, and it may be go to play, if he met any boys, and never go at all, or if he went, never come back with an answer, which was such a regardless, disobliging way that nobody had a good word for him, and everybody said he had the very look of a rogue, and would come to be hanged. In a word, he got nothing of anybody for goodwill, but was, as it were, obliged to turn thief for the mere necessity of bread to eat; for if he begged, he did it with so ill a tone, rather like bidding folks give him victuals than entreating them, that one man, of whom he had something given, and knew him, told him one day, "Captain Jacque," says he, "thou art but an awkward, ugly sort of a beggar, now thou art a boy; I doubt thou wilt be fitter to ask a man for his purse than for a penny when thou comest to be a man."

The major was a merry, thoughtless fellow, always cheerful; whether he had any victuals or no, he never complained; and he recommended himself so well by his good carriage that the neighbours loved him, and he got victuals enough, one where or other. Thus we all made a shift, though we were so little, to keep from starving; and as for lodging, we lay in the summer-time about the watch-houses and on bulkheads and shop-doors, where we were known. As for a bed, we knew nothing what belonged to it for many years after my nurse died; and in winter we got into the ash-holes and nealing-arches in the glass-house, called Dallow's Glass-house, in Rosemary Lane, or at another glass-house in Ratcliff Highway.

In this manner we lived for some years; and here we failed not to fall among a gang of naked, ragged rogues like ourselves, wicked as the devil could desire to have them be at so early an age, and ripe for all the other parts of mischief that suited them as they advanced in years.

I remember that one cold winter night we were disturbed in our rest with a constable and his watch crying out for one Wry-neck, who, it seems, had done some roguery, and required a hue-and-cry of that kind; and the watch were informed he was to be found among the beggar-boys under the nealing-arches in the glass-house.

The alarm being given, we were awakened in the dead of the night with "Come out here, ye crew of young devils; come out and show yourselves;" so we were all produced. Some came out rubbing their eyes and scratching their heads, and others were dragged out; and I think there was about seventeen of us in all, but Wry-neck as they called him, was not among them. It seems this was a good big boy, that used to be among the inhabitants of that place, and had been concerned in a robbery the night before, in which his comrade, who was taken, in hopes of escaping punishment, had discovered him, and informed where he usually harboured; but he was aware, it seems, and had secured himself, at least for that time. So we were allowed to return to our warm apartment among the coal-ashes, where I slept many a cold winter night; nay, I may say, many a winter, as sound and as comfortably as ever I did since, though in better lodgings.

Captain Jacque in this time fell into bad company, and went away from us, and it was a good while before we ever heard tale or tidings of him, till about half a year, I think, or thereabouts. I understood he was got among a gang of kidnappers, as they were then called, being a sort of wicked fellows that used to spirit people's children away; that is, snatch them up in the dark, and, stopping their mouths, carry them to such houses where they had rogues ready to receive them, and so carry them on board ships bound to Virginia, and sell them.

This was a trade that horrid Jacque, for so I called him when we were grown up, was very fit for, especially the violent part; for if a little child got into his clutches, he would stop the breath of it, instead of stopping its mouth, and never troubled his head with the child's being almost strangled, so he did but keep it from making a noise. There was, it seems, some villainous thing done by this gang about that time, whether a child was murdered among them, or a child otherwise abused; but it seems it was a child of an eminent citizen, and the parent somehow or other got a scent of the thing, so that they recovered their child, though in a sad condition, and almost killed. I was too young, and it was too long ago, for me to remember the whole story, but they were all taken up and sent to Newgate, and Captain Jacque among the rest, though he was but young, for he was not then much above thirteen years old.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet