by Lucy Moore
Wealth however got, in England makes
Lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes,
but there remained a vast gulf between England’s well-off gentry and merchant classes, and their lords.
The English aristocracy lived at this period in a strange mixture of intense formality and almost barbaric crudity and perverse eccentricity. Their clothes, houses, art and manners seemed perfect on the outside; but the metaphorical petticoats under their delicate silk gowns were stained. Dining rooms with pale panelled walls, edged in finely carved gilt detailing, held chamber pots so that conversation wouldn’t be broken up if anyone needed to relieve themselves during dinner. Ladies’ shoes were not only used as champagne glasses, but on one occasion in 1747 a party ate a pair of shoes, sliced and fried in butter, ‘to testify their affection for the lady [Fanny Murray, the most beautiful courtesan of her generation]’.[122] Female sexuality was frowned on as unladylike, yet ladies’ lapdogs — shock dogs — were trained to sit under their skirts licking their mistresses’ love grottoes’.
The urban middle classes reinforced the aristocracy’s cultural hegemony by emulating their lifestyle. Merchants’ wives stopped working behind the counter, and instead sat in a parlour reading magazines or novels; children were sent away to boarding-school to improve their manners; men and women of all classes dressed up to walk around London, window-shopping, strolling through the parks, just showing off. Fashionable urban recreations were linked not to the seasons, as they were in the country, but centred on what the city had to offer: shopping, going to Bedlam to look at the lunatics, walking ‘in whole shoals’ through the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall or Greenwich. Perhaps most importantly, these pursuits were accessible to all sections of society, and the rights to enjoy them were jealously protected by the lower classes. When Queen Caroline asked Robert Walpole how much it would cost to make Hyde Park a royal park, he replied, ‘Only three crowns.’
The Female Tatler in 1709 recorded a conversation in which
a general complaint was made that the prosperous vulgar take so much upon them in dress, air, equipage and visiting, that people of rank are hardly distinguished from upstart pretenders...If they once get a knack of pleasing their betters with novelties, the business of whose life is amusement, and can tongue-pad themselves into a reputation, they immediately get estates, and pretend to look folks in the face. We have our quality midwives that keep coaches, quality mantua-makers that carry home jumps [bodice stays] in [sedan] chairs, nay even quality waiting women that won’t stir without a Hackney and a footman.
This preoccupation with social rank extended to all levels of society. ‘How contemptibly a cutler looks at a poor grinder of knives, a physician in his coach at a farmer on foot, and a well-grown [St] Paul’s churchyard bookseller upon one of the trade that sells second-hand books under the trees at Moorfields.’[123] Even among criminals these distinctions existed. A highwayman considered himself infinitely superior to a house-breaker; a house-breaker realms above a mere pickpocket.
While on one side the poor looked up to and imitated their masters, at the same time many of them deeply resented the privileges and airs they assumed. The poet John Gay in Trivia, his account of 1720s London, describes the downfall of a man of fashion at the hands of an embittered dustman.
I’ve seen a beau, in some ill-fated hour,
When o’er the stones choked kennels swell the shower,
In gilded chariot loll, he with disdain,
Views spattered passengers, all drenched in rain;
With mud filled high, the rumbling cart draws near,
Now rule thy prancing steeds, laced charioteer!
The dustman lashes on with spiteful rage,
His pond’rous spokes thy painted wheel engage,
Crushed is thy pride, down falls the shrieking beau,
The slabby pavement crystal fragments show,
Black floods of mire th’embroidered coat disgrace,
And mud enwraps the honours of his face.
The resentment and scorn with which some members of the lower classes behaved towards their superiors was far more prevalent in London than in the counties; and this disrespect encouraged a parallel disrespect for the law, the purpose of which was to shield the upper classes from the rest of society.
While some of the population belittled the aristocracy, and others emulated it, an articulate, self-conscious middle class was emerging in London in the early eighteenth century. Hogarth and his circle of friends were typical of this new layer of society. His wife was the daughter of Sir James Thornhill, Serjeant Painter to the court of George I; other close friends included an attorney who also wrote a popular ballad-opera, and a merchant adventurer. They were professional men, whose comfortable lives were unmarked by the desperation of the lower classes or the icy refinement of the upper classes.
The changing social order was reflected in the novels that were being written for this new class. Defoe’s protagonists are essentially middle-class figures seeking improvement, both material and social. Robinson Crusoe ignores his father’s moderate advice, and leaves his home and family to seek his fortune, driven by a ‘secret burning lust of ambition for great things’. Moll Flanders’s life is devoted to the quest for financial security. Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver, a common sea-captain, carries in his pockets spectacles and a pocket telescope, instruments of discovery and learning, as well as the usual eighteenth-century accoutrements of a snuffbox and pocket-watch. Gulliver is from a middle-class background, but wears a sword and carries a pistol, both marks of gentility.
The plots of eighteenth-century novels, while sometimes fantastic, are grounded by attention to physical detail and day-to-day concerns. ‘The heroes and heroines of the age are cobblers and kitchen wenches,’ commented Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The extension of the reading class was altering the nature of literature. New sections of society, down to apprentices and servants, were learning to read — and, living in their masters’ houses, often had access to novels and free time in which to read them. Their aspirations, attitudes and values were increasingly reflected in the literature directed at them. Together with the widespread dissemination of news through coffee-houses and newspapers, and the efficiency of the new postal service, novels helped create and mould a self-conscious urban middle class.
Men such as Wild who sought to raise their social standing, aspired to this new respectability. This was exemplified in the distinctive dress of the professional classes (lawyers, clergymen and doctors), that was imitated by tradesmen to create an illusion of gravitas and dependability. Their clothes were costumes, elaborate and intended clearly to denote the profession of the wearer. Wild also cultivated an importance of manner. His pride was evident in all his dealings. He treated all his clients as his equals, which was almost revolutionary for the period. He boasted inordinately. He refused to allow people to allude to his alliance with London’s underworld, demanding to be accepted as an honest businessman.
The flip side of the new middle-class respectability was, in the view of observers such as John Gay, the emergence of new vices: avarice, masked by hypocrisy. The characters he used in The Beggars’ Opera to embody these traits, Peachum and Lockit, are consumed by their desire for money, power and social acceptance; for them, as for Jonathan Wild, the means by which they gain these ends are immaterial. As long as the facade they created to conceal their true motives remained intact, they cared not about the consequences of their greed.
Part of Wild’s facade, and of the fictional Peachum’s, was a duplicitous emphasis on honour. While highwaymen liked to believe they were carrying on a noble, chivalrous tradition as ‘Gentlemen of the Road’, Wild chose to portray himself as a gentleman of business, carrying out his work to benefit society rather than himself. For this reason, he made a point of always ensuring goods people paid for in advance, before he had located them, were found and returned at the appointed time. The best example of this is the return of the Duchess of Marlborough’
s sedan chair. Wild was left ten guineas by her frantic footmen, whose negligence had given the thieves time to spirit the chair away. He assured them that the chair would be left outside Lincoln’s Inn Chapel at a certain time; and so it was. Later, he prided himself on his handling of the incident as proof of his ‘honourable’ practices.
On another occasion a grand silk merchant arrived at Wild’s office in a state of panic. A bolt of his finest bespoke damask had been stolen as it waited for collection; it was to be made into a suit for the king’s birthday party, and the merchant feared for his business if he failed to deliver it in time. In his desperation, he offered to pay thirty guineas to recover the missing fabric that day, but declared he would pay no more than half the sum if it took longer — implying that Wild knew where to get hold of it. Wild, bristling, affronted, insisted nothing could be done in less than a week. A minute later, a man came into his office and asked to speak to Wild in private. After five minutes Wild returned, all smiles, saying, ‘I protest, Sir, you’re the luckiest man I ever knew!’ He said the man who had just come to see him had news of the silk, and he told the draper where to go to collect his goods for only twenty guineas. Wild feigned reluctance to accept the other ten guineas the grateful merchant tried to press on him: ‘’Tis satisfaction enough, Sir, to an honest man, that he is able to procure people their goods again’ — but did accept in the end. Wild emphasized his integrity and desire to serve, while glossing over his connection with thievery; he swallowed the insulting assumption that he was somehow involved with the crime in order to increase his reputation, with a public display of miraculous efficiency.[124]
A newspaper report of May 1724 shows the heights of hypocrisy Wild was prepared to scale to cultivate an image of respectability.
On Sunday last (whilst the family were all at church), the house of Mr Kirby, in Bridgewater Square, was robbed of gold and diamonds to a considerable value: it is supposed that entrance was made by false keys, for, ’tis said, a servant in the neighbourhood saw a person open the door in church-time, whom he took to belong to the family. Jonathan Wild was consulted that evening on this occasion, but he, good man! was pleased to tell those that applied to him, that he did no business on the Lord’s Day.[125]
Wild was also susceptible to demonstrations of arrogance that he could not disguise. A certain Lady M. had a diamond buckle stolen from her while she was staying at Windsor Castle, so she came to Wild’s office and offered twenty guineas for its recovery. ‘Zounds, Madam, you offer nothing — it cost the gentleman who took it from you forty for his coach, equipage and other expenses to Windsor!’ he replied. The thief was one of Wild’s specially trained Spruce Prigs whose ease in polite circles allowed them to circulate unnoticed in the grandest of company.[126]
Despite his insistent self-importance, Wild was also capable of humour. A group of his Spruce Prigs challenged a bell-ringing club to a competition to see who could ring the loudest.
There were a parcel of rich citizens who took a singular pleasure in ringing bells. One day each week they met and dined together, and passed the rest of the day in ringing; in summertime they travelled from place to place wherever they heard of a good ring of bells, in order to divert themselves with ringing and to try to find where were the sweetest bells. One of our gentry found means of getting into their company; and one night, when they were getting pretty warm with wine, and boasting of their great excellence in ringing, our spark offered that he and five more he would bring should ring with them for two hundred guineas, provided he was to name the bells. They took him up immediately, and entered into articles under a forfeiture of £100 to those that should fail...
The prig named Lincoln Cathedral as the venue, and accordingly once the bell-ringers had taken off their coats and wigs, and got into their ringing clothes — drawers, a waistcoat and a cap — Wild’s men carried off all their goods and their horses, as well as the money for the wager. ‘I saw £300 besides watches, snuffboxes, tobacco-boxes, clothes and periwigs,’ Wild declared proudly.[127] But he never dropped the mask of respectability he cultivated so assiduously: however he might seem to mock himself, however he was able to swallow his pride for the sake of his profit, he was always playing the part of a wealthy, respectable businessman.
Lord Chesterfield believed Wild’s ambition was due in part to the court paid him by members of the aristocracy.
Condescension of people of a high rank has often an adverse effect upon those in a low one. This was evident in the case of Jonathan Wild. He grew insufferable [sic] arrogant: he had his levee-days, and would only be spoke to upon those days. The rest of the week was given up to his pleasures, his thieves and his mistresses.
Wild’s ‘wives’ also aspired to bourgeois splendour. His association with Mary Milliner had ended in the mid-1710s, and he took up with Elizabeth, or Betty Mann, another Buttock-and-File. She was suddenly overcome with disgust and horror at the life she led, and converted to Catholicism, and died soon after, probably in 1718. This piety touched Wild deeply, and he was devoted to her memory, asking to be buried by her side. ‘He loved her above the other women he had taken for wives, and lived publicly with her, which he did not with any of the rest...Jonathan retained such an impression of the sanctity and goodness of this wife that he never forgot it as long as he lived...’[128]
Three other women who ‘supplied the place of wives’ followed (or ran parallel to) Betty: Sarah Parrin; Judith Nunn, on whom he had fathered a daughter in about 1715; and Mary Brown, his last ‘wife’, a noted beauty of the underworld. When Wild set his sights on her, she was married to a robber called Scull Dean, who made it publicly known that he would brook no interference with his wife from Wild despite his position. Wild had him arrested, and sent to the gallows — rather more quickly than was usual — and then took up with Mary. There is no record of their marriage although early accounts of Wild’s life say they wed in February 1719. This may have been a sly dig at Wild, for the account states they were married by the Ordinary (pastor) of Newgate; in any case, he still had a legal wife in Wolverhampton, and to marry so publicly would have been blatant bigamy. Except for his attachment to Betty Man, Wild cherished his independence. ‘Thank God I have no wife to follow me to an alehouse; that I can say, I am master of my self, and am not afraid of a bawling daughter of Eve, or tied to anybody’s honour but my own.’
Whether or not they actually were married, however, Mary Dean was considered Wild’s wife. She was known rather unflatteringly as ‘Benefit Jonathan’ but took pride in being pointed out as ‘Madam Wild’. Mary’s pretensions of grandeur were equal to Jonathan’s. ‘When Madam Wild appeared abroad, she always took the wall of her neighbours [a term for assuming precedence in the street, because taking the wall meant walking away from the mud and splashes of the gutter] with a footman at her arse, with a fine laced livery.’[129] Livery and costume were abiding preoccupations of aspirants like Wild and Mary. People were fascinated by fashion because clothes so clearly defined the wearer’s status — but also because the leisured classes took pride in the sheer frivolity of consumption, in which the latest styles in clothing played a large part. Mrs Crakenthorpe, writing for the Female Tatler, described her visit to a fabric shop in Ludgate Hill, at the north-east end of Fleet Street, in 1709. Shopping was
as agreeable an amusement as a lady can pass away three or four hours in; the shops are perfect gilded theatres. The variety of wrought silks, so many changes of fine scenes; and the mercers are the performers in the opera, and instead of ‘Viviture Ingenio’ [‘Long Live Genius’; a reference to the inscription above the door] you have in gold capitals ‘No Trust by Retail’. They are the sweetest, fairest, nicest dished out creatures, and by their elegant address and soft speeches, you would guess ’em to be Italians. As people glance within their doors they salute ’em with: ‘garden silks, ladies, Italian silks, brocades, tissues, cloth of silver, or cloth of gold, very fine Mantua silks, any right Geneva velvet, English velvet, velvets embossed’ — a
nd to the meaner sort — ‘fine satin threads, both striped and plain, fine mohairs, silk satinets, burdets, perfianets, Norwich crepes, auterines, silks for hoods and scarves — any camlets, drudgets, or sagathies; gentlemen, night-gowns ready made, shalloons, durnaces and right Scotch plaids’.
The variety of materials available shows the overwhelming significance attached to clothes by London’s middle classes. Fashions disguised the wearer, making human forms mere mannequins. Hair was pomaded and powdered, faces painted and rouged, busts thrust up, waists cinched in, legs hidden under huge hoop-skirts. But blinding desire to keep up with the latest fashions sometimes led to sartorial mistakes. ‘I have often counted fifteen patches, or more, upon the swarthy wrinkled phiz [face] of an old hag threescore and ten, and upwards. Thus the English women refine upon our fashions,’ commented the Frenchman, Henri Misson.
The ostentatious display of dress that marked eighteenth-century fashions stemmed from the same source as Jonathan Wild’s professional arrogance: a constant desire to better oneself in the eyes of the world, to rise a step higher, to leave the old life behind and prove oneself in the new.
[Wild had only to keep] his compting house, or office, like a man of business, and had his books to enter everything in with the utmost regularity...[and he might have] carried on such a commerce as this, with the greatest ease, I do not say honesty, in the world, if he had gone no further...So that in a word, Jonathan’s Avarice hanged him.[130]
Chapter Nine – Fame
On 9 October 1724, the day before Thomas Sheppard was transported for the robbery in which he had impeached Jack and Edgworth Bess, Blueskin Blake was arrested by Jonathan Wild, Abraham Mendez and Quilt Arnold. All three appeared at his trial five days later and gave evidence against him. Mendez testified that he had gone with Wild to arrest Blake,
and, as we were coming by the prosecutor’s house, Mr Wild said to the prisoner, ‘There’s the ken [man; victim]!’ and he answered, ‘Say no more, Mr Wild, for I know I am a dead man; but what I fear is that I shall be carried to the Surgeons’ Hall and anatomized.’ [Dissected; it was a common medical practice to dissect the bodies of criminals in front of students.] To which Mr Wild replied, ‘No, I’ll take care to prevent that, for I’ll give you a coffin.’