Читать книгу Defoe on Sheppard and Wild: The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild by Daniel Defoe - Даниэль Дефо, Данієль Дефо, Даниэль Дефо - Страница 9

The outstanding feature of the second pamphlet, A Narrative of John Sheppard, is its confident and brilliant assumption of Sheppard’s own voice, just as Defoe had previously assumed Moll Flanders’ in the novel. So this second biography is presented in the first person, in the convention of a ‘True Confession’, and its tone is wonderfully controlled by Defoe throughout: plain speaking, disarmingly frank, occasionally ironic, but always believable. From the outset the narrator continually ‘corrects’ the first pamphlet, so a sense of intimacy and confidentiality is achieved. ‘Sheppard’ adds convincing new details about his Spitalfields childhood, his relationship with his mother and brother Thomas, and his evidently stormy affair with Elizabeth Lyon (‘Edgworth Bess’).

This interest in the subject’s youth and upbringing, as emotionally formative, is a clear mark of the new biography. We learn for example how Sheppard’s mother tried to cover up for his early crimes (just as she later begged him - in vain - to leave London); how he felt angry with his guardian Mr Kneebone (who had tried to replace his dead father); and how his first arrest was not for theft, but for breaking his indentures as an apprentice carpenter. His subsequent humiliating night in St Clement’s Roundhouse was the one recorded time he did not try to escape: but it left Sheppard ungovernable at eighteen. ‘I then fell to robbing almost everyone that stood in my way.’ Significantly one of his first major burglaries was from his own guardian, ‘my kind patron and benefactor’ Mr Kneebone.

Altogether it is a formidable bit of literary ventriloquism, and as always with Defoe, supremely ambiguous. Is Sheppard vain or penitent? Gentle or psychopathically violent? Loyal (to Elizabeth Lyon, for example) or cruelly treacherous? Defoe makes us continually hang upon his words in order to interpret character, and to judge actions. This is a quite different order of narrative from the traditional Newgate life, and again a fundamental drive towards the new, realistic biography.

Another thing that the biography shows, is that Sheppard’s fantastic abilities as escaper were no mystery. They came from his outstanding skills as a carpenter and builder, learned during his six year apprenticeship, but also inherited from his father and his grandfather (both carpenters). His great physical strength combined with a small gymnastic body, gave him a natural mastery of building materials and an instinctive understanding of the construction (and deconstruction) of every kind of lock, wall, window, bar, spike, chimney-breast, floor, ceiling, roof or cellar. He once cheekily complimented the Keeper of Newgate on the high quality of the prison’s ironwork, having just ‘worked’ one of its most formidable spikes.

The climax of the second pamphlet is Defoe’s extraordinarily tense and revealing narrative of Sheppard’s last escape from Newgate. This is quite as striking as Casanova’s celebrated account of his escape from the Venetian prison, a generation later in his Memoirs. The author of Robinson Crusoe was always fascinated by technique, expertise and method: how things actually get done. With astonishing ingenuity, Sheppard escaped upwards: first through a chimney, then through six massively bolted doors, then through the prison chapel, and finally out over the Newgate rooftops. Like a good editor, Applebee immediately saw the attraction of this grim obstacle-course for readers, and took the unusual step of commissioning a copper-plate engraving, showing the eight stages of Sheppard’s escape, which became a huge selling point.

This escape sequence, which took place entirely in the dark over nine hours, is finally turned by Defoe into a study of Sheppard’s character under stress. ‘It being full dark, my spirits began to fail me, as greatly doubting of succeeding; but cheering up, I wrought on with great diligence, and in less than half an hour … wrenched the box off, and so made the door my humble servant.’

While at liberty, Sheppard disguised himself and wandered through London, hearing stories and ballads about his own exploits. According to Defoe, this enlarged his whole sense of identity. ‘That night I came to a cellar at Charing Cross, and refreshed myself very comfortably with Roast Veal etc, and heard about a dozen people all discoursing about Sheppard, and nothing else was talked about while a stayed amongst them.’ The next day he talked with a young woman in an alehouse off Piccadilly, who spoke admiringly of Sheppard and ‘wished a Curse might fall on any who should betray him.’

After his last escape, he stole a set of gentleman’s clothes, rings and sword, picked up two pretty girls (one described as his true ‘Sweetheart’, though neither being Elizabeth Lyon), and had the wonderful audacity to hire a coach and ride back under the very gateway of the Newgate Prison arch. This, as told by Defoe, was a stroke of theatrical genius and an ultimate escape into another identity, ‘transformed into a Perfect Gentleman’, as Sheppard exults just a few hours before his final re-capture. His last free act is to buy his mother three-quarters of a pint of best brandy.