“COLONEL
JACK” Daniel Defoe (first published 1722)
As
you can see from the heading above, “Something Old” can mean “a venerable and
antique classic”, and this is one of those weeks when I will make it mean just
that.
Why
should I choose to commend a book nearly 300 years old? Daniel Defoe’s Colonel
Jack first appeared in 1722, in the same year that the inspired hack published
both Moll Flanders and his fictitious (but convincing) Journal of the Plague
Year. This was just three years after his Robinson Crusoe. As in so many early
18th century productions, the title page tells you explicitly what you’re in
for. Title pages then were something like modern blurbs.
It
runs in full as follows: “The History and Remarkable Life of the Truly Honorable
Col. Jacque commonly call’d Col. Jack, who was Born a Gentleman, put ‘Prentice
to a Pick-Pocket, was Six-and-Twenty years a Thief, and then Kidnapp’d to
Virginia, married four Wives, and five of them prov’d Whores; went into the
Wars, behav’d bravely, got Preferment, was made Colonel of a Regiment, came
over, and fled with the Chevalier, and is now abroad compleating a Life of
Wonders, and resolves to dye a General.”
Complete
with original spelling and liberal use of capital letters (and dodgy mathematics
about the number of Jack’s wives) this is indeed how the title page reads. And
in case you were wondering, “the Chevalier” refers to the Jacobite Stuart
claimant to the British throne, “the Old Pretender”, who had attempted to wrest
it from those German Hanoverian usurpers just a few years before, in 1715. If
Jack “came over” with the Chevalier, it means he was part of the 1715 Jacobite
uprising.
But
it’s not an obscure antiquarian point that makes me commend this book to you.
Having just read this week’s “Something New”, I’m forcibly impressed with the
idea that the first-person episodic story of young Enaiatollah Akbari is in a
sturdy tradition that goes back at least as far as Defoe.
The
modern young Afghani’s story is factual whereas Defoe’s stories were fiction
(although Robinson Crusoe did borrow details from the life of the real castaway
Alexander Selkirk). Even so, there is that personal confessional style and that
loose plotlessness where one damned thing follows another (as in real life),
and that driving energy that leads to some form of personal triumph or
vindication.
No
wonder literary historians have so often placed Defoe in the context of “early
capitalism”. He had a basic vision of personal effort and ingenuity overcoming
obstacles and perhaps leading to wealth, fame or happiness. Robinson Crusoe
converts the desert island to his own uses. Moll Flanders is a whore and a
thief who ends up happily married. And, as you can see from the title page,
Jack at least attains to some sort of respectability after criminal beginnings.
Of
course to modern readers there are details in Defoe’s world-view that are
profoundly disturbing. Europeans subduing the world by their own efforts also
meant Europeans subduing other non-European people. So roll on slavery, empire
and colonialism. Just as Crusoe places his foot on Man Friday’s head, and
claims him as a chattel, so is Jack involved in becoming the master of slaves
in Virginia. Much academic ink has been spilt in recent times reminding us of
the evil of this – and fair enough too. But I still read these early novels
with pleasure, partly because of their frank openness about motives and
assumptions, even in matters as questionable as these. In that way, they are an
un-airbrushed snapshot of a past world.
I
could rabbit on with much more about Defoe, especially his habit of scattering
dates through his novels, with never a thought for consistent chronology. One
wit once added up all the times a protagonist in a Defoe novel made such
statements as “I spent ten years working in London” and “I was for nine years a
soldier of the line” and so forth. The wit’s conclusion was that if all these
statements were true, Defoe’s hero would have to have been about three hundred
years old by the novel’s close. As has often been remarked, Defoe has many of
the characteristics of an accomplished liar. who could engage the attention and
keeps things moving without too much concern for accuracy. But he does engage
the attention.
There
is one overwhelming question on which I must close – why do I choose Colonel
Jack in preference to the much-better-known Robinson Crusoe or Moll Flanders?
Partly
it’s my delight in the specific details of a forgotten world – those details of
Jack, as a child, warming his feet at night in the cinders of a workshop’s
fire; or Jack as a soldier in old royal Europe.
Partly
it’s the greater sympathy I feel for this character – Jack is a bit of a rogue,
but not as much of a criminal as Moll Flanders at her worst. Jack does some
sober moralising and reflecting, but never becomes as sententious as Robinson
Crusoe does.
More
than anything, though, it’s the unfamiliarity of the tale. Robinson Crusoe and
Moll Flanders are characters known to people who have never actually read the
books in which they figure. They have become icons or clichés. With Colonel
Jack there is the joy of discovery. I hope I have passed a little of that on.
Note
on editions: Like many of Defoe’s works, Colonel Jack has been published in
many editions in recent years. The best one I’ve come across is still the one
that sits on my shelf – the Oxford University Press one in its “Oxford English
Novels” series, with scholarly introduction and notes by Samuel Holt Monk. It
was first published in this edition in 1965 and has been reprinted many times
since.
