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Mrs. Sheppard's expostulating with her Son
George Cruikshank
July 1839
Etching
11.2 x 9.7 cm
"Epoch the Second, 1715. Thames Darrell," Vol. 2, Ch. 19, "Good and Evil," in William Harrison Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard. A Romance, facing page 101.
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"Where are you going?" asked his mother.
"I hardly know," returned Jack; "but it's not safe for me to remain much longer here."
"True," replied the widow, upon whom all the terrible recollections of the day before crowded, "I know it isn't. I won't keep you long. But tell me how have you escaped from the confinement in which you were placed — come and sit by me— here—upon the bed—give me your hand — and tell me all about it."
Her son complied, and sat down upon the patch-work coverlet beside her.
"Jack," said Mrs. Sheppard, clasping him with a hand that burnt with fever, "I have been ill — dreadfully ill — I believe delirious — I thought I should have died last night — I won't tell you what agony you have caused me — I won't reproach you. Only promise me to amend — to quit your vile companions — and I will forgive you — will bless you. Oh! my dear, dear son, be warned in time. You are in the hands of a wicked, a terrible man, who will not stop till he has completed your destruction. Listen to your mother's prayers, and do not let her die broken-hearted."
"It is too late," returned Jack, sullenly; "I can't be honest if I would."
"Oh! do not say so," replied his wretched parent. "It is never too late. I know you are in Jonathan Wild's power, for I saw him near you in the church; and if ever the enemy of mankind was permitted to take human form, I beheld him then. Beware of him, my son! Beware of him! You know not what villany he is capable of. Be honest, and you will be happy. You are yet a child; and though you have strayed from the right path, a stronger hand than your own has led you thence. Return, I implore of you, to your master, — to Mr. Wood. Acknowledge your faults. He is all kindness, and will overlook them for your poor father's sake—for mine. Return to him, I say —"
"I can't," replied Jack, doggedly.
"Can't!" repeated his mother. "Why not?"
"I'lltell you," cried a deep voice from the back of the bed. And immediately afterwards the curtain was drawn aside, and disclosed the Satanic countenance of Jonathan Wild, who had crept into the house unperceived, "I'll tell you, why he can't go back to his master," cried the thief-taker, with a malignant grin. "He has robbed him."
"Robbed him!" screamed the widow. "Jack!"
Her son averted his gaze.
"Ay, robbed him," reiterated Jonathan. "The night before last, Mr. Wood's house was broken into and plundered. Your son was seen by the carpenter's wife in company with the robbers. Here," he added, throwing a handbill on the bed, "are the particulars of the burglary, with the reward for Jack's apprehension."
"Ah!" ejaculated the widow, hiding her face.
"Come," said Wild, turning authoritatively to Jack, — "you have overstayed your time."
"Do not go with him, Jack!" shrieked his mother. "Do not — do not!"
"He must!" thundered Jonathan, "or he goes to jail."
"If you must go to prison, I will go with you," cried Mrs. Sheppard: "but avoid that man as you would a serpent." — Chapter 19, "Good and Evil,"p. 99-102.
The interview between mother and son in her cottage at Willesden follows immediately upon Jack's stealing Kneebone's papers in the church (papers that incriminate him in the Earl of Mar's Jacobite plot) and being incarcerated in the village pound, known as "The Cage." Although Jonathan Wild and Blueskin have arrived with the supposed intention of freeing Jack, he had already devised his own escape. Prior to leaving, Jack insists upon visiting his mother, whom he had seen carried insensible from the church to her rose-trellised cottage near the Church of St. Mary, whose actual tower is glimpsed in the open doorway in Cruikshank's engraving. He is unaware of Jonathan Wild's overhearing their conversation. Mrs. Sheppard is aghast that Jack has participated in the robbery of the Woods' house, and is mentioned as a member of a gang of house-breakers in a wanted poster, so that his robbery of William Kneebone in the Willesden Church is in fact his second crime. However, the reader may be inclined to overlook this second theft as Jack was acting under Wild's direction and was not pilfering valuables, but papers that implicate the bearer in a Jacobite plot. Mrs. Sheppard now asks Jack to choose between good (herself and her counsel) and evil (his fealty to Jonathan Wild), as if Jack is the subject of a morality play.
The allusions to Hogarth are on Cruikshank's part as well as on Ainsworth's; not only in the illustrated scene at Tyburn, which recreates the end of Hogarth's Tom Idle, but more subtly, in "Mrs. Sheppard expostulating with her Son," where she lies in a canopied bed with a hatbox on top like that in the third plate of A Harlot's Progress, while Jonathan Wild, peering around the curtain unobserved, and the open door recall the entry of the magistrate in the same same scene. The Hogarthian emblems on the wall — including a print of Mary Magdalene — underline the reversals. — Meisel, p. 269.
Amidst signs of domesticity and good ordersuch as the china cabinet and the cat on the chair are suggestions of Mrs. Sheppard's moral nature: the tower of the Willesden Church seen through the open door, and the three prints on the wall, above Jack's head — Mary Magdalene, The Prodigal Son, and The Thief Biting His Mother's Ear off at the Gallows. Since the previous scene, involving Jack's sitting atop the cage as Blueskin and Wild ride up, occurs after sunset, one naturally wonders what source of illumination Cruikshank had in mind to show in bright light the signs on the front of the cage. Presumably the setting sun (implied as being off the bottom right of the picture Jack Sheppard's escape from Willesden Cage) renders the signs on the Cage legible. In the present scene, when Jack visits his mother in her cottage near the church, the tower of the building is clearly visible through the open door, and the room appears to be lit by daylight, which is somewhat improbable if the time of day is well after sunset. That Cruikshank appears to have more concerned with the plausibility of available lighting for the scenes in Oliver Twist may reflect his concern with realism in working with Dickens, who may have been much more directive with his illustration than was Ainsworth.
Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. A Romance. With 28 illustrations by George Cruikshank. In three volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1839.
Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. Edited by Edward Jacobs and Manuela Mourao. With 31 illustrations. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2007.
Clark, Kenneth. Chapter 10, "The Smile of Reason." Civilisation. London: BBC and John Murray, 1969, rpt. 1975. Pp. 244-267.
Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.
Meisel, Martin. Chapter 13, "Novels in Epitome." Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Pp. 247-282.
Sutherland, John. "Jack Sheppard" in The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19893. Pp. 323-324.
Vann, J. Don. "Jack Sheppard in Bentley's Miscellany, January 1839 — February 1840." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Page 19.
Last modified 22 December 2016