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When Jack was brought in, he cast a rapid glance around him, and perceiving Thames in the custody of Jonathan, instantly divined how matters stood. As he looked in this direction, Wild gave him a significant wink, the meaning of which he was not slow to comprehend.

"Get it over quickly," said Trenchard, in a whisper to the thief-taker.

Jonathan nodded assent.

"What's your name?" he said, addressing the audacious lad, who was looking about him as coolly as if nothing material was going on.

"Jack Sheppard," returned the boy, fixing his eyes upon a portrait of the Earl of Mar. "Who's that queer cove in the full-bottomed wig?"

"Attend to me, sirrah," rejoined Wild, sternly. "Do you know this picture?" he added, with another significant look, and pointing to the miniature.

"I do," replied Jack, carelessly.

"That's well. Can you inform us whence it came?"

"I should think so."

"State the facts, then."

"It came from Lady Trafford's jewel-box."

Here a murmur of amazement arose from the assemblage outside.

"Close the door!" commanded Trenchard, impatiently.

"In my opinion, Sir Rowland," suggested Jonathan; "you'd better allow the court to remain open."

"Be it so," replied the knight, who saw the force of this reasoning. "Continue the proceedings."

"You say that the miniature was abstracted from Lady Trafford's jewel-box," said Jonathan, in a loud voice. "Who took it thence?"

"Thames Darrell; the boy at your side."

"Jack!" cried Thames, in indignant surprise.

But Sheppard took no notice of the exclamation.

A loud buzz of curiosity circulated among the domestics; some of whom — especially the females — leaned forward to obtain a peep at the culprit.

"Si—lence!" vociferated Charcam, laying great emphasis on the last syllable.

"Were you present at the time of the robbery?" pursued Jonathan.

"I was," answered Sheppard.

"And will swear to it?"

"I will."

"Liar!" ejaculated Thames.

"Enough!" exclaimed Wild, triumphantly. — "Epoch the Second, 1715. Thames Darrell." Ch. 9, "Consequences of the Theft," p.​303-305.

Commentary

That the anti-hero, Jack Sheppard, is not the protagonist of the novel Ainsworth illustrates in this scene, in which the notorious "thief-taker," Jonathan Wild (he of the Neanderthal visage, left), attempts to make good on his promise to eliminate Thames Darrell. With the unexpected assistance of Thames's former friend and fellow apprentice, Wild seems to be engineering a judicial murder.

The seventh chapter makes clear the cause of Sir Rowland Trenchard's animosity towards Thames Darrell, for his sister's will leaves all to her son, should she still have one, by the man whom her brother murdered on the Thames. But the motive for her concealment of her husband's identity Ainsworth withholds from the reader. Sir Rowland asserts that her boy as well as her husband lie at the bottom of the Thames. However, in a private interview with Sir Rowland Trenchard, Jonathan Wild reveals that the nephew still lives, the apprentice of the carpenter Owen Wood, and agrees to eliminate this threat to Sir Rowland's inheriting his sister's estate in exchange for a thousand pounds. The opportunity conveniently presents itself when Thames arrives at the mansion with the intention of returning the portrait that Jack Sheppard had purloined earlier, when he delivered the case for Lady Trafford's journey back to Lancashire. Since Wild holds an arrest warrant for Sir Rowland as a Jacobite plotter, the arrogant nobleman has no choice but to acquiesce in Wild's scheme. Thus, when chapter nine opens, Thames Darrell expects to be able to speak to Lady Trafford in private and return the portrait, but instead is confronted by Jonathan Wild, who asserts that Thames is the thief. Before witnesses, Jack Sheppard, perhaps out of jealousy over Winny Wood and still smarting from the drubbing that Thames gave him, supports Wild's accusation. Since the hour is late and the boys cannot brought before Magistrate Walters until the morning, Wild orders his confederate Nab (Abraham Mendez, a Fagin-lookalike Jew) to consign the boys to a holding facility at Saint Giles's roundhouse. In fact, Wild intends to have a Dutch skipper of his acquaintance, Rykhart Van Galgebrok, drown Thames in the North Sea that very night.

The figures in the Cruikshank illustration are consistent with the scene in Lady Trafford's house in London as Ainsworth describes it: the witnesses, servants of the mansion, stand at the open doorway. In front of them, Jack points at Thames, aghast, as the thief while "a dwarfish, shabby-looking man, in a brown serge frock, with coarse Jewish features, and a long red beard" (302) seems ready to apprehend Thames. The liveried servant in the centre is Sir Rowland Trenchard's butler, Charcam, who serves as the magistrate; the aristocrat in the wig is Sir Rowland Trenchard (in fact, Thames's maternal uncle, as Cruikshank implies by their facial resemblance), and beside him is the devious Jonathan Wild, armed with a sword and holding out the portrait miniature. The setting, if one may judge from the presence of so many books, is Lady Trafford's library (although Ainsworth does not specify such a setting). The seventeenth-century portraits above the shelves correspond to Ainsworth's having Jack ask about the portrait of the leading Jacobite among the English peerage, the Earl of Mar — the "queer cove in the full-bottomed wig" (303). The other three portraits (including, adjacent to the likeness of the Earl of Mar, Lady Trafford's father, the ex-Jacobite Sir Montacute Trenchard, and the one above the door captioned "Sir Cecil," a likeness of Lady Trafford's former fiancé and cousin, now deceased), the view of an Elizabethan country manorhouse ("Edgecroft Hall," undoubtedly the ancestral mansion in Lancashire for which Lady Trafford has just departed), and the full suit of armour, however, create a sense of the room's being congested, in contrast to the more open treatment of the room in which two years earlier Cruikshank set Oliver's hearing before the Board of Governors of the Mudfog workhouse in Oliver Escapes Being Bound to a Sweep (March 1837). In the earlier serial engraving, the illustrator satisfies the requirements of the text by providing figures without inserting excessive background detail, including titles on two of the book-spines, Ignatius Layola and The Society of Jesus, obvious references to Sir Rowland's radical Catholic leanings, exemplified by the crucifix partially obscured by Mar's portrait.​One may presume that relative austerity of supporting detail in the earlier Dickens illustration is the direct result of that author's restraining Cruikshank's inventiveness. Cruikshank's giving some facial resemblance to Sir Rowland and his nephew, Thames, and to the family portraits above then, is, however, a useful addition to Ainsworth's rather generalised description of the room in which Charcam conducts the quasi-judicial examination of the two apprentices — and fails to ask the right questions.

References

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.

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.

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Last modified 22 December 2016