We were hopeful boys, all three of us, and promised very early, by many repeated circumstances of our lives, that we would be all rogues; and yet I cannot say, if what I have heard of my nurse’s character be true, but the honest woman did what she could to prevent it.
Before I tell you much more of our story, it would be very proper to give you something of our several characters, as I have gathered them up in my memory, as far back as I can recover things, either of myself or my brother Jacques, and they shall be brief and impartial.
Captain Jacque was the eldest of us all, by a whole year. He was a squat, big, strong-made boy, and promised to be stout when grown up to be a man, but not to be tall. His temper was sly, sullen, reserved, malicious, revengeful; and, withal, he was brutish, bloody, and cruel in his disposition. He was, as to manners, a mere boor, or clown, of a carman-like breed; sharp as a street-bred boy must be, but ignorant and unteachable from a child. He had much the nature of a bull-dog, bold and desperate, but not generous at all. All the schoolmistresses we went to could never make him learn—no, not so much as to make him know his letters; and as if he was born a thief, he would steal everything that came near him, even as soon almost as he could speak; and that not from his mother only, but from anybody else, and from us too that were his brethren and companions. He was an original rogue, for he would do the foulest and most villainous things, even by his own inclination; he had no taste or sense of being honest—no, not, I say, to his brother rogues, which is what other thieves make a point of honour of; I mean that of being honest to one another.
The other, that is to say, the youngest of us Johns, was called Major Jacque, by the accident following: The lady that had deposited him with our nurse had owned to her that it was a major of the Guards that was the father of the child, but that she was obliged to conceal his name, and that was enough. So he was at first called John the Major, and afterwards the Major; and at last, when we came to rove together, Major Jacque, according to the rest, for his name was John, as I have observed already.
Major Jacque was a merry, facetious, pleasant boy, had a good share of wit, especially off-hand-wit, as they call it; was full of jests and good humour, and, as I often said, had something of a gentleman in him. He had a true manly courage, feared nothing, and could look death in the face without any hesitation; and yet, if he had the advantage, was the most generous and most compassionate creature alive. He had native principles of gallantry in him, without anything of the brutal or terrible part that the captain had; and, in a word, he wanted nothing but honesty to have made him an excellent man. He had learned to read, as I had done; and as he talked very well, so he wrote good sense and very handsome language, as you will see in the process of his story.
As for your humble servant, Colonel Jacque, he was a poor, unhappy, tractable dog, willing enough, and capable too, to learn anything, if he had had any but the devil for his schoolmaster. He set out into the world so early, that when he began to do evil, he understood nothing of the wickedness of it, nor what he had to expect for it. I remember very well that when I was once carried before a justice, for a theft which indeed I was not guilty of, and defended myself by argument, proving the mistakes of my accusers, and how they contradicted themselves, the justice told me it was a pity I had not been better employed, for I was certainly better taught; in which, however, his worship was mistaken, for I had never been taught anything but to be a thief; except, as I said, to read and write, and that was all, before I was ten years old; but I had a natural talent of talking, and could say as much to the purpose as most people that had been taught no more than I.
I passed among my comrades for a bold, resolute boy, and one that durst fight anything; but I had a different opinion of myself, and therefore shunned fighting as much as I could, though sometimes I ventured too, and came off well, being very strong made and nimble withal. However, I many times brought myself off with my tongue, where my hands would not have been sufficient, and this as well after I was a man as while I was a boy.
I was wary and dexterous at my trade, and was not so often catched as my fellow-rogues—I mean while I was a boy, and never after I came to be a man; no, not once for twenty-six years, being so old in the trade, and still unhanged, as you shall hear.
As for my person, while I was a dirty glass-bottle-house boy, sleeping in the ashes, and dealing always in the street dirt, it cannot be expected but that I looked like what I was, and so we did all; that is to say, like a “black-your-shoes-your-honour,” a beggar-boy, a blackguard-boy, or what you please, despicable and miserable to the last degree; and yet I remember the people would say of me, “That boy has a good face; if he was washed and well dressed, he would be a good, pretty boy. Do but look; what eyes he has; what a pleasant, smiling countenance! ’Tis a pity. I wonder what the rogue’s father and mother was,” and the like. Then they would call me, and ask me my name, and I would tell them my name was Jacque. “But what’s your surname, sirrah?” says they. “I don’t know,” says I. “Who is your father and mother?” “I have none,” said I. “What, and never had you any?” said they. “No,” says I, “not that I know of.” Then they would shake their heads and cry, “Poor boy!” and “’Tis a pity,” and the like; and so let me go. But I laid up all these things in my heart.
I was almost ten years old, the captain eleven, and the major about eight, when the good woman my nurse died. Her husband was a seaman, and had been drowned a little before in the Gloucester frigate, one of the king’s ships which was cast away going to Scotland with the Duke of York in the time of King Charles II., and the honest woman dying very poor, the parish was obliged to bury her; when the three young Jacques attended her corpse, and I, the colonel (for we all passed for her own children), was chief mourner; the captain, who was the eldest son, going back very sick.