L O C A L H ERO
Liberty's devil
Muckraking inventor of
political spin, arch-hedonist
member of the Hellfire
Club, and publisher of
the most obscene poem
in the English language,
John Wilkes was North
Bucks’ most unlikely allaction hero. Cameron
Hawtree reports
Had the Squire of Aylesbury not
been so hideously ugly, it’s probable Hollywood would have come a’ calling long ago.
After all, America’s Founding Fathers
had lionised his battle with the reactionary
forces of the ancien regime, and wrote
a raft of Wilkes’ ideas into the first 10
amendments of their constitution’s Bill of
Rights, including, freedom of the press and
freedom from arbitrary arrest, the right to
life, liberty and property and, of course,
the pursuit of happiness.
But then, like most details of Wilkes chequered life, contradictions and
conundrums abound. He was not even
to the north Buckinghamshire manor of
Aylesbury born.
John (Jack) Wilkes entered this
breathing world in Clerkenwell, London
in 1725, the scion of a middling, upwardly
mobile family. His father ran a prosperous
distillery and his mother was the daughter
and heiress of a tannery proprietor.
Jack was privately educated by Presbyterian tutors before completing his studies at
the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
By 1744, he’d developed into something
of an Augustan scholar and sophisticated
man-about-town, with an uncompromisingly independent intellectual outlook.
But, of course, young Jack, as he was
known to growing circle of friends, was
also no slouch when it came to the pursuit
of the hedonistic pleasures of youth. Not
that he could count on good looks to enrapture the fair sex. His visage was distorted by a monstrously prognathous jawbone
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that caused his teeth to protrude when he
spoke, and topped off by a crossed eyes
gaze. He was once told by his barber his
face was “ an indication of a very bad soul
within” and should not be exposed to
pregnant women.
But for all that he’d been cheated of feature by dissembling nature, with a face that
jolted all seeing it for the first time, Wilkes
wore his deformed visage lightly. And it
became a signature calling card, a symbol
of liberty reproduced, sketched and etched
thousands of times in a tumultous life.
And as for the effect on females he
accosted, he liked to say he “needed only
20 minutes to talk away my face”. For his
conversation trumped everything, and
all who met him, male and female were
instantly entranced. And though he was
a poor orator, when he spoke to small
groups, he mesmerised everyone by his
fluency, wit and intelligent repartee.
Wilkes was the ultimate outsider’s
insider during a turbulent century of
fractious constitutional change in which
Britain’s ruling elite were caught up, haphazardly adjusting to the implications of
the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The 18th century set the signature template for the growth of liberal-democracy in
Britain that was largely bloodless, unlike in
France where the guillotine swept away the
ancient regime in an unpitying revolution
that Wilkes hated, or the American colonial
struggle, which he championed.
His clandestine support for the American revolution saw Wilkes treading treasonous waters at a time when he’d taken
on the institutional might of the establishment that had earned him the soubriquet
“that devil Wilkes” from King George III.
But when he had set out on life’s journey as a young man, there was little hint of
the swathe he would cut after early years of
unrestrained debauchery and dilettantism.
After Leiden there followed a 10 year
period of unrestrained womanising, including
with his friends in the notorious Hellfire Club.