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Upon Applebee's being apprehended, and himself impeached, Whittingham withdrew to Rochester, with an intent to have gone out of the kingdom, but after all he could not prevail with himself to quit his native country.
Thenceforth the printers and editors of journals held aloof from him. Such is Mr. Lee's fair interpretation of the fact that his connexion with Applebee's Journal terminated abruptly in March, 1726, and that he is found soon after, in the preface to a pamphlet on Street Robberies, complaining that none of the journals will accept his communications.
His second son, named Benjamin, became a journalist, was the editor of the London Journal, and got into temporary trouble for writing a scandalous and seditious libel in that newspaper in 1721. A writer in Applebee's Journal, whom Mr. Lee identifies with Defoe himself, commenting upon this circumstance, denied the rumour of its being the well-known Daniel Defoe that was committed for the offence.
Newspapers became less political, and their circulation extended from the coffee-houses, inns, and ale-houses to a new class of readers. "They have of late," a writer in Applebee's Journal says in 1725, "been taken in much by the women, especially the political ladies, to assist at the tea-table."
Defoe seems to have taken an active part in making Mist's Journal and Applebee's Journal, both Tory organs, suitable for this more frivolous section of the public. This fell in with his purpose of diminishing the political weight of these journals, and at the same time increased their sale.
To the end of his days Defoe could not forget this taunt of want of learning. In one of the papers in Applebee's Journal identified by Mr. "I remember an Author in the World some years ago, who was generally upbraided with Ignorance, and called an 'Illiterate Fellow, by some of the Beau-Monde of the last Age...."
In after years Defoe appears to have picked up several tongues, as may be judged by his challenge to John Tutchin, to translate with him any Latin, French, or Italian author for twenty pounds each book; one sees his proficiency also in the character he gives of himself in a paper in Applebee's Journal. But at the very heart of the genius of Defoe lay the spirit of the tradesman.
In connexion with Applebee's more particularly, Defoe went some way towards anticipating the work of the modern Special Correspondent. He apparently interviewed distinguished criminals in Newgate, and extracted from them the stories of their lives.
He converted them from rabid party agencies into registers of domestic news and vehicles of social disquisitions, sometimes grave, sometimes gay in subject, but uniformly bright and spirited in tone. The raw materials of several of Defoe's elaborate tales, such as Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack, are to be found in the columns of Mist's and Applebee's.
The pages which follow relate how Roxana became reconciled to her daughter, died in peace, and was buried at Hornsey. The curious reader finds, however, no further mention of Belinda and her friend. Evidently Applebee's hack simply stole as much copy as he needed from an almost forgotten book, trusting to receive his money before the fraud was discovered.
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