THE PLACE OF DEFOE'S FICTIONS IN HIS LIFE.
Those of my readers who have thought of Defoe only as a writer of
stories which young and old still love to read, must not be surprised
that so few pages of this little book should be left for an account of
his work in that field. No doubt Defoe's chief claim to the world's
interest is that he is the author of _Robinson Crusoe_. But there is
little to be said about this or any other of Defoe's tales in
themselves. Their art is simple, unique, incommunicable, and they are
too well known to need description. On the other hand, there is much
that is worth knowing and not generally known about the relation of
these works to his life, and the place that they occupy in the sum total
of his literary activity. Hundreds of thousands since Defoe's death, and
millions in ages to come, would never have heard his name but for
_Robinson Crusoe_. To his contemporaries the publication of that work
was but a small incident in a career which for twenty years had claimed
and held their interest. People in these days are apt to imagine,
because Defoe wrote the most fascinating of books for children, that he
was himself simple, child-like, frank, open, and unsuspecting. He has
been so described by more than one historian of literature. It was not
so that he appeared to his contemporaries, and it is not so that he can
appear to us when we know his life, unless we recognise that he took a
child's delight in beating with their own weapons the most astute
intriguers in the most intriguing period of English history.
Defoe was essentially a journalist. He wrote for the day, and for the
greatest interest of the greatest number of the day. He always had some
ship sailing with the passing breeze, and laden with a useful cargo for
the coast upon which the wind chanced to be blowing. If the Tichborne
trial had happened in his time, we should certainly have had from him an
exact history of the boyhood and surprising adventures of Thomas Castro,
commonly known as Sir Roger, which would have come down to us as a true
record, taken, perhaps, by the chaplain of Portland prison from the
convict's own lips. It would have had such an air of authenticity, and
would have been corroborated by such an array of trustworthy witnesses,
that nobody in later times could have doubted its truth. Defoe always
wrote what a large number of people were in a mood to read. All his
writings, with so few exceptions that they may reasonably be supposed to
fall within the category, were _pièces de circonstance_. Whenever any
distinguished person died or otherwise engaged public attention, no
matter how distinguished, whether as a politician, a criminal, or a
divine, Defoe lost no time in bringing out a biography. It was in such
emergencies that he produced his memoirs of Charles XII., Peter the
Great, Count Patkul, the Duke of Shrewsbury, Baron de Goertz, the Rev.
Daniel Williams, Captain Avery the King of the Pirates, Dominique
Cartouche, Rob Roy, Jonathan Wild, Jack Sheppard, Duncan Campbell. When
the day had been fixed for the Earl of Oxford's trial for high treason,
Defoe issued the fictitious _Minutes of the Secret Negotiations of Mons.
Mesnager_ at the English Court during his ministry. We owe the _Journal
of the Plague in 1665_ to a visitation which fell upon France in 1721,
and caused much apprehension in England. The germ which in his fertile
mind grew into _Robinson Crusoe_ fell from the real adventures of
Alexander Selkirk, whose solitary residence of four years on the island
of Juan Fernandez was a nine days' wonder in the reign of Queen Anne.
Defoe was too busy with his politics at the moment to turn it to
account; it was recalled to him later on, in the year 1719, when the
exploits of famous pirates had given a vivid interest to the chances of
adventurers in far-away islands on the American and African coasts. The
_Life, Adventures, and Piracies of the famous Captain Singleton_, who
was set on shore in Madagascar, traversed the continent of Africa from
east to west past the sources of the Nile, and went roving again in the
company of the famous Captain Avery, was produced to satisfy the same
demand. Such biographies as those of _Moll Flanders_ and the _Lady
Roxana_ were of a kind, as he himself illustrated by an amusing
anecdote, that interested all times and all professions and degrees; but
we have seen to what accident he owed their suggestion and probably part
of their materials. He had tested the market for such wares in his
Journals of Society.
In following Defoe's career, we are constantly reminded that he was a
man of business, and practised the profession of letters with a shrewd
eye to the main chance. He scoffed at the idea of practising it with any
other object, though he had aspirations after immortal fame as much as
any of his more decorous contemporaries. Like Thomas Fuller, he frankly
avowed that he wrote "for some honest profit to himself." Did any man,
he asked, do anything without some regard to his own advantage? Whenever
he hit upon a profitable vein, he worked it to exhaustion, putting the
ore into various shapes to attract different purchasers. _Robinson
Crusoe_ made a sensation; he immediately followed up the original story
with a Second Part, and the Second Part with a volume of _Serious
Reflections_. He had discovered the keenness of the public appetite for
stories of the supernatural, in 1706, by means of his _True Relation of
the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal_.[4] When, in 1720, he undertook to
write the life of the popular fortune-teller, Duncan Campbell--a puff
which illustrates almost better than anything else Defoe's extraordinary
ingenuity in putting a respectable face upon the most disreputable
materials--he had another proof of the avidity with which people run to
hear marvels. He followed up this clue with _A System of Magic, or a
History of the Black Art_; _The Secrets of the Invisible World
disclosed, or a Universal History of Apparitions_; and a humorous
_History of the Devil_, in which last work he subjected _Paradise Lost_,
to which Addison had drawn attention by his papers in the _Spectator_,
to very sharp criticism. In his books and pamphlets on the Behaviour of
Servants, and his works of more formal instruction, the _Family
Instructor_, the _Plan of English Commerce_, the _Complete English
Tradesman_, the _Complete English Gentleman_ (his last work, left
unfinished and unpublished), he wrote with a similar regard to what was
for the moment in demand.
[Footnote 4: Mr. Lee has disposed conclusively of the myth that this
tale was written to promote the sale of a dull book by one Drelincourt
on the _Fear of Death_, which Mrs. Veal's ghost earnestly recommended
her friend to read. It was first published separately as a pamphlet
without any reference to Drelincourt. It was not printed with
Drelincourt's _Fear of Death_ till the fourth edition of that work,
which was already popular. Further, the sale of Drelincourt does not
appear to have been increased by the addition of Defoe's pamphlet to the
book, and of Mrs. Veal's recommendation to the pamphlet.]
Defoe's novel-writing thus grew naturally out of his general literary
trade, and had not a little in common with the rest of his abundant
stock. All his productions in this line, his masterpiece, _Robinson
Crusoe_, as well as what Charles Lamb calls his "secondary novels,"
_Captain Singleton_, _Colonel Jack_, _Moll Flanders_, and _Roxana_, were
manufactured from material for which he had ascertained that there was a
market; the only novelty lay in the mode of preparation. From writing
biographies with real names attached to them, it was but a short step to
writing biographies with fictitious names. Defoe is sometimes spoken of
as the inventor of the realistic novel; realistic biography would,
perhaps, be a more strictly accurate description. Looking at the
character of his professed records of fact, it seems strange that he
should ever have thought of writing the lives of imaginary heroes, and
should not have remained content with "forging stories and imposing them
on the world for truth" about famous and notorious persons in real life.
The purveyors of news in those days could use without fear of detection
a licence which would not be tolerated now. They could not, indeed,
satisfy the public appetite for news without taking liberties with the
truth. They had not special correspondents in all parts of the world, to
fill their pages with reports from the spot of things seen and heard.
The public had acquired the habit of looking to the press, to periodical
papers and casual books and pamphlets, for information about passing
events and prominent men before sufficient means had been organized for
procuring information which should approximate to correctness. In such
circumstances, the temptation to invent and embellish was irresistible.
"Why," a paragraph-maker of the time is made to say, "if we will write
nothing but truth, we must bring you no news; we are bound to bring you
such as we can find." Yet it was not lies but truth that the public
wanted as much as they do now. Hence arose the necessity of fortifying
reports with circumstantial evidence of their authenticity. Nobody
rebuked unprincipled news-writers more strongly than Defoe, and no
news-writer was half as copious in his guarantees for the accuracy of
his information. When a report reached England that the island of St.
Vincent had been blown into the air, Defoe wrote a description of the
calamity, the most astonishing thing that had happened in the world
"since the Creation, or at least since the destruction of the earth by
water in the general Deluge," and prefaced his description by saying:--
"Our accounts of this come from so many several hands
and several places that it would be impossible to bring the
letters all separately into this journal; and when we had
done so or attempted to do so, would leave the story confused,
and the world not perfectly informed. We have therefore
thought it better to give the substance of this amazing
accident in one collection; making together as full and as
distinct an account of the whole as we believe it possible to
come at by any intelligence whatsoever, and at the close of
this account we shall give some probable guesses at the natural
cause of so terrible an operation."
Defoe carried the same system of vouching for the truth of his
narratives by referring them to likely sources, into pamphlets and books
which really served the purpose of newspapers, being written for the
gratification of passing interests. The History of the Wars of Charles
XII., which Mr. Lee ascribes to him, was "written by a Scot's gentleman,
in the Swedish service." The short narrative of the life and death of
Count Patkul was "written by the Lutheran Minister who assisted him in
his last hours, and faithfully translated out of a High Dutch
manuscript." M. Mesnager's minutes of his negotiations were "written by
himself," and "done out of French." Defoe knew that the public would
read such narratives more eagerly if they believed them to be true, and
ascribed them to authors whose position entitled them to confidence.
There can be little doubt that he drew upon his imagination for more
than the title-pages. But why, when he had so many eminent and notorious
persons to serve as his subjects, with all the advantage of bearing
names about which the public were already curious, did he turn to the
adventures of new and fictitious heroes and heroines? One can only
suppose that he was attracted by the greater freedom of movement in pure
invention; he made the venture with _Robinson Crusoe_, it was
successful, and he repeated it. But after the success of _Robinson
Crusoe_, he by no means abandoned his old fields. It was after this that
he produced autobiographies and other _primâ facie_ authentic lives of
notorious thieves and pirates. With all his records of heroes, real or
fictitious, he practised the same devices for ensuring credibility. In
all alike he took for granted that the first question people would ask
about a story was whether it was true. The novel, it must be remembered,
was then in its infancy, and Defoe, as we shall presently see, imagined,
probably not without good reason, that his readers would disapprove of
story-telling for the mere pleasure of the thing, as an immorality.
In writing for the entertainment of his own time, Defoe took the surest
way of writing for the entertainment of all time. Yet if he had never
chanced to write _Robinson Crusoe_, he would now have a very obscure
place in English literature. His "natural infirmity of homely plain
writing," as he humorously described it, might have drawn students to
his works, but they ran considerable risk of lying in utter oblivion.
He was at war with the whole guild of respectable writers who have
become classics; they despised him as an illiterate fellow, a vulgar
huckster, and never alluded to him except in terms of contempt. He was
not slow to retort their civilities; but the retorts might very easily
have sunk beneath the waters, while the assaults were preserved by their
mutual support. The vast mass of Defoe's writings received no kindly aid
from distinguished contemporaries to float them down the stream;
everything was done that bitter dislike and supercilious indifference
could do to submerge them. _Robinson Crusoe_ was their sole life-buoy.
It would be a mistake to suppose that the vitality of _Robinson Crusoe_
is a happy accident, and that others of Defoe's tales have as much claim
in point of merit to permanence. _Robinson Crusoe_ has lived longest,
because it lives most, because it was detached as it were from its own
time and organized for separate existence. It is the only one of Defoe's
tales that shows what he could do as an artist. We might have seen from
the others that he had the genius of a great artist; here we have the
possibility realized, the convincing proof of accomplished work. _Moll
Flanders_ is in some respects superior as a novel. Moll is a much more
complicated character than the simple, open-minded, manly mariner of
York; a strangely mixed compound of craft and impulse, selfishness and
generosity--in short, a thoroughly bad woman, made bad by circumstances.
In tracing the vigilant resolution with which she plays upon human
weakness, the spasms of compunction which shoot across her wily designs,
the selfish afterthoughts which paralyse her generous impulses, her fits
of dare-devil courage and uncontrollable panic, and the steady current
of good-humoured satisfaction with herself which makes her chuckle
equally over mishaps and successes, Defoe has gone much more deeply into
the springs of action, and sketched a much richer page in the natural
history of his species than in _Robinson Crusoe._ True, it is a more
repulsive page, but that is not the only reason why it has fallen into
comparative oblivion, and exists now only as a parasite upon the more
popular work. It is not equally well constructed for the struggle of
existence among books. No book can live for ever which is not firmly
organized round some central principle of life, and that principle in
itself imperishable. It must have a heart and members; the members must
be soundly compacted and the heart superior to decay. Compared with
_Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders_ is only a string of diverting
incidents, the lowest type of book organism, very brilliant while it is
fresh and new, but not qualified to survive competitors for the world's
interest. There is no unique creative purpose in it to bind the whole
together; it might be cut into pieces, each capable of wriggling
amusingly by itself. The gradual corruption of the heroine's virtue,
which is the encompassing scheme of the tale, is too thin as well as too
common an artistic envelope; the incidents burst through it at so many
points that it becomes a shapeless mass. But in _Robinson Crusoe_ we
have real growth from a vigorous germ. The central idea round which the
tale is organized, the position of a man cast ashore on a desert island,
abandoned to his own resources, suddenly shot beyond help or counsel
from his fellow-creatures, is one that must live as long as the
uncertainty of human life.
The germ of _Robinson Crusoe,_ the actual experience of Alexander
Selkirk, went floating about for several years, and more than one artist
dallied with it, till it finally settled and took root in the mind of
the one man of his generation most capable of giving it a home and
working out its artistic possibilities. Defoe was the only man of
letters in his time who might have been thrown on a desert island
without finding himself at a loss what to do. The art required for
developing the position in imagination was not of a complicated kind,
and yet it is one of the rarest of gifts. Something more was wanted than
simply conceiving what a man in such a situation would probably feel and
probably do. Above all, it was necessary that his perplexities should be
unexpected, and his expedients for meeting them unexpected; yet both
perplexities and expedients so real and life-like that, when we were
told them, we should wonder we had not thought of them before. One gift
was indispensable for this, however many might be accessory, the genius
of circumstantial invention--not a very exalted order of genius,
perhaps, but quite as rare as any other intellectual prodigy.[5]
[Footnote 5: Mr. Leslie Stephen seems to me to underrate the rarity of
this peculiar gift in his brilliant essay on Defoe's Novels in _Hours in
a Library_.]
Defoe was fifty-eight years old when he wrote _Robinson Crusoe_. If the
invention of plausible circumstances is the great secret in the art of
that tale, it would have been a marvellous thing if this had been the
first instance of its exercise, and it had broken out suddenly in a man
of so advanced an age. When we find an artist of supreme excellence in
any craft, we generally find that he has been practising it all his
life. To say that he has a genius for it, means that he has practised
it, and concentrated his main force upon it, and that he has been driven
irresistibly to do so by sheer bent of nature. It was so with Defoe and
his power of circumstantial invention, his unrivalled genius for "lying
like truth." For years upon years of his life it had been his chief
occupation. From the time of his first connexion with Harley, at least,
he had addressed his countrymen through the press, and had perambulated
the length and breadth of the land in assumed characters and on
factitious pretexts. His first essay in that way in 1704, when he left
prison in the service of the Government, appealing to the general
compassion because he was under government displeasure, was skilful
enough to suggest great native genius if not extensive previous
practice. There are passages of circumstantial invention in the
_Review_, as ingenious as anything in _Robinson Crusoe_; and the mere
fact that at the end of ten years of secret service under successive
Governments, and in spite of a widespread opinion of his
untrustworthiness, he was able to pass himself off for ten years more as
a Tory with Tories and with the Whig Government as a loyal servant, is a
proof of sustained ingenuity of invention greater than many volumes of
fiction.
Looking at Defoe's private life, it is not difficult to understand the
peculiar fascination which such a problem as he solved in _Robinson
Crusoe_ must have had for him. It was not merely that he had passed a
life of uncertainty, often on the verge of precipices, and often saved
from ruin by a buoyant energy which seems almost miraculous; not merely
that, as he said of himself in one of his diplomatic appeals for
commiseration.
"No man hath tasted differing fortunes more,
For thirteen times have I been rich and poor."
But when he wrote _Robinson Crusoe_, it was one of the actual chances of
his life, and by no means a remote one, that he might be cast all alone
on an uninhabited island. We see from his letters to De la Faye how
fearful he was of having "mistakes" laid to his charge by the Government
in the course of his secret services. His former changes of party had
exposed him, as he well knew, to suspicion. A false step, a
misunderstood paragraph, might have had ruinous consequences for him. If
the Government had prosecuted him for writing anything offensive to
them, refusing to believe that it was put in to amuse the Tories,
transportation might very easily have been the penalty. He had made so
many enemies in the Press that he might have been transported without a
voice being raised in his favour, and the mob would not have interfered
to save a Government spy from the Plantations. Shipwreck among the
islands of the West Indies was a possibility that stood not far from his
own door, as he looked forward into the unknown, and prepared his mind,
as men in dangerous situations do, for the worst. When he drew up for
Moll Flanders and her husband a list of the things necessary for
starting life in a new country, or when he described Colonel Jack's
management of his plantation in Virginia, the subject was one of more
than general curiosity to him; and when he exercised his imagination
upon the fate of Robinson Crusoe, he was contemplating a fate which a
few movements of the wheel of Fortune might make his own.
But whatever it was that made the germ idea of _Robinson Crusoe_ take
root in Defoe's mind, he worked it out as an artist. Artists of a more
emotional type might have drawn much more elaborate and affecting
word-pictures of the mariner's feelings in various trying situations,
gone much deeper into his changing moods, and shaken our souls with pity
and terror over the solitary castaway's alarms and fits of despair.
Defoe's aims lay another way. His Crusoe is not a man given to the
luxury of grieving. If he had begun to pity himself, he would have been
undone. Perhaps Defoe's imaginative force was not of a kind that could
have done justice to the agonies of a shipwrecked sentimentalist; he has
left no proof that it was: but if he had represented Crusoe bemoaning
his misfortunes, brooding over his fears, or sighing with Ossianic
sorrow over his lost companions and friends, he would have spoiled the
consistency of the character. The lonely man had his moments of panic
and his days of dejection, but they did not dwell in his memory. Defoe
no doubt followed his own natural bent, but he also showed true art in
confining Crusoe's recollections as closely as he does to his efforts to
extricate himself from difficulties that would have overwhelmed a man of
softer temperament. The subject had fascinated him, and he found enough
in it to engross his powers without travelling beyond its limits for
diverting episodes, as he does more or less in all the rest of his
tales. The diverting episodes in _Robinson Crusoe_ all help the
verisimilitude of the story.
When, however, the ingenious inventor had completed the story
artistically, carried us through all the outcast's anxieties and
efforts, and shown him triumphant over all difficulties, prosperous, and
again in communication with the outer world, the spirit of the iterary
trader would not let the finished work alone. The story, as a work of
art, ends with Crusoe's departure from the island, or at any rate with
his return to England. Its unity is then complete. But Robinson Crusoe
at once became a popular hero, and Defoe was too keen a man of business
to miss the chance of further profit from so lucrative a vein. He did
not mind the sneers of hostile critics. They made merry over the
trifling inconsistencies in the tale. How, for example, they asked,
could Crusoe have stuffed his pockets with biscuits when he had taken
off all his clothes before swimming to the wreck? How could he have
been at such a loss for clothes after those he had put off were washed
away by the rising tide, when he had the ship's stores to choose from?
How could he have seen the goat's eyes in the cave when it was pitch
dark? How could the Spaniards give Friday's father an agreement in
writing, when they had neither paper nor ink? How did Friday come to
know so intimately the habits of bears, the bear not being a denizen of
the West Indian islands? On the ground of these and such-like trifles,
one critic declared that the book seems calculated for the mob, and will
not bear the eye of a rational reader, and that "all but the very
canaille are satisfied of the worthlessness of the performance." Defoe,
we may suppose, was not much moved by these strictures, as edition after
edition of the work was demanded. He corrected one or two little
inaccuracies, and at once set about writing a Second Part, and a volume
of _Serious Reflections_ which had occurred to Crusoe amidst his
adventures. These were purely commercial excrescences upon the original
work. They were popular enough at the time, but those who are tempted
now to accompany Crusoe in his second visit to his island and his
enterprising travels in the East, agree that the Second Part is of
inferior interest to the first, and very few now read the _Serious
Reflections_.
The _Serious Reflections_, however, are well worth reading in connexion
with the author's personal history. In the preface we are told that
_Robinson Crusoe_ is an allegory, and in one of the chapters we are told
why it is an allegory. The explanation is given in a homily against the
vice of talking falsely. By talking falsely the moralist explains that
he does not mean telling lies, that is, falsehoods concocted with an
evil object; these he puts aside as sins altogether beyond the pale of
discussion. But there is a minor vice of falsehood which he considers it
his duty to reprove, namely, telling stories, as too many people do,
merely to amuse. "This supplying a story by invention," he says, "is
certainly a most scandalous crime, and yet very little regarded in that
part. It is a sort of lying that makes a great hole in the heart, in
which by degrees a habit of lying enters in. Such a man comes quickly up
to a total disregarding the truth of what he says, looking upon it as a
trifle, a thing of no import, whether any story he tells be true or
not." How empty a satisfaction is this "purchased at so great an expense
as that of conscience, and of a dishonour done to truth!" And the crime
is so entirely objectless. A man who tells a lie, properly so called,
has some hope of reward by it. But to lie for sport is to play at
shuttlecock with your soul, and load your conscience for the mere sake
of being a fool. "With what temper should I speak of those people? What
words can express the meanness and baseness of the mind that can do
this?" In making this protest against frivolous story-telling, the
humour of which must have been greatly enjoyed by his journalistic
colleagues, Defoe anticipated that his readers would ask why, if he so
disapproved of the supplying a story by invention, he had written
_Robinson Crusoe_. His answer was that _Robinson Crusoe_ was an
allegory, and that the telling or writing a parable or an allusive
allegorical history is quite a different case. "I, Robinson Crusoe, do
affirm that the story, though allegorical, is also historical, and that
it is the beautiful representation of a life of unexampled misfortunes,
and of a variety not to be met with in this world." This life was his
own. He explains at some length the particulars of the allegory:--
"Thus the fright and fancies which succeeded the story
of the print of a man's foot, and surprise of the old goat, and
the thing rolling on my bed, and my jumping up in a fright,
are all histories and real stories; as are likewise the dream
of being taken by messengers, being arrested by officers, the
manner of being driven on shore by the surge of the sea, the
ship on fire, the description of starving, the story of my man
Friday, and many more most natural passages observed here,
and on which any religious reflections are made, are all historical
and true in fact. It is most real that I had a parrot,
and taught it to call me by my name, such a servant a savage
and afterwards a Christian and that his name was called Friday,
and that he was ravished from me by force, and died in
the hands that took him, which I represent by being killed;
this is all literally true; and should I enter into discoveries
many alive can testify them. His other conduct and assistance
to me also have just references in all their parts to the
helps I had from that faithful savage in my real solitudes and
disasters."
"The story of the bear in the tree, and the fight with the
wolves in the snow, is likewise matter of real history; and
in a word, the adventures of Robinson Crusoe are a whole
scheme of a life of twenty-eight years spent in the most wandering,
desolate, and afflicting circumstances that ever man
went through, and in which I have lived so long in a life of
wonders, in continued storms, fought with the worst kind of
savages and man-eaters, by unaccountable surprising incidents;
fed by miracles greater than that of the ravens, suffered
all manner of violences and oppressions, injurious reproaches,
contempt of men, attacks of devils, corrections from
Heaven, and oppositions on earth; and had innumerable ups
and downs in matters of fortune, been in slavery worse than
Turkish, escaped by an exquisite management, as that in the
story of Xury and the boat of Sallee, been taken up at sea
in distress, raised again and depressed again, and that oftener
perhaps in one man's life than ever was known before;
shipwrecked often, though more by land than by sea; in a
word, there's not a circumstance in the imaginary story but
has its just allusion to a real story, and chimes part for
part, and step for step, with the inimitable life of Robinson
Crusoe."
But if Defoe had such a regard for the strict and literal truth, why did
he not tell his history in his own person? Why convey the facts
allusively in an allegory? To this question also he had an answer. He
wrote for the instruction of mankind, for the purpose of recommending
"invincible patience under the worst of misery; indefatigable
application and undaunted resolution under the greatest and most
discouraging circumstances."
"Had the common way of writing a man's private history
been taken, and I had given you the conduct or life of a man
you knew, and whose misfortunes and infirmities perhaps
you had sometimes unjustly triumphed over, all I could have
said would have yielded no diversion, and perhaps scarce
have obtained a reading, or at best no attention; the teacher,
like a greater, having no honour in his own country."
For all Defoe's profession that _Robinson Crusoe_ is an allegory of his
own life, it would be rash to take what he says too literally. The
reader who goes to the tale in search of a close allegory, in minute
chronological correspondence with the facts of the alleged original,
will find, I expect, like myself, that he has gone on a wild-goose
chase. There is a certain general correspondence. Defoe's own life is
certainly as instructive as Crusoe's in the lesson of invincible
patience and undaunted resolution. The shipwreck perhaps corresponds
with his first bankruptcy, with which it coincides in point of time,
having happened just twenty-eight years before. If Defoe had a real man
Friday, who had learnt all his arts till he could practise them as well
as himself, the fact might go to explain his enormous productiveness as
an author. But I doubt whether the allegory can be pushed into such
details. Defoe's fancy was quick enough to give an allegorical meaning
to any tale. He might have found in Moll Flanders, with her five
marriages and ultimate prostitution, corresponding to his own five
political marriages and the dubious conduct of his later years, a closer
allegory in some respects than in the life of the shipwrecked sailor.
The idea of calling _Robinson Crusoe_ an allegory was in all probability
an after-thought, perhaps suggested by a derisive parody which had
appeared, entitled _The life and strange surprising adventures of Daniel
de Foe, of London, Hosier, who lived all alone in the uninhabited island
of Great Britain_, and so forth.
If we study any writing of Defoe's in connexion with the circumstances
of its production, we find that it is many-sided in its purposes, as
full of side aims as a nave is full of spokes. These supplementary moral
chapters to _Robinson Crusoe_, admirable as the reflections are in
themselves, and naturally as they are made to arise out of the incidents
of the hero's life, contain more than meets the eye till we connect them
with the author's position. Calling the tale an allegory served him in
two ways. In the first place, it added to the interest of the tale
itself by presenting it in the light of a riddle, which was left but
half-revealed, though he declared after such explanation as he gave that
"the riddle was now expounded, and the intelligent reader might see
clearly the end and design of the whole work." In the second place, the
allegory was such an image of his life as he wished, for good reasons,
to impress on the public mind. He had all along, as we have seen, while
in the secret service of successive governments, vehemently protested
his independence, and called Heaven and Earth to witness that he was a
poor struggling, unfortunate, calumniated man. It was more than ever
necessary now when people believed him to be under the insuperable
displeasure of the Whigs, and he was really rendering them such
dangerous service in connexion with the Tory journals, that he should
convince the world of his misfortunes and his honesty. The _Serious
Reflections_ consist mainly of meditations on Divine Providence in times
of trouble, and discourses on the supreme importance of honest dealing.
They are put into the mouth of Robinson Crusoe, but the reader is warned
that they occurred to the author himself in the midst of real incidents
in his own life. Knowing what public repute said of him, he does not
profess never to have strayed from the paths of virtue, but he implies
that he is sincerely repentant, and is now a reformed character. "Wild
wicked Robinson Crusoe does not pretend to honesty himself." He
acknowledges his early errors. Not to do so would be a mistaken piece of
false bravery. "All shame is cowardice. The bravest spirit is the best
qualified for a penitent. He, then, that will be honest, must dare to
confess that he has been a knave." But the man that has been sick is
half a physician, and therefore he is both well fitted to counsel
others, and being convinced of the sin and folly of his former errors,
is of all men the least likely to repeat them. Want of courage was not a
feature in Defoe's diplomacy. He thus boldly described the particular
form of dishonesty with which, when he wrote the description, he was
practising upon the unconscious Mr. Mist.
"There is an ugly word called cunning, which is very pernicious
to it [honesty], and which particularly injures it by
hiding it from our discovery and making it hard to find.
This is so like honesty that many a man has been deceived
with it, and have taken one for t'other in the markets: nay,
I have heard of some who have planted this _wild honesty_, as
we may call it, in their own ground, have made use of it in
their friendship and dealings, and thought it had been the
true plant. But they always lost credit by it, and that was
not the worst neither, for they had the loss who dealt with
them, and who chaffered for a counterfeit commodity; and
we find many deceived so still, which is the occasion there is
such an outcry about false friends, and about sharping and
tricking in men's ordinary dealings with the world."
A master-mind in the art of working a man, as Bacon calls it, is surely
apparent here. Who could have suspected the moralist of concealing the
sins he was inclined to, by exposing and lamenting those very sins?
There are other passages in the _Serious Reflections_ which seem to have
been particularly intended for Mist's edification. In reflecting what a
fine thing honesty is, Crusoe expresses an opinion that it is much more
common than is generally supposed, and gratefully recalls how often he
has met with it in his own experience. He asks the reader to note how
faithfully he was served by the English sailor's widow, the Portuguese
captain, the boy Xury, and his man Friday. From these allegoric types,
Mist might select a model for his own behaviour. When we consider the
tone of these _Serious Reflections_, so eminently pious, moral, and
unpretending, so obviously the outcome of a wise, simple, ingenuous
nature, we can better understand the fury with which Mist turned upon
Defoe when at last he discovered his treachery. They are of use also in
throwing light upon the prodigious versatility which could dash off a
masterpiece in fiction, and, before the printer's ink was dry, be
already at work making it a subordinate instrument in a much wider and
more wonderful scheme of activity, his own restless life.
It is curious to find among the _Serious Reflections_ a passage which
may be taken as an apology for the practices into which Defoe,
gradually, we may reasonably believe, allowed himself to fall. The
substance of the apology has been crystallized into an aphorism by the
author of Becky Sharp, but it has been, no doubt, the consoling
philosophy of dishonest persons not altogether devoid of conscience in
all ages.
"Necessity makes an honest man a knave; and if the
world was to be the judge, according to the common received
notion, there would not be an honest poor man alive."
"A rich man is an honest man, no thanks to him, for he
would be a double knave to cheat mankind when he had no
need of it. He has no occasion to prey upon his integrity,
nor so much as to touch upon the borders of dishonesty.
Tell me of a man that is a very honest man; for he pays
everybody punctually, runs into nobody's debt, does no man
any wrong; very well, what circumstances is he in? Why,
he has a good estate, a fine yearly income, and no business to
do. The Devil must have full possession of this man, if he
should be a knave; for no man commits evil for the sake of
it; even the Devil himself has some farther design in sinning,
than barely the wicked part of it. No man is so hardened
in crimes as to commit them for the mere pleasure of
the fact; there is always some vice gratified; ambition, pride,
or avarice makes rich men knaves, and necessity the poor."
This is Defoe's excuse for his backslidings put into the mouth of
_Robinson Crusoe_. It might be inscribed also on the threshold of each
of his fictitious biographies. Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Roxana, are
not criminals from malice; they do not commit crimes for the mere
pleasure of the fact. They all believe that but for the force of
circumstances they might have been orderly, contented, virtuous members
of society.
A Colonel, a London Arab, a child of the criminal regiment, began to
steal before he knew that it was not the approved way of making a
livelihood. Moll and Roxana were overreached by acts against which they
were too weak to cope. Even after they were tempted into taking the
wrong turning, they did not pursue the downward road without
compunction. Many good people might say of them, "There, but for the
grace of God, goes myself." But it was not from the point of view of a
Baxter or a Bunyan that Defoe regarded them, though he credited them
with many edifying reflections. He was careful to say that he would
never have written the stories of their lives, if he had not thought
that they would be useful as awful examples of the effects of bad
education and the indulgence of restlessness and vanity; but he enters
into their ingenious shifts and successes with a joyous sympathy that
would have been impossible if their reckless adventurous living by their
wits had not had a strong charm for him. We often find peeping out in
Defoe's writings that roguish cynicism which we should expect in a man
whose own life was so far from being straightforward. He was too much
dependent upon the public acceptance of honest professions to be eager
in depreciating the value of the article, but when he found other people
protesting disinterested motives, he could not always resist reminding
them that they were no more disinterested than the Jack-pudding who
avowed that he cured diseases from mere love of his kind. Having yielded
to circumstances himself, and finding life enjoyable in dubious paths,
he had a certain animosity against those who had maintained their
integrity and kept to the highroad, and a corresponding pleasure in
showing that the motives of the sinner were not after all so very
different from the motives of the saint.
The aims in life of Defoe's thieves and pirates are at bottom very
little different from the ambition which he undertakes to direct in the
_Complete English Tradesman_, and their maxims of conduct have much in
common with this ideal. Self-interest is on the look-out, and
Self-reliance at the helm.
"A tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and
blood about him, no passions, no resentment; he must never
be angry--no, not so much as seem to be so, if a customer
tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of goods, and scarce
bids money for anything; nay, though they really come to
his shop with no intent to buy, as many do, only to see what
is to be sold, and though he knows they cannot be better
pleased than they are at some other shop where they intend
to buy, 'tis all one; the tradesman must take it, he must place
it to the account of his calling, that 'tis his business to be ill-used,
and resent nothing; and so must answer as obligingly
to those who give him an hour or two's trouble, and buy
nothing, as he does to those who, in half the time, lay out
ten or twenty pounds. The case is plain; and if some do
give him trouble, and do not buy, others make amends and
do buy; and as for the trouble, 'tis the business of the shop."
All Defoe's heroes and heroines are animated by this practical spirit,
this thorough-going subordination of means to ends. When they have an
end in view, the plunder of a house, the capture of a ship, the
ensnaring of a dupe, they allow neither passion, nor resentment, nor
sentiment in any shape or form to stand in their way. Every other
consideration is put on one side when the business of the shop has to
be attended to. They are all tradesmen who have strayed into unlawful
courses. They have nothing about them of the heroism of sin; their
crimes are not the result of ungovernable passion, or even of antipathy
to conventional restraints; circumstances and not any law-defying bias
of disposition have made them criminals. How is it that the novelist
contrives to make them so interesting? Is it because we are a nation of
shopkeepers, and enjoy following lines of business which are a little
out of our ordinary routine? Or is it simply that he makes us enjoy
their courage and cleverness without thinking of the purposes with which
these qualities are displayed? Defoe takes such delight in tracing their
bold expedients, their dexterous intriguing and manoeuvring, that he
seldom allows us to think of anything but the success or failure of
their enterprises. Our attention is concentrated on the game, and we pay
no heed for the moment to the players or the stakes. Charles Lamb says
of _The Complete English Tradesman_ that "such is the bent of the book
to narrow and to degrade the heart, that if such maxims were as catching
and infectious as those of a licentious cast, which happily is not the
case, had I been living at that time, I certainly should have
recommended to the grand jury of Middlesex, who presented The Fable of
the Bees, to have presented this book of Defoe's in preference, as of a
far more vile and debasing tendency. Yet if Defoe had thrown the
substance of this book into the form of a novel, and shown us a
tradesman rising by the sedulous practice of its maxims from errand-boy
to gigantic capitalist, it would have been hardly less interesting than
his lives of successful thieves and tolerably successful harlots, and
its interest would have been very much of the same kind, the interest of
dexterous adaptation of means to ends."