Daniel Defoe by William Minto

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"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."

CHAPTER X.

HIS MYSTERIOUS END.

"The best step," Defoe says, after describing the character of a
deceitful talker, "such a man can take is to lie on, and this shows the
singularity of the crime; it is a strange expression, but I shall make
it out; their way is, I say, to lie on till their character is
completely known, and then they can lie no longer, for he whom nobody
deceives can deceive nobody, and the essence of lying is removed; for
the description of a lie is that it is spoken to deceive, or the design
is to deceive. Now he that nobody believes can never lie any more,
because nobody can be deceived by him."

Something like this seems to have happened to Defoe himself. He touched
the summit of his worldly prosperity about the time of the publication
of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719). He was probably richer then than he had
been when he enjoyed the confidence of King William, and was busy with
projects of manufacture and trade. He was no longer solitary in
journalism. Like his hero, he had several plantations, and companions to
help him in working them. He was connected with four journals, and from
this source alone his income must have been considerable. Besides this,
he was producing separate works at the rate, on an average, of six a
year, some of them pamphlets, some of them considerable volumes, all of
them calculated to the wants of the time, and several of them extremely
popular, running through three or four editions in as many months. Then
he had his salary from the Government, which he delicately hints at in
one of his extant letters as being overdue. Further, the advertisement
of a lost pocket-book in 1726, containing a list of Notes and Bills in
which Defoe's name twice appears, seems to show that he still found time
for commercial transactions outside literature.[6] Altogether Defoe was
exceedingly prosperous, dropped all pretence of poverty, built a large
house at Stoke Newington, with stables and pleasure-grounds, and kept a
coach.

[Footnote 6: _Lee's Life_, vol. i. pp. 406-7.]

We get a pleasant glimpse of Defoe's life at this period from the notes
of Henry Baker, the naturalist, who married one of his daughters and
received his assistance, as we have seen, in starting _The Universal
Spectator_. Baker, original a bookseller, in 1724 set up a school for
the deaf and dumb at Newington. There, according to the notes which he
left of his courtship, he made the acquaintance of "Mr. Defoe, a
gentleman well known by his writings, who had newly built there a very
handsome house, as a retirement from London, and amused his time either
in the cultivation of a large and pleasant garden, or in the pursuit of
his studies, which he found means of making very profitable." Defoe "was
now at least sixty years of age, afflicted with the gout and stone, but
retained all his mental faculties entire." The, diarist goes on to say
that he "met usually at the tea-table his three lovely daughters, who
were admired for their beauty, their education, and their prudent
conduct; and if sometimes Mr. Defoe's disorders made company
inconvenient, Mr. Baker was entertained by them either singly or
together, and that commonly in the garden when the weather was
favourable." Mr. Baker fixed his choice on Sophia, the youngest
daughter, and, being a prudent lover, began negotiations about the
marriage portion, Defoe's part in which is also characteristic. "He
knew nothing of Mr. Defoe's circumstances, only imagined, from his very
genteel way of living, that he must be able to give his daughter a
decent portion; he did not suppose a large one. On speaking to Mr.
Defoe, he sanctioned his proposals, and said he hoped he should be able
to give her a certain sum specified; but when urged to the point some
time afterwards, his answer was that formal articles he thought
unnecessary; that he could confide in the honour of Mr. Baker; that when
they talked before, he did not know the true state of his own affairs;
that he found he could not part with any money at present; but at his
death his daughter's portion would be more than he had promised; and he
offered his own bond as security." The prudent Mr. Baker would not take
his bond, and the marriage was not arranged till two years afterwards,
when Defoe gave a bond for L500 payable at his death, engaging his house
at Newington as security.

Very little more is known about Defoe's family, except that his eldest
daughter married a person of the name of Langley, and that he speculated
successfully in South Sea Stock in the name of his second daughter, and
afterwards settled upon her an estate at Colchester worth L1020. 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. The same
writer declared that it was known "that the young Defoe was but a
stalking-horse and a tool, to bear the lash and the pillory in their
stead, for his wages; that he was the author of the most scandalous
part, but was only made sham proprietor of the whole, to screen the true
proprietors from justice."

This son does not appear in a favourable light in the troubles which
soon after fell upon Defoe, when Mist discovered his connexion with the
Government. Foiled in his assault upon him, Mist seems to have taken
revenge by spreading the fact abroad, and all Defoe's indignant denials
and outcries against Mist's ingratitude do not seem to have cleared him
from suspicion. 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. "Assure yourself, gentle reader," he says,[7] "I had
not published my project in this pamphlet, could I have got it inserted
in any of the journals without feeing the journalists or publishers. I
cannot but have the vanity to think they might as well have inserted
what I send them, _gratis_, as many things I have since seen in their
papers. But I have not only had the mortification to find what I sent
rejected, but to lose my originals, not having taken copies of what I
wrote." In this preface Defoe makes touching allusion to his age and
infirmities. He begs his readers to "excuse the vanity of an
over-officious old man, if, like Cato, he inquires whether or no before
he goes hence and is no more, he can yet do anything for the service of
his country." "The old man cannot trouble you long; take, then, in good
part his best intentions, and impute his defects to age and weakness."

[Footnote 7: Lee's _Life_, vol. i. p. 418.]

This preface was written in 1728; what happened to Defoe in the
following year is much more difficult to understand, and is greatly
complicated by a long letter of his own which has been preserved.
Something had occurred, or was imagined by him to have occurred, which
compelled him to fly from his home and go into hiding. He was at work on
a book to be entitled _The Complete English Gentleman_. Part of it was
already in type when he broke off abruptly in September, 1729, and fled.
In August, 1730, he sent from a hiding-place, cautiously described as
being about two miles from Greenwich, a letter to his son-in-law, Baker,
which is our only clue to what had taken place. It is so incoherent as
to suggest that the old man's prolonged toils and anxieties had at last
shaken his reason, though not his indomitable self-reliance. Baker
apparently had written complaining that he was debarred from seeing him.
"Depend upon my sincerity for this," Defoe answers, "that I am far from
debarring you. On the contrary, it would be a greater comfort to me than
any I now enjoy that I could have your agreeable visits with safety, and
could see both you and my dear Sophia, could it be without giving her
the grief of seeing her father _in tenebris_, and under the load of
insupportable sorrows." He gives a touching description of the griefs
which are preying upon his mind.

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