Маргарет Олифант
Historical Characters in the Reign of Queen Anne
If excuses are to be sought for Defoe’s conduct in this first beginning of his slavery, it will not be difficult to find them. The age, for one thing, was corrupt through and through. There was not a statesman but had two strings to his bow, nor a politician of any description who did not attempt to serve two masters. To hold the balance between Hanover and St.-Germain, ready to perform a demi-volt in the air at any moment as the scale should turn, was the science of the day. On the other hand, Defoe was now a ruined man, with a family to support, and nothing but his busy and inexhaustible pen to do it with. The material inducement of a certain income to fall back upon, whatever
might be the chances of journalism, must have been very strong. And what was stronger still was the delight of his own vivacious, restless, ready mind, with its sense of boundless power and infinite resource, to which difficulty was a delight and the exercise of walking over hot coals or dancing on a sword-point the most exhilarating possibility, in making its triumphant way over obstacles which would have baffled almost all his contemporaries. “The danger’s self was lure alone” to this skilled and cunning fencer, this master of all the arts. In a very different sense from that of Tennyson’s noble hero, “Faith Unfaithful” was inspiration and strength to him, and to be falsely true the most delightful situation. He loved to support his principles by a hundred dodges, and plead them from the other side, and make of himself the devil’s advocate in the interest of heaven. All this was life to his mind. He must have had a positive pleasure in proving to himself first, and then to all England, that the happiest thing a Whig could do was to find the Tory measures exactly those which he would have recommended, and that his allegiance to the queen required a change of policy on his part whenever circumstances compelled her to change her ministry. It was all devotion—not time-serving, as the vulgar thought. Defoe took infinite pleasure in proving that it was so, in making everything clear. The commonplace and humdrum expedient of following your party would have been dull to him—a proceeding without interest as without danger. He wanted excitement, obstacles to get over; a position which would make sudden claims upon his ingenuity to account for and fortify it. Such a mind is rare, and still more rarely is it accompanied by genius. But when such a combination does occur it is a very curious spectacle.
In the mean time, however, all that Defoe had to do was simple enough. He had to support peace and the union—two things which in his free estate he had already advocated with all his powers. He did it with the utmost skill, fervor, and success, and to all appearance contributed much to the great public act which was the subject of so many struggles and resistances on the part of the smaller nation—the union. This great expedient, of which from the first he had seen the advantage, Defoe worked for with unwearying zeal. He praised and caressed Caledonia—upon which subject he wrote one of those vigorous essays in verse which he called poetry—and the tolerance of the Presbyterian Church, and the good sense of the nation generally, which was not always perceptible to English politicians; and even risked a visit to Edinburgh in performance of the orders of the government, though at the risk of rude handling to himself. In all this there cannot be the slightest doubt that he was entirely honest and patriotic, and acted from an enlightened personal view of the necessities of the case. When the curious incident of the Sacheverell prosecution occurred, he had once more a subject entirely to his own mind, and expressed his own feelings in supporting with all his might the measures of the government against that High Church firebrand, one of the chief of those whom he had held up to public ridicule in the “Shortest Way.” So far he was fortunate, being employed upon subjects entirely congenial to his mind, and on which he had already strong convictions. The equivocal part of the matter is that he never ceased to assert and insist upon his independence. “Contemn,” he says, “as not worth mentioning, the suggestions of some people of my being employed to carry on the interests of a party. I have never loved any party, but with my utmost zeal have sincerely espoused the great and original interest of this nation and of all nations—I mean truth and liberty”—which was the truth, yet not all the truth. Again, with still more violent protestations, he refers to his private circumstances, of which nothing is known, to prove how little he was protected by power. It would seem from this statement that he was still being pursued for the remnant of old debts, or those new ones with which the failure of his tile factory and his long imprisonment had saddled him.
If paid, gentlemen, for writing [he cries], if hired, if employed, why still harassed with merciless and malicious men; why pursued to all extremities of law for old accounts which you clear other men of every day? Why oppressed, distressed, and driven from his family, and from all his prospects of delivering them and himself? Is this the fate of men employed and hired? Is this the figure the agents of courts and princes make?
The argument is a feeble one for such a practised reasoner as Defoe, without considering the trifling detail that it was untrue, for debts are by no means unknown to favorites of the crown. Nor could he have been saved by Harley’s pay, which probably was never very great, from the consequences of previous misfortunes. The reader will think that a judicious silence would have been more appropriate, but that was not Defoe’s way. The only wonder is that he did not adduce such detailed evidence of his own freedom as would have deceived any man, and shown to demonstration that it was he who subsidized the ministry, and not they him. The wonderful thing is that he was free through all, maintaining his own favorite opinions, working as an independent power. Servile journalists have existed in plenty, but seldom one who took the pay of his masters and served their interests, yet fought under his own flag with honesty and a good conscience all the while.
This happy state, however, did not last. Harley fell, but with his last breath (as a minister) adjured his champion not to sacrifice himself, but to come to an understanding with his successor, Godolphin. This necessitated a certain revolution in respect to peace, which Defoe managed cleverly with the excellent device above mentioned. And there was still higher ground which he felt himself entitled to take. The public safety was involved in the stability of the new ministry such as it was. And he faces the dilemma with boundless pluck and assurance. “Though I don’t like the crew, I won’t sink the ship; I’ll pump and heave and haul and do everything I can, though he that pulls with me were my enemy. The reason is plain. We are all in the ship and must sink or swim together.” These admirable reasonings brought him at last to the calm rectitude of the following conclusion:
It occurred to me instantly as a principle for my conduct that it was not material to me what ministers her Majesty was pleased to employ. My duty was to go along with every ministry so far as they did not break in upon the constitution and the laws and liberties of my country, my part being only the duty of a subject, viz: to submit to all lawful commands, and to enter into no service that was not justifiable by the laws, to all of which I have exactly obliged myself.
When Harley returned to power, another modification became necessary, but Defoe piously felt it was providential that he should thus be thrown back upon his original protector; and had the matter ended here, as was long supposed, it is difficult to see what indictment could be brought against him. It is not expedient certainly that a director of public opinion should have state pay, and does not look well when the secret is betrayed. But so long as the scope of all his productions is good, honest, and patriotic, with only as much submission in trifles as is inevitable, the bargain is a personal meanness rather than a public crime, and this was long supposed to have been the case. It was believed that after the death of Queen Anne and Harley’s final fall, Defoe’s eloquent mouth was closed, and he disappeared into the calm of private life to earn a better hire and a more lasting influence through the two immortal works of fiction by which alone, but for the painful labors of biographers, his name would have been known. Had the matter been left so, how much happier would it have been for the hero of this romance of literary life, how much more edifying for posterity! We could have imagined the tired warrior retiring from that hot and painful field in which even the laurels were not worth the plucking, where defeat was miserable and success mean, and scarcely any combatant could keep his honor intact, to the quietness of some suburban house in which his three pretty daughters could care for him and idolize him, and where his wonderful imagination, no longer a slave to the exigencies of political warfare, could weave its dreams into a sober certainty of life awake. We should then have said of the author of “Robinson Crusoe” and the “Journal of the Plague,” that in his poverty and anxiety and overhaste he had been beguiled into a bargain which might have been a shameful one had not his marvelous power of seeing every side of a subject, and that insight of genius which divines the real unity of honest souls through all the external diversities which fill the limited vision of common men, carried him triumphantly through. And upon what real fault there was we should have thrown a veil. The age would have borne the blame—an age which was corrupt to the core, and in which men changed their principles every day. In the garden at Newington, where the young ladies entertained their lovers, we could have pictured him benevolent and friendly in the flowing peruke under which his keen eyes sparkled, looking on at the love-making with prudent, tradesmanlike thoughts of Sophia’s portion, and how much the young people would have to set up housekeeping upon, coming in not inappropriately between the pages of Crusoe—perhaps taking a suggestion about Robinson’s larder from some passing talk about the storeroom, or modifying for the use of Friday some rustical remark of the young serving-man from the country, or in the renewing of old recollections produced by some old friend’s visit finding an anecdote, a detail, to incorporate into the “Journal of the Plague.” And we should have asked ourselves by what strange play of genius the unenchanted island, where all the sober elaborations of fact clothed so completely the vivid realizations of imagination, should have risen out of the mists amid those trim, old-fashioned alleys, and green plots, and stiff parterres of flowers.
Alas! That demon of research which in its poking and prying sometimes puts old bones together, and sometimes scatters to the winds the ashes of the dead, has spoiled this pleasant picture. Impelled by its influence, an unwary or else too painstaking student, some twenty years ago, was seized with the idea of roaming the earth in search of relics of Defoe. And the diabolical powers which put this fatal pursuit into his mind directed him to a bundle of yellow papers in the State Paper Office which has, alas! for ever and ever made an end of our man of genius. These treacherous papers give us to wit under his own hand that he was in reality in full action in the most traitorous of employments during the period of his supposed retirement. The following, which is the first of these fatally self-elucidatory letters, will reveal at once the inconceivable occupation to which Defoe in his downfall lent himself. He had perhaps compromised himself too much, and been too completely identified with Harley at the end to be considered capable of more honorable and evident employment. The letter is addressed to the secretary of the minister who had given him his disgraceful office:
It was proposed by my Lord Townsend that I should appear as if I were as before under the displeasure of the government, and separated from the Whigs, and that I might be more serviceable in a kind of disguise than if I appeared openly. In the interval of this, Dyer, the “News-Letter” writer, being dead, and Dormer, his successor, being unable by his troubles to carry on that work, I had an offer of a share in the property as well as in the management of that work.
I immediately acquainted my Lord Townsend of it, who, by Mr. Buckley, let me know it would be a very acceptable piece of service, for that letter was really very prejudicial to the public, and the most difficult to come at in a judicial way in case of offense given. My Lord was pleased to add, by Mr. Buckley, that he would consider my service in that case, as he afterwards did.
Upon this I engaged in it, and that so far, that though the property was not wholly my own, yet the conduct and government of the style of news was so entirely in me, that I ventured to assure His Lordship the sting of that mischievous paper should be entirely taken out, though it was granted that the style should continue Tory, as it was, that the party might be amused and not set up another, which would have destroyed the design, and this part I therefore take entirely on myself still.
This went on for a year before my Lord Townsend went out of the office, and His Lordship, in consideration of the service, made me the appointment which Mr. Buckley knows of, with promise of a further allowance as service presented.
My Lord Sunderland, to whose goodness I had many years ago been obliged, when I was in a secret commission sent to Scotland, was pleased to approve and continue this service, and the appointment annexed, and, with His Lordship’s approbation I introduced myself, in the disguise of a translator of the foreign news, to be so far concerned in this weekly paper of Mist’s as to be able to keep it within the circle of a secret management, also prevent the mischievous part of it, and yet neither Mist, or any of those concerned with him, have the least guess or suspicion by whose direction I do it.
There is nothing, it seems to us, for any apologist to say in explanation of this extraordinary statement. The emissary of a Whig and Hanoverian government acting as editor of a Tory and Jacobite newspaper,—nay, of three newspapers,—in order to take the harm out of them, to amuse the Tory party with a pretense of style and subjects suitable to their views, while balking all their purposes, is at once the most ingenious and the most shameless of all devices. It continued for a long period, and was very successful. But when the deceit was discovered at last, Mist, the deluded publisher, made a murderous assault upon the deceiver, and the journalists of the period seem to have risen unanimously against him. That Defoe must have fallen sadly before he came to this is very evident; but how he fell, except by the natural vengeance of deterioration, which makes a man who has long paltered with the truth unable at last to distinguish the gradations which separate the doubtful from the criminal, no one can say. He must, however, have fallen indeed in position and importance before he could be put to such miserable work; and he must have fallen more fatally, like that other son of the morning, deep down into hades, where he became the father of lies and the betrayer of mankind, before he could have been capable of this infamous mission.
We turn with relief to the work which, of all these manifold labors, is the only portion which has really survived the effects of time. Defoe’s political writings, with all their lucidity, their brilliant good sense, daring satire, and astonishing readiness and variety, are for the student, and retain a place among the materials of history, studied no longer for their own sake, but for the elucidations they may give. But “Robinson Crusoe” lives by his own right, and will, we may confidently affirm, after the long trial he has had, never die. We need not discuss the other works of fiction which are all as characteristic as distinct narratives of apparent fact, as carefully elaborated in every detail. They are almost all excellent in their beginning, but, a fault which is shared by Crusoe himself, run into such a prodigality of detail toward their close, that the absence of dramatic construction and of any real inspiration of art, becomes painfully (or rather tediously, which is worse) apparent. We do not, however, share the opinion of those critics who disparage Defoe’s marvelous power of narrative. “The little art he is truly master of, of forging a story and imposing it on the world for truth,” is an art which he possesses in common with but very few who have ever lived; and even among these few he has it in a very high degree. The gift is peculiar; we are not moved by it to pity or tenderness, and not much to admiration of the hero. The inner circle of our emotions is seldom, if ever, entered; but, on the other hand, there is nothing in that island where the shipwrecked mariner finds a shelter, and which he makes into a home, which we do not know and see, as well as if we had dwelt in it like Robinson. It is an island which is added to the geography of the world. Not only would no child ever doubt of its existence, but to the most experienced reader it is far more true and real than half of those of which we have authentic histories, which our relatives and countrymen have visited and colonized. Those South Sea Islands, about which we have so many flowery volumes, are not half so certain. And every detail of the life of its solitary inhabitant comes up before us like our own personal proceedings—more than visible, incontestable experiences. Not one of us but could draw the picture of the solitary in his furs, with all his odd implements about him; and, more wonderful still, not a child from four upward but could tell who it was. The tale does not move us as do imaginative histories on a more poetic level; but in its humbler range it is as living as the best. And there is something in this very absence of emotion which gives a still more wonderful force to the tale. Men in such desperate circumstances, driven to the use of all their faculties for the mere preservation of their lives, have presumably but little time for feeling. The absorption of every faculty in this one primitive need brings a certain serenity, a calm which is like the hush of the solitude—the silence of the seas. The atmosphere is full of this stillness. There is the repose of Nature, not filled with reflections of human sentiment, but imposing her patience, her calm repetition of endless endeavor upon the solitary flung into her bosom; and there is a sobriety in the story which adds immensely to the power. Other unknown islands have been in fiction, but none where the progress of events was so gradual, where there were so few miraculous accessories. One of the most able of English romancers, the late Charles Reade, is the last who has carried us to a desolate island. His story is full of charm, of humor, and sentiment far beyond the reach of Defoe. Nothing could be more tender, more delightful, than the idyl of the two lovers cut off from all mankind, lost in the silence of the seas. But in every way his isle is an enchanted isle. Not only is it peopled with love and all the graces, but it is running over with every convenience,—everything that is useful and beautiful. The inexhaustible ingenuity of the lover is not more remarkable than the wealth of necessary articles of every kind that turns up at every step. He builds his lady a bower lined with mother-of-pearl; he clothes her in a cloak of sealskin; he finds jewels for her; she has but to wish and to have, as if Regent street had been within reach. Very different is the sober sanity of the elder narrative. Defoe knows nothing about lovers; all his heroes marry with prodigality; but he has no love, any more than he has pearls or gutta-percha, on his island. Conveniences come very slowly to Robinson Crusoe; he has to grope his way, and find his living hardly, patiently. Day after day, and year after year, the story-teller goes on working out the order of events. It is as leisurely as nature, as little helped by accident, as sober even as matter of fact, and yet what a potent, clear, all-realizing fancy—a faculty which in its limited sphere saw and felt and acted in completest appropriation of the circumstances—this sober imagination was!
He was fifty-eight at the time this book was written—a man worn with endless work and strife, but ever ready for more—a man who had fallen and failed, and made but little of his life. It is said that he was at his highest point of external prosperity when he published “Robinson Crusoe”; but when we remember that he was at that time engaged in the inconceivable muddle of “Mist’s Journal,” it seems almost impossible to believe this, or to understand how anything but poverty could drive him into such a disgraceful employment. No doubt, to a man who at heart had once been an honest man, and was so no more, it must have been a relief and blessed deliverance to escape away into the distant seas, to refresh his ever-active soul with the ingenious devices of the shipwrecked sailor, and bury himself in that life so different from his own, the savage necessities, the primitive cares. The goats and the parrot and poor Friday: what an ease and comfort to escape into their society after bamboozling Mist, and reporting to my lord at St. James’s! Was it a desperate expedient of nature to save him from utter self-contempt? Such a man, even if his conscience had grown callous, must have required some outlet from the dreadful slavery to which he had bound himself.
“Robinson Crusoe” is the work by which Defoe is best known, which is, after all, the most effectual guarantee that it is his best work. But it is not, to our thinking, worthy of being placed in competition with the “Journal of the Plague”—a history so real, so solemn and impressive, so full of the atmosphere and sentiment of the time, that it reaches a far higher point of literary art than anything else Defoe has written. For this is not prose alone, nor that art of making fiction look like truth, which is supposed to be his greatest excellence: it is one of the most impressive pictures of a historical incident which has struck the poetic imagination everywhere, and of which we have perhaps more authentic records than of any other historical episode. Neither Boccaccio nor Manzoni have equaled Defoe in the story of the plague. To the old Italian it was a horror from which the life-loving fled with loathing as well as fear, and which they tried to forget and put out of their sight. Defoe’s minute description of the argument carried on within his own mind by the narrator is curiously characteristic of the tendency to elaborate and explain which enters so largely into all his works. The mental condition of the respectable citizen, divided between concern for his life and concern for his property, seeing with reasonable eyes that death was not certain, but that in case of flight ruin was,—moved by the divination which he uses in all good faith, yet perhaps not with sufficient devoutness to have allowed himself to be guided by it had it been contrary to his previous dispositions, and at bottom by a certain vis inertiæ and disinclination to move, which is clearly indicated from the beginning,—is in his best manner, and so real that it is impossible to resist its air of absolute truthfulness. But the state of the shut-up streets, the dreadful sounds and sights, the brooding heat and stillness of the long and awful days, the cloud of fate that is about the doomed city, are beyond description impressive. This curious spectator of all things, this impartial yet eager looker-on, determined to see all that can be seen, prudent yet fearless, adopting every precaution, yet neglecting no means of investigation, inquiring everywhere, always with his eyes and ears open, at once a philosophical inquirer and an eager gossip, is without doubt Defoe himself. But he is also a marked figure of the time. He is like Pepys; he is almost, but for the unmistakable difference between the bourgeois and the fine gentleman, like Evelyn. He is one of the special kind of man born to illustrate that period. Pepys would have found means for some piece of junketing even in the midst of his alarm, whereas Defoe thinks of his property, when he has time to think of anything but the plague, which is a very natural modification consequent on the changes of the times. But they are at bottom the same. While, however, this central figure remains the characteristic but not elevated personage with whom we are already acquainted, the history which he records is done with a tragic force and completeness which it is impossible to surpass. In this there is nothing commonplace, no wearying monotony; the very statistics have a tragic solemnity in them; the awful unseen presence dominates everything. We scarcely breathe while we move about the streets emptied of all passers-by, or with a suspicious throng in the middle of the way keeping as far apart as possible from the houses. This is not mere prose: it is poetry in its most rare form; it is an ideal representation, in all its sober details, of one of the most tragical moments of human suffering and fate.
Nothing else that Defoe has done is on the same level. It is pitched on too high a key perhaps for the multitude. His innocent thief, “Colonel Jack,” begins with a picture both amusing and touching of the curious moral denseness and confusion of a street boy; his “Cavalier” is a charming young man. But both these and all the rest of Defoe’s heroes and heroines grow heavy and tedious at the end. The “Journal of the Plague” is not like them in this respect. The conclusion—the sudden surprise and delicious sense of relief, the joy which makes the passers-by stop and shake hands with one another in the streets, and the women call out from windows with tears and outcries of gladness—is sudden and overwhelming as the reality. We are caught in the growing despair, and suddenly in a moment deliverance comes. Here alone Defoe is not too long; the unexpected is brought in with a skill and force not less remarkable than that which in the previous pages has portrayed the slow growth and inevitable development of the misery. Up to this anticlimax of unlooked-for joy the calamity has grown, every new touch intensifying the awful reality. But the recovery is sudden, and told without an unnecessary word. It is the only instance in which Defoe has followed the instinct of a great artist and shown that he knew how to avail himself of the unwritten code and infallible methods of art.
We forget his shortcomings when we discuss this which is to our mind much his greatest work, and it is well that we should leave him in this disposition. He died mysteriously alone, after a period of wandering and hiding which nobody can explain. Whether he was in trouble with creditors, or with political enemies, or with the exasperated party which he had managed to outwit; whether he kept out of the way that his family might make better terms for themselves, or that he might keep the remains of his money out of the hands of an undutiful son, or a grasping son-in-law, nobody can tell. He died in remote lodgings, all alone, and his affairs were administered by a stranger, perhaps his landlady, no one knows. His domestic circumstances have been referred to during his life only in the vaguest way. He had a wife and a numerous family when he was put in the pillory; he had a wife, a son who was unkind, and three daughters at the end; but that is all we know. He died at seventy-two “of a lethargy,” no doubt fallen into the feebleness and hopelessness of lonely old age; and that is all. His life overflowed with activity and business. To be doing seems to have been a necessity of his being. But he never seems to have enjoyed the importance due to his powers, and in an age when men of letters filled the highest posts never would appear to have risen above his citizen circle, his shop-keeping ways. Something in the man must have accounted for this, but it is difficult to say what it was; for the age did not require a high standard of truthfulness, and the worst of his misdoings were kept secret from the public. Perhaps his manners were not such as society, though very easy in those days, could tolerate; perhaps—but this is simple guesswork. All we know of Defoe is that as a writer he was of the greatest influence and note, but as a man nothing. He died poor and alone; he had little reward for unexampled labor. When Addison was secretary of state, and Prior an ambassador, he was nobody—a sword in the hand of an unscrupulous statesman; a shopkeeper manufacturing his genius and selling it by the yard. A sadder conclusion never was told.
