Part 3 (1/2)
When De Foe wrote Alexander Selkirk, able seaman, was alive end had told his story of s.h.i.+pwreck to Sir Richard Steele, editor of the English Gentleman and of the Tattler, who wrote it up well--but not half as well as any one of ten thousand newspaper men of today could do under similar circ.u.mstances.
Now who that has read of Selkirk and Dampierre and Stradling does not remember the two famous s.h.i.+ps, the ”Cinque Ports” and the ”St. George?”
In every actvial book of the times, s.h.i.+p's names were sprinkled over the page as if they had been shaken out of the pepper box. But you inquire in vain the name of the slaver that wrecked ”poor Robinson Crusoe”--a name that would have been printed on his memory beyond forgetting because of the very misfortune itself. Now the book is the autobiography of a man whose only years of active life between eighteen and twenty-six were pa.s.sed as a sailor. It was written apparently after he was seventy-two years old, at the period when every trifling incident and name of youth would survive most brightly; yet he names no s.h.i.+ps, no sailor mates, carefully avoids all knowledge of or advantage attaching to any parts of s.h.i.+ps. It is out of character as a sailor's tale, showing that the author either did not understand the value of or was too indolent to acquire the s.h.i.+p knowledge that would give to his work the natural smell of salt water and the bilge. It is a landlubber's sea yarn.
Is it in character as a revelation of human nature? No man like unto Robinson Crusoe ever did live, does live, or ever will live, unless as a freak deprived of human emotions. The Robinson Crusoe of Despair Island was not a castaway, but the mature politician. Daniel Defoe of Newgate Prison. The castaway would have melted into loving recollections; the imprisoned lampoonist would have busied himself with schemes, ideas, arguments and combinations for getting out, and getting on. This poor Robin on the island weeps over nothing but his own sorrows, and, while pretending to bewail his solitude, turns aside coldly from companions.h.i.+ps next only in affection to those of men. He has a dog, two s.h.i.+p's cats (of whose ”eminent history” he promises something that is never related), tame goats and parrots. He gives none of them a name, he does not occupy his yearning for companions.h.i.+p and love by preparing comforts for them or by teaching them tricks of intelligence or amus.e.m.e.nt; and when he does make a stagger at teaching Poll to talk it is for the sole purpose of hearing her repeat ”Poor Robin Crusoe!”
The dog is dragged in to work for him, but not to be rewarded. He dies without notice, as do the cats, and not even a billet of wood marks their graves.
Could any being, with a drop of human blood in his veins, do that? He thinks of his father with tears in his eyes--because he did not escape the present solitude by taking the old man's advice! Does he recall his mother or any of the childish things that lie so long and deep in the heart of every natural man? Does he ever wonder what his old school-fellows, Bob Freckles and Pete Baker, are doing these solitary evenings when he sits under the tropics and hopes--could he not at least hope it?--that they are, thank G.o.d, alive and happy at York? He discourses like a parson of the utterly impossible affection that Friday had for his cannibal sire and tells you how n.o.ble, Christian and beautiful it was--as if, by Jove! a little of that virtue wouldn't have ornamented his own cold, emotionless, fishy heart!
He had no sentimental side. Think of those dreary, egotistic, awful evenings, when, for more than twenty years this infernal hypocrite kept himself company and tried patiently to deceive G.o.d by flattering Him about religion! It is impossible. Why thought turns as certainly to revery and recollection as gra.s.s turns to seed. He married. What was his wife's name? We know how much property she had. What were the names of the honest Portuguese Captain and the London woman who kept his money?
The cold selfishness and gloomy egotism of this creature mark him as a monster and not as a man.
So the book is not in character as an autobiography, nor does it contain a single softening emotion to create sympathy. Let us see whether it be scholarly in its ease. The one line that strikes like a bolt of lightning is the height of absurdity. We have all laughed, afterward of course, at that--single--naked--foot--print. It could not have been there without others, unless Friday were a one legged man, or was playing the good old Scots game of ”hop-scotch!”
But the foot-print is not a circ.u.mstance to the cannibals. All the stage burlesques of Robinson Crusoe combined could not produce such funny cannibals as he discovered. Crusoe's cannibals ate no flesh but that of men! He had no great trouble contriving how to induce Friday to eat goat's fles.h.!.+ They took all the trouble to come to his island to indulge in picnics, during which they ate up folks, danced and then went home before night. When the big party of 31 arrived, they had with them one other cannibal of Friday's tribe, a Spaniard, and Friday's father. It appears they always carefully unbound a victim before despatching him.
They brought Friday pere for lunch, although he was old, decrepit and thin--a condition that always unfits a man among all known cannibals for serving as food. They reject them as we do stringy old roosters for spring chickens in the best society. Then Friday, born a cannibal and converted to Crusoe's peculiar religion, shows that in three years he has acquired all the emotions of filial affection prevalent at that time among Yorks.h.i.+re folk who attended dissenting chapels. More wonderful still! old Friday pere, immersed in age and cannibalism, has the corresponding paternal feeling. Crusoe never says exactly where these cannibals came from, but my own belief is that they came from that little Swiss town whence the little wooden animals for toy Noah's Arks also came.
A German savant--one of the patient sort that spend half a life writing a monograph on the variation of spots on the b.u.t.terfly's wings--could get a philosophical dissertation on Doubt out of Crusoe's troubles with pens, ink and paper; also clothes. In the volume I am using, on page 86, third paragraph, he says: ”I should lose my reckoning of time for want of books, and pen and ink.” So he kept it by notches in wood, he tells in the fourth paragraph. In paragraph 5, same page, he says: ”We are to observe that among the many things I brought out of the s.h.i.+p, I got several of less value, etc., which I omitted setting down as in particular pens, ink and paper!” Same paragraph, lower down: ”I shall show that while my ink lasted I kept things very exact, but after that was gone I could not make any ink by any means that I could devise.”
Page 87, second paragraph: ”I wanted many things, notwithstanding all the many things that I had ama.s.sed together, and of these ink was one!”
Page 88, first paragraph: ”I drew up my affairs in writing!” Now, by George! did you ever hear of more appearing and disappearing pens, ink and paper?
The adventures of his clothes were as remarkable as his own. On his very first trip to the wreck, after landing, he went ”rummaging for clothes, of which I found enough,” but took no more than he wanted for present use. On the second trip he ”took all the men's clothes” (and there were fifteen souls on board when she sailed). Yet in his famous debit and credit calculations between good and evil he sets these down, page 88:
EVIL
GOOD -------------------------------------------------- I have no clothes to
But I am in a hot climate, cover me.
where, if I had
clothes (!) I could hardly
wear them.
On page 147, bewailing his lack of a sieve, he says: ”Linen, I had none but what was mere rags.”
Page 158 (one year later): ”My clothes, too, began to decay; as to linen, I had had none a good while, except some checkered s.h.i.+rts, which I carefully preserved, because many times I could bear no other clothes on. I had almost three dozen of s.h.i.+rts, several thick watch coats, too hot to wear.”
So he tried to make jackets out of the watch coats. Then this ingenious gentleman, who had nothing to wear and was glad of it on account of the heat, which kept him from wearing anything but a s.h.i.+rt, and rendered watch coats unendurable, actually made himself a coat, waistcoat, breeches, cap and umbrella of skins with the hair on and wore them in great comfort! Page 175 he goes hunting, wearing this suit, belted by two heavy skin belts, carrying hatchet, saw, powder, shot, his heavy fowling piece and the goatskin umbrella--total weight of baggage and clothes about ninety pounds. It must have been a cold day!
Yet the first thing he does for the naked Friday thirteen years later is to give him a pair--of--LINEN--trousers! Poor Robin Crusoe--what a colossal liar was wasted on a desert island!
Of course, no boy sees the blemishes in ”Robinson Crusoe;” those are left to the Infallible Critic. The book is as ludicrous as ”Hamlet” from one aspect and as profound as ”Don Quixote” from another. In its pages the wonder tales and wonder facts meet and resolve; realism and idealism are joined--above all, there is a mystery no critic may solve. It is useless to criticize genius or a miracle, except to increase its wonder.
Who remembers anything in ”Crusoe” but the touch of the wizard's hand?
Who a.s.sociates the Duke of Athens, Hermia and Helena, with Bottom and Snug, t.i.tania, Oberon and Puck? Any literary master mechanic might real off ten thousand yards of the Greek folks or of ”Pericles,” but when you want something that runs thus: