DEFOE AND DESERT ISLES

Evening Star, Issue 18394, 1 October 1923, Page 8

DEFOE AND DESERT ISLES

THE IMMORTAL CRUSOE,

In 1708 merchants of Bristol equipped an expedition. for the South Seas. Their ships were tho Duke, of thirty guns, under command of Captain Woodes Rogers, and the Duchess, twenty-five guns, Captain Courtney, and afterwards Captain Dover. The expedition carried Dampicr for pilot, and no man in England was bettor fitted for the post than tho old buccaneer. These ships sailed from England on August 1, doubled Cape Horn in December, and on January 31, 1709, came in eight of tho island of Juan Femandaz.

“On February 1,” wrote Woodcs Rogers, “wo came 1 before the island, haring had a good observation the day before. In the afternoon Captain Dover wont in the pinI naco to go ashore, though we could not bo less than four leagues off. As soon as it was dark wo saw a light ashore. Our boat, was then about a league off the island, and boro away for the ships. We wero all coni vinced the light was on the shore, and designed to make onr ships ready to engage, believing them to bo French ships at anchor, and wo must either fight thorn or want water. All this stir and apprehension arose, us we afterwards found, from one poor naked man, who passed in onr imagination at present for a Spanish garrison, a body of Frenchmen, or a crew of pirates.” The captain continued his narrative, that at last the pinnace was sent ashore, and it returned with “a man clothed in goats’ skins, who looked wilder than the first owners of them.” He had been on the island four years and four months. He had been left there by Captain S trad ling, of the Cinque Ports. His name was Alexander Selkirk, a Scotchman, who had been master of the Cinque Ports. So Alexander Selkirk, voyager and buccaneer, returned to England on October 14, 1711, after an absence of over eight years. Reports of his extraordinary life on the island brought him under notice of Richard Steele, who told of him and Iris history in the twenty-sixth number of the ‘Englishman.’ And the story of the young buccaneer, marooned on Juan Fernandez, fired the imagination of Daniel Defoe, pamphleteer, and gave the world its masterpiece of creative imagination—'The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner.’ Now the book was not based wholly on Selkirk's adventures. The title page of the first edition slated that Crusoe "lived eight and twenty years all alone in an uninhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the great river of Oroonoquo.” At least, tho island was not, intended entirely for Juan Fernandez, The probability is that Defoe used, in addition to the account of Selkirk and Dampier’s description of Juan Fernandez, in the ‘ Voyage,’ his knowledge of tho story of Peter Serrano, a Spanish sailor, who was cast away on one of tho cluster called tho Serrano Keys, in the Caribbean Sea. Serrano's story is contained in Garoilasco do la Vega’s ‘ Commentaries of Peru,’ translated by Sir Paul Rycaut in 1688. But Selkirk—-from the account of his lifo on the, island and its resemblance to the lifo of Crusoe—was- no doubt the original of ‘Robinson Cnisoe,’ and Selkirk is immortal because of Defoe’s romance. The first part was published on April 25, 1719. So Dofoo became the first and greatest of the writers of the talcs of desert islands in which young and old have delighted for 200 years. He first created the desert island of beloved story, and the shipwrecked mariner coining ashore naked and by sheer ingenuity and happy chance triumphing over nature—escaping thirst, starvation, and hostile savages. Naked—for in -the original version Robinson Crusoe came -ashore naked, ami a slip of the pen in this respect, was promptly seized upon by the Tory pamphleteer, Gildon. Gildon must have boon tormented by his jealousy of Defoe. He wrote a satirical attack on tho great romancer. Ho wanted to know how Crusoe could fill his pockets with biscuits when he was naked. Defoe quietly and promptly put his hero into breeches. The envy Defoe inspired in poor, spiteful Gildon really did not matter. Envy is a penally of success, and imitation is a tribute. For there have been imitations of Defoe's work ever since. A few of them have survived. There is ‘Peter Wilkins and the Flying Indians’— Robert Palteck’s story of 1751, which was described by a contemporary critic 'as the “illegitimate offspring of no very natural conjunction, like ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ ana ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ but much inferior to the manner of these two performances as to entertainment or utility.” ‘Peter WilIdns’ is quite a readable yarn still, but it is poor by comparison with tho masterpiece.

Then there is a hare-faced imitation by the eighteenth century hack Alexander Bicknell, who wrote as “ Edward Dorrington.” This imitation is ‘The English Hermit, or Surprising Adventures of Philip Quarll, who was Discovered in an Uninhabited Island in the South Seas, whore he lived about fifty years without any human assistance.’ While ‘Peter Wilkins’ is readable, 'Philip Quarll ’ is not. Engravings in an old edition by A. K. Newman, of Leadenhall street, London, show tho hermit as a majestic sort of minor prophet, bewhiskered, and wearing a respectable pair of trousers. Dorrington ” is quite nasty about Defoe. The preface states that his surprising narralivo is not so replete with vulgar stories as Robinson Crusoe,’ and not so inierspersod with a satirical vein as 'Gulliver’s Travels,’ yet it is certainly of more use to the public than either. Poor venomous hack! His romance is a dull performance. The hermit is tho prosiest of old bores. When he is found on his island he is “ a venerable o!d man, with a worshipful white heard, which ocyensb is naked breast, and a long bead of hair of the same color.*

_ When Tom Pinch, in ‘ Martin Chuzzlcwit,' visits Salisbury he secs in the bookshop “Robinson Crusoe calmly surveying Philip Quarll and the host of imitators, and calling Pinch to witness that ho of all tho crowd, has impressed one solitary footstep on tho shoro of boyish memory, whereof tho (.road of generations shall not stir the lightest grain of sand.” That gets the idea exactly up to that time. Grusoo need fear no rival, of course, io push him from bis place. Up to Tom Pinch’s time not one of (ho imitators had much chance of permanence ; but since then tlicro have been a few castaways or marooned buccaneers. There is Ben Gunn, of ‘Treasure Island’; Long John Silver, who would have murdered him in the flesh, is likely to keep Ben Gunn alivo in letters for years to come, Jim Hawkins meets him on the island burnt black with tho sun and clothed in totters of old ships’ canvas and sea cloth, "I’m poor Bon Gunn, I am,” he tells Jim. "and 1 haven't spoke with a Christian these three years." Bon, the marooned, will live; but what of ‘ Ala storm an Ready’? There are modem editions of Oaplain Marryat's famous yarn for the youngsters of 1841. Do tho youngsters of to-day read the tale? It is a capital one, except that, old Ready moralises like poor dead Philip Quarll. Did Marryat model Ready on Quarll? And isn't Mr fvoagrave a tedious parent, and Master "William a wretched young prig? Don’t the three mar the fine story of the desert island, and is not Ready's death at the hands of savages a relief? Marryat wrote it —did ho not?—instead of continuing, as the children wished, tho adventures of the ‘Swiss Family Robinson.’ That is a better yarn of a desert isle than ‘Masterman Ready,’ though its characters and characteristics suggest missionaries and an escaped menagerie. Marryat was writing a far finer storv of a desert isle just before his death in 1848—'The little Savage.’ Ho wrote only twenty-four chapters of it; the rest is thought io bo tho work of his son. He did nothing much bettor than those opening chapters concerning tho lad Frank liennikcr and the grim seaman Jackson away on their island. It is better than ■Staepoolo’s ‘The Blue Lagoon,’ good as this ia among tho stories of desert isles.

Tear after year up to Jeffery Famol, with ‘Black Rartlcmy's Treasure,’ (ho writers of romance have reverted' to the desert island, the (shipwrecked or marooned mariner, and Uio buccaneers. But none of them has approached Dofoo with i ‘ Robineon Crusoe.’