6 April: Boreham on Daniel Defoe

A Prince of Journalists
The outstanding fact about Daniel Defoe—the anniversary of whose death we mark today—is, not that he wrote "Robinson Crusoe," but that, preeminently a journalist, he presented the British people with their first real newspaper. Long before that time there had, of course, been papers of a kind. But they were feeble ventures, lacking practically all the qualities that go to make a modern journal. Everything was crude, clumsy, inartistic, yet it was the best of which the journalism of that day was capable. Then, all at once, Defoe set his wits to work and changed everything. It occurred to him that a newspaper might very well contain, not only the news, but illuminating comments on current happenings, together with articles that would furnish intelligent and valuable guidance on important public questions. He therefore launched his famous "Review," and, with its appearance, the history of modern journalism really began.

It was altogether in harmony with the adventurous and romantic tenor of Defoe's life that he was actually in prison when he established his celebrated journal. Such an enterprise was, in those days, a thankless task. Public opinion was a thing of fits and starts. A new sovereign ascended the throne, or a new government came into power, and, hey presto! the whole country changed its coat. The heroes of one day became the villains of the next, and, contrariwise, men passed at a bound from pillories to pedestals. The consequence was that, for years, Defoe was as much in prison as out of it. Indeed, the only authoritative personal description that we have of him is embodied in an advertisement offering a reward for his apprehension. Hunted and harried, his business went to pieces: his wife and family were denied all intercourse and communication with him: and, for a while, he was dead to all the world. Yet there were compensations.

When The Body Languishes The Soul Soars
As Milton's blindness enabled him to peer into ghostly realms that he had never previously explored, so, as in Bunyan's case, the incarceration of Defoe's body proved the emancipation of his mind. He brooded in solitude, and it was in the course of that silent and reflective process that the idea of his "Review" occurred to him. It was in prison, too, that he first conceived of "Robinson Crusoe." It was essentially a journalist's conception. Our literature is fairly rich in tales of shipwreck; yet no such story ever written has seriously challenged the supremacy of Defoe's masterpiece. And, when we ask ourselves for an explanation of his peerless achievement, we are startled by the discovery that whilst others, as novelists, have written of life on a desert island, Defoe approached the same task in the spirit of the journalist.

In all other romances of maritime adventure, we pass from one set of sensational circumstances to another. In "Robinson Crusoe" we have no such exciting transitions. There is scarcely one page in the book that can be called thrilling. Even the shipwreck itself is not dramatically depicted. "Why," asks Dr. A. Compton Rickett, in his "History of English Literature," "why do boys take "Robinson Crusoe" so warmly to their hearts? It is because, in a journalistic way, Defoe is always giving us the small details; he tells us the very things that a boy is curious to know. He explains how many biscuits Crusoe ate, how he built his raft, and what the parrot talked about." Just once, in the episode of the footprint on the sand, he perpetuates a denouement of the kind so dear to the hearts of such thrill-makers as Charles Reade. For one brief and hectic moment Defoe became a real full-blooded novelist; but he seems ashamed of the lapse, hangs his head in contrition and never attempted anything of the kind again.

Robinson Crusoe As A Philosophy Of Life
In the most extraordinary way Defoe combines the romantically imaginative and the severely prosaic. Whether he is giving us history or fiction matters little: he gives it to us as a journalist would give it. We know exactly how his characters dressed, how they talked, what they ate and how they spent their money. Nothing is too trivial; nothing too matter of fact. In a word, Defoe is a journalist to the fingertips; and, although his influence on modern journalism is seldom recognised, his work in that connection is more notable and more enduring than that of any person of any age. Added to all this stands the fact that "Robinson Crusoe" is a great religious classic. Unfortunately the abbreviated popular editions omit the passages that Defoe himself regarded as vital. In the book as Defoe wrote it, the more serious aspects of life loom large: and nobody can read the narrative without being touched by Crusoe's vivid delineation of his spiritual pilgrimage. The record is all the more impressive when we reflect that, in his original preface to the third part of the book, Defoe explains that the deeper experiences of his hero are in reality a reflection of his own: that portion of the narrative is to be regarded as autobiographical.

"Robinson Crusoe" is a tonic for lonely souls. It is designed to show that, in the last analysis, the human soul is a terribly solitary affair. Robinson Crusoe's most sensational discovery on the island was his discovery of God. Defoe said in prose what Whittier sang in verse:

I have not been where islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only
know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care.

Defoe lies, in company with John Bunyan, the younger Cromwell, William Blake, Isaac Watts, Thomas Goodwin, John Owen, the mother of the Wesleys and a host of other notabilities, in the old burying place at Bunhill Fields, in the very heart of the city of London. And over his grassy grave the schoolboys of England, with their pocket money, have erected a stately obelisk, which, together with the work that particularly excited their admiration and gratitude, will keep his memory green for many generations to come.

F W Boreham

Image: Daniel Defoe