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CAPTAIN SINGLETON
By Daniel Defoe
With An Introduction By Edward Garnett
[Transcriber's Note: In the print copy, the following words and those ofthe title page are written in intricate, illuminated calligraphy.]
A TALE WHICH HOLDETH CHILDREN FROM PLAY AND OLD MEN FROM THE CHIMNEYCORNER
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
THE LIFE ADVENTURES AND PIRACIES OF THE FAMOUS CAPTAIN SINGLETON
PREFACE
That all Defoe's novels, with the exception of "Robinson Crusoe," shouldhave been covered with the dust of neglect for many generations, is aplain proof of how much fashions in taste affect the popularity of theBritish classics. It is true that three generations or so ago, Defoe'sworks were edited by both Sir Walter Scott and Hazlitt, and that thismasterly piece of realism, "Captain Singleton," was reprinted a fewyears back in "The Camelot Classics," but it is safe to say that out ofevery thousand readers of "Robinson Crusoe" only one or two willhave even heard of the "Memoirs of a Cavalier," "Colonel Jack," "MollFlanders," or "Captain Singleton." It is indeed distressing to thinkthat while many scores of thousands of copies of Lord Lytton's flashyromance, "Paul Clifford," have been devoured by the public, "CaptainSingleton" has remained unread and almost forgotten. But the explanationis simple. Defoe's plain and homely realism soon grew to be thoughtvulgar by people who themselves aspired to be refined and genteel. Therapid spread of popular education, in the middle of last century, wasresponsible for a great many aberrations of taste, and the works of thetwo most English of Englishmen, Defoe and Hogarth, were judged to behardly fitting for polite society, as we may see from Lamb's Essay onHogarth, and from an early edition of Chambers's "Cyclopaedia of EnglishLiterature" (1843), where we are told: "Nor is it needful to show howelegant and reflective literature, especially, tends to moralise, tosoften, and to adorn the soul and life of man." "Unfortunately thetaste or _circumstances of Defoe led him mostly into low life_, and hischaracters are such _as we cannot sympathise with_. The whole arcanaof roguery and villany seems to have been open to him.... It might bethought that the good taste which led Defoe to write in a style of suchpure and unpretending English, instead of the inflated manner of vulgarwriters, _would have dictated a more careful selection of his subjects_,and kept him from wandering so frequently into the low and disgustingpurlieus of vice. But this moral and tasteful discrimination seems tohave been wholly wanting," &c. The 'forties were the days when criticsstill talked learnedly of the "noble style," &c., "the vulgar," of"sinking" or "rising" with "the subject," the days when Books of Beautywere in fashion, and Rembrandt's choice of beggars, wrinkled faces andgrey hairs, for his favourite subjects seemed a low and reprehensibletaste in "high art." Though critics to-day still ingenuously confound anartist's subject with his treatment of it, and prefer scenes of life tobe idealised rather than realised by writers, we have advanced a littlesince the days of the poet Montgomery, and it would be difficult nowto find anybody writing so confidently--"Unfortunately the taste orcircumstances of Defoe led him mostly into low life," however much thecritic might believe it. But let us glance at a few passages in "CaptainSingleton," which may show us why Defoe excels as a realist, and whyhis descriptions of "low life" are artistically as perfect as anydescriptions of "higher life" in the works of the English novelists.Take the following description of kidnapping:--
"The woman pretending to take me up in her arms and kiss me, and play with me, draws the girl a good way from the house, till at last she makes a fine story to the girl, and bids her go back to the maid, and tell her where she was with the child; that a gentlewoman had taken a fancy to the child and was kissing it, but she should not be frightened, or to that purpose; for they were but just there; and so while the girl went, she carried me quite away.--Page 2.
Now here, in a single sentence, Defoe catches for us the whole souland character of the situation. It _seems_ very simple, but it sums upmarvellously an exact observation and knowledge of the arts of the gipsychild-stealer, of her cunning flattery and brassy boldness, and we cansee the simple little girl running back to the house to tell the nursethat a fine lady was kissing the child, and had told her to tell wherethey were and she should not be frightened, &c.; and this picture againcalls up the hue and cry after the kidnappers and the fruitless hopes ofthe parents. In a word, Defoe has condensed in the eight simple lines ofhis little scene all that is essential to its living truth; and let theyoung writer note that it is ever the sign of the master to do in threewords, or with three strokes, what the ordinary artist does in thirty.Defoe's imagination is so extraordinarily comprehensive in picking outjust those little matter-of-fact details that suggest all the otheraspects, and that emphasise the character of the scene or situation,that he makes us believe in the actuality of whatever he is describing.So real, so living in every detail is this apocryphal narrative, in"Captain Singleton," of the crossing of Africa by a body of maroonedsailors from the coast of Mozambique to the Gold Coast, that one wouldfirmly believe Defoe was committing to writing the verbal narrative ofsome adventurer in the flesh, if it were not for certain passages--suchas the description of the impossible desert on page 90, which provesthat Defoe was piecing together his description of an imaginaryjourney from the geographical records and travellers' tales of hiscontemporaries, aided perhaps by the confused yarns of some sailorfriends. How substantially truthful in spirit and in detail is Defoe'saccount of Madagascar is proved by the narrative of Robert Drury's"Captivity in Madagascar," published in 1729. The natives themselves,as described intimately by Drury, who lived amongst them for many years,would produce just such an effect as Defoe describes on rough sailors intheir perilous position. The method by which Defoe compels us to acceptimprobabilities, and lulls our critical sense asleep, is well shown inthe following passages:--
"Thieving, lying, swearing, forswearing, joined to the most abominable lewdness, was the stated practice of the ship's crew; adding to it, that with the most unsufferable boasts of their own courage, they were, generally speaking, the most complete cowards that I ever met with."--Page 7.
"All the seamen in a body came up to the rail of the quarter-deck, where the captain was walking with some of his officers, and appointing the boatswain to speak for them, he went up, and falling on his knees to the captain, begged of him in the humblest manner possible, to receive the four men on board again, offering to answer for their fidelity, or to have them kept in chains, till they came to Lisbon, and there to be delivered up to justice, rather than, as they said, to have them left, to be murdered by savages, or devoured by wild beasts. It was a great while ere the captain took any notice of them, but when he did, he ordered the boatswain to be seized, and threatened to bring him to the capstan for speaking for them.... Upon this severity, one of the seamen, bolder than the rest, but still with all possible respect to the captain, besought his honour, as he called him, that he would give leave to some more of them to go on shore, and die with their companions, or, if possible, to assist them to resist the barbarians."--Page 18.
Now the first passage we have quoted about the cowardice, &c., of thePortuguese crew is not in keeping with the second passage, which showsthe men as "wishing to die with their companions"; but so actual isthe scene of the seamen "in a body coming up to the rail of thequarter-deck," that we cannot but believe the thing happened so, just aswe believe in all the thousand little details of the imaginary narrativeof "Robinson Crusoe." This feat of the imagination Defoe strengthen
sin the most artful manner, by putting in the mouths of his charactersvarious reflections to substantiate the narrative. For example, in thedescription, on page 263, of the savages who lined the perilous channelin a half-moon, where the European ship lay, we find the afterthoughtsare added so naturally, that they would carry conviction to any judge orjury:--
"They little thought what service they had done us, and how unwittingly, and by the greatest ignorance, they had made themselves pilots to us, while we, having not sounded the place, might have been lost before we were aware. _It is true we might have sounded our new harbour, before we had ventured out; but I cannot say for