FICTION
PETER WILKINS, CORNISHMAN
The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins. By Robert Paltock. (Dulac. 8s. 6d.)
Tins remarkable eighteenth-century romance, describing its hero's wonderful passage thro' a subterranean cavern into a kind of new world," is said to have been highly esteemed by Leigh Hunt, Charles Lamb, Southey, Coleridge and Sir Walter Scott. It is probable, however, that few modern readers are familiar with it, or even acquainted with the author's name. Indeed, the story having originally appeared anonymously, the authorship of it has been a matter of dispute, though there now seems little doubt that the Monthly Magazine for December, 1802, was correct in ascribing it to Robert Paltock. Paltock was born in 1697. His father, Thomas Paltock, died in 1701, and his mother in 1711. Robert was brought up by friends of his parents at Enfield, in Middlesex, and later became an attorney, living first in Clement's Inn and secondly in Black Lane, Lambeth, where he died in 1767. Peter Wilkins was published in London in 1751, and soon afterwards in Dublin, and both these editions contained the illustrations by Boitard which, with the original title-page, are reproduced in the present reprint.
Robinson Crusoe appeared in 1719 ; and if the dates did not suggest Paltock's debt to Defoe, Peter Wilkins itself bears un- mistakable evidence of it. Peter is born in Cornwall. On the early death of his father, he becomes the spoiled darling of his mother, and it is not until he is sixteen that, through the apparent friendliness of a stranger, who becomes his step- father, he is sent to an academy in Somersetshire. His assumed benefactor, however, soon reveals himself as a scheming foe, and on the death of his mother, Peter finds that he has been robbed of his small patrimony, and that he is left penniless to face the future—a situation the more embar- rassing in that by the time he is nineteen he has two children through a hasty union with a serving-maid at the academy. Having foisted his family upon his wife's " aunt, he proceeds to Bristol, where he is engaged as ship's steward by the master of a vessel bound to the coast of Africa. The voyage is ill-fated from the first. In an engagement with a French .‘...rivateer Peter is taker prisoner and laid in irons and,finally WO satt.,..11..73, Sea blIIIIRnr. Oft turned adrift with a score of other prisoners in an open boat, with scanty provisions. Space forbids a narration of the adventures that immediately follow, which include a term of slavery in Africa. Suffice it to say that at last Peter finds himself cast alone upon a rocky island, in cruising around which one day his boat is suddenly sucked into a cataract, down which it is hurried in total darkness for five weeks, at the end of which time it emerges at the " South Pole," in the country of Graundevolet.
The land of Graundevolet, though uninhabited, is one of surpassing beauty and abundance, luxuriant with " the most charming flowery shrubs that can be imagined " and with numberless trees " of the greatest variety of shapes, forms, and verdures the eye ever beheld." Here, in the shadow of a great rock, Peter gradually transforms a grotto into a com- fortable house. His boat has still good store of provisions ; and his unloading of the cargo, his exploration of the country, with its many " exoticks " that offer delicious additions to his own supplies of food, and all his manifold activities in home-making, shooting of beast-fish," and husbandry, are described with the characteristic detail of Robinson Crusoe.
But Paltock now ventures into more fanciful regions than any essayed by Defoe. Peter is awakened one night by a noise upon the roof of his house, and by the cry of a human voice. He finds a beautiful woman, whom he takes to be dead, but who recovers under his ministrations. After a time he marries her, and then in circumstances described with a single lapse into eighteenth-century coarseness, he discovers that his wife, Youwarkee, is not as other women, but that she has " graundees," or wings. Peter, indeed, has reached the lonely outpost of a vast, strange continent in which men and women fly. At first he and his wife have unavoidable mis- understandings, narrated with piquant humour. But a happy family life is attained ; Peter has several children, some of whom are able to fly, while others lack the " graundees " ; and, in course of time, his wife's family arrive from the mainland by air. Following that comes a visit from Georgietti, the King himself, by whom Peter is invited to the Court. For the purpose of conveying him thither, a flying machine is devised, and, on his arrival at the King's palace, Peter finds himself sucked into another kind of cataract.
This time it is the cataract of politics. A revolt against Georgietti has broken out in his western dominions, and the priests are sure that Peter, the strange visitor from another world, is, as revealed by an ancient prophecy, the man to subdue it. By discovering and crushing perfidy in the King's own household, by converting the people from a worship of the Image to a religion of the Spirit, by defeating the rebel army in a battle of the air, and by imposing peace and good government upon the whole realm, Peter fulfils the prophecy to the letter. At last, his mission accomplished, and heavy with sorrow for the death of his wife, he yearns for England. After many days of flight, lie and his attendants fall into the sea, and he alone is rescued, off Cape Horn, by a vessel bound for Plymouth.
Such, in necessarily brief outline, which can give little suggestion of its wealth of description, humour, and invention, is the story of Peter Wilkins, Cornishman. The very fecundity of the author's fancy precludes the universality of appeal that makes Robinson Crusoe everybody's book. Yet it is difficult to understand the almost complete neglect of Paltock, who exhibits, in addition to his genius for story- telling, sagacious scientific and political ideas and a spiribial conception of religion far in advance of his age. This very attractive reprint should do much towards re-establishing his fame.
GILBERT THOMAS.
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