BOOKS

Defoe for England

By SIMON RAVEN

ALL inhabitants of this world are guests during their lifetime, though there is some diversity of opinion as to the nature

and identity of our host. Guests we seem to be in any case, and while we should there- fore be circumspect in our demands, we may nevertheless look for a bare minimum of amenity. It is indeed a bare minimum that many of mankind enjoy; but those who are born in Europe, and still more those who are born in England, are given much cause for gratitude. Thus Defoe, and so many who wrote both before and after him, did well to record with love how a green and prosperous country had provided guest- room for a race of men who, in the main, had used their energies and their wits to develop the promise of riches and to assist fertility. In sentences as easy and undis- turbed as the progress of his own leisurely journeys, Defoe takes us through the grateful valleys and the gentle hills, the Closes and the Courts, the Cities puffed with merchandise, the thrumming Harbours and the Castles which had long since ceased to need their ramparts, showing us how all of these added only dignity and wealth to the serene but stirring England of the early eighteenth century. Defoe was a magnifi- cent liar when he chose, but historians assure us that he did not lie in this . . . in chronicling a people which was beginning to organise itself and all the arts of peace for the adornment of its acres, the covering of its back, and the plentiful lining of its belly and its pockets.

Daniel Defoe's Tour through England* was written from his memories of several jour- neys taken at various times and for various reasons, spying among them, and indeed his manifold capacities made him a fitting judge

of this or any country. Born in the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate, he always con- sidered London his home and retained an essential urbanity, an essential love of the smoke. 'Defoe learned the life of the city,' writes Professor John Robert Mooret, 'as a fearless and inquiring child'; but neither his temerity nor his curiosity was to confine itself to the alleys and middens of London. Apart from professional travellers, Defoe was perhaps the most 'travelled man of his age: he could speak of Scotland, Denmark, the Mediterranean coast; he had come near Poland and Bohemia; he was informed about Russia, and found it necessary to apologise, when referring to

* A TOUR THROUGH ENGLAND AND WALES, By Daniel Defoe. (Dent/Dutton: Everyman, 2 vols., 10s. 6d. each.) tDANIEL DEFOE: CITIZEN OF THE MODERN WORLD. By John Robert Moore. (University of Chicago/C.U.P.,!568.116d.)

Constantinople, that he only knew the place through his reading. And as he was not confined in space, nor was he in time: ' . . . truly I have read all the histories of Europe, that are extant in our language, and some in other languages.' An historian himself, he delighted in looking back, and hence was often enabled to look accurately forward.

We may learn further from Professor Moore's academic study, which is written comprehensively if not without fulsomeness and fuss and which makes fair use of much unpublished material, that Defoe was not only a highly imaginative man (author of one of the earliest and most haunting ghost stories in the language), but also sturdy and cunning in practical affairs. No one who has read Robinson Crusoe can doubt that he was a man of contrivance, any more than readers of Moll Flanders can deny him humanity and humour. A brilliant journalist and a dedicated social observer, he took note of what passed beneath his nose—and what it smelt of. An experienced merchant (if at times an unlucky speculator) he was much concerned with questions of quality and fair dealing, fascinated by processes of adminis- tration and transport. A lover of freedom (by no means the least of his characters) he was the lifelong enemy of religious and all other bigotries, and this with a lack of equivocation which earned him his taste of the pillory.

It is therefore hardly surprising that he should have surveyed the face of England with curiosity and, despite the pillory, with increasing affection. For the teller of tales might well relish the tradition that no grass would grow in the place where Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, gallant de-

fenders of Colchester, were shot by the Parliament men under the castle wall—

though the practical man is quick to add that 'the story is now dropp'd, and the grass, I suppose, grows there as in other places'. The social observer marks with in- terest the prevalence of polygamy in the marshes of Essex: The reason, as a merry fellow told me, who said he had about a dozen and half of wives (tho' I found afterwards he fibb'd a little) was this: That they being bred in the marshes themselves, and season'd to the place, did pretty well with it; but that they always went up into the hilly country . . . for a wife: That when they took the young lasses out of the wholesome and fresh air, they were healthy, fresh and clear . . .; but when they came into the marshes among the fogs and damps, there they presently changed their com- plexion . . .; and then, said he, we go to the uplands again and fetch another; so that marrying of wives was reckon'd a kind of good farm to them.

The humorist, again, is much taken with the Devil's alleged frolics near Ludlow. The merchant evokes Sturbridge Fair with vigour, or finds proud words in which to praise the Bank of England, its good name and undisputed primacy throughout Europe. As for the lover of freedom, how should he not take heart from the spectacle of so many outspoken, thriving and independent men and women of every possible estate?

Small wonder then that such a man as Defoe, having looked on England with his mild but enquiring eyes, went home to write of it with love. But it may well be pertinent for us to ask, moved as any Englishman must be by such a picture of our country's past, what picture this agile and clearsighted critic would render of his country today. Suppose Defoe was to set out once again across his green and pleasant land, what would he find? He would find that riches had not just been coaxed from England but torn from its very bowels. He would find that the meadows through which he had walked his horse to Essex two hun- dred years before were blotted out, not with decent buildings such as reflect a composed spirit, but with the black and shabby tene- ments of envious and exploited men. En- quiring further, he might conclude that Englishmen no longer had crafts or pleasures worth the name, so debilitated they were with push-button techniques and hair- grease cultures; he might aver that the beer was thin, that the ciders of the West which he once praised so highly now stank of chemicals; that arms and legs were brittle, eyes glazed, knees weak and spirits mean. He might think, and many of our own con- temporaries would encourage him to do so, that the England he had travelled was now debased. Until, that is, he began to look a little deeper.

For in the last resort of all this is still the country and the people which Defoe once knew and praised; a country of wealthy cities and green fields and, much more than this, a country of justice and hope. Defoe, who was always as careful to examine poor

men's houses as he was to applaud the monuments or mansions of the great—

Defoe of all men would recognise this and give thanks. Looking about him, though he would find disgrace in some things, he might think, for he was a great protester, that this disgrace is much lessened where so many of his countrymen protest at it. He would be alarmed by what people say of the Hola killings or the condition of Mr. Podola; he would be pleased that it is said so loudly by so many. The lover of freedom would see

that the oppressed and persecuted are wel- comed here satisfactorily enough, that we are not censored or battened on by priests,

and that we have nothing to fear from our own fine regiments. He might hear people saying unpopular things at corners and not being silenced—a source of great pleasure to a man who was once pilloried in Fleet Street.

There is much in England still that Defoe would approve and love; and since he was a man of shrewd mind and generous heart, there is matter for comfort here.