MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School

Certificate for Approving the Dissertation

We hereby approve the Dissertation

of

Joshua Grasso

Candidate for the Degree:

Doctor of Philosophy

Laura C. Mandell, Ph.D. Director

Susan J. Morgan, Ph.D. Reader

Alison E. Hurley, Ph.D. Reader

P. Renee Baernstein, Ph.D. Graduate School Representative

ABSTRACT

STRANGE ADVENTURES, PROFITABLE OBSERVATIONS: TRAVEL WRITING AND THE CITIZEN-TRAVELER, 1680-1760

by Joshua Grasso

My dissertation, Strange Adventures, Profitable Observations: Travel Writing and the Citizen-Traveler, 1680-1780, explores the role of the traveler as it developed in late seventeenth and eighteenth-century travel writing. Prior to this period, the traveler remained an anonymous figure of convention, reporting on worlds rarely seen with either empirical authority or utopian embellishment. Beginning approximately with ’s A New Voyage Round the World (1697), travel writing became less about what was seen as how it was seen, capturing the composite experience of a nation of travelers. By authenticating their travels through a reliable witness, the writers were able to use the outside world to “see” and explore its social, moral and economic boundaries. The four chapters of my study chart the tempestuous course of contemporary travel, as well as the tenuous divide between experience and embellishment. From Dampier’s prototypical /adventurer to Fielding’s ailing misanthrope, each traveler meditates on English identity while divorced from the customs and conventions of home. While some, such as Defoe, find a national mission of travel and empire, others, such as Fielding, see the possible breakdown of English society. Yet, read as a complete narrative, these works illustrate how travel writing became a truly national enterprise, contributing to the cultural mythology that fueled the age of empire. STRANGE ADVENTURES, PROFITABLE OBSERVATIONS: TRAVEL WRITING AND THE CITIZEN-TRAVELER, 1690-1760

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of

Miami University in partial

fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English

By

Joshua Grasso

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2006

Laura C. Mandell, Dissertation Director

Table of Contents

Page

Introduction 1

Chapter One: The Portrait of a Buccaneer as an Englishman: 11 The New Voyage of William Dampier

Chapter Two: “What a Vast and Charming World He Had 37 Been Master Of”: Travel Writing and Colonial Innocence in Behn’s Oroonoko

Chapter Three: “I Thought Myself Very Rich In Subjects”: 60 The Englishman Adrift in Defoe’s

Chapter Four: “To Wheel in Among Them Worse Manners Than 94 Their Own”: Domestic Travel in Fielding’s The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon

Epilogue 122

Bibliography 127

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Acknowledgments

This dissertation is dedicated first and foremost to the three people who were most central in supporting and inspiring it: my wife Elizabeth, and my two young sons, Eli and Charlie. Though the latter probably never read this work, I vividly imagined them uncovering it among my posthumous papers and materials and thinking “they gave him a Ph.D. for this bunk! What a crock!” On the off-chance this occurs, I wanted it to be as interesting and coherent as possible, exhibiting my love for literature and storytelling. My wife, on the other hand, lived with this work intimately from the first, sketchy ideas to the final, nail- biting revisions. She was incredibly supportive and interested throughout, though she wasn’t afraid to tell me when something didn’t make sense or sounded inflated. But even more importantly, she gave me time to write every day, and long into the evening, even taking the kids out when I needed time to summon— or plead with—the muse. My family means the world to me, and though this dissertation is a sorry tribute, I hope they understand that they, alone, made it possible (though they are no means responsible for its lack of coherence). I also need to thank my dissertation committee: Laura Mandell, Alison Hurley, and Susan Morgan. I first tinkered with ideas of travel writing in Laura’s Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory course, writing a half-baked paper on Marco Polo. She subsequently encouraged my writing with supportive, yet challenging mentorship, cumulating in the Prospectus for this dissertation, which was the most coherent—if still problematic—work I had ever produced. Alison Hurley not only expanded my knowledge of the issues and concerns of the eighteenth century, but asked the crucial question that got me thinking about the current dissertation: “are you sure travel writing is really a genre?” I’m still trying to answer this question. And finally, Susan Morgan’s encyclopedic knowledge of travel writing and the British empire inspired me to attempt something vast and exciting—even if my feeble skills only reveal hers in greater relief. In short, this was a tough but brilliant committee, and I only regret I couldn’t produce the work that I continually glimpsed in their comments, but was sadly unable to evoke. And one final word of thanks to the music of J.S. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Liszt, Brahms, Sibelius, Bax, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glazunov, Shostakovich, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, and others. I spent countless hours listening to their music as I hammered away at the keys, thinking I was creating something far more glorious and noble than I actually was. But I appreciate the illusion.

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Introduction

It is a curious fact that one of England’s most famous explorers never found any new lands, never traded with any mysterious natives, and indeed, never left the pages of his celebrated book. His voyage, instead, took him to very peripheries of nonsense, discovering satirical islands and archipelagos that bore a cunning resemblance to the more familiar landmarks of home. Lemuel Gulliver, immortalized in ’s Gulliver’s Travels, was a traveler in an age of travel, where the map was constantly expanding, changing, and becoming obsolete. Swift includes several such maps in his book, carefully documenting the discovery of Lilliput and Brobdingnag, among others (which, he notes, were discovered in A.D. 1699 and 1703 respectively). Indeed, there is little obvious difference in the exhaustive travels of Gulliver than in the travels of his contemporaries; all attempt to record the travails, experiences, data, and profit that result from a seemingly endless voyage at sea. And yet, modern readers approach Gulliver’s Travels not as a work of travel writing, but as a work of satire as well as a precursor to the English novel. The “realistic” details of travel are read as amusing—and occasionally, tiresome—conventions of eighteenth century literature; that is, when they are not ignored entirely. However, this was certainly not the case during its publication, where its true purpose (and author) was much less certain. While many contemporaries identified the work as a product of the author’s imagination, some remained mystified by the consistent tone of the work. As Swift writes to Alexander Pope in a letter dated Nov. 27, 1726: “A Bishop here said, that [Gulliver’s Travels] was full of improbable lies, and for his part, he hardly believed a word of it; and so much for Gulliver” (Williams, 245). Other critics, such as the much satirized Dr. Richard Bentley, defended the existence of the Houyhnhnms by an encyclopedic reading of classical sources, thus proving that “the whole History is a Fact, and not a Fiction” 1 (ECCO, 24). Clearly, then, the artifice of contemporary travel writing (aped so remarkably by Swift) offered a different perspective for an eighteenth- century audience. This becomes apparent from the way Gulliver positions himself as a specifically English traveler throughout the course of his narrative. In the opening letter that begins the work, “A Letter from Captain Gulliver, To His Cousin Sympson,” Gulliver links himself to a much more famous traveler of the previous generation, William Dampier: “by your great and frequent urgency, you prevailed on me to publish a very loose and uncorrect [sic] account of my travels; with the direction to hire some young gentleman of either university to put them in order, and correct the style, as my Cousin Dampier did by my advice, in his book called, A Voyage round the World” (i). In a single passage Swift toys with the tenuous distinctions between real and fictional travels by claiming kinship with William Dampier (whose work is discussed in Chapter One). More interesting, however, is the advice Gulliver offered his “cousin,” which is the

1 Bentley’s unusual analysis of the fourth part of Gulliver’s Travels appears in his work, Critical remarks upon Gulliver’s travels; particularly his voyage to the Houyhnhms country. Part I (1735). (ECCO, 24).

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same that he, himself, is offered by his cousin Sympson: namely, to hire someone to clean up the rough version of his travels, making them read like a more polished narrative of travel. This is a somewhat audacious claim, as Dampier took great pains (as did many travel writers of the period) to establish his credentials as an unlettered traveler: “As to my Stile [sic], it cannot be expected, that a Seaman should affect Politeness; for were I able to do it, yet I think I should be little solicitous about it, in a work of this Nature…[and] if what I say be intelligible, it matters not greatly in what words it is express’d” (Dampier, 4). What Swift cheekily suggests is that no traveler publishes his work as is: the style, events, and narrative are carefully re-written by someone learned in the arts of literary—as opposed to experienced—travel. Of course, Swift could have chosen any number of travel writers as a dummy to support this claim; Dampier was unique in role as a transitional travel writer, who married with a palpable sense of economic and national identity. His zeal in writing a journey that reflected England’s own colonial ambitions must have amused Swift, as it reduces the outside world to a vast chest, to be pilfered and weighed by English measures. For this reason, Gulliver adopts the manner, dress, and language of a Dampier-like traveler, attempting to weigh the strange lands and customs in the balance of England. If the final result is somewhat unfair to Dampier’s achievement, it accurately lampoons his legacy, which profoundly influenced what a traveler was supposed to see, experience, and ultimately write in a book for the armchair traveler. Swift’s satirical portrait of Dampier and his ilk appears in many guises in the book, but most notably when Gulliver rhapsodizes on the superiority of English civilization. As Dampier is quick to label those civilizations “savage” who have no understanding of English customs, 2 so Gulliver is eager to point out the deficiencies of his “inferior” hosts. Such an example occurs in Part II of Gulliver’s Travels, A Voyage to Brobdingnag. While discoursing with the king of Brobdingnag, Gulliver attempts to dazzle him with a history of England’s social and military achievements. Yet quite the reverse occurs, and the king cuts him off with the exclamation that “[our history] was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments; the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice and ambition could produce” (139). Gulliver holds his tongue with the thought that such opinions are the result of a “confined education,” which is made up of vulgar “prejudices, and a certain narrowness of thinking” (141). In a passage which evokes similar scenes in Dampier, Gulliver remarks: “I have always born that laudable partiality to my own country, which Dionysius Hallicarnassensis with so much justice recommends to an historian. I would hide the frailties and deformities of my political mother, and place her virtues and beauties in the most advantageous light. This was my sincere endeavor in those many discourses I had with that monarch, although it unfortunately failed of

2 Dampier had nothing but scorn for the Aborigines, which had little interest in trading with the English. Dampier’s gifts of trinkets and clothing were seen for the rubbish they were, and no amount of such could induce them to labor for the English—which Dampier saw as the height of barbarity. See Chapter One for a discussion of this passage.

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success” (140-141). The irony is that in lowering or hiding the “frailties and deformities” of England, Gulliver nevertheless paints a picture of English life that appalls the Brobdingnagian monarch. This is most humorously seen in Gulliver’s explanation of gunpowder, which he—and many other travelers, notably Dampier and Crusoe—considers the high point of European civilization. Flabbergasted, the monarch cuts him off, protesting “he would rather lose half his kingdom, than be privy to such a secret,” (142). Gulliver’s contemptuous response, “A strange effect of narrow principles and short views!” echoes the ethos of Dampier, above all, who sailed not to record new worlds and civilizations, but to convert them for English markets. Swift concludes Gulliver’s Travels in the spirit of Dampier’s text, outlining the chief aims and virtues of the English traveler. Of course, these aims are delightfully undercut by Swift’s satirical subject, who makes a mockery of Dampier’s most laudable themes. As he writes: I could heartily wish a law were enacted, that every traveler, before he were permitted to publish his voyages, should be obliged to make oath before the Lord High Chancellor, of that all he intended to print was absolutely true to the best of his knowledge…I imposed on myself as a maxim, never to be swerved from, that I would strictly adhere to truth; neither indeed, can I be ever under the least temptation to vary from it. (312) While the modern reader can appreciate the humor of this passage, it was less evident to an audience who read Dampier, and indeed the majority of travel writers, as documentary experience (as is clear from the Royal Society’s publication of Dampier’s work, and their subsequent commission for Dampier to explore ). Such protestations, which are found throughout Dampier’s work, were a necessary convention of travel literature, without which they languished in the realm of fictional or romantic literature. Swift takes his lampoon a step further with the remark: “[other writers may] jostle me out of vogue; and stand in my place; making the world forget that ever I was an author. This indeed would be too great a mortification if I wrote for fame: but, as my sole intention was the PUBLICK [sic] GOOD; I cannot be altogether disappointed” (313). Compare this to Dampier’s dedication to Charles Mountague, President of the Royal Society, prefacing A New Voyage Round the World: “nor can I think this plain piece of mine, deserves a place among your more Curious Collections…Yet dare I avow, according to my narrow sphere and poor abilities, a hearty Zeal for the promoting of useful knowledge, and of any thing that may never so remotely tend to my Countries [sic] advantage” (Dampier, 1). While both passages smack of eighteenth-century literary convention, it is less obvious—for the modern reader, at least—how travel writing can make elaborate pretensions for the “PUBLICK GOOD,” when it is at best a string of semi-fictional episodes and anecdotes. As evident from Gulliver’s Travels, Swift satirized Dampier and similar travel writers for just these pretensions: writers wrote primarily for fame, and secondarily to bilk the public. If Gulliver can claim to write a work that would “strictly adhere to truth,” what stopped Dampier from making—and abusing—the same claim?

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The role of travelers and travel writing in Gulliver’s Travels points to a critical dilemma in eighteenth-century letters: namely, what was the purpose of reading—or writing—a book of travels? For whom were such works written? And did such works have any place in the literary marketplace of society? It was certainly no coincidence that no major writer before Swift and Defoe had sullied their hands with travel writing (and both of them had published their works anonymously). Reflecting on travel literature in the Idler No.97 (1760), Samuel Johnson writes that “few books disappoint their readers more than the narrations of travelers” (SW,181). Though something of a travel writer himself, Johnson finds little to praise in the work of his contemporaries, which consist of mindless itineraries traversed point by point for the reader. As he goes on: He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life…[h]e only is a useful traveler who brings home something by which his country may be benefited; who procures some supply of want or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it” (SW, 182). Johnson’s definition captures the uneasy reputation of travel writing in the eighteenth century: though undoubtedly entertaining, the field was nevertheless populated by writers who travel with their eyes closed, unable to distinguish between “useful” images and lifeless accounts of a “succession of rocks and streams, mountains and ruins” (SW, 181). Johnson’s “useful traveler” would scorn the Baedeker approach and ruthlessly seek out the human element—the people and customs which could best reflect the English character. Here we have a hint of some grand purpose for travel writing, a sense that following in a traveler’s footsteps can “mitigate evil” with the return of foreign goods; or in this case, the carefully revealed knowledge of an expanding—but nonetheless English—world. Johnson’s essay expresses the concerns of numerous writers and critics on the subject of travel, which was a virus that infected the whole of eighteenth century literature. Besides straightforward travelogues, which Johnson found particularly distasteful, so-called travel writing encompassed captains’ journals, sailors’ memoirs, utopian fictions, romances, satires, scientific reports, and maps and drawings from numerous expeditions. Cultivated readers (such as Johnson) realized that the very nature of travel encouraged embellishment; indeed, celebrated travelers such as Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville were expected to draw from their knowledge of classical authors (Herodotus, etc.) to fill in the blank spots of the map. For hundreds of years, the map was little more than a mythological tableau, reflecting the hidden fears of the medieval psyche. An abrupt shift occurred in the wake of Columbus’ and Magellan’s famous voyages. Suddenly, the map became a physical presence, a place to be explored, colonized, and traded with; in other words, it could be known. Travel writing captured the excitement of new worlds and cultures for readers who had scarcely traveled fifty miles in any direction. However, due to this largely unsophisticated

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audience and the lagging technology of mapmaking, travel writing remained surprisingly provincial. Though exotic names crept into the manuscripts, familiar myths and stories were peddled as first-hand accounts of the new world. Even the most scientific accounts were not above deferring to previous authors or legends, writing of longitude and twelve-foot Amazons in the same breath. Travel remained less a subject in its own right, than a backdrop for romance or utopian philosophy, or at best an exhausting catalogue of foreign wonders. Thus, for many writers, the question was similar to the one posed in Johnson’s essay: how to make travel, arguably the most influential subject in thought and letters, worth writing about. Ironically, travel writing fashioned itself as a factual, first-hand account of actual places and events on the globe. A standard convention has the traveler or author state, usually in an elaborate preface, “I have seen this with my own eyes,” or “I alone can attest to these miraculous sights.” A further irony, considering Johnson’s remark about the importance of “human life,” is the presence of the traveler him or herself. From Marco Polo to any number of ghost-written exploration accounts, the authorial “I” is often invoked but never seen. Who, for example, is Marco Polo? Where do we see him? His shadowy presence darts in and out of the manuscript, always in profile, frustrating our efforts to associate the traveler with his travels. For this reason, even the most documented journey can be dismissed as a literary counterfeit. Without a specific individual and national presence, these narratives lacked the very gambit of travel: namely, that the promise of discovery was balanced with the risk of social oblivion. How did a traveler remain “English” on his or her travels? After all, travel risked making of travelers in more than one sense, since even those that returned might be morally or socially corrupt by the experience. The creation of a citizen-traveler 3 was a way to create a stable English subject— which could verify the delights and dangers of the outside world—as well as dramatize the conflict between civilization and savagery. The shift from travelogues to travelers illustrates a centuries-old conflict in travel writing, suggested as early as Marco Polo, but explored more profitably in the travel anthologies of Richard Haklyut (1589-1600) and the accounts of English in Alexander Exquemelin’s The Buccaneers of America (1678). These works are largely bound by the conventions of the travelogue, which report on the lands, people, and material goods of foreign lands, with a touch of romance in their depiction of buccaneers and natives (Exquemelin’s work, in particular, highlights the legendary career of the Englishman Sir ). Yet both works also invoke a telling strain of nationalism (despite Exquemelin writing in Dutch), writing of travel from a distinctly English point of view; the descriptions and stories often underline the possibilities of an English

3 I use the word “citizen” because prior to Dampier, the role of a traveler as a citizen of a specific country was rarely, if ever, emphasized. While most travelers could make a claim to being English or some other European nationality, it went little further than this; Dampier was among the first (and certainly the first who was widely read in England) who made his nationality inseparable from his narrative. Everything he sees, experiences, and records is framed by his English identity and his interest in colonial English markets. After Dampier, many subsequent writers (and their fictional creations) appeared as specifically English subjects, whose identities were to be observed as much as their travels.

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empire, often going so far as to suggest opportunities for future investment. Of course, the lack of a tangible traveler in these stories often weakened their national emphasis; Haklyut was merely an editor, compiling diverse stories of travel, while Exquemelin was Dutch (or French, his identity remains shrouded) which makes it difficult to adopt his sentiments wholesale. To verify this experience of travel, the creation of a literary self was necessary, one that could not only verify foreign investments, but offer a recognizable citizen to his or her fellow readers. Only a self whose journeys had a specific point of origin (in this case, England), and experienced the lands and cultures as English would have value to an English nation. Of course, this concept was further complicated by the changing nature of nationality itself. New lands meant new markets, new colonies, and a new empire that conformed to no known maps or boundaries. Part of the lure of travel for writers like Johnson was to experience these lands for the entire nation, allowing the traveler to bring “home something by which his country may be benefited.” 4 In other words, all the theories or cartography in the world meant nothing if readers back home were unable to feel the changing world—to see and speak with their countrymen in Scotland and the South Sea Islands. Through this exchange, travelers (and the readers following in their wake) could question their own identity as English, and as the eighteenth century advanced, the evolving identity of being British. Additionally, the author could ponder what defined boundaries such as “English” in the first place. The sea? Or the pages of a book? Nationalism, then, seemed to rallying cry of this new breed of travel writing, as voiced through a citizen-traveler that spoke for a specific national audience. For it was a sense of the traveler’s national mission, as an emissary for an English audience and its interests that separated it from so many diverse accounts of travel. Audience was paramount in Johnson’s mind, since travel could not be all things for all people. Too much travel literature reflected its own bastard origins, turning from romance to nautical charts to dry description within a single chapter. Instead, travel should be the document of a single traveler, indifferent to the conventions of a bygone age. It should give a “true” 5 account of the world, as seen through the traveler’s eyes and thoughts, while avoiding an encyclopedic list of towns and mountains. As Johnson explains, “why should he…make a show of knowledge which, without some power of intuition unknown to other mortals, he could never attain” (SW, 181). This is what separates earlier

4 This also echoes Johnson’s credo in Rasselas (1759), where Imlac proclaims: “The business of a poet…is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest” (27). It was the business of a citizen-traveler to capture the “general properties” of the nation through his or her travels as a specific—yet transparent—explorer. 5 By “true” I refer less to non-fiction or autobiography than the expectations of travel literature in Johnson’s time. A true narrative would be one that makes no overtures to obvious fictional elements, such as romance, but places the author center stage to narrate his or her travels. That these travels were often embellished, borrowed, or simply invented was a continual source of discomfort for many readers and critics, particularly after the publication of George Psalmanazar’s An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1765), which was entirely invented—and this despite Psalmanazar supposedly being a native of Formosa!

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travelogues from most travel writing of the eighteenth century: an emphasis on national identity and travel as an exclusively English endeavor. Not coincidentally, it was written more for the merchant in the coffee house than the scholar at the university (though he, too, could benefit from reading it). In this way it reflected the spirit of the age, where information was increasingly accessible to anyone who could afford it (and with coffee houses costing only a penny, information became very accessible indeed). 6 Travel writing in many ways mirrors its near relation, journalism, which similarly wrote of the world through a specific national consciousness. Addison and Steele’s The Spectator and The Tatler each wrote of national identity, social contracts, gender relations, and foreign trade through such English personalities as Mr. Spectator and Sir Roger de Coverly. Like Dampier and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, their authenticity belies their artifice, allowing them to “write” England even as they reported it. This became the hallmark of a new travel literature, and few writers, from Dampier to Johnson, could ignore this essentially domestic aspect of travel. However, the greatest difficulty in defining eighteenth century travel writing is the bugbear of fiction. For centuries, as mentioned previously, travel was largely synonymous with lies and embellishment. Part of creating a citizen- traveler was to have an authentic witness 7 of travel; the writer—or the traveler— could hold him or herself personally responsible for the facts and descriptions of his or her book. Starting roughly with the works of Behn and Dampier, writers became primarily concerned with distinguishing their travels with those that came before (or continued to be churned out by hack writers), offering eyewitness testimony of seemingly fantastic events. Yet the break with the past was never so definitive, and in many ways followed two parallel lines of development: works that created a fictional traveler and works that wrote (somewhat fictionally) of the author’s own experiences and travels. We can best see this dichotomy in the complementary works of Behn and Dampier. Behn’s Oroonoko married her first-hand account of Surinam’s natives and geography with a powerful element of romance, creating the character of Oroonoko to complement—and in some ways, disguise—the real traveler of the work (the narrator, an unnamed representative of Behn herself). Dampier, in his first published work, A New Voyage Round the World, heavily revised and

6 Maureen Waller, writing in 1700: Scenes from London Life, explains: “for a penny entrance fee payable to la dame de comptior any man who was reasonably dressed and who was prepared to obey the rules as regards swearing and fighting could sit at the common table and drink a dish of coffee—at about one and a half pence a dish—and smoke his long, clay pipe” (196). 7 What did it mean to be an “authentic witness” in an age where few readers could experience the lands in question? Authenticity was largely based on two things in travel writing: carefully observed details and a traveler with a specific identity; in other words, one who had something vitally at stake in publishing his or her travels (a reputation). Dampier’s book was his calling card to London society, and was enthusiastically taken up by the Royal Society, who gave it their seal of approval. Its authenticity was established less by what he said than how he said it; by asserting his personality and citizenship, Dampier colors the outside world with a verifiable English presence. This identity, blended with the rhetoric of empirical observation, establishes Dampier as a reliable witness for a nation of skeptical, but largely uncritical readers. This authenticity separated travel writing from travel fiction, which was not expected to inform and enlighten, but simply entertain. No writer gained respect or reputation for writing travel fiction, which is why so much of it was published anonymously (which is never the case with travel writing!).

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embellished his travel journals under the influence of the Royal Society. The result is a work that leans heavily on the travelogue tradition, intending to be a “useful” commercial and scientific document of foreign lands and peoples; the element of fiction enters as Dampier shifts his involvement with the buccaneers from participant to observer, allowing him to maintain his credibility as a loyal Englishman. Both works, however, were largely read as first-hand accounts of travel, with few readers able to make the distinction between travel fact and travel fiction. Throughout the eighteenth century, travel writing would navigate between these twin poles, using fiction to emphasize individual identity and national enterprise. However, while later writers such as Johnson and Fielding were at great pains to discredit travel fictions, neither can entirely escape the charge of . For both travelers were primarily authors, and in writing for a specific audience, they wrote with a specific purpose. Their travels, likewise, used autobiography to authenticate rambles throughout England and Scotland, though they otherwise emulate the English novel. We see an extreme example of this technique in Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker (1771), where the final third of the book becomes an extended piece of travel writing. Smollett further underlines this paradox by using fictional characters who write letters during their travels, which allies them to a respected tradition of literature and travel. As Henry Davis, the bookseller in the Preface, notes: “there have been so many letters upon travels lately published—What between Smollett’s, Sharp’s, Derrick’s, Thicknesse’s, Baltimore’s, and Baretti’s, together with Shandy’s Sentimental Travels, the public seems to be cloyed with that kind of entertainment” (HC, 29). This quote testifies to the enormous appetite for reading the observations of citizen-travelers, however fictionalized their travels or origin. Does this make Humphrey Clinker a work of travel writing? Or are Johnson and Fielding’s work less “useful” because of their relation to Smollett’s technique? The answer is that documentary experience, though often emulated, is not the defining characteristic of eighteenth century travel writing. The connecting link is the role of the traveler in each work, and how he or she attempted to answer the national questions of travel: What did it mean to be English? Was it as simple as speaking and acting the part? Could it be bought and sold? Did a woman’s role change on the peripheries of civilization? And how far could the thread of civilization stretch before fraying at the edges? These are difficult questions, never properly answered in any one text, but attempted most fruitfully in the context of travel. And as Johnson suggests, every journey is followed by a return home; in the case of literature, in books that circulate through English homes and shape the cultural mythologies of the English nation. Chapter One, “The Portrait of a Buccaneer as an Englishman: The New Voyage of William Dampier,” focuses on what I consider one of the prototypical works of the citizen-traveler: Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World (1697). Dampier’s work, unlike much previous travel writing, uses fiction behind the scenes, as the editorial process that transformed a buccaneer’s journals into a significant work of natural (and national) observation. In this work we see travel literature dissected to its gross anatomy: travelogue, ethnography, scientific

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observation, personal reflection, and economic speculation all vie for space in the narrative, unified by the personality of Dampier himself. Though crude, Dampier’s work gave England its first glimpse of many wonders that would soon enter the cultural lexicon, and more importantly, told England what to think about these modern marvels. 8 While much of the book flies blatantly in the face of Johnson’s credo, it is here that travel writing begins to find a definitive shape, as seen in the many writers (Defoe, Swift, Cook) who emulated his technique. Chapter Two, ‘“What a Vast and Charming World He Had Been Master Of”: Travel Writing and Colonial Innocence in Behn’s Oroonoko,’ examines a work that preceded Dampier chronologically, but in many ways seems an advance on his narrative technique. My discussion of Oroonoko (1688) is an attempt to address the conventions of travel writing that inform Behn’s work, and how these conventions—largely unfamiliar to modern audiences—help situate the presence of “innocent” natives in the historical setting of colonial Surinam. Through the voice of her inexperienced narrator, Behn both borrows from and subverts the genre of travelogue to undercut the romance of the colonies with its dangerous, but lucrative, underbelly. This dual narrative positions the narrator in two worlds (before and after Dutch possession), allowing her to critique the colonial project as well as question the efficacy of travel writing as a “true” account of indigenous culture. Chapter Three, ‘“I Thought Myself Very Rich In Subjects”: The Englishman Adrift in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe,’ considers this classic work from the perspective of contemporary travel writing and the role of the English sailor. Though Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is generally considered a novel, it has remarkably few claims for this distinction, especially when compared to his other essays in the genre, Moll Flanders and Roxana. Robinson Crusoe is more accurately a transitional work, like Dampier’s A New Voyage, whose hasty stitch- work betrays the seams that bind several genres within the fabric of travel. The work is a veritable anthology of influences, containing romance, utopian fiction, and stories of (ironically, it was William Dampier who exiled on his Pacific island). Defoe unites these genres through the creation of a mythical figure, Crusoe, whose story initiates a new economic reality for the larger nation. In essence, by returning to his roots as a self-sufficient native, he affirms the English enterprise by the “chain of miracles” that makes Crusoe into an eighteenth century Adam. The myth of Crusoe is the belief that the outside world is an English world, and mercantilism is the surest way to reclaim it from heathen (or worse, French or Spanish) domination. Chapter Four, ‘“To Wheel in Among Them Worse Manners Than Their Own”: Domestic Travel in Fielding’s The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon,” ends my survey with arguably the most complex and ambiguous travel narrative of the

8 As the prototypical citizen-traveler, Dampier weighed all things in the balance of England. Though he was a shrewd naturalist and made many important contributions to nautical science, he is perhaps best known for his more biased observations. Most notably, his passages on the Aborigines—which he colors as uncivilized beasts—influenced British, and later, Australian, policy on these indigenous peoples. Only Captain Cook refuted Dampier’s description in print, but he was largely ignored in favor of his companion, , who cribbed his notes from Dampier.

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eighteenth century. Fielding’s The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1754) offers a dispirited look at the pains of travel, yet despite the title, he never actually sets foot in Lisbon (except for a brief look on the final page). In an apt metaphor, Fielding likens himself to a bundle of goods, shipped haphazardly from port to port, and finding nothing but scorn for his domestic origins. His travels are a litany of complaints about malicious innkeepers and dishonest sailors, who prey, pirate-like, upon their own people at the cost of trade. Written as a farewell letter to England, and perhaps his own epitaph, Fielding’s Journal implores England to tend to her “floating castles” which not only bring in foreign goods, but extend the eternal promise of English society. It is my hope that this discussion of travel literature can place travel in its proper historical perspective, perhaps less as a means of broadening the outside world, than as a means for defining the cultural consciousness of an expanding English nation. From its humble beginnings, travel became a widely read and plastic medium, allowing authors to speak directly to the nation, while at the same time “writing” the nation in question. And while travel literature is an overlapping genre, with many works belonging more properly to the novel, it is nevertheless crucial to study on its own, as both a product of its age and a contributing factor to national identity. For as the map struggled to keep pace with discovery, travel writing recorded what no science could accurately predict: the fear of the unknown, the thrill of discovery, and the relief of homecoming— often in the most exotic locations on the globe.

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Chapter One The Portrait of a Buccaneer as an Englishman: The New Voyage of William Dampier

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The line of great explorers comes readily to mind: Columbus, Magellan, Raleigh, Drake, Cook, followed by their fictional, though no less famous counterparts, such as Crusoe and Gulliver. Yet one name that is rarely included on either list is William Dampier, an influential figure who has a claim on both lists; that is, as a famous explorer and a fictional creation in his own right. Dampier wrote three famous books (each one a bestseller in late seventeenth century England), including the account of his first of the globe, A New Voyage Round the World (1697). Despite its slightly eccentric style and wealth of ethnographic detail, it accomplished what few travel writers had ever attempted: namely, a voyage away from the conventions of travel writing itself— or, to be more precise, a journey that used these conventions to write less about travel than the person traveling. For it was Dampier’s ambition, and his singular talent, to take the most motley, all-encompassing theme in literature (travel), and make it synonymous with the imperial project. While he was not the first writer (or explorer) to tinker with this notion, Dampier’s A New Voyage is perhaps the most direct precursor to Samuel Johnson’s notion of travel writing, written almost a century later: “…[h]e only is a useful traveler who brings home something by which his country may be benefited; who procures some supply of want or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it” (182). While there is obviously no “recipe” for travel writing, Johnson’s Idler essay captures the ethos of the grand tradition of travel writing, as developed by Defoe, Addison, Fielding, Smollett, Boswell and others (with slight, though often important, variations). Each of these writers “[brought] home something” of the outside world which speaks to a unique vision of England: namely, an understanding of English identity in the rapidly expanding world of colonies and markets. Travel writing allowed England to “see” itself not only in the parade of “wooden castles” crowding on the Thames, but also in the remote South Pacific Islands, among cultures who had never set eyes on England. The “mitigation of evil” Johnson speaks of is the traveler’s burden: to travel with England wherever he goes, confiding in Her his most heartfelt impressions and fears, the way he might a far- away sister or lover. Though Johnson’s style suggests unfortunate overtones of Polonius-like advice (which was gleefully taken up by pompous travelers), the best travel writing is a mixture of epistle, elegy, and epithalamion, expressing celebration, fear, doubt, rapture, and poetry in equal measure. Dampier was among the first to put these elements of the “useful traveler” into currency, and as will be seen, his influence changed the way England thought, and wrote, about travel.

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On the surface, “travel writing” seems like a simple, transportable notion: obviously it concerns literature (or any writing, for that matter) that is concerned with the themes and ideas of travel. Yet taking such a definition at face value, how many works could fit under the umbrella of travel writing? Works of utopian fiction, such as More’s Utopia, certainly bear several hallmarks of travel, as do many romances, satirical fictions, and much dramatic literature. For example, is Shakespeare’s The Tempest a work of travel writing, considering its extensive use of new world ideas and imagery?9 And what about non-fiction? Travel writing easily crosses the divide between fiction and non-fiction in memoirs, letters, travelogues, and captains’ and sailors’ journals. Indeed, at its heart, travel writing insists on being read as non-fiction, which is perhaps one of the most important (and influential) conventions of travel. Any so-called work of travel purports to be a truthful account of events as seen by a first-hand witness, even when its claims to fiction are beyond question. Because of this, travel writing is often conflated with travel narratives, which are usually understood to mean travelogues in the modern sense. Travelogues are the origin of all travel writing, originating in epic voyages across the world to discover new lands and cultures, as in the famous narratives of Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, and Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s personal historian. This aspect of travel captures the exhilaration of first contact, describing the lands and cultures for an audience who, in all probability, would never witness these wonders personally. For this reason, the accounts are ostensibly straightforward, journalistic accountts of travel as it happened, without a recognizable plot or narrative sequence (other than, “I saw this, then I saw this,” etc.). The paradox is that many of the famous travel narratives (Polo, Mandeville) are now dismissed as outright fabrications or , while others, such as the work of Columbus, Pifagetta, and Raleigh, are full of fictional embellishments. This is perhaps due to the exclusionary nature of travel writing, which compelled writers to establish links to the ancient world, or simply color in the dark spaces of the map with their wildest imaginings. Thus, Raleigh can discuss the mating habits of Amazons in a work that is claims to be a “Discoverie of the Large, Rich, and Bewtiful Empyre of Guiana.” Fact and fiction mingle interchangeably in travel writing, as do the genres themselves. Whenever travel is evoked, the conventions of romance, utopian fiction, satire, and travelogue appear in equal measure, creating a work that borrows heavily from established tradition to describe something never before seen—or read—by European eyes. For this reason it is difficult to discuss travel writing as a stable genre, since its sole unifying feature, travel, is informed by so many disparate styles and traditions. However, one convention that most works of travel share is the presence of a traveler. Often this traveler is the narrator him or herself, guiding the reader through a tour of Africa, Guyana, or lands that have yet to be discovered. At other times he or she is simply the protagonist, the writer following faithfully at his

9 Interestingly, Shakespeare forges an alliance with previous travel writers in this work, since Caliban’s god, Setebos, comes by way of Antonio Pigafetta, who wrote a first-hand account of Magellan’s famous voyage. While visiting the natives of Patagonia, Pigafetta recorded an extensive vocabulary, including the entry: “For their big devil—Setebos.” (Pifagetta., 25)

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or her side taking voluminous notes and descriptions. Either way, the narrator establishes the most important convention of travel—a “frame” through which we view the events of discovery, science, and empire; whatever he or she sees is reported back to the civilized world in a variety of forms—letters, journals, notes, stories, charts, illustrations, and latitude coordinates. However, for all the autobiographical evidence of this convention, the traveler sticks to an unwavering code of conduct: to be seen but not heard. From hallowed antiquity to the early eighteenth century, the role of the traveler is little different from the legendary Scheherezade: to tell a novel story of exotic wonders each evening, and by the end of the book, return the reader to sleepily to his or her bed without making your acquaintance. A strange convention, particularly since travel is perhaps the greatest metaphor for the journey of man; all travels are, in a sense, a quest for truth and enlightenment, and thus reflect the inner life of the traveler him or herself. And yet what do we know of Marco Polo’s soul? Even Sir Walter Raleigh, though a legendary figure in English history, betrays little of his person or beliefs in his travels. Work after work follows this rigid prohibition, regardless of country or destination; until, that is, travel becomes an English phenomenon in the late seventeenth century. In his influential study of travel literature, Pleasurable Instruction, Charles L. Batten notes that a number of writers, who were obviously aware of the “rules” of travel writing, found the occasion to break them. A notable example is Joseph Addison, whose Travels in Italy (1706) was a widely read and emulated work of travel writing. And yet, as Batten notes: Addison relates feelings and experiences: he felt fortunate to attend an opera, that he made a mistake in what he saw, that he received certain advice from his merchants. But in these few instances Addison violates what we shall see is a clearly defined convention of eighteenth-century travel literature: a travel writer must not talk about himself! (15) This passage is interesting for two reasons: on one hand, the eighteenth century view of travel writing (which was certainly the case in previous centuries) saw personal detail as irrelevant, and indeed, egotistic in the balance of the empirical, omniscient business of travel. Travel was about geography, seas, vast distances, foreign mysteries—the mind of man played no part in this cosmic panoply. However, on the other hand, the writer acknowledged as breaking these rules is Addison, founder of the Tatler and The Spectator, who was well-versed in the latest volumes and accounts of travel writing. Rather than a fluke or a failed experiment, Addison’s style spread throughout so-called travel writing, popping up in the works of Defoe, Swift, Fielding, Smollett, Johnson, and others. Each of these works stressed an identifiably English traveler, whose ideas, opinions, and morals reflected the ethos of coffee houses throughout England; indeed, the travelers of these works bear an uncanny resemblance to The Spectator’s Mr. Spectator, with his unmistakably “useful” credo: Thus I live in the World, rather as a Spectator of Mankind, than as one of the Species; by which means I have made my self a Speculative Statesman, Soldier, Merchant and Artizan [sic], without ever meddling with

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any Practical Part in Life. I am very well versed in the Theory of an Husband, or a Father, and can discern the Errors in the Oeconomy [sic], Business and Diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them…In short, I have acted in all the Parts of my Life as a Looker-on, which is the Character I intend to preserve in this Paper. (Addison, 199) These words were published by Addison on March 1711 about a different kind of traveler—a traveler in London society. Nevertheless, they capture perfectly the idea of the “citizen-traveler,” who can mix effortlessly in the foreign ports of the world, knowing each man’s business and confiding his notes to the country at large. There can be no better personification of this technique—nor of its usefulness to England—than in the character and book of William Dampier. Like Mr. Spectator, Dampier appears in his book as something of a jack- of-all-trades. If Addison writes that Mr. Spectator “[has] been taken for a Merchant upon the Exchange these ten Years, and sometimes [passes] for a Jew in the Assembly of Stock-Jobbers at Jonathan’s” (Addison, 199), Dampier is by turns a traveler, buccaneer, pirate, merchant, scientist, and politician in the course of his narrative. However, unlike Mr. Spectator, Dampier had no problem revealing his true identity—or, we should say, the identity he “wrote” for himself at the end of A New Voyage. This identity is nowhere better seen in Thomas Murray’s portrait of Dampier, painted soon after the successful publication of his first book, which bestows an aura of respectability to the now-famous mariner. It is a remarkable portrait: a slightly haggard Dampier (perhaps still suffering from the flux he contracted in ) stares confidently at the viewer, his long hair (wigless) spilling over a distinguished jacket with a prominent cravat. In his one visible hand he holds a book entitled “Dampier’s Voyages,” which in one stroke seems to brand him an author rather than a sailor or buccaneer. The painting affirmed what his book had already suggested: that even a pirate could reinvent himself through the national project of travel writing. For indeed, identity is at the heart of his book: the identity of a traveler as morally and economically English; the identity of a scientist in a world of savagery and superstition; and the identity of a criminal whose are a service to his country. Regarding the last statement, Dampier’s “career” is by no means clear from the narrative. Dampier sails around the world courtesy of a band of “buccaneers,” though in many ways they are just as easily pirates, brigands, or an unlawful rabble. The word “buccaneer” has a curious origin, perhaps first explained in Alexander Exquelemin’s The Buccaneers of America (1678). The French settlers in Hispaniola and became highly adept boar hunters, eking out a precariously existence among their intolerant Spanish landlords. Working in the wilderness, they adopted the native system of cutting meat into strips and it over a fire to dry. This method of curing meat, called boucan by the French, was soon appropriated by the Spanish as a name (probably prejoratively) for the hunters—boucaniers, or as Anglicized, buccaneers (Exquemelin, 58-59). These hunters were more or less forced into when the Spanish began heavily taxing—and at times, simply murdering— the buccaneers. While buccaneers were generally anti-Spanish, this had less to do with any profound sense of nationalism than the simple fact that Spain

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controlled most of the Caribbean and South America. Buccaneers quickly attracted a large national following, particularly among the English, who produced the legendary Sir Henry Morgan, responsible for sacking Panama City in 1670. 10 At the same time, buccaneers were often synonymous with pirates, preying on Spanish and English vessels alike, since they had no exclusive contract with any nation (unless they individually hired themselves out). This contrasted sharply with , such as the famous Sir , who had letters from the Queen authorizing the assault and seizure of Spanish vessels. Clearly, though, Dampier was no ; at best, he was a buccaneer who operated in Spanish waters and looted Her colonial bounties. Yet piracy was piracy, particularly in an age where even disserting a naval vessel was a hanging offense. The fact remained that Dampier was technically a criminal, traveling the world under dubious circumstances and returning to England for an uncertain reception. 11 His book, which is the only true documentary evidence of his career, is at once a celebration and a defense of his remarkable journey, and one he would have us believe is profoundly English in inspiration. Dampier had numerous precedents for the shape of his work, chief among those the extremely popular Buccaneers of America by the Frenchman Exquemelin (written in Dutch as De Americaensche Zee-Roovers, translated in 1684). Despite the title, this is a work squarely in the travelogue tradition, telling a loose story of the author’s journey as a buccaneer throughout the infamous campaigns of Spanish America. However, the largest part of the work is a history of Henry Morgan’s savage campaign against the Spanish, resulting in the pillaging of numerous coastal towns, including St. Catalina and Panama City. Not surprisingly, the work was a bestseller in England, with a second edition following three months after its initial publication in London (Cordingly, 55). The text of A New Voyage suggests that Dampier knew Exquemelin’s work, or at least the conventions of this breed of travel writing; namely, a history and adventure story framed by scientific travelogue told by a first-hand witness. Much of Dampier’s story reads like a sequel to The Buccaneers of America: we see buccaneer attacks on Spanish towns and ships, exploration of native villages with a detailed description of their customs, accounts of historical events and people, and an insider’s view of the realities of Dutch and Spanish trade (though Dampier’s account is more extensive in this regard). Yet what is remarkable about Dampier’s work is that it diverges from this template in two important ways: in its representation of the author and his intentions for writing the book. In the late seventeenth century, as in our own

10 Sir Henry Morgan, however, was not strictly a buccaneer, since he was given a commission from the Governor of to raid Spanish vessels (Cordingly, 56). However, because of his actions and the imprecise nature of the term, many buccaneers are seen as national agents rather than the highly anarchistic group they truly were. 11 That said, though many English buccaneers (even some of Dampier’s former companions) were prosecuted upon returning home, most were ultimately acquitted or received reduced sentences. The fame of Morgan made buccaneering somewhat romantic in the eyes of the public, and though criminal by law, many in England saw the benefit of such practices to trade and foreign markets. Indeed, as Sir Albert Gray writes in his Preface to the 1927 Edition of Dampier’s A New Voyage, English colonies—such as New England—saw buccaneering as a welcome source of income (Gray, n.xxvii).

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time, successful books demanded sequels and imitations. If Exquemelin’s book was a resounding success only a decade before the publication of Dampier’s work, certainly the market was still favorable to another account of buccaneers and colonial looting. Yet Exquemelin had the excuse of nationality; quite frankly, no one cared if Exquemelin (as a Frenchman writing in Dutch) was a criminal. As an English citizen, however, Dampier might be reluctant to embrace the charge of piracy. Appearing as a willing accomplice to crimes committed without a privateer’s license would be tantamount to a confession, whether or not he expected to be arrested for his crimes. Instead, Dampier positions himself in a way that alludes to his buccaneering past without making it the focus of his story: “As for the Actions of the Company among whom I made the greatest part of this Voyage…’tis not to divert the Reader with them that I mention them, much less that I take any pleasure in relating them: but for method’s sake, and for the Reader’s satisfaction…I would not prejudice the Truth and Sincerity of my Relation, tho by Omissions only” (3). Dampier reminds us again and again that he was an unwilling Buccaneer, and participated merely as an observer—an observer with a significant national agenda. Reports of foreign spoils and individual crimes are suppressed by a narrative voice that strives to be an international “Spectator.” His method is to tuck himself away with a gang of buccaneers—for, like Mr. Spectator, he can pass for any man in any walk of life—and use this inside information to leak trade secrets into the coffee houses of London. The result is an author who is more of a spy than a buccaneer, and whose every word and action reflects his duty to the nation. When Dampier writes of his refusal to “prejudice the Truth and Sincerity of my Relation,” he is talking less of empirical truth than the authenticity of his narrative. Indeed, he allows just enough to shine through to verify “yes, I was there, I saw this,” without admitting “yes, I was there, and I helped burn Tobago to the ground.” Dampier had to be taken seriously as an author and an observer, without being compromised by dubious company and motives; his narrative allows him to side- step both traps and emerge as a reliable witness and a loyal English subject. But how, one might ask, is Dampier a specifically “English” subject? If it was taboo for travelers to think out loud, how could a traveler write as a patriot, consciously shaping the narrative to speak for the interests of England? The answer is how he positions himself—both as author and traveler—within the familiar frame of travel writing. The Preface to A New Voyage not only distances himself from the taint of piracy, but proclaims the loftiest goals for his manuscript. His claim that the work was born of a “hearty Zeal for the promoting of useful knowledge, and of any thing that may never so remotely tend to my Countries advantage” (1) sounds conventional enough, all the more so considering the work’s dedication to Charles Montague, president of the Royal Society. Of course, it also foreshadows something of Johnson’s claims for travel writers in his famous Idler essay, with his refrain of “mitigating evil” for the nation. Yet any number of travelogues make similar claims, and Dampier’s lofty goals are echoed by a majority of the letters and essays that comprise the bulk of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. Even the numerous descriptions of plants and animals in Dampier’s work follow a well-worn strategy of travel

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writing, whether scientific or entertaining in nature: namely, to document everything in an exhaustive encyclopedia of travel for future travelers—whether of the real or armchair variety—to follow in his wake. However, it is in these very descriptions that Dampier subverts travel conventions to become a “useful traveler” for England. Obviously, it is difficult to claim that Dampier is being useful whereas a traveler documenting species of wild fowl is not; rather, Dampier seems to define “useful” in terms of foreign markets and the demands of empire. A brief comparison of two travelogue passages in Exquemelin and Dampier can illustrate this point. First, a passage from Exquemelin: There are also some large trees with a fruit called genipas…if you squeeze the juice out of an unripe fruit, it is as black as soot and you can write on paper with it—but after nine days it fades away completely, as if the paper had never been written on. The wood of this tree is used for building, as it is solid and handsome timber. It would be good for shipbuilding, for it lasts well in water. (41) This description is virtually a staple of travel writing: an exotic fruit with seemingly magical properties, verified by the eyewitness authority of the author. The author also ties this passage to the business of travel, noting how the sturdy wood “would be good for shipbuilding.” However, compare this to Dampier’s passage on the coconut tree, which follows a similar convention: Yet [the tree], that is of such great use, and esteemed so much in the East-Indies, is scarce regarded in the West-Indes for want of the knowledge of the benefit which it may produce. And ‘tis partly for the sake of my Country-men, in our American plantations, thus I have spoken so largely of it. For the hot Climates there are a very proper soil for it: and indeed it is so hardy, both in the raising it, when grown, that it will thrive as well in dry sandy ground as in rich Land. (204) Both authors tie their respective fruits to the colonial enterprise, but Dampier takes it a step further: breadfruit is not simply a useful, nourishing fruit, but can benefit Dampier’s “Country-men, in our American plantations.” This innocent remark reveals a patriotism, if you will, that surfaces again and again in his travels. Almost every description, story, and character he meets has some use— and again, “use” in the term of market value—for England. Here, breadfruit needs to be collected, planted, and cultivated in the American colonies. Little in Dampier is abstract in the ways of so-called empirical science; even the most conventional aspects of travel are pregnant with national sentiment. Incidentally, this scheme of Dampier’s was not lost upon the Royal Society: no less a figure than Joseph Banks, scientist on Captain Cook’s first voyage, and eventual president of the Society, commissioned Lt. Bligh in 1787 to collect breadfruit plants in Tahiti and bring them to the to feed the prodigious slave populations. As will be seen, Banks knew his Dampier well and experienced many of his own travels through the “eyes” of Dampier’s narrative. Nationalism is present not only in the subject of Dampier’s travels, but in Dampier himself; or, it should be stressed, the Dampier that appears in his narrative. Though ostensibly a work of non-fiction, without recourse to fictional

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language and techniques, Dampier’s narrative is written with the hand of an accomplished writer. Indeed, a work of his scope and ambition might have justifiably impressed the Royal Society, but who else would have read it? A handful of readers at best, or as many who read the endless stream of travels and discourses published by the Royal Society. But A New Voyage was more than this: its success far eclipsed that of its predecessor Exquemelin, reaching the widest possible audience and making Dampier an overnight success. The Royal Society not only published his work in its Philosophical Transactions, but sponsored a voyage to New Holland with Dampier in charge of his own vessel (a disastrous mission recounted in his next work, A Voyage to New Holland). And more importantly, his name and image infiltrated the very fabric of literary society. He made the rounds of respectable people (picking up Hans Slone, secretary of the Royal Society, as a patron), and dined with such luminaries as Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. Evelyn recorded this meeting in his diary on August 6, 1699: I din’d at Mr. Pepys, where was Cap: Dampier, who has ben [sic] a famous Buccaneere [sic], brought hither the painted Prince Jolo, printed a Relation of his strange adventures, which was very extraordinary, and his observations very profitable…he seemed a more modest man, than one would imagine, by the relation of the Crue [sic] he had sorted with. (Evelyn, 404) This portrait, like Thomas Murray’s portrait in oils, captures much of the appeal of Dampier’s persona in his book. Throughout his “extraordinary” adventures among strange lands and people, Dampier always unearths “profitable” observations unknown to the common Londoner. He speaks the language of the sea, unpolished and untutored, but sees with the eyes of a Defoe (whose Robinson Crusoe owes him a significant debt). It is this quality of authenticity and sophistication that appeals to the reader of Dampier’s book, and must have appealed to Evelyn, surprised to find him so “modest” a Buccaneer. For unlike previous travelers and their writings, Dampier creates a new kind of protagonist: a citizen-traveler, whose reflections and character remained fixed, compass-like, on England. Though most travel writing uses the “I” pronoun and allowed some interaction with the traveler and his travels, we learn little about the traveler—even less about his country. This is ironic since Dampier must have inherited his technique from the very narratives that formed the basis of the Philosophical Transactions. Indeed, these narratives emphasized an “author-centered” approach as a way of verifying foreign marvels, often presenting their findings in a first-hand, epistolary format. In a recent study of the Philosophical Transactions, Scientific Discourse in Sociohistorical Context, Dwight Atkinson documents the chief conventions of these narratives: witnessing, that is, naming of…persons who were present at the scientific events…indexes of modesty and humility…a tendency toward miscellaneity, such that digressions are frequent, and some articles are patchworks of unconnected observations…[and] elaborate politeness. (77) This is a fairly close description of Dampier’s technique, diverging in only one important detail: the narrator is not simply a fawning, humble observer who offers a scientific experiment before quitting the stage. From the beginning of the

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narrative, Dampier appears as a quick-witted, independent-minded Englishman who, though sensible of his patrons, has strong opinions on how to be “useful” to England. The modesty of so many travel writers assures their relative anonymity; it is no mistake that Dampier is the first celebrated traveler who lives and dies by his writings. Certainly Columbus, Magellan, Drake, Raleigh, and even the later Captain Cook would be remembered with or without the published accounts of their travels. Dampier’s fame lies solely in the fictional persona he creates in his narrative, which is perhaps the first truly authentic account of an English traveler. His Englishness is expressed in four important ways in his narrative: (1) his humble yet opinionated nationality, which is revealed in his adventures and personal reflections; (2) his insider schemes for capitalizing on buccaneer knowledge for the good of England; (3) his systematic debunking of popular myths and superstitions that inhibit the spread of trade; and (4) his commoditization of indigenous peoples in the larger scheme of empire. No writer before Dampier (except for Behn, perhaps) created a traveler who was as recognizable as his or her travels: it is no surprise that Pepys and Evelyn desired to meet Dampier in person, lauding his person and achievements in a way that closely resembles the reception of Captain Cook almost a century later. Evelyn’s surprise that Dampier “seemed a more modest man, than one would imagine, by the relation of the Crue he had sorted with,” is perhaps the clearest testimony to his cunning as a writer. For even when he associates himself with buccaneers, he is careful to create a specifically English—and therefore, innocent—space in the ship. For example, very early in the narrative, he is transferred to a companion vessel short on men; unfortunately, the vessel is manned by Frenchmen, which prompts Dampier to remark: “[the] French Seamen were the saddest Creatures that ever I was among; for tho’ we had bad Weather that requir’d many Hands aloft, yet the biggest part of them never stirr’d out of their Hammocks, but to eat, or ease themselves” (30). He soon requests a transfer, confiding to his readers that “I ever designed to continue with those of my own Nation” (45). Indeed, an innovative subplot of the book is Dampier’s frequent attempt to jump ship and flee to an English settlement. This obsessive theme has nothing to do with his story proper, and is quite at odds with the conventions of the “invisible” traveler. Yet Dampier wants his fame both ways—as a fearless explorer and a faithful subject of the Crown. In a cunning passage toward the end of the book, Dampier writes: I thought now was my time to make my Escape…Indeed, one reason that put me on the thoughts of staying at this particular place, besides the present opportunity of leaving Captain Read, which I did always intend to do as soon as I could, was that I had here also a prospect of advancing a profitable Trade for Ambergreece with these people, and of gaining a considerable Fortune for my self. (323) This “escape” has been planned for some time, carefully worked in between passages of economic and scientific interests. However, despite its blatant autobiographical detail, this passage exhibits Dampier’s famous ability to kill two

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birds with one stone. He is not only distancing himself from the buccaneer life, but actively seeking a way to open up foreign markets for England. The South Asian markets, where Ambergreece was found, was then monopolized by the Dutch; the only Englishmen to trade on these shores were the buccaneers themselves, who had little interest in such ambitious schemes. Dampier is nothing if not ambitious, and his pride rings through in this passage, as he admits the enterprise will “[earn] a considerable fortune for myself.” Dampier is never shy to assert what he considers his due, and his obvious awareness of his manuscript’s worth marks A New Voyage as something quite different from the Philosophical Transactions, and indeed, any travel writing prior to its publication. However, this attitude often becomes problematic, since the “humble” Dampier who longs to return home is pitted against the “buccaneer” who exults in his lawless adventures. Indeed, the bulk of his narrative, which documents the pillaging of foreign markets and cargo, is more or less the natural business of a pirate. So how does he get away with it? Why do so many important figures in London life line up to shake hands with a literary pirate? Here we see something of the “novelistic” flair which would inspire Defoe’s characterization of Robinson Crusoe. For one of the most fictional touches of the work is how Dampier widens the scope of his Englishness to encompass the duties—however criminal—of a true buccaneer. As Anna Neill writes in Buccaneer Ethnography: Nature, Culture, and Nation in the Journals of William Dampier, Dampier borrowed conventions from two travel genres—/buccaneer narrative (as represented by Exquemelin) and the scientific narrative (Philosophical Transactions) to “domesticate” the role of the buccaneer, which in any case was becoming acceptable through the career of Sir Henry Morgan. As she writes: Fashioning himself as a careful observer of the natural phenomenon and human societies that he encounters on his travels, he is able to at once identify himself as a member of a respectable profession and to divorce himself effectively from the “uncivilized” behavior of his buccaneer colleagues and their indigenous allies. (3) In other words, by dedicating his work to the President of the Royal Society, and outwardly imitating the conventions outlined in the Philosophical Transactions, Dampier gains instant respectability for his work. Thus, when botanical descriptions give way to the more lucrative business of a pirate, it is not seen as plunder but as part of a national project of travel. Even episodes that have a tenuous relationship to English interests are seen in the best possible light, since Dampier so muddies the rhetorical waters. As Neill concludes: “his journal is now clearly the authoritative product of his initiation into a community of knowledgeable and dependable traveling Englishmen—men who can project English commercial advantage across the countries and peoples they have explored and compared” (Neill, 10). Here is the clearest mark of his nationality, since A New Voyage was embraced not only by the Royal Society, but by generations of scholars and explorers as a definitive work of travel. Even Joseph Banks, writing in his Endeavour Journal of 1668-1770, cites Dampier copiously when exploring New South Wales (as will be discussed in greater detail below), viewing him as the chief authority on South Pacific travel. What affected the

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transformation from buccaneer to explorer was the character of Dampier himself, a role unique to travel writing which at once “domesticated” buccaneers and altered the scope (and purpose) of travel.

II

Dampier’s advice takes on many forms in the narrative, from economic gain to a more nuanced understanding of indigenous relations. A typical example occurs in Chapter Six, when Dampier and his buccaneer allies are exploring the north-west coast of South America. Dampier is thunderstruck by a significant money-making scheme, but is overruled by the buccaneer captains, who decide to push on for fear of the Spanish.12 Lest the reader miss the significance of this opportunity, Dampier writes: There was never a greater Opportunity put into the Hands of Men to enrich themselves than we had, to have gone with these Negroes, and settled ourselves at Santa Maria…[employing] them in getting Gold out of the Mines there…Add to this, that the Indian neighborhood, who were mortal Enemies to the Spaniards…were our fast Friends, and ready to receive and assist us…[and] which was the principal Thing, we had the North-Seas to befriend us; from whence we could export ourselves, or Effects, or import Goods from all parts of the West-Indes (114). Dampier concludes this passage with the wistful remark that “these may seem to the Reader but Golden Dreams” (114). Obviously, there is nothing somnambulistic about Dampier’s reverie, since it has all the elements for economic enterprise: a defensible port, willing slaves, untapped mines, and the protection of Indians at war with the Spanish. The reader is all the more likely to believe Dampier given his rhetorical role in the narrative: the good-hearted, “modest” Englishman whose helpful advice is scorned by the short-sightedness of the buccaneers (who, though English, have obviously forsaken Her best interests). Indeed, passages like this make it imperative that Dampier sail with the buccaneers, since they allow him to define Englishness as something beyond birth or language. An English traveler is not simply an Englishman who travels, but one whose business is observation, and whose science is trade. Yet for all his business advice, Dampier has serious misgivings about England’s role in the global empire. He is chiefly concerned with the haphazard way England exploits human and natural resources without creating a sustainable legacy. Not that Dampier was unusually concerned with human rights; on the contrary, it was simply bad business not to think about the future. In a notable passage, Dampier’s buccaneers return to a village where they had previously installed John Gret, an English-speaking native who had been

12 Another clever strategy more suited to the novel than a travel account: Dampier’s “useful” schemes are always overruled by the buccaneers. This has the dual purpose of showing him as a creature above the common concerns of buccaneers, as well as allowing him to digress on these episodes under the guise of a personal grievance.

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adopted by the buccaneers. Gret’s role was to ensure the buccaneers could rely on the resident Moskito Indians for trade and sanctuary. However, upon their return, they find the natives’ goodwill strained. Dampier soon learns the reason for this mistrust: …this Friendship had like to have been stifled in its Infancy; for within a few Months after [our departure] an English trading Sloop came on this Coast from Jamaica…[and] these English Men, having no Knowledge at all of what had happened, endeavored to make them Slaves (as is commonly done)...But John Gret, and the rest, perceiving this, leapt all over board, and were by the others killed every one of them in the Water. The Indians on shoar never came to the knowledge of it…[and] [s]everal times after, upon our conversing with ‘em, they enquired of us what was become of their Country-men: But we told them we knew not…so they concluded the Spaniards had met with them, and killed, or taken them (131). An awkward situation; all the more so, since Dampier realizes that whatever promises and pledges of friendship he makes them, the next wave of Englishmen will most likely smother the relationship “in its infancy.” Dampier’s frustration is in these short-term profits (such as kidnapping) rather than the long-term cultivation of trade. For trade not only benefits England, but tames the natural “savagery” of the native, much as the buccaneers “baptized” John Gret and clothed him in the manner of their country. Reflecting on this relationship, Dampier writes: “For the more trade, the more civility; and on the contrary, the less trade the more barbarity and inhumanity. For trade has a strong influence upon all people, who have found the sweet of it, bringing with it so many of the conveniences of life as it does” (214). Thus, he urges his countrymen against acts of aggression which linger in the memory of natives, and make implacable enemies of those who would otherwise be an invaluable asset. The passage has another resonance for England: by mistreating the natives—particularly natives already aiding the English—they blur the distinction between English and Spanish. Throughout the narrative, Dampier gleefully reports on the mutinous state of natives throughout the Caribbean and South America. All are ready to take up arms against the Spanish, who have inflicted unspeakable cruelties in the name of empire. Yet the Spaniards’ weakness is in viewing the natives as expendable labor rather than business partners. Dampier urges the English to see the value in long-term trade with the natives, who can easily overthrow the Spanish (with English help) and offer a boundless empire to English merchants. But at the present rate of conquest, the natives will soon be decimated entirely by the Spanish, even sooner if the English aid in this destruction. In a surprisingly moving passage, Dampier writes: All the Indians that I have been acquainted with who are under the Spaniards, seem to be more melancholy than other Indians that are free…[t]heir Songs are very melancholy and doleful…[b]ut I have always been prone to believe, that they are only condoling their Misfortunes, the Loss of their Country and Liberties: which altho’ these that are now living do not know, they remember what it was to be free. (94)

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Unlike many explorers (to say nothing of buccaneers), Dampier had the unique ability to see the natives as human beings, reading in their songs a history of intolerance and persecution. Again, this passage allows Dampier to pose himself as a put-upon Englishman, since he, too, can remember “what it was to be free” while sailing under the law of buccaneers. However, this identification only deepened as a naturalist, since he was truly exploring virgin territory; little of what had been written about natives by European authors was observed first-hand— and little of that was unclouded by ignorance or indifference. The more he learned, the more he was convinced that the future of the natives rested on English intervention. The Spanish must be driven from the Caribbean and South America, if not for compassion, then at least for the lucrative trade that depended on a successful partnership with indigenous peoples. Of course, as will be seen with the example of Prince Jeoly, Dampier often acted against his own advice, a contradiction that remains one of the most fascinating illustrations of his private character. Sailing as a buccaneer had another useful advantage for Dampier the traveler: it allowed him to make a comprehensive survey of the myths, inaccuracies, and superstitions that plagued English mariners. While many of these beliefs were shared by sailors regardless of nationality, Dampier was concerned with how they checked the flow of English expansion. Thus, while his English persona allows Dampier to “domesticate” his natural calling, it also allows him to speak to two distinct audiences: the English scientific/literary community and the common sailor—some of whom had literary pretensions. 13 Dampier must have realized that many of the superstitions of travel were passed through second-hand accounts, often composed in the comfort of a professional writer’s study. What would be the difference, then, if an authentic Englishman wrote a meticulously documented book of travel that challenged these malicious fantasies? We can see Dampier consciously separating himself from the greater tradition of travel writing as he writes: “Nor have I given my self any great Trouble since my Return, to compare my Discoveries with those of others” (3). As his style attests, he is less a writer writing about travel than a traveler taking up writing. Of course the irony is that Dampier is very much a writer, and as such, was able to inhabit both worlds. For example, while discrediting so many travel fictions, he still allied himself with the respectable branch of English travelers. While describing rabbits in Nicobar, he slyly remarks: “Sir Francis Drake in his Voyage round the World makes mention of such that he found at Ternate, or some other of the Spice-Islands, or near them” (317). In one sentence, we have two English explorers, two voyages of discovery, and two of the globe. Again, this was part and parcel of his strategy to identify with the

13 It is no surprise that travel narratives are among the most published literature of this period, as sailors enthusiastically published their travels to share with a curious nation. In its Philosophical Transactions of 1666, the Royal Society published “Directions for Seamen, bound for Far Voyages,” which encouraged sailors to keep a running journal of the sights, impressions, changes, and wonders of a sailing expedition. (Edwards, 27). Many of the Philosophical Transactions contributions were by such “amateurs,” in the form of diaries and letters to the Society.

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common sailor, who would respond favorably to the exalted pedigree of Drake and Raleigh (much as later writers would invoke Cook and Nelson). Elsewhere, however, he is emphatic in his break with the travel writing tradition, identifying with the aims of the Royal Society. As Dampier was no doubt aware, most travelers, of the real or armchair variety, were content to “crib” from previous writers to flesh out voyages that had either been forgotten or never attempted. The chain of borrowings often goes back several hundred years, becoming less and less reliable with each succeeding volume. As Percy Adams notes in his work, Travelers and Travel Liars: a traveler could distort appearances to make them conform with a set of notions derived from previous travelers and theorists, and then his report would become part of a myth, self-fed but not self-consumed. When this close relationship prevails, one finds it impossible to discuss the falsehood, or the falsifier, alone.” (16) In other words, a writer would often try to be seen as authentic by inserting a commonly held belief, which was carried from traveler to traveler as a badge of honor. The truth, however, was often based on an early travel lie or distortion that somehow slipped into gospel. One of the most famous examples occurs in Antonio Pigafetta’s famous accountt of Magellan’s circumnavigation (1525), where we find the following passage: One day we suddenly saw a naked man of giant stature on the shore of the port, dancing, singing, and throwing dust on his head. The captain- general sent one of our men to the giant so that he might perform the same actions as a sign of peace…He was so tall that we reached only to his waist, and he was well proportioned. (14) These Patagonian giants were subsequently discovered and found to have been tall, but no more than six feet. However, the observation became enshrined in European cultural mythology, and travelers wrote energetically about their size and grotesque customs well into the eighteenth century. Dampier would have none of it. He took little on faith, and attempted to “see” the outside world through the eyes of an honest, work-a-day Englishman. This is all the more evident in his Preface, where he scorns the pretensions of literature: “As to my Stile, it cannot be expected, that a Seaman should affect Politeness; for were I able to do it, yet I think I should be little sollicitious [sic] about it, in a work of this Nature” (4). These careful bows of subservience color the authenticity of his narrative, fooling us that his observations are first impressions, hastily scribbled into his travel diary. This is certainly the logic behind the following passage, which is unique in travel writing of the period: “Foreseeing a Necessity of wading through Rivers frequently in our Land-march, I took care before I left the Ship to provide my self a large Joint of Bambo, which I stopt at both Ends, closing it with Wax, so as to keep out any Water. In this I preserved my Journal and Writings from being wet, tho’ I was often forced to swim” (21). A practical question for a practical age: how did one preserve one’s notes and journals through years of storms, shipwreck, long marches, battles, and bouts of disease? Few writers considered

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the pragmatic aspects of recording one’s journey on the go; or if they had, they considered such trivia irrelevant to a serious work of travel. Dampier includes it as if to say: had the notes been ruined, the pages of the journal scattered, I would have nothing to write you, lacking the “Politeness” of a proper author. The presence of the bamboo is Dampier’s proof against a faulty—or literary— imagination. Ironically, this device would become one of the staples of subsequent travel literature, and indeed, the English novel. The great antiquity of sailing has given rise to more than its share of legends, few of which were seriously contested before Dampier’s day. One of the most persistent legends is the matter of what Dampier calls a “Corpus Sant,” now more commonly known as St. Elmo’s fire. 14 Sailors had a near religious belief in these lights, seeing them as God’s divine hand plucking them out of tempestuous waters. When Dampier encountered one after a storm, he had a more pragmatic view of the experience: …we saw a Corpus Sant at our Main top-mast Head, on the very Top of the Truck of the Spindle. The sight rejoiced our Men exceedingly; for the height of the Storm is commonly over when the Corpus Sant is seen aloft…[it] is a small glittering Light…like a Star; but when it appears on the Deck, it resembles a great Glow-worm…I have heard some ignorant Seamen discoursing how they have seen them creep, or, as they say, travel about in the Scuppers…[but] I did never see any one stir out of the place where it was first fixt…and therefore do believe it is some Jelly: but enough of this. (281) Dampier’s irreverence for the sacred lights reflects the practical concerns of morale: how to keep a crew motivated in hurricane-force weather when their every thought and gaze is for the elusive Corpus Sant? Even buccaneers, for all their vice and debauchery, had an unwavering faith in signs and omens—to say nothing of the rituals that accompanied them. Yet Dampier coldly examined the miracle and pronounced it nothing more than a “Jelly,” which had already wasted enough of his ink. Dampier, however, could also side in the favor of seafaring legends; superstition simply had to be proven by scientific observation before he would set any store in it. In one passage, Dampier remarks: “For in all hot Countries, as I have observed, the Sea is soon raised by the Wind, and as soon down again when the Wind is gone, and therefore it is a Proverb among the Seamen, Up Wind, up Sea, Down Wind, down Sea” (153). Above all, Dampier wanted to educate a new generation of seamen and merchants to be wiser and more self-sufficient than their Dutch and Spanish competition. For all the advances in sailing and longitude meant nothing if sailors clung to the beliefs of their medieval forefathers. If Dampier distrusts superstition, then he is equally suspicious of the contributions of previous travelers and the books that popularized them. History is replete with examples of hasty travelers who name this or that island without

14 Again, it was largely writers such as Pigafetta who created this myth in the first place. As he writes in his account of Magellan’s voyage: “Ten leagues southwest of that island, we came to an island, which, as we coasted by, seemed to us to be going upward. After entering the port, the holy body [i.e. St. Elmo’s fire] appeared to use through the pitch darkness” (71).

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making a proper study; the result is that “Savage Island” turns out to be relatively peaceful, and “” is perhaps the most uninhabitable coast in . 15 Again, Dampier has to see for himself, if only to educate subsequent Englishmen in their voyages of discovery. In one passage, while exploring the islands around Panama, he writes: “Why they are called the King’s-Islands, I know not; they are sometimes, and mostly in Maps, called the Pearl-Islands. I cannot imagine wherefore they are called so, for I did never seen one Pearl Oyster about them, nor any Pearl-Oyster seashells” (125). He is equally dismayed by reports of cannibalism, which are virtually a stock-in-trade of travel writing. Even Defoe, in Robinson Crusoe and other works, never seriously questions the desire of natives (of whatever country) to dine on human flesh. Dampier is less certain of this predilection, which inspires one of his most pointed criticisms: As for the common Opinion of Authropophagi, or Man-Eaters, I did never meet with any such People: All Nations or Families in the World, that I have seen or heard of, having some sort of Food to live on…would scarce kill a Man purposely to eat him. I know not what barbarous Customs may formerly have been in the World; and to sacrifice their Enemies to their Gods, is a thing hath been much talked of…but I speak as to the Compass of my own Knowledge, and know some of these Cannibal Stories to be false, and many of them have been disproved since I first went into the West-Indes. (325) In using the term “authropophagi” (in his idiomatic spelling), he traces a line back to Herodotus, one of the earliest travel writers, who wrote semi-fictional accounts of cannibals and other exotic creatures—details that were bodily lifted by generations of armchair explorers (including the possibly mythical Sir John Mandeville, who was wildly popular throughout the Renaissance). The thrill of exploration was always tempered with the fear of who you would meet; stories of being shipwrecked on cannibal islands—whether real or imagined—haunted seamen of every nationality. Dampier seems to have little fear of being eaten alive, trusting the “civilizing” force of trade to bridge the culinary divide. It is yet another passage where Dampier, as the fearless, intrepid captain (remarkably like the role Cook would play in his own voyages) rouses the morale of his English seamen on the rough voyage ahead. Dampier is also eager to correct the mistakes of distance and geography which are endlessly—and often blindly—repeated by his contemporaries. Remarking on the distance from South America to South Sea Islands, he writes: the South-Sea must be of a greater breadth by 25 degrees than it’s commonly reckoned by Hydrographers who make it only about 100, more or less…I am not ignorant how much this hath been canvassed of late

15 Both examples from Captain Cook. In June 1774, Cook landed on an Island near Tonga (now called Niue), and was met with a show of fierce resistance from the natives. Without exploring farther, Cook writes in his journal: “The Conduct and aspect of these Islanders occasioned my giving it the name of Savage Island” (Cook, 367). Botany Bay was so named for the quantity of plant specimens gathered by Joseph Banks in the area; unfortunately, the first colonizing mission from England found a blighted land that “did not afford a spot large enough for a cabbage garden” (Horwitz, 144).

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years especially, and that the prevailing Opinion hath been that about 70, or upwards, should be allowed. But till I can see some better grounds for the exactness of those trials, that have been made on Land by Mr. Norwood and others…[I will remain] somewhat doubtful of their measures. (200-201) Again, an opinionated stance for the conventional—and invisible—traveler. One wonders what Mr. Norwood thought of his innovation! But Dampier, outside of his Dedication, cared little for flattery; his intention was always to write of travel in the plainest possible terms, even if that meant revealing an unhappy truth about nautical distances.16 Dampier even weighs in on the latest geographic disputes, notably the endless search for the Northwest Passage, a subject of much speculation in coffee houses (where, perhaps, Dampier was advised to write something about it). Though this is one instance where Dampier lacks first-hand information, he uncharacteristically proceeds with circumspection, unlike many authors who not only claimed it was possible, but claimed to have found it. Dampier modestly claims that “such a Passage may be found,” though most writers and explorers are going about it all wrong. As he continues: “if I was to go on this Discovery, I would go first into the South-Seas, bend my course from thence along by California, and that way seek a Passage back into the West-Seas…I would take the same Method if I was to go to discovery the North-East Passage” (190). With a concluding jab at his predecessors, he admits that “Captain Wood, indeed, says, this N. East Passage is not to be found for Ice: but how often do we see that sometimes Designs have been given over as impossible, and at another time, and by other ways, those very things have been accomplished; but enough of this” (190). The irony of this passage is that most “anonymous” works of travel would offer second-hand speculations as facts, such as the notorious work of Father Hennepin. This famous “travel liar,” to quote Percy Adams, attempted to trump his companion, La Salle, by claiming he had piloted a canoe down the length of the Mississippi River to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico. Hennepin created fanciful geography along the way, borrowing generously from La Salle’s own writings when inspiration flagged (Adams, 47-48). It was this very tradition Dampier tried to avoid, rhetorically staging himself through his “simple” language to dispel the charge of embellishment. The ruse proved all too effective: Dampier’s observation was never seriously called into question, and on the basis of his first book, the Royal Society commissioned him to document New Holland in command of his own vessel. Few travel writers had written themselves so effectively on the national stage—and in a fraction of the time it took Captain Cook to rise to prominence.

16 Interestingly, in Magellan’s voyage to the same area two hundred years earlier, he deliberately fudged the distances reported to his crew. These official figures (off by several hundred miles) were dutifully recorded by his hagiographer, Pigafetta, and became the basis for many subsequent journeys. In doing this Magellan was simply following the precedent set by Columbus, who drastically rounded down when traversing the Atlantic.

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III

As stated previously, Dampier is the first traveler who lives or dies by his book. His travels are largely unknown, and no lands or islands were named after him in the manner of Tasman or Vancouver (ironic, considering his “discovery” of much of Australia). It is only by reading A New Voyage, along with its sequels, that we can piece together the enormous influence Dampier had on the whole of eighteenth century travel writing. This is no idle claim: everyone from Defoe to Cook knew and cited Dampier’s work, as his ideas and opinions rapidly contributed to the vast store of cultural mythology on travel and exploration. Few travelers were able to sail beyond the shores of England and not “see” Dampier’s travels all around them. Much of this influence can be attributed to Dampier’s narrator, who is a curious mix of Dampier and Addison’s Mr. Spectator. His uncanny ability to mix in any society—buccaneers, natives, Dutch, the Royal Society—and adopt any literary or narrative style—travelogue, adventure, scientific observation, spiritual reflection—is the basis for what amounts to an international journal of travel. Add to this his nationalist/economic reflections and insistence on simple seaman’s language, and this journal might well be called the Citizen-Traveler, as it documents the outside world through a uniquely English gaze, which constructs, dissects, and defines England’s stake in the global empire. From the list of “subscribers” alone, Dampier’s journal had a wide circulation—as apparent in numerous passages that evoke a curious sense of déjà vu, as they have become popular through other’s retellings (often in the works of Defoe). For all Dampier’s myriad accomplishments, it is here that we find his greatest legacy, as his words and images created a global sense of Englishness; that is, of English identity as something transportable and able to bear fruit in foreign soil. English attitudes toward indigenous peoples and the stereotypes that resulted are largely the work of travel writers. Through travel England experimented with ideas of Self and Other, civilization and savagery, and the no- man’s land that existed in-between. It is no mistake that many of the mythical stories of the eighteenth century, such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Cook’s Voyages, and even the of the Bounty deal with just such an abyss; the lure of the exotic threatened the tenuous nature of Englishness at every turn, as seen in Crusoe’s savage appearance, or the of the Bounty’s mutineers. English readers looked to travel writing to define these boundaries, to restore Crusoe to English civilization and see the mutineers (those who were captured, at least) returned to an English court of justice. Dampier played his role in this delineation of English and native character, largely defining both by what they were not. Though he prided himself on honest, eyewitness description, Dampier was unable to resist the example of previous works of travel, to say nothing of his own English and European ideals. On the one hand, he takes great pains to learn native languages, mastering Malay well enough to distinguish dialects and variants between the various South

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Asian islands. He refuses to read cannibalism into every stray bone and obscure ritual, and only resorts to violence when his own life is threatened. And yet he views natives, as most Europeans did, primarily as a commercial asset. While he objects to some forms of slavery—notably the barbaric manumission of the Spanish—he did not object to the practice entirely. In general, he believes that natives are a marketable commodity for trade, and by enriching the empire they, too, will be culturally emancipated (as illustrated in his earlier quote). When natives frustrate this convenient view of the world, we find Dampier musing as follows: “[The Mindanayans] are ingenious, nimble, and active, when they are minded; but generally very lazy and thievish, and will not work except when forced by Hunger. This laziness is natural to most” (223). In essence, we find here every stereotype about natives perpetuated by Europeans for hundreds of years: lazy, indolent, willful, and thievish. Dampier, like many subsequent English travelers, wanted the exotic presented in an essentially European frame: law, decorum, values, and sentiments should be generally universal, though the language and customs might vary from place to place. The natives most adaptable to this mindset are naturally considered enlightened; those most resistant (such as the Aborigines, as discussed below) are dismissed as barbaric and mindless. This view has the effect of sorting all indigenous peoples into one of two camps, which proved convenient for the armchair traveler at home, though somewhat unreliable—and dangerous—for the would-be explorer. Nevertheless, Dampier’s example (and the example of so many travel writers) was “read” into wildly diverse land and cultures, a typical example of travel fiction preceding travel “fact.” Even Captain Cook, one of the most enlightened explorers of the age, emulates Dampier’s example. Throughout his First Voyage, Cook is at great pains to promote trade with natives who view everything—even his ship—as communal property, and lack the industriousness of an English sailor (particularly a sailor as driven as Captain Cook, who was still sailing at age fifty-one, unheard of among the navy at that time). In a passage that mirrors Dampier’s reflections, he writes: These people very frequently took oppertunities to shew us what expert thieves they were, even some of the Cheifs did not think this profession beneath them…[but] we could inflict nothing which they thought a punishment…[until] Capt. Clerke hit upon a method which had some effect, this was by shaving their heads for thought it is not a very uncommon thing to see…yet its being done on this occasion was looked upon as a mark of infamy and marked out the man. (Cook, 465) Like Dampier, Cook assumes that the natives (in this case, Tongans) are naturally lawless, or at least unwilling to enforce the moral and social laws that operate in England. More significant is how Cook responds to this thievery: instead of using violence (which he was loath to do, though it did happen, particularly in his Third Voyage) he delivers an extremely personal insult, the way one might shave a cat or a dog. The assumption here is that the natives are English property, to be used as they see fit; tolerably if possible, but readily debased and humiliated if they resist English authority.

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In the same way, Cook expects to find English class distinctions when encountering native peoples; for instance, he always seeks the “king” of a given island to establish trade and present his national mission. More often than not, he encounters not one, but several kings, or chiefs, all of whom ruled independently of one another with their own familial allegiances. For this reason, Cook betrays his sensibility when, in a rare moment of praise, he writes: “I was quite charmed with the decorum that was observed, I had no where seen the like, no not even amongst more civilized nations” (472). As an Englishman he longs to “see” England elsewhere—its rules and traditions, decorum and sensibility. And when he doesn’t find it, he is apt to censure the culture for laziness, vice, or debauched sensuality. Of course, reality never played out as conveniently as fiction: Cook never returned to England after his final voyage and he recruited few “Fridays” to his cause. In 1779, Cook was beaten to death after an uncharacteristically violent display of rage and intolerance. The man who had tolerated the petty thefts of his Tahitian hosts apparently lost his appetite for the exotic; Cook meant to enforce English authority by European law—the law of firearms. And yet the natives killed him with rocks and clubs, an older law speaking of an older—and to the English, savage—existence. Not surprisingly, this denouement was echoed in the Mutiny of the Bounty, when Lt. Bligh’s ship was commandeered by crewmen desperate to return to Tahitian civilization. That many of the mutineers were men of respectable families—Fletcher Christian, Peter Haywood, etc.—suggested the threat to English identity from foreign contact. Though Dampier seems to have stubbornly resisted the lure of the exotic, he knew the danger of becoming a rootless explorer; which perhaps is the very reason England (at least in writing) is never far from his thoughts. Easily the most arresting passage of Dampier’s brand of Englishness (and its opposite) occurs in his description of the Aborigines, natives of Australia. Dampier and his crew on the Cygnet are briefly stranded on the north west shore of Australia for repairs, allowing Dampier a first-hand look at a culture unknown to England. From the beginning he seems appalled by these strange, retiring people, who live in a squalor devoid of European contact. His description of the Aborigines—the first ever attempted by a European, much less an Englishman— became the accepted view and a national policy until the mid-twentieth century: The Inhabitants of this Country are the miserablest People in the World. The Hodmadods of Monomatapa¸ though a nasty People, yet for Wealth are Gentlemen to these; who have no Houses, and skin Garments, Sheep, Poultry, and Fruits of the Earth…And setting aside their Humane Shape, they differ but little from Brutes…Their Eyelids are always half closed, to keep the Flies out of their Eyes…[a]nd therefore they cannot see far, unless they hold up their Heads, as if they were looking at somewhat over them. (312) As with Cook, his language is telling: wealth, gentlemen, houses, garments, sheep, etc. Nothing about the Aborigines mirrors the natural order of home. Lacking possessions, they also lack the desire to acquire them. They are thus “brutes,” loafing in the oppressive sun like so many cattle, unable to meet one’s stare for all the flies. Another sign of brutishness is the natives’ unwillingness to

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parlay with the English. Time and again, Dampier approaches the natives to trade, but they either make a show of resistance or simply run away. Dampier’s rhetoric becomes increasingly animalistic, as in the following passage: “The lustiest of the Women snatching up their Infants ran away howling, and the little Children run after squeaking and bawling, but the Men stood still. Some of the women…[made] such a doleful noise, as if we had been coming to devour them” (314). By writing the women and children as “howling” and “squeaking,” and the men as watching dumbly, the reader imagines Dampier’s crew wandering into a field of beasts, who can no more understand civilization than the insects that dot their faces. Dampier’s “reading” of Aboriginal culture becomes more explicit toward the end of his stay: here, Dampier’s crew is attempting to transport water from a well back to the ships. As this is heavy work, the job naturally falls to the natives. In return, the crew offers the Aborigines their most tattered, threadbare clothes, which “would have been very acceptable at some places where we had been, so we thought they might have been with these People” (315). The Aborigines take no interest in the clothes, even though the crew forcibly dresses them in their “gift.” Again, the Aborigines simply shrug it off and “put the Cloaths off again, and laid them down, as if Cloaths were only to work in” (315). However, the greatest insult is the Aborigines’ inability—or unwillingness—to follow the crew’s instructions. In an unusual display of temper, Dampier writes: But all the signs we could make were to no purpose, for they stood like Statues, without motion, but grinn’d like so many Monkeys, staring one upon another: For these poor Creatures seem not accustomed to carry Burthens; and I believe that one of our Ship-boys of 10 Years old, would carry as much as one of them. So we were forced to Carry our Water ourselves. (315) “Poor Creatures” indeed, that are unaccustomed to bearing the burdens of every Englishman that washed ashore. For Dampier, of course, natives uninterested in a business partnership with the English were true savages, which explains their relatively brief appearance in the narrative (the Moskito Indians, by comparison, are described in considerable length). It seems strange that a mind that eagerly recorded water spouts and volcanic eruptions would shrink away from the tenacious self-sufficiency of Aboriginal culture. 17 And yet more than a century would pass before another explorer, in this case, Captain Cook, would refute his description. In August 1770, Cook landed on the Western coast of Australia, expecting to see the New Holland of Dampier’s description. Instead, he writes:

17 However, according to Diana and Michael Preston, in their biography of Dampier, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, this famous passage is the result of second thoughts. As they write: “the unpublished draft of Dampier’s book painted a different picture, more consistent with Dampier’s usual objective style of observation. In it there were no comments about “brutes” or “unpleasing aspects” and he described the people as “of good stature but very thin and lean,” which he attributed to “want of food” (175). The change may have been made to juxtapose the Aborigines with the more amenable natives in the book. Either way, the revision challenges the view of Dampier as an objective, dispassionate observer.

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From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happy than we Europeans; being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary Conveniences so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. They live in a Tranquility which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition…they covet not Magnificent Houses, Houshold-stuff & c…[and] this in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life. (Cook, 174) By referencing “the most wretched people upon Earth,” Cook is obviously responding to Dampier’s earlier dismal of the Aborigines, which his scientific mind found wanting. As a lifelong mariner, Cook had no love for the superfluities of modern life, preferring to live in “Tranquility” on his wooden island. He identifies with the Aborigines in a way Dampier dared not; for by seeing them as consciously rejecting the “superfluous,” he suggests that trade does not civilize a people, but in fact leads to its confusion. These were strong words for 1770, but they went largely unheeded. Though the manuscript of Cook’s Journals was published soon after each of this three voyages (initially in a bowdlerized version, later under Cook’s supervision), it lacked the vital spark of modern travel writing—Dampier’s citizen-traveler, whose views spoke to the heart of the English nation. Cook, like the modest, hard-working Yorkshireman that he was, refused to draw any attention to himself as a traveler, merely recording the events and natural wonders around him. More compelling were the published journals of Joseph Banks, who also accompanied Cook on his first voyage to Australia. Banks’ Endeavour Journal of 1768-1771 is replete with references to Dampier, whose works he studied and consulted on subjects as diverse as trade winds, crowned pigeons, longitude, and of course, Aborigines. As the future president of the Royal Society, Banks prided himself on proving even the most reliable sources with first-hand experience. And yet his first encounter with the Aborigines comes straight out of A New Voyage, as he describes: In the morn we stood in with the land near enough to discern 5 people who appeard [sic] through our glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampiers [sic] account influence us that we fancied we could see their Colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men. (Banks, 50) This refers to a passage in Dampier’s work where he writes: “The Colour of their Skins is, both of their Faces and the rest of their Body, is Coal-Black, like that of the Negroes of Guinea” (Dampier, 313). Dampier makes much of their blackness, stressing their similarity in both appearance and manner to African slaves (many of whom came from Guinea). Banks continues to examine the Aborigines through the lens of Dampier, though makes slight corrections to Dampier’s description, as in the following passage: Dampier in general seems to be a faithfull [sic] relater...These Indians when coverd [sic] with their filth which I believe they never wash of are, if not coal black, very near it: as negroes then he might well esteem them

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and add the wooly hair…in consequence of the similitude in complexion between these and the natives of Africa. (Banks, 112) The sense we get from this description is that he wants to find Dampier correct in all things, and makes ample allowances for the occasional lapse. But much else finds his consent, particularly Dampier’s description of the Aborigines’ bestial nature. Banks’ disgust for the natives is soon revealed when he remarks: “Myself in the woods botanizing as usual, now quite void of fear as our neighbors have turnd [sic] out such rank cowards (Banks, 59). When the Aborigines show little interest in trading or conversing with Cook’s party, Banks treats them as little more than casual annoyances, brushing them aside with brief descriptions of their numbers and actions. He says nothing else of consequence on the subject, siding with Dampier for posterity. Despite his education and training, Banks never catches even the slightest glimpse of what Cook saw; nevertheless, this is the description that is passed down to subsequent travelers, including the first colonizing missions that reached Australia in the following decades. However, Dampier’s influence can also be traced through two curious characters that embellish Dampier’s narrative: the exiled Moskito Indian and Dampier’s companion, Prince Jeoly. Though neither character appears in the work for more than a few pages, the cultural impact of each was considerable; not surprisingly, elements of both occur in Defoe’s most popular work (which itself proved quite influential) Robinson Crusoe. The first character is a Moskito Indian who was accidentally abandoned by Dampier’s crew on the isolated John Fernando’s Isle, off the western South American coast (this happened years before the events of A New Voyage). Upon returning to the island, the buccaneers are curious to see if their abandoned comrade is still alive. Amazingly, they find him thriving beyond all expectations. Dampier learns that the “Indian” (who is later named Will) managed to evade the Spanish for years, fashioning his few European implements into “Harpoons, Lances, Hooks, and a long Knife” in order to survive. Dampier goes on to describe his manner of living: He had a little House or Hut half a Mile from the Sea, which was lin’d with Goats Skin; his Couch or Barbecu of Sticks lying along about two foot distant from the Ground, was spread with the same, and was all his Bedding. He had no Cloaths [sic] left, having worn out those he brought from Watlin’s Ship, but only a Skin about his Waste [sic]. (67) Like Crusoe, “Will” transforms a savage island into a simulacrum of home, lacking none of the accoutrements of civilization. And less the reader think Will enormously gifted, Dampier assures us that “it is no more than these Moskito Men are accustomed to in their own Country” (66). From there, Dampier goes on to show the enormous potential of John Fernando’s Isle, concluding with the hint that it is “doubtless capable of maintaining 4 or 500 Families, by what may be produced off the Land only” (68). Dampier says little more on the subject, but the possibility of these pages surely kindled the imagination of Defoe, then contemplating his first novel. 18 The idea of stripping away the accoutrements of

18 We know that Defoe knew Dampier’s work since, in 1724, he virtually rewrote it in a work entitled (satirically?) A New Voyage Round the World by a Course never sailed before. Though it is written as a

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civilization was at the heart of all travel writing, but no writer had ever considered the subject from a native’s point of view. Did a native have a civilization to lose? And if a Moskito Indian could return unscathed from his island ordeal, what of a European—an Englishman? Of course, exiles were common enough in the age of exploration, as seen in the story of Alexander Selkirk, who was purportedly the basis for Robinson Crusoe. Though Defoe had numerous sources for his novel, Dampier’s exiled Indian must have suggested a theme, even an entire structure upon which to dangle the most tortured question of the age: what keeps an Englishman English? And how much can a traveler lose before losing his home? As will be discussed in Chapter Three, Defoe took Dampier’s Indian and used him to rationalize the imperial project, finding salvation much where Dampier sought it—in the civilizing force of trade. Defoe was equally attentive to another figure in Dampier’s story, perhaps the most tragic character in the entire work. Toward the end of his journey, Dampier makes the acquaintance of Mr. Moody, a buccaneer who owns two “painted” Indians bought in (in the modern day ), Prince Jeoly and his mother. Dampier is taken with the pair, all the more so as Moody promises him that with their help, “I might gain a Commerce with his People for Cloves” (342). In due course, Moody sells both natives to Dampier, who befriends Jeoly and eagerly learns his story. Jeoly is from the small island of Meangis, where “there were not above Thirty Men on the Island, and about one Hundred Women…he himself had five Wives and eight Children, and…one of his Wives painted him” (344). Jeoly and his family were captured by fishermen off the coast of Mindanao, where they were sold to the Spanish; an easy task, since, according to Dampier, “he was very timerous, and could not endure to see any sort of Weapons…they had no Arms at Meangis, they having no Enemies to fight with” (345). After five years of slavery, Mr. Moody purchased him and his mother for sixty dollars, before transferring them to Dampier. While this seems to be a simple business transaction, Dampier is unusually attentive to his servant, describing his person and activities with an openness unusual in the narrative. 19 In one passage, he writes with amused affection of Jeoly’s attempt to build a chest: “he busied himself in making a Chest with four Boards, and a few Nails that he begged of me. It was but an ill-shaped odd Thing, yet he was as proud of it as if it had been the rarest Piece in the World” (346). This sentiment spills over in a heartfelt confession when Jeoly and his mother fall ill: I took as much care of them as if they had been my Brother and Sister, yet she died. I did what I could to comfort Jeoly; but he took on extremely, insomuch that I hide her out of his sight. I had her shrouded decently in a piece of new Callico; but Jeoly was not satisfied, for he wrapt all her Cloaths about her, and two new pieces of Chints that Mr. Moody gave

first-hand account of travel, even down to a citizen-traveler in the mold of Dampier, it is a work of fiction obsessed with the same themes as Dampier’s work: expanding the English empire in South America and the South Seas. 19 The relation of intimacy between Dampier and Jeoly is telling, since he speaks of no other close relationships in the book. Even his long-suffering wife is mentioned only once, and then quite incidentally: “The northernmost [island], where we first anchored, I called the Duke of Grafton’s Isle…having married my Wife out of his Dutchess’s Family, and leaving her at Arlington-house, at my going abroad” (285).

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her…I would not disoblige him for fear of endangering his Life; and I used all possible means to recover his Health. (346) How does this passage fit into the patchwork quilt of the book? While it certainly helps create a sense of the man behind the manuscript, it comes curiously late to do any good. Are these merely the actions of a merchant lamenting his goods, or is there a sincere relationship between the two? Perhaps Dampier decided not to strike it out of the text (as he altered his impressions of the Aborigines) out of fond remembrance, or—a tantalizing possibility—guilt. For upon landing in England, Dampier is immediately approached by “some eminent Persons” who offer to purchase Jeoly. In the same sentence, without reflection or quibbling, Dampier writes: “and I being in want of Money, was prevailed upon to sell first, part of my share in him, and by degrees all of it” (366). This seems entirely in keeping with Dampier the mercantilist, who views Jeoly—and all natives—as commercial capital. The next sentence, however, betrays a hint of regret: “After this I heard he was carried about to be shown as a Sight, and that he died of the Small-Pox at Oxford” (366). This detail is unnecessary to the story unless we care about Prince Jeoly (which we do), and unless Dampier sees him as a person in his own right. And who are these “Eminent Persons” who exhibit Jeoly like a circus animal in town? Reading between the lines, it is possible that Dampier had no interest in selling Jeoly at all, but had his arm twisted. His original manuscript is even more revealing, lamenting that he had “fallen amongst rooks” in London (Preston, 218). And even though all mention of Jeoly ends here (and indeed, the narrative ends a paragraph later), Dampier writes of his subsequent fate as a “freak” two chapters previously, with obvious distaste. Apparently, these “Eminent Persons” concocted a romantic story to drum up interest in the painted Indian involving a love triangle between an innocent Indian slave and a tyrannical sultan (with obvious overtones of Oroonoko). Dampier writes that “these were Stories indeed,” and goes on to debunk tall tales that Jeoly was immune to snake venom due to his magical tattoos. In a final word about Jeoly, Dampier writes: “But I never knew any Paint of such Virtue; and as for Jeoly, I have seen him as much afraid of Snakes, Scorpions, or Centapees, as myself” (346). This one sentence encapsulates an entire history of adventures together, Dampier watching over him as a brother, or possibly even a lover. Though he remained guarded about his inner life and emotions, Jeoly’s presence in the narrative may attest to Dampier’s guilty conscience over his fate. It was this subtle ambivalence that Defoe must have responded to, in creating not one, but two companions for Crusoe—Xury and Friday. Not coincidentally, Crusoe sells Xury, after much faithful service, to a slave trader in Brazil; but unlike Dampier he allows himself the unambiguous line: “I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury” (Defoe, 33). The relationship between Crusoe and Friday can also be seen as a working out of the prototype of Dampier/Jeoly, voicing many of the same conflicts Dampier might have experienced, though tactfully censured in his final account. Of course, Defoe was also inspired by Dampier’s character itself—a self- made explorer and English pirate. Piracy and trade became something of an obsession for Defoe, as seen in such works as , The King of

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Pirates, and a work that is generally attributed to him, A General History of the Most Notorious Pirates. Yet many of these works can traced back to Dampier’s example, as a buccaneer who observed, experimented, and recorded his views for an English nation. It also gave Defoe a prototype for travel literature, a fledgling genre that combined mythmaking with personal reflection and national discourse. Starting with Robinson Crusoe, Defoe’s greatest works center around the experience of a single Englishman or woman, who, like Dampier, could verify a seemingly fantastic tableau. Indeed, Defoe was so good at covering his tracks that history has largely credited him with Dampier’s innovations—for which reason A New Voyage Round the World is little read and studied today. Nevertheless, Dampier’s book is very much like the head of Zeus, from which Athena (or in this case, eighteenth century travel writing) sprang forth fully formed. No subsequent writer wrote without the knowledge of Dampier, and many travelers modeled themselves on Dampier’s nationalist buccaneer, eager to hack a path through uncharted lands in the name of England.

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Chapter Two “What a Vast and Charming World He Had Been Master Of”: Travel Writing and Colonial Innocence in Behn’s Oroonoko

I

Though Behn’s Oroonoko (1688) precedes Dampier’s first published work by a decade, in many ways it seems a progression, rather than a precursor, to Dampier’s use of the citizen-traveler, as well as the role of England in a fictional travelogue. While Dampier’s A New Voyage claims to be little more than a readable, “useful” account of the famous mariner’s circumnavigation of the globe, it remains a highly stylized portrait, one that positions his questionable activities to catch the light of empire and English ambition. Yet for all its success, his work was only a stone’s throw from the more familiar travels of the Royal Society, with their anonymous travelers and endless notes and experiments. However, Behn’s work, which is arguably not in the tradition of travel writing at all, seems to pick up on his innovations and form an unbroken link to Defoe, Fielding, and other travel writers of the eighteenth century. For Oroonoko not only offers a profound meditation on the expression and boundaries of colonial Englishness, but creates the most fully formed citizen-traveler to date in the narrator of Behn’s fictional tale. Oroonoko also has a place in the travel writing continuum because of its effort to appropriate the style and mythos of the English travelogue, particularly as expressed in Dampier’s writings. While Behn never read a word of Dampier in her life (she died in 1689, several years before A New Voyage’s publication), both authors must have responded to the ethos of travel writing to tell the English story of travel; that is, the story of English travelers as they shaped the outside world to an all-encompassing—and often contradictory—vision of England. Yet Oroonoko is unique in its ability to express the same anxieties that fueled eighteenth-century travel writing without writing a book of travel. After all, Oroonoko’s appropriation of romance 20 and the Oriental tale place it more squarely in the realm of fiction, rather than the first-hand authentic 21 accounts of travel writers. Yet by marrying such diverse genres, Behn is able to write a work centered in the English experience of travel and the lived experience of the narrator/traveler. This technique creates a complex narrator that elides the conventions of travel writing and romance, and who functions both an authoritative guide and an unreliable narrator. This is the step which Dampier

20 See note 4, page 10 for my definition of “romance” as used in seventeenth-century travel writing. 21 “Authentic” is a tricky term in travel writing, since so much travel writing was either fabricated, embellished, or ghost written by an accomplished writer who compiled the oral account of an illiterate seaman. Yet whatever its origins, travel writing was marketed as the “authentic” experience of the writer in question, which was its chief appeal. People wanted to read about the journeys of Dampier as he lived them; the wealth of ethnographical detail offered the illusion (if not the reality) of traveling in the author’s wake, and accepting their interpretation of foreign lands and cultures. Thus, “authentic,” as used in this chapter, refers to travel writing which was meant to educate and inform, rather than simply entertain. Dampier was adopted by the Royal Society as a legitimate work of travel, whereas a popular travel fiction such as The Mighty Kingdom of Krinke Kesmes (1708), though widely read, remained outside the orbit of authenticity (despite influencing later writers, such as Defoe).

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was unable to manage in his own writing, and leads directly—if somewhat problematically—to Defoe’s prototypical citizen-traveler, Robinson Crusoe. The difficulty in reading Oroonoko for the modern reader is reconciling the obvious elements of romance with the more detailed and “realistic” 22 descriptions of Surinam and its natives. The two elements have an uneasy relationship, particularly when Oroonoko appears in the more verifiable world of the narrator and her English colony. Yet this dichotomy is less troubling when we begin to unravel the layers of narrative in Oroonoko: in other words, the story not only of a “Royal Slave,” but of English identity in the colonies, colonial innocence and authority, and the naivete and experience of a young colonist/narrator. To tell such a story is to inhabit two worlds—an invented world of fantasy and romance, and a meticulously detailed world of facts and figures. The character of the narrator (as discussed below) binds these two stories together, as she also exists in two worlds: the teenager who lived in Surinam and the older woman who writes her story. For this reason, Behn sets Oroonoko not in some fictional island in the South Pacific (despite Surinam’s utopian elements), but in a verifiable space within the orbit of English colonial aspirations. Surinam is a focal point in the English obsession for a South American empire, as it is roughly the location of Raleigh’s fabled city of El Dorado (itself something of a metaphor for English prosperity and empire). Behn is conscious of the ghost of Raleigh looming in the background, and pays homage to him with her description of a lost Eden, teeming with innocent natives and unlimited merchandise. However, after the capture of Surinam by the Dutch in 1667, which was formally recognized by the Treaty of Breda, hopes of enjoying the gold and slave markets of South America largely faded. This sense of elegy is palpable throughout Oroonoko, and for reasons beyond the martyrdom of its “Royal Slave.” As Albert J. Rivero notes in “Aphra Behn’s “Oroonoko” and the “Blank Spaces” of Colonial Fictions”: “As we travel through its several locations and time frames…we mourn with its author the passing of her youth and the aristocratic ideals symbolized by the young Oroonoko and Imoinda. The colonial spaces represented in Oroonoko are thus emotionally charged, made significant by its author’s memories” (447). We see Rivero’s point clearly in the following passage, again ostensibly written for Oroonoko, but indicative of a deeper national—and thus, personal—grief: But [Oroonoko’s] misfortune was to fall in an obscure world, that afforded only a female pen to celebrate his fame, though I doubt not but it had lived from others’ endeavours, if the Dutch, who, immediately after his time, took that country, had not killed, banished, and dispersed all those that

22 Compare the descriptions of Surinam and the natives (particularly when the narrator and Oroonoko visit the native village toward the middle of the work) with the descriptions of Coramantien. Though Behn seems to have some working knowledge of West African customs, the characters and events in these scenes would not be out of place in The Arabian Nights. Surinam, on the other hand, could exist nowhere else, giving it a dynamic sense of realism. Whether or not these descriptions are “real,” or whether or not Behn witnessed them herself is beside the point; they follow travel writing conventions that contrast markedly with the romantic conventions of Africa, which is not a former colony of England in the way Surinam is (and why Behn is less interested in exploring it).

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were capable of giving the world this great man’s life, much better than I have done (108). The elegy here is threefold: Oroonoko’s obscure fate is certainly mourned, but behind that we have the lament of a female author and the epitaph of an English colony. Since the Dutch were allowed to overrun Surinam, other stories might have been told of England, stories of Royal Slaves and fabulous wealth that would linger for the ages. Now it remains for a woman to assume the momentous task of resurrecting not only a dead hero, but the faded aspirations of an entire nation. It is unlikely that Behn felt this task beyond her powers; on the contrary, the satiric stance is itself an acknowledgment on the state of travel writing itself. There were virtually no female travelers of note, or at least none who published their travels prior to the eighteenth century.23 The irony was that it took a woman to remind English travel writers where their true subject lay: in the lost identity of colonial Englishness. That colonial identity is a central theme of Oroonoko is apparent through Behn’s use of travel writing conventions, even when they seem at odds with the romantic nature of her narrative. For despite the occasionally grafted-on nature of Oroonoko’s adventures, Behn clearly intended this to be read as a legitimate work of travel, indistinguishable from the adventures of Dampier and other seventeenth century explorers. The opening of the work flawlessly insinuates itself into the genre, establishing a “frame” for her accounts of exotic wonders. As she writes: I was myself an eye-witness, to a great part, of what you will find here set down; and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history…though I shall omit, for brevity’s sake, a thousand little accidents of his life, which, however pleasant to us…yet might prove tedious and heavy to my reader (75). We see a typical tightrope strategy here, with the narrator precariously balancing herself between experience and evidence, citing a second “authority” for what she could not personally witness. The same strategy is used throughout the seventeenth century, and occurs often in Dampier’s works, where he cites numerous “reliable gentlemen” for knowledge of lands and cultures he was unable to visit. Also telling is her open acknowledgment of editing the text to omit “a thousand little accidents of his life,” which would be of no interest to the reader. In an age of extravagant travel fictions, this was a familiar technique to obscure unreliable information, sketchy research, and a general lack of experience in the lands in question. From this opening, little separates Oroonoko from conventional travel writing, the narrator less a personality crafted as an English subject than a lazy whim of convention. And then the narrative turns on its head. After introducing her theme, the narrator immediately launches into a highly detailed description of Surinam’s flora and fauna, documenting the colors of birds, the skins of snakes, and the weapons and adornment of the country’s natives. Of course, such

23 However, stories of female pirates and adventurers circulated in ballads and broadsheets, and some were compiled by Defoe (?) in the famous encyclopedia of eighteenth century piracy, A General History of the Pirates (1722).

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details could easily be cribbed from previous travelers (as Defoe ably demonstrated) and conveniently placed in the mouth of a wide-eyed narrator. As if anticipating this, Behn delivers a marvelous counterstroke that sets it apart from so much anonymous travel reportage: “I had a set of [feathers] presented to me, and I gave them to the King’s Theatre, and it was the dress of the Indian Queen 24, infinitely admired by persons of quality, and were inimitable” (Behn, 76). This is surprising on two levels: one, the narrator actually places herself in the midst of verifiable historical events that are exclusively English—namely, the performance of Dryden and Howard’s The Indian Queen. While some travelers might make a slight gesture toward this kind of historical signposting, few would “out” themselves in so public a venue. And two, the remark is a strong suggestion that the narrator is none other than Aphra Behn, the playwright and author. 25 Behn’s success and contacts in the theatre would allow her, unlike many travelers, to have access to the King’s Men and their prop department. Though the narrator never names herself (or indeed, anyone in her family), the sentence is a clear way of establishing her identity as a famous Englishwoman. This links Behn with a line of famous English explorers, such as Drake and Raleigh, whose travels were verified through their popularity and a wealth of historical details. Of course, these famous explorers had entire crews who could vouch for their travels; Behn, on the other hand, has only her manuscript to recommend her. But is it enough? Would her contemporaries read the narrator as an English traveler along the lines of her famous predecessors, who had not only traveled in foreign lands but lived to write about them? Given the example of Dampier (who took far less pains to establish his identity), Behn’s strategy would be sufficient to position her narrative in the realm of authentic travel writing rather than travel fiction (again, “authentic” meaning meant to inform and instruct rather than simply entertain). But why would she take such pains to pass off a romantic tale as an elaborate travel memoir? Why not simply write a “tour” of Surinam without the tragic story of Oroonoko and Imoinda? This question is eagerly taken up by numerous Behn biographers and scholars, eager to draw the line between fact and fiction in Oroonoko. Did she actually travel to Surinam? Did she know or meet an “Oroonoko”? Or was the entire work an elaborate artifice based on other travels to the region? Many scholars, among them Janet Todd, Mary Ann O’Donnell, and Maureen Duffy, believe that Behn actually lived in Surinam and knew the characters (minus Oroonoko) in her story. O’Donnell writes that “Behn’s stay in Surinam lasted somewhere between eighteen months and two and a half years,” citing contemporary letters and the dedication of her first play, The Young King

24 The Indian Queen, written by Dryden and Sir Robert Howard, was first performed in January 1664 under the King’s Men at the Theatre Royale. A later, more popular version, was a quasi-opera with music by the composer Henry Purcell staged in 1695. Like Oroonoko, it capitalized on the public interest in Indians and exotic locations. 25 . Behn drops another clue to her theatrical identity toward the end of the work, when she writes: “We met on the river with Colonel Martin, a man of great gallantry…whom I have celebrated in a character of my new comedy, by his own name, in memory of so brave a man” (132). The comedy referred to was The Younger Brother; or the Amorous Jilt (1696).

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(O’Donnell, 3). Other writers make bolder claims, as in Duffy’s book, which cites a letter from a fellow colonist, William Yearworth, written in January, 1664: “the Ladeyes that are here live att St. Johnes hill. Itt is reported here that yowre Honoure have sould that Plantation toe my Lord Willoughby” (Duffy, 42). This echoes a passage in Oroonoko where the narrator writes: “[a]s soon as I came into the country, the best house in it was presented me, called St. John’s Hill” (116). Of course, however tantalizing it is to imagine Aphra Behn living at St. John’s Hill, the authenticity of the narrative lives and dies through the presence of the narrator herself. She needs no historical verification to establish her hold on the reader (or her story). Then why link the two stories—Behn’s autobiographical narrative and Oroonoko’s tragedy—in the convenient cloak of travel writing? It would almost seem more appropriate to write a narrative of Surinam and save Oroonoko for the theatre where he belongs (and where Thomas Southerne would later popularize him in his own retelling). One possible answer is in the story travel writing never tells: that of the individual Englishman or woman adrift in the outside world. The nature of travel writing, and particularly the travelogues made famous by the Royal Society, is encyclopedic—lists and classifications instead of thoughts and perspectives. Even Dampier is at pains to stray from this model, offering us glimpses of cultural conflict without taking us inside the travelers’ heads. In his stories of marooned Moskito Indians and ship’s doctors masquerading as natives, an important question of travel is never asked: when has the traveler lost sight of home? Ironically, travel writing became unreliable due to its inability to resort to fiction (by which is meant, its inability to imagine travelers as moral and national creatures rather than narrative frames and statistics). The amalgam of fiction and non-fiction in Oroonoko seems to be an attempt to tell the true story of travel, a tale of aspiration, innocence, greed, confusion, and betrayal in a tenuously English world. To do this, Behn could not simply write a story that sounded real; it had to breathe the dense, humid air of the tropics and reek with imperial rot and martyrdom. The narrator and Oroonoko are themselves emblematic of this technique. Both represent conventions of travel writing (the semi-anonymous narrator with her concern for ethnography, and the royal native anticipating Dampier’s Prince Jeoly) though both are highly fictional creations. Indeed, Oroonoko is largely a hero of Oriental romance, and as suggested before, seems initially out of place in the colonial world of Surinam. Few scholars attempt to find a “real” Oroonoko in Behn’s life, though it is certainly possible that a young Behn could have met a princely African slave. Whatever his origin, he remains something of an anachronism in English Surinam: a creature of exalted sensibilities and chivalrous—often naïve—conduct. In this he echoes the sensibilities of the teenage narrator herself, who is apt to view Surinam as an El Dorado of innocent passion. Indeed, what draws the characters together is how utterly they exist apart from colonial society. The narrator quickly reveals her contempt of the colonial government, dismissing the governor, Byam, as “the most fawning fair- tongued fellow in the world…[his] character is not fit to be mentioned with the worst of the slaves” (12). She continually contrasts the inborn nobility of the

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natives with the corrupt, faithless nature of the transplanted English. Yet her role as narrator confines her within the strict conventions of the travelogue; like an actor on-stage, she can only afford quick asides and glances to indicate her displeasure. It is for Oroonoko to bridge the two worlds as a character whose fictional provenance allows him to step beyond the boundaries of travel writing. As the narrator writes (soon after we are introduced to Oroonoko): “He knew almost as much as if he had read much: he had heard of, and admired the Romans; he head heard of the late Civil Wars in England, and the deplorable death of our great monarch, and would discourse of it with all the sense, and abhorrence of the injustice imaginable” (80). Without study or education, Oroonoko is of one mind with the narrator, able to lament the “deplorable death” of a man whose existence can have no more reality for him than the lives of the Romans. Of course, this sympathy forges a link between Oroonoko and this unbroken line of kings, at once rising him above the common rank of slaves, and coloring all those who would view him as a threat to English order. This “stand-in” quality of Oroonoko’s was often used by Behn in works that balance travel writing “truth” with a fictional representation of the colonial world. We see the same characters and environment in Behn’s late tragicomedy, The Widow Ranter (1690), with a historical character, Bacon, replacing the fictional Oroonoko (though they are virtually identical in every other respect, including their devotion to an Indian/African princess whom they both kill—Oroonoko intentionally, Bacon accidentally). In the play, Bacon is given the same kingly pedigree as Oroonoko, as demonstrated in the following exchange: FRIENDLY: Now you have named a man [Bacon] indeed above the common rank…who studying the lives of the Romans and great men…fancies it easy for ambitious men to aim at any pitch of glory. I’ve heard him often say, ‘Why cannot I conquer the universe as well as Alexander? Or like another Romulus form a new Rome, and make myself adored? HAZARD: Why might he not? Great souls are born in common men, sometimes as well as princes. (Behn, 256) Like Oroonoko, Bacon is “above the common rank,” a direct descendent of Alexander, Romulus, and Caesar (Oroonoko’s slave name) who could remake Virginia in Rome (or England’s) image. Hazard also echoes Behn’s narrator when she writes that “he was adorned with a native beauty so transcending all those of his gloomy race, that he struck an awe and reverence, even in those that knew not his quality” (79). Both Bacon and Oroonoko are marked men, having no proper place in the illegitimate colonies. Their respective downfalls may have the stuff of romance, but it is a fate bound up entirely in the nature of travel, and specifically, the legitimacy of English rule. This is clearly seen in The Widow Rather, when the colonial government of Virginia supports Bacon until he wages a violent but successful war against the local Indians. Though he single-handedly saved the colony from destruction, he did so without the direct authority of the council (who, needless to say, were impotent before the native threat). Offended by his success, the government

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begins plotting against him, offering increasingly preposterous rationalizations for their “loyal” actions: WHIFF: …but is it lawful to hang any general? WHIMSEY: Lawful, yes, ‘tis lawful to hang any general that fights against law. WHIFF: But in what he has done, he has served the king and our country, and preserved all our lives and fortunes. WHIMSEY: That’s all one, brother, if there be but a quirk in the law offended in this case, though he fought like Alexander, and preserved the whole world from perdition, yet if he did it against law, ‘tis lawful to hang him…is it fit that every impudent fellow that pretends to a little honour, loyalty, and courage, should serve his king and country against the law? no, no, brother, these things are not to be suffered in a civil government by law established (Behn, 264). The definition of “law” is paramount here, since it is highly variable and fixed to no one system: not inheritance, nobility, courage, or justice. Those in power in the colonies maintain their legitimacy by “a quirk in the law,” which betrays the very values which make them English. The nature of such a “civil government,” with its echoes of recent English history, haunts the events of both stories and underlines their respective ends. The nature of honor and legitimacy is further questioned by the characters who speak for England in the story. Following the conventions of travel writing, characters’ “English” values are contrasted with colonial otherness—in this case, Oroonoko and his “natural” honor. However, if Dampier would use the Aborigines’ indifference to trade to underline their barbarity, Behn uses Oroonoko’s values to expose the illegitimacy of the colonial government. A notable example is when Oroonoko is duped by an English captain, who then enslaves him and his followers. When Oroonoko starts a hunger strike on the ship, the captain’s only recourse is to free Oroonoko so he can reason with the slaves; doing so, however, will mean having to honor his word that he will not incite a rebellion. The captain balks at this request, since he “could not resolve to trust a heathen…upon his parole, a man that had no sense or notion of the God that he worshipped” (104). Oroonoko’s response might have been lifted from Bacon, as it belongs to a notion of honor that is as familiar to the reader as it is alien to the captain: Let him know I swear by my honor, which to violate, would not only render me contemptible and despised by all brave and honest men…punishments hereafter are suffered by oneself; and the world takes no cognizances whether this god have revenged them, or not, ‘tis done so secretly…while the man of no honour suffers every day ignominously in his fame, which is more valuable than life (104). Bacon, in The Widow Ranter, lives and dies by the same code, which Behn defines as the epitome of classical valor. The captain’s code, however, is more variable: after accepting Oroonoko’s word and freeing him, the captain betrays him upon their arrival in Surinam. The reason is simple: Oroonoko is a heathen with no knowledge of the Christian God and can thus be used falsely. This

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smacks of Whimsey’s remark in The Widow Ranter: “if there be but a quirk in the law offended in this case…‘tis lawful to hang him.” Oroonoko, who upheld his word and his honor like any honorable Englishman, is betrayed through such a “quirk in the law,” which the captain believes is his duty in a “civil government.” Perhaps, but who is left “English” in this exchange? We know Oroonoko is not English, though he bears the stamp of a classical hero; in the same way, the captain has betrayed his religion for a “quirk” of convenience. This suggests that colonial Englishness is a sham devoid of values or culture, a game of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” to fool the natives. And more troublesome still, it can be mimicked by those slaves with a natural affinity to greatness. Behn’s portrait of Surinam thus becomes less about the landscape than the explorers, and whether cultural identity—a fragile weed at best—can be cultivated in the new world. Though such questions are often asked—if not answered—throughout the period, Oroonoko is unique in its lack of a stable English subject. For, as we will see, Behn avoids the confident figure of a Dampier to guide us on our quest. Her narrator is beset with her own conflicting views on Englishness, and specifically, how Oroonoko can be both the savior and threat to a precariously English civilization.

II

One of the most important—though often neglected or misunderstood— elements of the work is its significant passages of travelogue. The opening paragraphs, firmly in the style of a seventeenth-century travelogue, are perhaps the most important in the entire narrative, as it is a microcosm of the entire tableau of Oroonoko. Her description begins with a somewhat conventional (in the sense of a travel journal) account of the indigenous peoples, describing their clothes and jewelry (some of which she brought home with her to add local color to The Indian Queen). Here the conventions of travelogue and utopian fiction combine to paint a picture of Edenic splendor, as the natives go about virtually naked, without a desire to cover up or covet one another’s nakedness. They are utterly without the material necessities of the European world, and in a passage that echoes what Captain Cook would later write about the Aborigines, the narrator remarks: “these people represented to me an absolute idea of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin; and ‘tis most evident and plan, that simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress’ (77). This passage—and others like it—poses considerable difficulty for the modern reader, since the natives’ actions seem a bit too romantic for an authentic account of travel. In the same passage, Behn praises the natives’ courting rituals, which, despite their nakedness, follows elaborate rules of modesty and decorum: “I have seen a handsome young Indian, dying for love of a very beautiful young Indian man; but all his courtship was, to fold his arms, pursue her with his eyes, and sighs” (76-77). Based on these passages alone, Surinam seems chosen more as an exotic backdrop for a neoclassical tragedy. However, as typical with Behn, she no sooner establishes one convention before turning it violently—and

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unrecognizably—on its head. Immediately after the romantic depiction of Indian lovers, the narrator recounts a story about natives who hold great mourning ceremonies for an English governor who fails to turn up on an appointed day. Believing the only explanation for his absence is death, they are confounded when the governor makes an unfashionably late appearance. The natives then ask the governor “what name [the English] had for a man who promised a thing he did not do? The governor told them, such a man was a liar, which was a word of infamy to a gentleman. Then one of them replied, ‘Governor, you are a lair, and guilty of that infamy’” (77). To make her point even clearer, the narrator remarks: “they understand no vice, or cunning, but when they are taught by the white men” (77). This unconventional detail still fits in the overall picture, since its purpose is to depict the natives as innocent, guileless creatures. Yet in hindsight, the leitmotif sounds clearly enough: the immorality of English colonial governors, who invoke the ideals and principles of honor to justify their whimsical nature of “civil government.” Like Oroonoko, the natives are taught to abide by principles that they, themselves, have learned “naturally,” though to the English they are highly subjective rules depending on one’s birth, race, and gender. An Oroonoko can never be honorable, though he dies as heroically as any Roman general; likewise, an English governor can never be dishonorable, though he betrays his own people and slights the honor of England. While Behn’s narrative is obviously too “fictional” to be a strict travelogue of Surinam, it is also too realistic—or perhaps, dystopian—to follow the conventions of utopian fiction. However, in many essentials, it does seem to follow the conventions of romance in its naïve view of the natives as innocent, blushing nymphs and satyrs. Is the romantic nature of Oroonoko, then, simply an veil for an abolitionist stance for both Africans and indigenous peoples? Is her message ultimately one of tolerance and compassion? Again, Behn never proceeds so predictably in any genre. Her use of romance in depicting the natives is increasingly undercut by the narrator, who almost seems to “age” throughout the narrative. 26 And less we forget, the Behn who wrote Oroonoko was at the end of her life, while the narrator (whether representing Behn or not) was little more than a teenage girl, seeing Surinam, the natives, and Oroonoko with fresh eyes. It is a mistake to take everything the narrator says at face value, much less to conflate her views with Behn’s more experienced position (a position that knew Oroonoko’s fate and the fate of her narrator—and the fate of all those poor unfortunates who pursue romance in the colonies). As Bakhtin writes in Discourse in the Novel: Behind the narrator’s story we read a second story, the author’s story; he is the one who tells us how the narrator tells stories, and also tells us about the narrator himself. We acutely sense two levels at each moment

26 As will be discussed, this process of aging is seen in the narrator’s changing sympathies with her natural landscape. Surinam begins in romance and ends in savagery: chivalrous natives turn monstrous, cutting off pieces of their flesh for a baroque war ritual. In the same way, Oroonoko changes from trusted companion to bloodthirsty mutineer, prompting the narrator to flee with the female inhabitants of Surinam. Behn’s voice of experience and colonial disillusionment provides an ironic counterpoint to the teenage narrator’s expectations, as well as the smug nature of colonial Englishness.

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in the story…The narrator himself, with his own discourse, enters into this authorial belief system along with what is actually being told (314). In Behn we find an early example of Bakhtin’s “hybrid construction,” which is the basis for the English novel; namely, “an utterance that belongs, by its grammatical (syntactic) and compositional markers, to a single speaker, but that actually contains mixed within it two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two “languages,” two semantic and axiological belief systems” (304). The confident, romantic story of the narrator, who can gleefully call herself the “Great Mistress,” is told through the voice of a woman who has no illusions at all about her power; indeed, she interrupts the work several times to lament her “female pen,” and even concludes the work with a note of resignation, writing: “Thus died this great man, worthy of a better fate, and a more sublime wit than mine to write his praise” (140). The trick in reading the genres of Oroonoko is to distinguish the voice of Behn behind her teenage traveler and the “voices” of the travel conventions she appropriates. As seen in the earlier passages on Surinam, the narrator’s travel descriptions would not be out of place in numerous accounts of the Americas, from the seventeenth century backwards. However, Behn’s presence can be felt in the heavy-handedness in which she emphasizes the natives’ “state of innocence.” While she certainly wishes to draw the link between English lies and a loss of innocence, the definition of “innocence” is one that changes depending on the narrator. Behn’s teenage narrator is able to see them, as she sees Oroonoko, as characters out of the continental romances she devours in her leisure hours; the older, worldly narrator sees them as innocents in a difference sense. As children, certainly, but a dangerous, exotic breed of children whose nature is ultimately at odds with European civilization. Addressing this very paradox, Laura J. Rosenthal writes: …the intriguing little monkeys and brilliantly feathered birds give way to the ferocious tiger with bullets in its heart and the eel with the power to paralyze…The natives at first resemble ‘our first Parents before the Fall’…when provoked by the Dutch, however, they hang mothers with their children and nail dismembered footmen to the trees” (161). How can the natives be at once innocent and ferocious? And which Surinam is the “real” one? On first glance, the narrative appears far from seamless, passages of guidebook rhetoric framing conventional romance and conspicuous autobiography. Yet dabbling in each genre allows Behn to create a more artless—and therefore, persuasive—national persona. The presence of the Dutch, often referred to but never seen, becomes a powerful leitmotif for Behn’s citizen-traveler. On the most obvious level, it is a way to assert her Englishness and lament the loss of English possessions. It also functions as a way to transition between the dual nature of the indigenous peoples. In Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter, the natives are painted as essentially classical beings, full of romantic values of love, honor, and self-sacrifice. On the same hand, they are cardboard cut-outs, acting from a unvarying script rather than from the spontaneous human emotions of the narrator. For this reason, they exist primarily as innocent (or childlike) beings, capable of “natural”

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goodness or “natural” savagery. In both works, the natives are roused to hostile acts only by the lies and deceit of Europeans. As the narrator informs us: “[warfare broke out] in the possession of the Dutch, who used them not so civilly as the English, so that they cut in pieces all they could take, getting into houses, and hanging up the mother, and all her children about her, and cut a footman…all in joints, and nailed him to trees (120). All of this, the narrator makes clear, occurred after the English left, since they were better used under English government (largely, it seems, due to the superior diplomacy of Oroonoko). In this Behn echoes the sentiments of Dampier, who felt that the Spanish warped the essential nature of indigenous cultures, making them “seem to be more melancholy than other Indians that are free” (Dampier, 94). As will be seen, the narrator loses no opportunity to blast the Dutch colonization of Surinam; however, it was not the Dutch presence alone that corrupted the native character. The opening of both Oroonoko and The Widow Ranter find the English colonies at odds with their Indian neighbors. Though a truce between the two cultures exists in Oroonoko, the reasons, for the English, are entirely pragmatic: “[the natives] being, on all occasions, very useful to us, we find it absolutely necessary to caress them as friends, and not to treat them as slaves; nor dare we do other, their numbers so far surpassing ours in that continent” (78). However, the narrator later confides to the reader that she was in “many mortal fears, about some disputes the English had with the Indians” (120), which keep her and the other colonists virtually quarantined in town. Here we begin to distinguish the voice of the elder Behn editorializing her travels, though the narrator seems unaware of this contradiction. Obviously, the policy of “caressing” was a naïve assumption of the narrator, who misjudged the ambition of the colonial government. The elder Behn knew that the indignities assigned to the Dutch were also being perpetrated in the name of England. Thus, the travelogue that interrupts Oroonoko’s story, far from being a throwback to convention, is perhaps the most vital part of the text. Vital, because it marries Behn’s first-hand accounts of Surinam with more experienced—and perhaps, disillusioned—views of England’s colonial empire. The most extended piece of travelogue occurs soon after the narrator befriends Oroonoko, and the two begin their romantic escapades across Surinam. While these adventures fall more in the province of romance, they provide a seamless introduction to Behn’s ethnographic account of the Carib Indians. How else would a female narrator gain access to a remote village without losing her life—and possibly her audience—in the attempt? Oroonoko picks up on the narrator’s desire to see the Caribs in their native state, and despite the potential danger, assures them that “we need not fear, for it we had a mind to go, he would undertake to be our guard” (120). On the surface it seems like simply another exotic amusement, a chivalric feat for Oroonoko’s “Great Mistress”; yet immediately upon entering the village, we discover a new Surinam, where everyone—Oroonoko and the narrator included—assumes surprising focus. Indeed, for the first time in the entire work, the narrator calls attention to her own appearance: “My own hair was cut short, and I had a taffeta cap, with black feathers, on my head” (121). The picture she paints is of an intrepid

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explorer who is in the first stages of “going native,” if only to ingratiate herself with the natives’ customs. 27 Indeed, she is one of the few members of her party to brave the visit: “the hearts of some of our company failed, and they would not venture on shore, so we polled who would, and who would not. For my part, I said, if Caesar would, I would go” (120-121). The ensuing travelogue, for all its nods to convention, is a clever weaving of the dual voices of narrative: one moment the eager, titillated narrator, the next, the disillusioned voice of experience. The ethnographic detail of this passage is impressive, and whatever its source, Behn internalizes it to such a degree that it sounds and feels immediate. As the natives react to the arrival of their guests, the narrator captures the wonder and fear of first contact: They were all naked, and we were dressed, so as is most commode for the hot countries, very glittering and rich, so that we appeared extremely fine…we took heart and advanced, came up to them, and offered them out hands, which they took, and looked on us round about, calling still for more company…and crying out tepeeme, taking up their hair in their hands, and spreading it wide to those they called out to, as if they would say (as indeed it signified) ‘numberless wonders,’ or not to be recounted, no more than to number the hair of their heads (121). This, surely, is what it felt to meet an exotic culture face to face: taking halting steps forward, reading signs and meaning in every gesture, and recording— however imperfectly—the repeated cries of the strangers. The narrator also recounts how her brother kisses the shaman’s wife, who, in childish innocence, runs up and kisses the narrator: “after this, they kissed one another and made it a very great jest, it being so novel…they never will forget that ceremony, never before used or known” (123). This reads with the first-hand immediacy of Dampier or Cook, and undoubtedly came from Behn’s own observations in Surinam. However, if this is indeed first-hand, it is surprising how little resemblance the natives bear to those at the beginning of the work: we find no trace of their sophisticated, romantic courtship, but rather their eager, if primitive hospitality. The narrator makes this distinction clear through the natives’ own point of view, which she creatively describes for the reader: “[they] asked, If we had sense, and wit? If we could talk of affairs of life, and war, as they could do? If we could hunt, swim, and do a thousand things they use?” (122). Of course, the deliberate naiveté of their questions draws a cultural divide between the two parties, marking the “innocence” of the natives as crude and somewhat childish. On the whole, these descriptions carry the accent of a young woman, expressing sentiments lifted from a journal or letters to friends back home. A deeper voice enters the travelogue, almost imperceptibly, when the narrator explores the implications of the natives’ innocence. After a meal of welcome, the

27 Though the narrator is obviously appropriating an English sense of “Indian” dress, the passage questions the supposedly stable nature of “Englishness.” How far is too far? When does fashion become identity? Compare this to a more extreme example found in Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World: “Mr. Wafer wore a Clout about him, and was painted like an Indian; and he was some time aboard before I knew him” (37).

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narrator and her brother entertain the village with an impromptu flute recital. One can imagine the exotic spectacle of “glittering” white strangers making music with bright-toned flutes. The natives are naturally spellbound by this performance, prompting the narrator to reflect: “I soon perceived, by an admiration that is natural to these people, and by the extreme ignorance and simplicity of them, it were not difficult to establish any unknown or extravagant religion among them, and to impose any notions or fictions upon them” (122). A deeply cynical passage, one that is less impressed with their Biblical innocence than their conspicuous lack of culture. She underlines this point with a familiar travel- writing convention: a “certain kinsman of mine” uses a magnifying glass to start a fire, though without revealing his secret to the natives. With smug amusement, the narrator writes that “[the natives] were like to have adored him for a god, and begged he would give them the characters or figures of his name, that they might oppose it against winds and storms” (122). Additionally, the natives call her kinsman a “peeie, that is, prophet” (122). This trick and its effects are at least as old as Columbus, who famously terrified the Arawak Indians into submission by darkening the face of the sun (with the aid of a convenient eclipse). Yet the passage is no whim of convention, considering its place in the narrative: it occurs almost immediately after the narrator’s party balks at entering the village, fearing death and at the hands of the natives (which is exactly what happens to the Dutch, as Behn foreshadows). The effect, not surprisingly, is comical—colonial monsters transformed into mesmerized school children. Why, then, do the colonists fear the natives and fight them in endless battles? Certainly it would be a more profitable venture to subdue them through harmless trickery? A further note of contempt enters the text when she explains the role of their shaman (peeie): “He is bred to all the little arts and cunning they are capable of, to all their lederdmain tricks, and sleight of hand, whereby he imposes upon the rabble, and is both a doctor in physic and divinity” (123). Who is speaking here? This is a curious passage, following so close on the heels of the “tricks” of the narrator and her kinsman. Is Behn being ironic, playing on her narrator’s obliviousness to English chicanery? Or is it narrator, herself, who is disappointed by the natives’ “arts and cunning,” which she finds irreparably at odds with her earlier views of nobility? In other words, whose views have changed—Behn’s or the narrator’s? Matters become even more complex when the narrator stumbles upon a grotesque war ritual. When rival war chiefs compete for a position, instead of combat or political subterfuge, they take part in a grotesque ceremony which leaves both parties mutilated—and quite possibly, dead. As the narrator writes: [the first] cuts off his nose, and throws it contemptuously on the ground, and the other does something to himself that he thinks surpasses him, and perhaps deprives himself of lips and an eye. So they slash on till one gives out, and many have died in this debate. And ‘tis by a passive valour they show and prove their activity, a sort of courage too brutal to be applauded by our black hero. (124)

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It is clear that the narrator finds nothing particularly heroic in this dispute, as it has no place in conventional romance. Not surprisingly, Oroonoko draws away in horror; at this moment he is still a creature of romance himself, performing elaborate feats for his lady-in-waiting. Yet for all that, this is still “innocent” behavior, in the sense of uncultured buffoons incapable of walking the line between valor and stupidity. And it is precisely this quality that makes them dangerous. Without a proper European regard for decency, they could easily mutilate wives and children, decimating entire villages as they did in the new world (notably the early colonies of Virginia). Obviously, the narrator’s earlier statement that “simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive and virtuous mistress” (77) is blatantly contradicted by this macabre spectacle. To “caress them as friends,” as the narrator suggests, more than classical values are necessary. To civilize the natives without corrupting their innocence (as the narrator claims the Dutch have done), the English must form a lasting relationship with the natives that will mutually benefit both parties; in other words, trade. By way of closing their visit, the narrator skips ahead in the story to inform us that “Caesar begot so good an understanding between the Indians and the English, that there were no more fear, or heartburnings during our stay, but we had a perfect, open, and free trade with them” (124). This, it seems, is a chief aim of the travelogue—to show the dangers of both romanticizing and underestimating the natives. For any colony to be successful in Surinam, America, or elsewhere, the English must view the natives as business partners, rather than slaves to be exploited at will. The consequences of this action have been seen throughout the Americas, as documented by Dampier, among others, who find the natives in a near-mutinous state. 28 The same atmosphere is recorded in The Widow Ranter, which ends in the futile efforts of Bacon to reconcile the two cultures. Trade, on the other hand, allows both cultures to coexist peacefully, to say nothing of its civilizing affect on the innocent natives. Though Behn does not speak specifically to this, the grisly mutilation spectacle evokes the words of Dampier, who writes: “For the more trade, the more civility; and on the contrary, the less trade the more barbarity and inhumanity” (214). The narrator would certainly agree with this, as she is notoriously uneasy about the civilizing force of religion in the new world (as seen in the endless examples of Christian hypocrisy in the text). For it is trade that allows England to flourish in even the most exotic climes, and maintains the natives in an illusion of “the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin” (77). Thus, it is trade, and not Christianity, which is at the heart of the colonial Englishness; and it is the role of the citizen-traveler to guide the way for English ships to find these remote, yet bountiful ports of call.

28 Behn also points out that colonial soldiers are in no position to fight protracted wars against the natives: “For the English had none but rusty swords, that no strength could draw from a scabbard…The guns also, unless here and there one, or those newly carried from England, would do no good or harm, for ‘tis the nature of that country to rust and eat up iron” (125). Additionally, these guardians are “inexpert at the bow,” which is the weapon of choice for natives and fugitive slaves.

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Of course, Behn’s endorsement of trade is not solely a charity mission for the natives. Her interest in Surinam focuses on the glamorous spectacle of the place, of jewels and embellishments that, fittingly, come to adorn a theatrical presentation in London. In the initial travelogue, the narrator rhapsodizes about “trading with [the natives] for their fish, venison, buffaloes, skins, and…little parakeets, great parrots, macaws, and a thousand other birds and beasts of wonderful and surprising forms, shapes and colors” (75). In return, the colonists offer worthless beads, pins, and needles, another example of the “extreme ignorance and simplicity” of the natives (as well as native English cunning). Laura Brown, in Ends of Empire, notes that [t]he marvels here are all moveable objects, readily transportable to a European setting, where they become exotic and desirable acquisitions. Behn’s enumeration of these goods belongs to a widespread discourse of imperialist accumulation, typical of both the economic and the literary language of the Restoration and early eighteenth century, in which the mere act of proliferative listing, the evocation of brilliant colors, and the sense of an incalculable quantity express the period’s fascination with imperialist acquisition. (43) Read in this light, the natives appear as little more than childish storekeepers, undervaluing their exotic merchandise to a sophisticated world of buyers. Indeed, the tone of the narrator’s “tours” of Surinam is surprisingly economic: nature is valued less for its aesthetic or scientific marvels, than its diverse and unlimited stock. And each passage is tied to the theme of trade, showing how these items (parrots, feathers, gold) can be acquired and brought home to England. This is particularly the case in the second travelogue, immediately after the narrator’s visit to the village: the narrator encounters a strange group of Indians who, through translators, tell of vast riches beyond the mountains. The narrator eagerly—and tantalizingly—records the exchange: “[they] brought along with them bags of gold dust, which, as well as they could give us to understand, came streaming in little small channels down the high mountains, when the rains fell, and offered to be the convoy of anybody, or persons, that would go to the mountains” (124). An act of surprising serendipity, to happen upon Indians agreeable enough to assist in the plunder of their native resources—another instance of the innocence that “had no wishes; there being nothing to heighten curiosity” (76). Unfortunately, the scheme is never realized, as the governor prohibits the resulting gold rush, and is subsequently drowned in a hurricane. By way of a cryptic epilogue, the narrator writes: “either the design died, or the Dutch have the advantage of it. And ‘tis to be bemoaned what His Majesty lost by losing that part of America” (125). The invocation of the Dutch is a sharp reminder of the South American trade monopolized by Spain and Holland. Whether or not the mountains truly rained with gold, as the natives suggest 29, the image is one that would haunt England for centuries to come.

29 It is also important to note that many natives, despite their apparent “innocence,” were quite aware of Europeans’ lust for gold. To this end, they would invent fanciful stories about “cities of gold” which were beyond the mountains, or on a nearby island, in the hopes of sending the Europeans speedily on their way.

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While the Treaty of Utretcht (1713) promised England a share in the South American slave trade, such prospects remained tantalizingly obscure. Travel writing played a vital role in evoking the utopian promise of foreign markets, particularly markets which were once in English possession. Taking exceptional license in her geographical knowledge, the narrator proclaims that “[Surinam is] a continent whose vast extent was never yet known, and may contain more noble earth than all the universe besides; for, they say, it reaches from east to west, one way as far as China, and another to ” (115). If true, such an El Dorado would assure an English foothold not only in South America, but in the untapped markets of China. Encountering this, the English reader can only lament the colonial incompetence that allowed Surinam to fall into Dutch hands; for, as the narrator slyly remarks, “certainly had his late Majesty, of sacred memory, but seen and known what a vast and charming world he had been master of…he would never have parted so easily with it to the Dutch” (115). The point being that his Majesty never parted with it at all, but was deprived from his bounty by an act of colonial treason—echoed in the brutal massacre of Oroonoko at the end of the work. Thus Behn’s Surinam remains an alluring mix of utopian fiction and reality, its gold-laden mountains and compliant natives reflecting the desires that were later dashed by the South Sea Bubble of 1720.

III

This final passage of travelogue is cut short by the narrator, who self- consciously remarks: “Though this digression is a little from my story, however since it contains some proofs of the curiosity and daring of this great man, I was content to omit nothing of his character” (125). Oddly, it contains very little about Oroonoko’s character, and like much else of the work, Oroonoko almost appears as an afterthought—a way for Behn to artfully conceal her true narrative purpose. Yet one of the most fascinating elements of the work is the narrator’s bizarre relationship with Oroonoko, which teeters wildly between the worlds of reality and romance. Does this, like the realistic setting of Surinam itself, intend to ground the hero in a contextual English environment (one that can be verified in related accounts of Surinam)? To determine this, we must understand the qualities that attract the narrator to Oroonoko—and vice versa. Not surprisingly, the narrator is first drawn to Oroonoko by the romantic stories that precede him. Like her accounts of native courtship, the narrator seems to detect the same “natural” innocence and valor in this African prince. As she writes: “This great and just character of Oroonoko gave me an extreme curiosity to see him, especially when I knew he spoke French and English…[but] I was greatly surprised when I saw him as if I had heard nothing of him, so beyond all report I found him” (80). This leads to perhaps the most discussed and controversial passage in the work, Oroonoko’s classical description and features.

Such stories became an obsession for Sir Walter Raleigh, who never found his mythical El Dorado. In many ways, Behn seems to be evoking El Dorado, and its companion myths, in her descriptions of Surinam’s natural riches.

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It is interesting to compare this portrait to a later, famous depiction of an African hero: the anonymous portrait of Olaudah Equiano. This portrait reveals a very Anglicized Equiano, sporting a smart red jacket and sensible cravat; his hair, likewise, is given the appearance of an eighteenth-century wig, complete with ponytail and ribbon in the back. And yet, no attempt has been made to dilute his obvious African features: there is no mistaking Equiano’s racial identity, and indeed, his expression is aware and proud of the likeness. Compare this to the narrator’s revisionist portrait, which claims that “[h]is face was not of that brown, rust black which most of that nation are, but a perfect ebony, or polished jet…His nose was rising and Roman, instead of African and flat. His mouth, the finest that could be seen; far from those great turned lips, which are so natural to the rest of the Negroes” (81). Similar to Equiano, Oroonoko’s hair is made straight and long “by the aids of art” (81), a procedure that Oroonoko is obviously at pains to perfect. While both portraits intend to present an agreeable picture through “the aids of art,” the distinction is clear: Equiano is being presented as a British subject in an age of slavery, whereas Oroonoko is neither African nor English. So what is he? The narrator’s contempt—or at best, indifference—to the larger mass of slaves is apparent from the business-like way she records slave transactions in Surinam: “when there arrives a ship laden with slaves, they who have so contracted, go aboard, and receive their number by lot…there may happen to be three or four men [in one lot]; the rest, women and children; or be there more or less of either sex, you are obliged to be contended with your lot” (78). Hardly the stuff of abolitionism; nor is her depiction of the slaves that join Oroonoko’s revolt, all of whom, to a man, abandon Oroonoko to rejoin Byam (even Oroonoko’s steadfast ally, Tuscan). It is clear that Oroonoko is above the common lot of slaves through a nobility that can be read in the face. On the same hand, his features are not English but classical, betraying an ancient nobility that is both noble and awful (in the sense of “inspiring awe”). The narrator presents him, as she does Bacon and Imoinda, as a relic of a bygone age, an age of “natural” virtues which complement the narrator’s Royalist views. And yet it is not an entirely civilized world, as the animal (or childish) naturalness seems to lurk just beneath the surface, forcing the narrator, for all her admiration, to keep him slightly at arm’s reach. There is a curious paradox here, for if Oroonoko is made to resemble classical ideals and sympathize with Charles I’s death, why does the author refuse him English citizenship? After all, the narrator could have easily claimed him for England—by removing the taint of his “savagery” and giving him English/European rather than classical values—in the same way Equiano was staged as an “African” Englishman (or as Friday became an honest Christian in Crusoe’s estimation). Yet for all his nobility and virtues, Oroonoko always remains the narrator’s distinct inferior. Noble, to be sure, but not quite “English” in the sense that the natives are not English; both are innocent and capable of classical sensibility without the culture that gives it meaning. In a telling example, Oroonoko expresses doubt that either she or Trefry will fulfill their promises to free his family. And why not? The narrator has recounted the numerous

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betrayals of Oroonoko by white Christian Englishmen. Is an Englishwoman any different? The narrator responds honestly (if unfairly), suggesting “what advantage it would be to doubt? It would but give us a fear of him, and possibly compel us to treat him so as I should be very loth to behold: that is, it might occasion his confinement” (114). A curious threat to hold over the head of a king, one that smacks of Whimsey’s “civil government.” Likewise, though she boasts Oroonoko’s “entire confidence,” she says in the same breath: “I neither thought if convenient to trust him much out of our view, nor did the country who feared him; but with one accord it was advised to treat him fairly, and oblige him to remain within such a compass…[and] to be accompanied by some that should be rather in appearance attendants than spies” (115). This suggests that Oroonoko is a political prisoner, watched by nationalist spies who fear his affect on the slaves—that is, rousing them into a mutinous revolt. So for all his romance, Oroonoko is a savage himself; an admirable savage, to be sure, but not one who could be trusted to understand the subtleties of English culture. And yet, if he is so dangerous, why does the narrator insist on exoticizing him with colorful tiger hunts and excursions into native villages—all of which are at great risk to her life? One of the most interesting readings of this problem is found in Aravamudan’s Tropicopolitans, with his idea of “petting Oroonoko.” In his argument, Behn’s ability to parcel off the raw goods of Surinam (feathers, animals, gold) extends to Oroonoko himself; indeed, the narrator is merely participating in a fashionable English custom of “petting” African boys as servants, as seen in paintings such as Mignard’s Louise de Keroualle, The Duchess of Portsmouth (1682). In claiming the most illustrious—and therefore, dangerous—slave as her personal pet, the narrator is making a subtle coup for power in Surinam. It is no mistake that the natural virtues of Oroonoko see the narrator, and not Byam, as the true “Mistress” of England. Yet to “own” Oroonoko, the African prince first has to be tamed into some semblance of English decorum. This process of petting and chastisement is itself a subtle commentary on the failure of the colonial project, particularly through the eyes of an disillusioned colonist/author. We see this transformation early in the text, when the narrator attempts to “civilize” Oroonoko through courtly amusements and storytelling. It is a jarring image to contrast the Oroonoko of the “romance,” who fells enemies by the dozens, to the one who listens attentively as the narrator reads him “the lives of the Romans and the great men, which charmed him to my company” (113). Oroonoko’s fierce demeanor drops altogether when the narrator writes that “he liked the company of us women much above the men, for he could not drink, and he is but an ill companion in that country that cannot” (113). It is at this point that Oroonoko begins calling her his “Great Mistress” and seems to draw away from Imoinda, at least in the sense that she rarely appears in his presence. The narrator cleverly prepares us for this as well, writing: “I entertained…[Imoinda] with teaching her all the pretty works that I was mistress of, and telling her stories of nuns, and endeavoring to bring her to the knowledge of the true God” (113). It is no mistake that they receive such disparate educations. The narrator knows that the crucial link to Oroonoko’s heroic past is Imoinda; if she can convert

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Imoinda to the Christian faith, she will remove her from the pagan world of Oroonoko. At the same time, the narrator effectively becomes his English wife, as the two are inseparable for a dozen or so pages. Even the narrator seems to have forgotten Imoinda in her wild infatuation, only noting toward the end of their “honeymoon” that “Caesar made it his business to search out and provide for our entertainment, especially to please his dearly adored Imoinda, who was a sharer in all our adventures” (124). Was she indeed? Even Oroonoko seems unaware of her absence, throwing himself headlong into his new identity and relationship. Upon hearing of a ferocious tiger in the vicinity, Oroonoko exclaims: “What trophies and garlands Ladies will you make me, if I bring you home the heart of this ravenous beast, that eats up all your lambs and pigs?” (118). The following pages recount the chivalric deeds performed for his lady, relegateing his heroism to a more domestic, and even obedient nature. As Aravamudan notes, Oroonoko’s pethood is linked to earlier descriptions of the natives being “caressed,” as well as wild birds and animals being collected for the same purpose. He goes on to write: “Echoing this consumerist impulse, the narrator assimilates Oroonoko’s and Imoinda’s scarification to statuary…such ornamentation is relevant as a description of a potential pet and a variety of other mercantile objects, to elicit a collector’s desire to possess the “curios” that adorned the mantelpieces and cabinets of the leisured classes” (41). In this manner, the Cormantien hero is reduced to an exotic plant that, if carefully pruned and nurtured, can resemble the tropical bloom it had in the colonies. We can easily see the narrator returning to England with Oroonoko, and exhibiting him much in the same way Dampier’s Prince Jeoly was displayed in London (where he, too, would inevitably waste away in a matter of months). In a work that celebrates the commercial bounty of Surinam, it is not surprising that even its hero is presented as a commodity to be “caressed” by an overseas market. Ultimately, however, this view of exotic merchandise has a fatal flaw: Oroonoko’s otherness. If some writers question how much of England could be taken away from the traveler, the opposite question is equally valid: how much of the “savage” can be removed from the native? For if Oroonoko can never be truly English (since the narrator isolates him in classical antiquity), even less can he reduced to a drawing room centerpiece. The narrator is unable to force the natives of Surinam into the antique poses of classical nymphs, as seen in their ritual dismemberment; in the same way, Oroonoko is too volatile to continue in his role as an Englishwoman’s plaything. Indeed, his deconstruction from hero to pet to savage is of a piece with her depiction of the natives, suggesting that she views all non-Europeans (and to some degree, all non-English) as essentially the same. This is strikingly like Tzvetan Todorov’s view of Columbus in his work, The Conquest of America: Columbus wants the Indians to be like himself, and like the Spaniards. He is an assimilationist in an unconscious and naïve fashion; his sympathy for the Indians is “naturally” translated into the desire to see them adopt his own customs…There is never a justification of this desire to make the Indians adopt the Spanish customs; its rightness is self evident. (43)

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Both the natives and Oroonoko initially echo the narrator’s own sentiments and values, all of which they understand “naturally” without study. Yet the more the narrator tries to assimilate Oroonoko and the natives to her worldview, the more she sees another world—one that cannot fit neatly, if at all, into her English view of order. Likewise, Columbus’ sympathy for the Indians is shattered when they resist his ultimate purpose for exploration: gold. The colonial economy separates illusion from reality, and Spain from the Other. All natives suddenly become stubborn beasts to be subdued in the name of Spain, not just in one country but everywhere Columbus lands. The same is also true of Oroonoko: the narrator naively—and somewhat unconsciously—tries to assimilate the Other into her romantic view of European civilization. But even she is aware of the tenuous nature of this project, keeping both parties at arms’ length as she threatens the natives with displays of magic, and Oroonoko with perpetual slavery. Ironically, it is love, the centerpiece of her philosophy, that ultimately proves her undoing. For Oroonoko cannot bear the loss of his wife and child to a world of slavery and domestication. This plunges him headlong into the grotesque reality of the natives, in what proves Oroonoko’s final transformation in the novel. Gone are the clichéd sentiments of romance and chivalry, replaced by one of the most powerful passages in the novella, Oroonoko’s speech to his fellow slaves. And it is here that the two voices of Behn, narrator and author, lock horns in a frantic melee. For the speech begins in the narrator’s voice, in a listless, second-hand manner: “Ceasar…made a harangue to them of the miseries, and ignominies of slavery; counting up all their toils and sufferings, under such loads, burdens, and drudgeries, as were fitter for beasts than men; senseless brutes, than human souls” (125-126). Nothing particularly rousing here, though as the passage continues, it becomes more and more heated, losing something of the third person tone until it merges with Oroonoko. Indeed, Oroonoko jumps into the passage mid-way through, expressing an experience worlds removed from the narrator’s provincial mindset. Interesting is how Oroonoko implicates the narrator, herself, in Surinam’s crimes: “No, but we are bought and sold like apes, or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools, and cowards, and the support of rogues, runagades [sic], that have abandoned their own countries, for raping, murders, thefts, and villanies [sic]” (126, my emphasis). The narrator, for all her advocacy of Oroonoko, is no less a villain than the “rogues and runagades” under Byam. For she never truly saw Oroonoko as the equal of kings and emperors, but amused herself by domesticating his otherness; it was all an elaborate game of colonial jockeying for the most valuable keepsakes of Surinam. In this one passage alone does Oroonoko assume the mantle of abolitionism, as we see through the eyes of the slave, are given his thoughts and forced to endure his impassioned rhetoric. Yet it is not the abolition of slavery that Behn is advocating; rather, it is the debased colonial government that seeks to parcel Surinam off before “England” can get there. And by England it is meant a stable, Royalist government that acts in the best interests of home. In many ways, Behn’s Surinam itself is a mutiny (echoed in Oroonoko’s revolt) where Byam and his cronies purposely shipwreck on a distant island, loot the ship, and burn it—leaving what remains to be salvaged by the Dutch.

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Not surprisingly, the narrator physically disappears from the rest of the story, despite the great influence she claims to exert on Oroonoko. Instead, she uncharacteristically writes: “we were possessed with extreme fear, which no persuasions could dissipate, that he would secure himself till night, and then, that he would come down and cut all our throats” (51). It is certainly no coincidence that the narrator attributes the same horrors to Oroonoko as she does to the natives (when she earlier invested them with the same qualities of justice and honor). Nor is it surprising that in both instances, she (and the women of the colony) are the chief objects of revenge and plunder. And yet, in a curious aside, she admits: “For I suppose I had authority and interest enough there, had I suspected any such thing [i.e. Oroonoko’s torture], to have prevented it” (132). This is an extraordinarily naïve statement considering what is at stake: namely, the fate of the entire English colony in Surinam. This, of course, is exactly why she stays away; her Royalist hero has betrayed her romantic ideals and followed the example of Spartacus rather than Caesar. In her innocence, the narrator could only see revolt and mutiny, as well as the end of her charmed existence. That she is ashamed of her actions seems clear from her halfhearted attempt at exonerating herself. Behn, however, is more implicit in reading the betrayal: it is not the narrator, but Oroonoko, who is betrayed, since the narrator has practiced the same Christian deceit Oroonoko has come to expect from the English. Both she and Trefry, his legal owner, gorged him with empty promises for his family’s freedom, and then abandoned him to the jealousy and rage of Byam, for whom Oroonoko had become a symbol of mutinous sentiments among the slaves as well as the colonists. As Aravamudan notes: The callousness with which he [Oroonoko] is mutilated sends a very deliberate message—to the surviving slaves…but also to the pretensions of the narrator’s opposition to Byam…the hostility directed against her from the beginning is both misogynist and fantasized as anti-Stuart— perhaps even antimonarchist class warfare, given the presence of Cromwellian regicides in the colony. (47) Even posthumously, Oroonoko remains a symbol of the power struggle between the narrator and Byam, branding the latter as a revolutionary who defies the female markets of empire. Yet Oroonoko unexpectedly points to another power struggle, that between the narrator and Behn herself. Indeed, the death of Oroonoko is as much the failure of the colonies as a failure of the narrator’s imagination. Though she could exalt him to the heights of classical heroism, seeing in his slavery the undiminished pride of kings, she was unable to imagine him English. Lacking this identity, Oroonoko has no right to defend himself against English subjects, even those of questionable loyalty, such as Byam. This blatantly contradicts the narrator’s earlier barb against those Christians “who prefer the bare name of religion; and, without virtue or morality, think that’s sufficient” (83). Though she often makes distinctions between the levels and types of Englishness, it is clear this only pertains to the native-born. When Oroonoko contemplates the unthinkable, the taking of English lives, he must be sacrificed to maintain the illusion of colonial law. For Oroonoko’s value was in the threat, rather than the

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possibility, of savagery. He allowed the narrator the posture of defiance without openly declaring rebellion. When he endangers her credibility as an English citizen, she feigns ignorance and flees behind the pages of her manuscript, where she remains the kind—if scandalized—benefactor of the royal slave. The narrator’s final act as an author is to consign Oroonoko to an oblivion beyond the reach of colonial redemption. It is not enough that he simply dies; he must die in a truly extraordinary manner, with equal parts theatricality and realism. The death of Imoinda satisfies the theatrical expectations of her audience, with its obvious resonances of Othello; here, of course, Imoinda is being slain for her faithfulness to Oroonoko. Everything that follows is Oroonoko’s way of defacing the “japanned” nature of their exotic bodies, devaluing them for the colonial market. This is seen most clearly when the narrator’s party stumbles on Oroonoko and Imoinda’s remains: “they smelt an unusual smell, as of a dead body, for stinks must be very noisome that can be distinguished among such a quantity of natural sweets…for they smelt a stink that almost struck them dead. He, pointing to the dead body, sighing, cried, ‘Behold here there.’” (137). The reek of Imoinda’s once perfumed body is Behn’s cynical counterstroke to the narrator’s naïve faith in English commerce. Before the realization of this act can sink in, Oroonoko takes it a step further: he mimics the native war chiefs (as described on page 124) and begins carving off pieces of his own flesh. Everything in this scene is calculated by the author—if not the narrator—to horrify through repetition. Oroonoko, the great African prince, has now devolved into a ferocious savage, pulling out his bowels and taunting the cowardly English. When he is finally captured, the narrator tellingly remarks: “if before we thought him so beautiful a sight, he was no so altered, that his face was like a death’s head blacked over, nothing but teeth, and eye-holes” (139). This “blacked over” quality was exactly Oroonoko’s intention. In effect, he has transformed himself from preening pet to discomforting idol, one that the narrator can no longer recognize nor find any beauty in. The image appears all the more alien because it has no value on the English market; it cannot be bought, sold, or carried home to drum up interest in the colonies. Indeed, it is the very negation of the colonial project itself. Not surprisingly, the narrator removes herself from the grotesque spectacle with the words: “the earthly smell about [was] so strong, that I was persuaded to leave the place…being myself but sickly, and very apt to fall into fits of dangerous illness upon any extraordinary melancholy” (139). The narrator’s romantic imagination could not compass Oroonoko’s final image, burning on a pyre with a pipe in his mouth, evoking the nightmare of a thousand indigenous gods and devils. So the narrator flees the stench of tropical decay, fearing more for her delicate sensibility than the colonial spectacle that has played out before her. We are left with the body of Oroonoko being parceled off, its only value as a deterrent to future deeds of mutiny. A strange fluctuation in the market, from treasured pet to grisly reminder; such is the fickle nature of the colonial market, and those that seek to trade in its exotic delights. The story ends with a strange invocation by the author, almost an attempt to dispel the reek of Oroonoko’s burning flesh. As she concludes: “Yet, I hope, the reputation of my pen is considerable enough to make his glorious name to

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survive to all ages, with that of the brave, the beautiful, and the constant Imoinda” (140-141). Why end with the image of a pristine and faithful Imoinda? Perhaps Imoinda, like the beauty of Surinam itself, is an image of purity and promise that can only exist in romance. Now that the Dutch have conquered Surinam and England has lost its foothold in South America, what remains but the stench of betrayal? The elegiac tone of the work is present whenever the author speaks of her “female pen,” and the inability to immortalize Oroonoko as another, male, writer might have. Yet the power of her “pen” was legendary, and spawned numerous adaptations and downright borrowings. What she could not accomplish as a woman—much less as an author—was the restoration of the colonies as a truly English landscape. Through Oroonoko, it is clear that Behn felt betrayed by a corrupt colonial government and the immediate promise of exotic wealth. The usurpation of Surinam’s people and goods was itself an act of insurrection, as it failed England and paved the way for Dutch colonization. By asking what Oroonoko’s story might have been with a male author, she is also asking what Surinam might have been with men of ability to write her story. While Englishmen like Dampier were out touting the promise of foreign markets, it remained for Behn to write about who settled there, and at what cost to the nation. Is simply being “English” enough to safeguard the welfare of her citizens and the indigenous people that must live, however precariously, beneath her banner? The fate of Oroonoko provides the obvious answer, and one that topples the utopian faith of a nation sailing boldly into colonial expansion and the eighteenth century.

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Chapter Three “I Thought Myself Very Rich In Subjects”: The Englishman Adrift in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

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If the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the age of exploration, they were also the age of shipwreck, marooning, and isolation. The period teems with stories of nautical disaster, both real and imaginary, as well as the strange mariners who survived shipwreck to eke out a precarious existence on distant, and often deserted, islands. From Dampier to Defoe, not to mention countless Robinsonades and works of travel writing, this theme is repeated with frantic insistence, as if there was something beyond the mere act of marooning that obsessed the writers and their audience. But why this period specifically? Certainly ships had foundered in centuries past, and lost seamen lording over secluded isles was recorded long before Robinson Crusoe (the most familiar example, of course, being Shakespeare’s The Tempest). While the thought of shipwreck and marooning is obviously a terrifying one for a sailor, why would it haunt the domain of popular literature in all of its multifarious forms? And even more to the point, why do two of the most enduring works of English literature, each having a claim as the “first” English novel, have at their heart a shipwrecked English sailor? The question is all the more interesting considering the incredible cultural capital of Crusoe and Gulliver; the men and their adventures have passed into the realm of myth and metaphor, invoked daily in a world that scarcely remembers the perils of oversea exploration. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, even more so than Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, encompasses a dramatic shift in eighteenth century fiction. Though both works now stand on their own as “novels,” a term that was certainly not used in the period (as it was more commonly applied to French romances), each work is a unique amalgam of diary, travelogue, romance, utopian fiction, sermon, satire, and religious/philosophical treatise. This reflects the ethos of the early eighteenth century, when the old forms were often at a loss to describe the fantastic events that were unfolding around them—events that were more fantastic than the wildest imaginings of fiction. The scope of the world was changing at an ever quickening pace; maps could scarcely keep up with the latest discoveries from around the globe, as once invisible lands began tracing their jagged coastlines. Not surprisingly, many early novels modeled themselves on contemporary accounts of travel, following the lead of William Dampier whose works were unquestionably “true,” but told of strange new lands and fantastic adventures. And not surprisingly, we also find in Dampier’s work (as well as many of his contemporaries) stories of shipwreck and marooning. In his first work, A New Voyage Round the World (1697), Dampier writes of a marooned Moskito Indian, who was abandoned by buccaneers on a deserted island for several years. Upon returning to the island, the buccaneers discover the native quite alive, having adapted to his forbidding environment. As Dampier writes:

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He had a little House or Hut half a Mile from the Sea, which was lin’d with Goats Skin; his Couch or Barbecu of Sticks lying along about two foot distant from the Ground, was spread with the same, and was all his Bedding. He had no Cloaths [sic] left, having worn out those he brought from Watlin’s Ship, but only a Skin about his Waste [sic]. (67) While it is impossible to say that this passage decisively influenced Defoe’s novel, it does contain the faint silhouette of Robinson Crusoe, which in turn reflects the wonder and fear of the ’s existence. On the surface, such accounts seem to borrow heavily from the utopian tradition, which has a traveler stumble upon an imaginary society that either satirizes the vices of home, or shows the way to true enlightenment and understanding. Yet the passage in Dampier is far from utopian, as it reflects only the rudimentary civilization of the Moskito Indian and his struggle for survival. And of course the native, named “Will” by his rescuers, was not a fictional creation, any more Crusoe’s most direct forefather, Alexander Selkirk.30 Why, then, did two of England’s most prominent authors replace real castaways with fictional embellishments? What was the seemingly irresistible lure of the marooned Englishman and his account of discovering the world—and himself—in a book of travel? While accounts of marooning in part reflected the increasing traffic in overseas exploration, they had a more symbolic meaning for European society, one which directly led to the individual and nationalistic aims of the novel. David Fausett, in his work The Strange Surprising Sources of Robinson Crusoe, writes that “[marooning] bore implications for societies undergoing a profound transition from communitarian to individualistic ways…The distant shore on which a European hero was cast away became an abstraction…It was another sort of utopia: not an imaginary society, but an imaginary absence of society” (17). This is a curious paradox in an age that was increasingly concerned with realistic detail, as imaginary lands gave way to carefully documented worlds to be mapped and colonized. Not surprisingly, the appeal of utopia faded when the ideal kingdoms of legend never turned up; instead, what explorers found were strange natives with mysterious customs and a curious lack of “civilization,” at least by European standards. A large appeal of travel writing, in all its forms, was the juxtaposition of European order and culture with the seemingly chaotic and savage ways of the outside world. This is all the more interesting since exploration reduces the entire nation to a small group of sailors, and in the case of Crusoe and Gulliver, a single person. To see the new worlds of South America, Australia, and Africa, we must see through the eyes of an individual traveler, whose ideas, morals, doubts, and fears shape our experience of the “other.” But here is where the genre of travel writing fails: for though travel writing assumed many forms, both fictional and non-fictional, it remained bound

30 Dampier himself is something of a recurring theme in the Crusoe story. Alexander Selkirk sailed with Dampier in one of his later voyages, sailing not on Dampier’s vessel, but on a flagship, the . According to sketchy accounts, Selkirk quarreled with the captain, Stradling, and was marooned on the forbidding isle of Juan Fernandez (located off the coast of Western South America, next to the island now known as the Isle of Robinson Crusoe). Years later, Dampier returned to the island and rescued Selkirk, whose story was immortalized in print by and Edward Cooke in 1712.

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by a steadfast convention of anonymity. The traveler’s purpose was not to speak of him or herself, much less to reflect on his tenuous national identity. Instead, he or she viewed the world under the illusion of empirical science, documenting the lands, people, and climates through a near-omnipotent persona. The complications and misunderstandings this creates is staggering, since the nation must live through a traveler who is incapable of exploring his or her national identity. The “I” of travel writing is itself a convention, speaking of no one self or identity; only by reading between the lines can we glimpse the characters and national loyalties which shaped the meeting of cultures and the discovery of the non-Western world. For example, the moment Columbus encounters the Arawak Indians, he is confronted with a momentous decision: to entertain the ways and beliefs of a totally alien civilization (and thereby question his own), or ruthlessly reject anything that defies his understanding. While Columbus never articulates this dilemma, we can clearly read its result when he writes in his log book: “They should be good servants and very intelligent, for I have observed that they soon repeat anything that is said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, for they appeared to me to have no religion” (Columbus, 56). These words, though written in 1492, would shape the very style and tenor of European travel writing well into the nineteenth century. In this one passage, which is indicative of much of Columbus’ writing, he makes two important admissions: that the natives are extremely intelligent (no doubt learning more of Spanish than the Spanish of their tongue), as well as friendly and non-threatening. This must have confounded Columbus, who expected mindless savages threatening war and torture. His solution is to fall into an even more ancient narrative, that of the Christian missionary, and declare his expedition as a religious crusade of sorts. Thus, the docile natives “would easily be made Christians,” an uncomplicated matter since they have no obvious religion to speak of. To the modern reader, this passage seems absurd, since it is so at odds with “novelistic” common sense: how could he understand a concept as abstract as religion without the most rudimentary understanding of their language and culture? Any sense of immediacy or contact has been carefully edited by Columbus to reflect the staged beliefs of his narrative. Sadly, this crucial moment of cultural imperialism is passed over in the blink of an eye— or the turn of a page. But what really happened when Columbus first set eyes on the Arawaks? Where does the written Columbus end and the historical Columbus begin? Clearly, the conventions of travel writing were insufficient to record the momentous events that shaped the age of empire. As England underwent the transformation from a communal isle to a roving adventurer, professional writers recognized the potential of travel to tell the story of England, as reflected in an individual isolated from home and forced to abide in what Fausett terms an “imaginary absence of society.” As discussed earlier, Behn and Dampier were among the first “literary” travelers to explore the theme of travel as the inward experience of the traveler. 31 Dampier is perhaps the most obvious predecessor

31 By “literary” travelers, I mean travelers who were cunning enough to understand the distinctions between the various conventions of travel writing, allowing them to create a book of travels with its own inner logic

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to Robinson Crusoe, since Crusoe is very much a figure in the mold of the “fictional” Dampier. Both are independent, ambitious men whose loyalty to England is only second to their lust for travel. Not surprisingly, images only half- developed in Dampier find their way into Crusoe as full-fledged themes, as with the earlier example of the stranded Moskito Indian. An equally provocative scene occurs toward the beginning of the book, when Dampier returns to an native village where several buccaneers had elected to stay. Like Columbus, Dampier allows us a glimpse at a larger world before turning the page: “According to our Expectations the Indians came aboard, and brought our Friends with them: Mr. Wafer wore a Clout about him, and was painted like an Indian; and he was some time aboard before I knew him” (37). However, unlike Columbus, Dampier has a careful eye for cultural detail, and the passage obviously made an impression on him. Though he does not elaborate on Mr. Wafer’s condition, he manages to compress the collected anxieties of the English nation into his final sentence—that an Englishman could passed unnoticed before one of his countrymen. Mr. Wafer’s manner and appearance suggest someone who has been presented with Columbus’ dilemma and made the opposite decision: not to convert, but to be converted. But when did he make this decision? Was it unconscious—a mere matter of survival—or was it a slow seduction, as he yielded to a way of life that freed him from an oppressive civilization? If Dampier knew, he declines to inform us, bowing to conventions of travel writing that never delve too deeply in human affairs. It would take several decades until Defoe could see through Mr. Wafer’s eyes, as in the following passage on Crusoe’s appearance: “But had anyone in England been to meet such a man as I was, it must either have frightened them or raised a great deal of laughter…I could not but smile at the notion of my traveling through Yorkshire with such an equipage and in such a dress” (144). After going on to describe his long cap, jacket of goatskin, and open-kneed breeches, he writes: My beard I had suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of yard long; but as I had scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of Mahometan whiskers, such as I had seen worn by some Turks whom I saw at Salee…but they were of a length and shape monstrous enough, and such as in England would have passed for frightful. (145) This is the first time we see Crusoe in the narrative, and the image is shocking, as his thoughts and “appearance” seem uniformly English. Defoe is obviously aware of this, and means to shock his readers through a sight as “frightful” as Dampier’s vision of Mr. Wafer. Would we recognize Crusoe without his narrative? Is he still “English” in the manner of his countrymen? At the heart of all such questions is the great anxiety of travel itself, as well as the fate of the

(as opposed to the random and plotless nature of much travel writing). Both Behn and Dampier’s books can be roughly classified as travel writing, though that distinction hardly does them justice, as they transcend the conventions of travel through a “modern” sense of narrative and fiction. It is this very sense that leads directly to Crusoe and the English novel. See also J. Paul Hunter’s The Reluctant Pilgrim, which discusses his sense of the world “travel literature.”

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shipwrecked Englishman: could such people return home? For travel implies not only physical distance, but cultural and spiritual distance from one’s beliefs. In an age that, according to Fausett, was “undergoing a profound transition from communitarian to individualistic ways,” travel threatened to unravel the very fabric of nation itself, as sailors returned home with strange clothing and ideas— or worse still, never returned at all. If travel questioned the nature of English identity, then travel writing was the means for providing an answer, particularly in an age when its boundaries were largely untested beyond English waters. The conventions of early travel writing, and in particular the later innovations of Behn and Dampier, were instrumental in following Robinson Crusoe to his deserted island, and allowing him the framework to speak to England of itself—while at the same time rewriting the narrow conventions of travel. Is this to suggest, as many have done in the past, that Robinson Crusoe should be read primarily through the lens of travel writing? J. Paul Hunter, writing in The Reluctant Pilgrim, is ambivalent about the reading Crusoe in this manner, since: Robinson Crusoe makes no attempt to follow the conventional pattern of the travel tradition. Despite their subliterary status, travel books early in the seventeenth century developed a set of distinguishing characteristics almost as rigid as the conventions of poetic genre…The writers…seem (or pretend) to be concerned with readers who expect more technical information, and they usually profess their only desire is to disseminate knowledge which will benefit country and commerce. (15) Hunter makes an extremely useful point here, reminding us that Robinson Crusoe is not a work of travel writing as it had been defined in the seventeenth century. Indeed, Defoe breaks all the rules of travel, the most important of which is the traveler’s voice. Crusoe does not simply narrate his adventures, but usurps them; which is to say that he gradually supplants the forms and conventions of travel writing. The daring escapes he makes from his Turkish captors early in the book, and the mutiny he breaks up toward the end are largely forgotten for the true heart of the book—Crusoe’s isolation. Typically, when travel writing of this period writes of castaways and deserted islands, it is to introduce a utopian paradise, not to engage in moral and philosophical introspection. Such reflections would be viewed as unforgivably egotistical as they had no immediate value to “country and commerce.” Yet what Hunter overlooks is the growth of this tradition in the late seventeenth century, which destabilized the various genres that made up the tenuous boundaries of travel writing. The very hodgepodge nature of these works encouraged experimentation, leading to the highly unusual works of Behn and Dampier, who used travel conventions as a frame while placing the individual at the center. Thus, Defoe is responding to an emerging tradition that, while not representative of mainstream travel writing, exerted tremendous influence on “literary” writers. In this way, a vital branch of travel writing rose above its “subliterary” origins and came to dominate much of eighteenth century literature. Hunter admits as much when he defines travel literature as “published reports of such explorers as Dampier, Rogers, and Cooke…[which] was the chief

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type used by source students in their work; Secord, for example, lists ten such book as “certain” or “probable” sources of Robinson Crusoe and its two sequels” (n.18). In other words, he separates “travel literature” from travel writing largely on the basis of its influence on Defoe and subsequent literary writers. Each of these works (Dampier, Rogers, etc.) contain many of the seeds of Crusoe, and they are all related in a complex web of cause and effect: Rogers and Cooke sailed with Dampier on the Selkirk rescue, and later wrote books describing their journeys in the manner of Dampier, all of which must have been known to Defoe. For this reason we cannot ignore the element of travel writing in Robinson Crusoe, so long as we identify it along the lines of Hunter’s “travel literature,” or at least among later works that relate the perspective of a citizen-traveler such as that found in Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World. A further irony is that Defoe managed to write about an individual without abandoning the most conventional theme of travel: to “disseminate knowledge which will benefit country and commerce.” While Dampier and others brought the “traveler” into greater relief, his or her job remained a subservient one— reporting, spying, recording, and occasionally, confessing. But as demonstrated in scenes such as the Moskito Indian and Mr. Wafer, the traveler shrinks away when we need him most. We can never know how Dampier viewed the cultural implications of these moments, nor can we glean anything from the conversations and reflections he subsequently had with his shipmates. Dampier viewed his purpose as primarily economic, and so offered an exhaustive text of marketable goods and financial opportunities, laced with significant scientific discoveries. He was brave enough to assume center stage, but had no conception of what modern readers miss when reading his book: namely, a sense of the traveler being shaped by outside forces, which results in the most dramatic notion of all, conflict. There is much global conflict in the book in the manner of naval battles and skirmishes, but nothing that touches Dampier, the traveler; he remains much as he was at the end of the book, though perhaps a little humbled from his recent illness and loss of his companion, Prince Jeoly. 32 Defoe, writing decades later as an experienced journalist, knew that a new story could easily be dismissed without a reliable eyewitness. We cannot know the extent of an empire unless we see it through a citizen’s eyes; in the same way, we cannot grasp the horror of losing one’s country without feeling it as a shipwrecked Englishman. Even in a relatively early work like A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal (1705), it is not the supernatural story that impresses as much as the “relation” of the characters. Defoe’s use of dialogue and personal reflection gives eyewitness testimony to what would otherwise be a colorful anecdote. In the same way, the story of a shipwrecked Englishman would be front page news, forgotten tomorrow, without Crusoe’s eyewitness

32 In a rare instance of character growth, Dampier lavishes great attention over his native companion, Prince Jeoly, even nursing him back to health after a fatal illness. However, upon returning to London, he is convinced to sell Jeoly to a pair of swindlers as he is virtually penniless. He later reflects that he had been bamboozled, and records Jeoly’s subsequent fate with the bitter remark: “After this I heard he was carried about to be shown as a Sight, and that he died of the Small-Pox at Oxford” (366). For the first time, we sense a profound humanness to Dampier, who suggests that he may have lost something in the name of country and commerce.

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persona. In order to tell a “true” story, Defoe was less interested in amassing a hoard of ethnographic detail (though he accomplishes this as well), which varies little from author to author. Crusoe’s story is an immediately recognizable one, which communicates directly to European sensibilities and an English nation.33 For whatever artistic motives engaged Defoe as he wrote Robinson Crusoe, its genesis was profoundly moral and economic. Inspired by his travel writing predecessors, Defoe wanted to write for the good of the English nation, embodying its weaknesses and strengths in a single character who best represented English ambition and enterprise. It is no mistake that Crusoe is a sailor consumed by wanderlust—almost a mirror image of William Dampier—as such men were at the forefront of empire, discovering new lands, drawing up new maps, and encountering new cultures years before anyone in England could discover them in books. As will be seen, Defoe was deeply concerned about these emissaries of Englishness, and saw Crusoe as a way of rewriting the diverse accounts of marooning into a mythic symbol of national identity. This leads to the most important point of all: why write a fictional story based on real events and disguise it so cleverly behind the artifice of truth? It should be remembered that Robinson Crusoe opens with a brief Preface, where the author refers to himself merely as “the editor,” and remarks: “[he] believes this thing to be a just history of fact; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it” 34 (xv). And taken at face value, this is completely true: there is no appearance of fiction in the novel, as little strikes the reader as wildly improbable (at least, no more improbable than many contemporary travel accounts). As strange as Crusoe’s island existence may appear, stranger things had happened and were documented by any number of travel writers. Thus, Defoe’s statement that his work is a “just history of fact” is also, in a sense, true: he is attempting to tell the story that travel writing could never tell, despite its “truth” for a nation of readers. Michael Seidel, discussing the same passage in his book, Island Myths and the Novel, writes that:

33 As Watt writes in The Rise of the Novel: “Robinson Crusoe’s career is based…on some of the innumerable volumes which recounted the exploits of those voyagers who had done so much in the sixteenth century to assist the development of capitalism by providing the gold, slaves, and tropical products on which trade expansion depended; and who had continued the process in the seventeenth century by developing the colonies and world markets on which the future progress of capitalism depended” (67). Crusoe was thus an eyewitness in his nature as a composite of so many voyages and travelers; his travels sound “real” because Defoe is able to artlessly mimic the words and experiences of over a century of travel. Defoe marries this tradition to the genre of spiritual autobiography (as discussed below), to ground Crusoe in English soil. Thus, while his persona is a clever alchemy of English and continental travels, his words and thoughts and specifically English, and could belong to no other nation. 34 While the guise of the editor is a conventional one, it was crucial to works that positioned themselves as eyewitness travelogues. We find this technique exploited by every travel writer of note, from Dampier to Anson to Defoe; the editorial preface was as much a way of verifying the experience of the traveler as marketing the work to a specific audience. Gallagher is right to remind us in Nobody’s Story that: “As far as the reading public and most writers were concerned, narrative came in two forms: reverential truth telling and lying…[b]efore the mid eighteenth century…there was no consensus that all those genres [allegories, dramas, fairy stories, etc.] shared a common trait; instead they were classified according to their implied purposes…or their provenance” (xvi). Thus the travel writer had to navigate this “wild space” in as clear a manner as possible, which necessitates the creation of an editorial artifice—not to mention the character of Crusoe himself.

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…to call Crusoe a lie is to intimate that the process of fiction is incapable of producing an experience that, because it seems so true and powerful, is, in a sense, real. Defoe could not abide the notion that narrative invention is primarily a lie; it is, instead, a carefully crafted simulacrum, a stand in for or mimicry of truth whose value resides in its as if quality. (21) Clearly the Preface points to this “as if quality,” which invokes the reality of the travelogue (especially Dampier’s) to tell a story which should have been told, but had been buried beneath the miscellany of contemporary travel writing. Lacking Dampier’s experience in the distant ports of the world, Defoe simply had to invent a traveler to tell the story he read between the gaps of countless and shipwrecks. It needed to seem real, whether or not anyone believed it, to underline the essential reality of the story—that it had happened somewhere, to Englishmen who, for the most part, had never survived to tell their stories. Ironically, much of Robinson Crusoe sounds more authentic than any of its travel predecessors, Dampier included. 35 While this is partly due to the presence of conflict in Crusoe’s story, a significant part is a sense of what is at stake for Crusoe as an Englishman. Defoe gives us, in brief, Crusoe’s entire life story, documenting his flight from Yorkshire onto the high seas, to his eventual marooning on his deserted isle. It is crucial that we chart this Biblical trajectory from fight to disgrace so that Crusoe’s story resonates with the experience of the nation. We get a sense of this in Dampier’s work, as his travels do more than open up trade routes for English merchants—they suggest how a sailor should be “English” even in the most trying circumstances (such as sailing with a crew of buccaneers). Ultimately, however, Dampier saw nationality as an economic partnership, and ignored (or was unaware of) any allegorical associations. With Crusoe, we know that not only his life but his very belief system is at stake on his island—a belief system that reflects the values, fears, and aspirations of English society. The question posed is less whether Crusoe will survive his island ordeal, but whether England can survive in a cultural vacuum, with only “savages” and the scattered debris of a wrecked ship to sustain it. In short, this is not a story that any one traveler could experience; it needed to be culled from diverse accounts and written on the largest possible scale. The “as if” quality allowed English readers to see themselves in Crusoe, while at the same time stepping back and recognizing the literary conventions informing the novel. The message of Crusoe stands squarely in the tradition of travel writing, benefiting “country and commerce” in a way that lived experience could only hint at, but which seems entirely “real” in Crusoe’s reflections.

35 Leo Baudy, in his article “ and the Anxieties of Autobiography” writes that “Defoe developed his first-person style largely as a vehicle for his journalism and nonfiction, and much of the basic solidity of his novels comes from the unhurried power of a matter-of-fact tone that helps enforce belief. Defoe chose the first person to convey an impression of clarity and nonpartisan interest in the plain truth of whatever he was discussing” (110). No travel writer before Defoe (though Dampier and Behn certainly came closest) focused on the mundane, lived details of travel, which ground the story in a specific time and space. When we read Robinson Crusoe, we are able to read on two levels: the economic, national ethos of Crusoe, and the daily fears, frustrations, and triumphs of an individual traveler, faced with circumstances beyond his control. It is thus not surprising that Crusoe’s story entered the cultural consciousness to the extent that his story became indistinguishable from Alexander Selkirk’s.

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Not surprisingly, eighteenth century readers largely understood Robinson Crusoe as a religious fable or allegory, though few critics agreed on the precise nature of Defoe’s “moral.” One notable critic, Charles Gildon, is often evoked in Crusoe criticism. As a converted Anglican, he was religiously opposed to Defoe (as a Dissenter) and thus saw Defoe’s book as an attack on England itself. Gildon’s work, The life and strange surprizing adventures of Mr. D---- de F--, of London, hosier, who has liv’d above fifty years by himself, in the Kingdoms of North and South-Britain (1719), is cast in two parts: a dialogue between Defoe and his fictional creations, Crusoe and Friday, and a direct attack against Defoe entitled: “An Epistle to D----- D’F—e, the reputed author of Robinson Crusoe.” In the first part, Crusoe laments the role Defoe had made him play in the manuscript, remarking: “you make me an enemy to all English sailors, and a Panegyric upon all other Sailors that come in your way: Thus, all the English Seamen laugh’d me out of Religion, but the Spanish and Portugese Sailors were honest religious Fellows” (6). Defoe’s response, obviously in the satirical voice of Gildon, responds: “You seem to take it amiss, that I made you speak against the English Sea-Men, but that was only according to my own Nature, for I always hated the English, and took a Pleasure in depreciating and vilifying of them” (6). Less the reader miss the satirical thrust of his argument, Gildon appends a long diatribe against Defoe, spelling out the particular dangers of reading Robinson Crusoe: I think there can be no man so ignorant as not to know that our produces both our Safety and our Riches, and that whoever therefore shall endeavor to discourage this, is so far a profest [sic] Enemy of his Country’s Prosperity and Safety; but the Author of Robinson Crusoe…in many Places of the Book, employs all the force of his little Rhetorick to dissuade and deter all People from going to Sea. (8) While Gildon admirably mistakes Defoe’s intentions, he hits upon a crucial theme of the work: the link between sailors and nationality. This works on two levels, the most obvious being the economic and military advantage sailors (and their ships) bring to the nation. Yet there is a sense of patriotism invoked here as well, since Defoe’s book attempts to stifle a national project of travel. Can such a book even be called “English,” since its author is so blatantly an “Enemy of his Country’s Prosperity and Safety?” As bewildering as this sounds, Gildon’s argument reflects many of the confusions and uncertainties of national identity, particularly when removed from the context of England. Additionally, Gildon ignores the tradition of travel writing in Robinson Crusoe, examining it solely on its merits (as he sees them) as a religious fable or allegory. As he interprets the story, Crusoe is divinely punished for disobeying his father and going to sea, instead of staying home to be comfortably English (in other words, engaging in business within England, as Crusoe’s father advised). This makes Defoe sound like a reactionary at best, though Gildon suggests his loyalties lie with treasonous foreign interests. But is this the true moral of Robinson Crusoe—to “dissuade and deter all People from going to sea”? If so, Gildon blithely ignores the larger part of Defoe’s writing on travel and navigation, which are unanimous in exploiting foreign markets and

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sending sailors abroad in the pursuit of empire. 36 But even more important is what he says about Crusoe’s role as an Englishman and his influence on subsequent sailors who read his story. Gildon found it convenient to attack Defoe’s patriotism since the character of Crusoe is so ambiguous. Does he, as Gildon claims, represent the low moral character of the typical English sailor? After all, Crusoe goes out to sea against the expressed wishes of his parents, and even after experiencing a near-disaster at sea, is unable to resist what he calls “the evil influence.” If the story ended with Crusoe’s second departure to sea, we would have a concise and uncomplicated moral: a son who is seduced by bad company to reject his father and perish in stormy seas. This reading is all the more convincing given his fellow sailors’ opinions of Crusoe, who has a reputation for bad luck. After his first voyage, one warns him: “I would not set foot in the same ship with thee again for a thousand pounds (12). Nevertheless, sailing haunts Crusoe like a shameful vice, and he later absconds on his second voyage—though, notably, with some capital raised by his parents, suggesting at least a half-hearted blessing. Of course, his father’s curse that he “[would] be the more miserable wretch that was ever born” (5) asserts itself when he captured by pirates and sold into slavery, and later, when he is shipwrecked on his famous island. Gildon reads this as Defoe’s revenge upon English sailors, whose time would be better spent living virtuous lives in England. Thus, the lament of Gildon’s “Crusoe,” that “[y]ou make me an enemy to all English sailors, and a Panegyric upon all other Sailors that come in your way,” is partially true: Crusoe may be “an enemy to all English sailors,” but not in a way that threatens their profession. For indeed, though Crusoe constantly meets with bad luck on his travels, each misfortune is neatly balanced by a miraculous stroke of good fortune. In the first instance, he manages to elude his Turkish captors and sail to Africa with his servant, Xury, in tow; and in the second, the wrecked ship founders within easy striking distance from Crusoe’s island, allowing him a lifetime’s worth of plunder. And despite the curse of his father, and Crusoe’s initial interpretation of his plight (which he reads as divine punishment), Defoe never has him repent his career and return to England as a prodigal son. Even when he does return, he hardly puts down any roots, deciding instead to follow the “evil influence” and revisit his island. A strange moral that has Crusoe repent his seafaring past only to make his living from it (his Brazilian plantations) and return to the open seas and the end of his book—and indeed, two subsequent volumes of Crusoe’s adventures. So what was Gildon getting at when he has Crusoe lament the antagonistic role he plays

36 This is perhaps nowhere as clear than in Captain Singleton (1720), published just a year after Robinson Crusoe. In this work, the pirate Singleton blurs the boundaries between piracy and mercantilism through the teachings of his mentor, Quaker William. William encourages Singleton to practice piracy as methodically as the merchant taking inventory (or as Crusoe keeps his lists and journals), never losing sight of his actual mission. In an important scene, William chides him: “ Why…I only ask what is thy Business, and the Business of all the People thou hast with thee? Is it not to get Money?...And wouldst thou, says he, have Money without Fighting, or Fighting without Money? (154). Only once Singleton has made a considerable fortune from raiding Spanish ships, does William convince him to return to England, where Singleton and William become prosperous merchants.

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in the book? Is Crusoe, as Gildon suggests, simply an autobiographical cipher for Defoe’s anti-establishment views and biases? If sailors were the emissaries of English and European civilization, it is strange that they were not better equipped for the journey. While many educated men traveled in voyages of discovery, bringing cultural and scientific knowledge in tow, the average ship boasted few books and even fewer scholars. Indeed, sailors were infamous throughout the world for their loose morals and ready tongues, spawning innumerable stereotypes and lampoons throughout the centuries. The reality of sailing ships was a rowdy, impatient, and often indifferent crew held precariously in check by a stern, ascetic captain. This is certainly the tradition passed down in travel literature, with its most famous examples in Magellan and Captain Cook. On the way to their famous exploits, each captain had to face dissent and insubordination, and in many cases, outright mutiny. As Magellan prepared to round the cape of South America, three of his five ships mutinied with the intention of killing their captain and returning to Spain; similarly, Cook had to stage public punishments to cool mutinous sentiments among his crew, a practice that his protégé, Lt. , would adopt several decades later in Tahiti (where he became involved in the most famous mutiny of all). As the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries revolved around the twin themes of shipwreck and marooning, the fear of mutiny was never far behind. With so much at stake in global travel, it is surprising how easily it could be undermined by a disgruntled crew—especially one who sailed less for patriotism than personal profit. If Gildon singles Defoe out for his treasonous views of English sailors, he is hardly alone in his fears; in many ways, Crusoe provides a counterpoint to contemporary seamen’s guides, which attempted to minister to the lonely souls on His Majesty’s vessels. Without drawing a similar charge of treason, these guides pointed out a common failing of the seafaring profession: namely, that it created criminals rather than cured them. As Crusoe himself remarks: of all the lives [sailing] is the most destitute of the fear of God, though His terrors are always before them…all that little sense of religion which I had entertained was laughed out of me by my messmates, by a hardened despising of dangers, and the views of death, which grew habitual to me, by my long absence from all manner of opportunities to converse with anything but what was like myself or to hear anything that was good, or tended towards it. (127) Though not a sailor himself, Defoe undoubtedly gleaned such information from the innumerable travel writings he read in many languages. For indeed, though travel writers often mention gold, king, and country, they seldom, if ever, discuss religion. Even Dampier makes a single mention of religion in his text, and that when recording a hurricane off the coast of Sumatra. Remembering the fear that gripped him and his men in the thick of the moment, he writes: “I made very sad Reflections on my former Life, and looked back with Horrour and Detestation on Actions which before I disliked…I did also call to mind the many miraculous Acts of God’s Providence toward me in the whole Course of my Life, of which kind I believe few Men have ever met with the like” (Dampier, 333). Like Crusoe,

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Dampier is miraculously saved from certain destruction, and also like Crusoe, soon turns his mind to other, more immediate pursuits (he makes no further efforts to repent or change his life). The link between Crusoe and Dampier (and other literary sailors) cannot be understated, since they explain the nature of Crusoe’s “conversion,” and deflect the brunt of Gildon’s criticism. As the latter writes that “I think there can be no man so ignorant as not to know that our Navigation produces both our Safety and our Riches,” so Defoe is mindful throughout of the importance of having steadfast, moral sailors piloting His Majesty’s vessels. Defoe borrows the prototype of Dampier, whose citizen- traveler is at the forefront of discovery as a specifically English subject. However, where Dampier takes his national identity for granted, Crusoe explores the root cause of Englishness in the “imaginary absence” of England. Though Defoe is somewhat ambiguous about the nature of Crusoe’s “sin,” the careful reader is given many clues to trace his redemption. One of the most significant features of Robinson Crusoe is its thematic symmetry, which is so profound that even Crusoe feels compelled to examine it. Toward the end of the work, when Crusoe prepares to leave his island after twenty-odd years, he remarks: “the whole transaction seemed to be a chain of wonders; that such things as these were the testimonies we had of a secret hand of Providence governing the world, and an evidence that the eyes of an infinite Power could search into the remotest corner of the world, and send help to the miserable whenever He pleased” (266). This is an intriguing passage, as it suggests Defoe’s method of storytelling as much as the work of a Heavenly Father. But Crusoe is right, of course; the entire book is an elaborate “chain of wonders,” each event turning the wheels of its companion so we have continuous development and a sense of déjà vu. Crusoe also points out, after inspecting his journal, that “the same day that I broke away from my father and my friends and ran away to Hull…[was] the same day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man- of-war and made a slave. The same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of that ship in Yarmouth Roads, [was] the same day afterwards I made my escape from Sallee in the boat” (129). Not surprisingly, he later discovers that the day of his deliverance is “the same day of the month that I first made my escape in the barco-longo, from among the Moors of Sallee” (271). Why all these improbable entrances and exits? Though Defoe boasts that his work has no “appearance of fiction in it,” such moments clearly delineate Robinson Crusoe from the non-fictional accounts of contemporary travel writing. This is important, since here we find the first link between travel writing and spiritual autobiography, the two conventions that become almost indistinguishable throughout Robinson Crusoe. In the spiritual autobiography, perhaps best represented at this time by Bunyan, such coincidences guide the traveler to a gradual awareness of God and salvation. This is equally—if more problematically—true for Crusoe, who takes a long and torturous road to redemption. As G.A. Starr writes in Defoe & Spritual Autobiography: That [Crusoe’s travails] have this [function of spiritual autobiography] is indicated not only by the spiritual significance traditionally attached to such happenings, but more explicitly by Crusoe’s own comments. Although he

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fully comprehends these events only after conversion, there are some guides to their meaning even as they take place: in the course of the storm off Yarmouth, he twice likens himself to the Prodigal Son, the Captain compares him to Jonah, and the action itself resembles the Biblical stories at several points. In what I have called a kind of allusive shorthand, Defoe manages to suggest the spiritual connotations of Crusoe’s actions.” (97-98) Thus, we must read the “chain of wonders” as Defoe’s contemporaries would read them; not as challenges to Crusoe’s eyewitness adventures, but as a spiritual commentary that allows us to read two journeys—that of an Englishman and of all men floundering in the oceans of faith. Naturally, these divine coincidences remind us that nothing in the work is a mistake, or left to chance; every decision, setback, and miracle was carefully constructed to lead to Crusoe’s salvation—and in turn, his printed story. We need to believe in Crusoe so we can accept the artful manipulations of Defoe’s narrative, which raises it far above a simple morality tale. If, as Gildon suggests, Crusoe is damned for going to sea, then why does he prosper both materially and spiritually by the end of the story? When Crusoe suggests that the “whole transaction seemed to be a chain of wonders,” he is reminding the reader that the focus of the story is what happens to Crusoe on the island, not before. However, this is not to say that his past has no bearing on the story. By ignoring his parents’ wishes and blindly following his ambition, Crusoe is perpetuating a stereotype of the English sailor. As he is blind to familial ties, so, too, does he have only the foggiest notion of his duty to England. Only once Crusoe is isolated from everything English does he have any chance of becoming an individual; not coincidentally, Crusoe begins keeping a journal on the island, the truest sign of an individual consciousness (which, in turn, would inspire the letter- writing tradition of the novel). 37 Yet if Crusoe changes from a stereotype to a flesh and blood human being, it is difficult to say that he is an entirely different person once he leaves the island. After all, he has no desire to settle down in his new home (despite numerous assertions of the contrary), nor does he wish to assume the comfortable business of running a Brazilian plantation. His wanderlust and general inability to be ruled remain a constant throughout, underlining a message not of settling down but of roaming with purpose. If we read the story of Crusoe as emblematic of an age when society was transforming from “communitarian to individualistic ways,” then Crusoe stands at the crossroads; his story is less a choice between virtue and sin than between conflicting notions of duty. While many sailors followed Crusoe’s path and took to the high seas to escape the doldrums of civilization, this “wrong” decision can

37 As Watt writes on Richardson in The Rise of the Novel: “The very lack of selectiveness [of a letter], indeed, impels us to a more active involvement in the events and feeling described: we have to pick significant items of character and behavior out of a wealth of circumambient detail, much as in real life we attempt to gather meaning from the casual flux of circumstance…it makes us feel that we are in contact not with literature but with the raw materials of life itself as they are momentarily reflected in the minds of the protagonists” (193). Seen in this way, Crusoe’s journal not only gives us a window into the “raw materials” of his life, but adds another layer of authenticity to his lived experience.

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still be made for the “right” reasons—in this case, in a way that directly benefits the mercantile interests of England.

II

The heart of the novel occurs on Crusoe’s island, which is at once the most realistic part of the book and the least convincing; “convincing” in the sense that this is the true account, as edited by Defoe, of an actual traveler. It is not simply the “chain of wonders” that is miraculous, but Crusoe’s incredible resilience and adaptability. Predictably, he spends his first nights in horror and dejection, reading his story much as Gildon would—as the righteous judgment of God on a faithless sailor. Yet in the space of a few pages he has sprung into action, documenting the island, making plans, and looting the ship that, conveniently, has perched just off the coast of his island. The ship is perhaps one of the most important elements in the story, since it furnishes Crusoe with everything he needs for survival. Indeed, it is something of a Noah’s Ark of civilization, containing the scattered debris of a sailor’s life: clothes, bedding, muskets, powder, lead, rum, sugar, and gold. Crusoe greedily hoards this off to his island, notably pausing before pocketing the gold. This passage is fascinating for its almost postmodern use of genre to reveal Crusoe’s true character and desires. As Crusoe remarks: “ “O drug!” said I aloud, “what good art thou for? Thou art not worth to me, no, not the taking off of the ground; one of those knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of use for thee” (55). Yet, “upon second thoughts,” Crusoe scoops it up as well, virtually negating the effects of his speech. This becomes Crusoe’s shtick whenever he encounters money, as in a later passage reflecting on the same ill-begotten gold: “Alas! There the nasty, sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no manner of business for it; and I often thought with myself that I would have given a handful of it for a gross of tobacco pipes or for a hand mill to grind my corn” (125). Both passages find Crusoe (and Defoe) in a slightly coy mood, as Crusoe adopts the very tone and language of a parable. The “O drug!” and “Alas!” are not the reflections of an isolated Crusoe, but the obvious theatrics of a man writing for an audience. He knows he is being listened to, and so conforms to the expected conventions of his borrowed format. It is undoubtedly Defoe’s intention to show the worthlessness of money apart from its proper context; in the same way, Crusoe’s clothes, guns, and spirits are equally devalued in a world without English subjects to enjoy them. Yet it is ultimately what is not said that is more striking: Crusoe rails against the “drug” of money, and then, hoping to catch the reader unawares, hides it under his bed. After all, when Crusoe eventually flees the island, he leaves with only a handful of relics—his goatskin cap, his umbrella, and a parrot—and all the gold he saved from two shipwrecks (a Spanish ship founders on his island shortly before Crusoe encounters Friday). Obviously Crusoe was saving this gold for a “rainy day” when he could hitch a ride with some fellow Englishmen. However, it also attests to Crusoe’s knowledge of European civilization itself. Though the money is worthless, it still has value as it defines himself. In the same way that immigrants retain faded bills and coins

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from their former homeland, Crusoe keeps the gold because it is a relic of why he sailed out in the first place. English ships sailed the world in search of profit, which is what marooned Crusoe on his isolated, but not God-forsaken, island. Crusoe senses that the gold still has value in the English world—a world he fully intends to reconstruct in the absence of society. Interestingly, Crusoe takes his first steps back into civilization through the written word. After raiding the ship for supplies, one of Crusoe’s initial tasks is to make order out of chaos, which he does by drawing up the facts “like debtor and creditor” (63). His first writing on the island is his famous Evil/Good list, which gives us an early glimpse into the divine hand of providence, placing a subtle “check” against every “debit” his sins have accrued. This leads into perhaps the most innovative feature of the novel, Crusoe’s journal, which records the daily events of his otherwise pastoral existence. Crusoe makes his motives quite clear, less someone—like Gildon—accuse him of writing with an eye to the marketplace: “I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me…as to deliver my thoughts from daily poring upon them, and afflicting my mind” (63). This is a fascinating gesture, since Defoe knows he is borrowing from the most respected tradition of travel writing, the travel journal. And while these works often seem oblivious to the demands of the marketplace, they were nevertheless written for those that “came after them,” since most captains and sailors eagerly published their journals and oral accounts after a famous voyage. 38 The popularity of this genre is understandable, since its terse, often unpolished style suggests the hastily recorded experience of a sailor enduring the trials of overseas exploration. Even as late as the 1760’s, Captain Cook decided to publish his journals as they were, with little editorial assistance; while such a format makes for some occasionally dull reading, it has tremendous claims to lived experience. But why would Defoe appropriate this genre for a work that was primarily moralistic in nature? Part of the answer lies in the character of the English sailor/explorer, which Defoe continually paints as “the least of all mankind given to forethought” (247). Defoe must have tired of the plethora of written accounts that consist of endless entries of weather, coasts, and latitude coordinates, without any “forethought” of the sailors’ actual experiences—or considerations for the readers back home. Much of Crusoe’s story is capturing the “as if” quality of what it meant to be marooned from one’s country, language, and kinsmen. It was a bold move to appropriate a genre based on empirical detail to record the fictional thoughts of a make-believe character. And yet, it strikes closer to the truth than any travel writing before it, as we see behind the mask of explorer to the frightened, bewildered, astonished Englishman making sense of his island kingdom. However, despite its obvious immediacy, eighteenth century readers would also be aware of its national and religious scope. J. Paul Hunter writes

38 This was a particular problem for Dampier, who had to contend with conflicting accounts of his journeys, few of which were favorable toward the famous explorer. A similar phenomenon occurred after each of Cook’s Voyages, where publication was guaranteed to anyone with a story to tell. Though Cook’s was considered the definitive account, it was preceded by numerous publications from the highest ranking officers to the lowest seamen.

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that “[b]y keeping a diary, an individual (even a common man) helped to record human history and was, in a sense, a divine amanuensis if he observed and reported fully and accurately” (83). This captures the sense of Crusoe doing God’s work on his island, as his journals speak for his immediate experience and the larger experience of a traveling England. Seen in this light, the journal bridges the gap between travel narrative, spiritual autobiography, and national epic through his detailed and “truthful” descriptions. Hunter also reminds us that “[t]he reading of one’s diary provided moral and spiritual inspiration…even seemingly trivial events often bore significant spiritual meanings, especially if the long-range pattern of events was carefully observed” (84). Nothing could be more appropriate to Crusoe and his “chain of miracles,” which records the minute repetitions and hidden wonders in his natural environment. Defoe’s cleverness in blurring the line between fact and fiction allows us to reflect on the very nature of writing itself; for every word Crusoe writes takes on this triple meaning as a personal diary, a pious task, and a survey of colonial Englishness. Crusoe is surprisingly aware of his writing process, and in several passages sprinkled throughout the journal, gives us careful asides that set the entire work in greater relief. Introducing his journal writing technique, Crusoe writes: “at first I was in too much hurry, and not only hurry as to labor, but in too much discomposure of mind, and my journal would have been full of many dull things” (66). This introduction is interesting since, on the whole, this is exactly the method he follows: a superficially “discomposed” narrative full of “many dull things,” which of course are carefully recorded by the writer. Before starting the journal, he adds: “I shall here give you the copy (though in it will be told all these particulars over again) as long as it lasted, for, having no more ink, I was forced to leave it off” (67). Why should Crusoe “give [us] the copy” of a journal which merely repeats all the “particulars” of events he has already written about? It is strange that Crusoe not only includes a copy of this aborted journal, but hands us a criticism of his method—namely, that it is mere recapitulation and of little interest to the reader. One possible interpretation is that of every travel author: credibility and documentation. In other words, a further example of his “debtor and creditor” method, so the reader can tally up the facts of his narrative and find everything accounted for. While this is certainly plausible, more interesting are the layers of narrative that the journal provides. Defoe allows us to see Crusoe at different moments in his story: as the marooned adventurer forced to survive by his wits, as well as the composed, heroic Englishman who is recording his story for posterity. Both tell the same story, yet the meaning changes between the personal and the public Crusoe. Indeed, the journal records Crusoe’s crisis of identity as he tries to fashion an English manor in the hostile wilderness, and confronts visions of divine vengeance through his fevered imaginings. When Crusoe abandons his journal, it colors the rest of his narrative, making a definitive break with the travelogue, moral allegory, and adventure story. By this point Defoe is composing a completely new type of story, one which he could never identify by the name of “novel,” but which was of sufficient novelty to confuse—and infuriate—critics like Gildon who expected a more conventional narrative and moral.

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A detail that is repeated in both accounts—that is, the narrative proper and the journal—is the construction of Crusoe’s home. In many ways the accounts are identical, and at one point Crusoe (in the journal) writes: “This wall being described before, I purposely omit what was said in the journal” (74). Of course, the very fact that he points out his omission is worthy of notice. Though Crusoe is defensive about the purpose of his journal, it remains something of a studied role. Again, it is less the story that is being told than the manner in which Crusoe tells it. The most obvious difference between the two accounts are the dates. While many travelers had kept a running log of their travels, no one before Crusoe had recorded the opposite—a log of being marooned. Nevertheless, the progression of days and months suggests a journey, and though Crusoe travels only a short space in his twenty-seven year stay, the distance covered is substantial. Indeed, from his first landing, dated September 30, 1659, it takes him less than a month to fashion a considerable dwelling for himself inside a modified cave. Less the reader think this is a dwelling fit for a savage, Crusoe writes: “I worked to make this room or cave spacious enough to accommodate me as a warehouse or magazine, a kitchen, a dining-room, and a cellar” (72). By December 20, Crusoe has moved far beyond mere practicality and “set up some pieces of boards like a dresser, to order my victuals upon” (73). From late September to late December, a remarkably short space of time, Crusoe has all the rudiments of a civilized English dwelling. These dates are important, as they suggest that this was no mere whim of Crusoe’s, or something he slowly mulled over in two or three years’ time; no, this was his first and immediate task, something as vital to him as finding a reliable source of food. Obviously every castaway needs shelter, but for most, a simple cave would have done. Crusoe takes the cave but immediately sees its possibility as something else, something “English,” by which is meant a way to physically manifest his cultural ideals. This is a significant point given the condition of many previous castaways in literature, the most notable being Dampier’s Moskito Indian and Alexander Selkirk. The latter’s condition is described in the buccaneer/writer Woodes Rogers’ “Providence display’d, or a very surprizing account of one Mr. Alexander Selkirk” (1712). Rogers sailed with Dampier on the expedition that rescued Selkirk, and subsequently published a short account of his marooning. Selkirk’s story is almost a rehearsal for Crusoe, as he wears goatskin clothing, fashions rudimentary houses, learns to hunt and grow crops, and finds God in the wilderness. Yet there are two important distinctions: the time it takes for Selkirk to “civilize” his island, and the ultimate extent of this civilization. As Rogers writes: He diverted and provided for himself as well as he could; but for the first eight Months he had much ado to bear up against Melancholy, and the Terror of being left alone in such a desolate Place. He built two Huts with Piemento [sic] Trees, cover’d them with long Grass, and lin’d them with the Skins of Goats, which he kill’d with his Gun as he wanted. (5) Rogers’ account seems much more realistic than Crusoe’s, since he spends not a handful of days, but eight months in abject fear and confusion. And though he does provide shelter for himself, it is of the most rudimentary fashion, a type that

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most Englishmen, upon encountering it, would consider “savage.” Not so Crusoe, who offers everything a traveler’s heart would yearn for in an English home. Rogers makes no mention of any niceties or obvious cultural embellishments in Selkirk’s isolation; everything is crude, serviceable, and ultimately for naught. Selkirk’s clothes fall apart, his feet become rock hard from running along the rocks, and he is plagued by rats and other vermin. By the time Rogers arrived at the island, Selkirk was only a shadow of his former self: “At his first coming on board us, he had so much forgot his Language for want of Use, that we could scarce understand him, for he seem’d to speak his Words by halves. We offer’d him a Dram, but he would not touch it, having drank nothing but Water since his being there, and ‘twas some time before he could relish our Victuals” (8). How remarkably this contrasts with Crusoe, who keeps up the appearance of home throughout his stay—no mean feat, considering he was marooned twenty-seven years to Selkirk’s four. And while Crusoe does remark on his “Turkish” appearance, he maintains a love for liquor and a fluency in English belied by his many years on the island. Defoe had obviously read Rogers’ account, and knew the Selkirk story from its many incarnations in London. So why does Crusoe both acknowledge and contradict the lived experience of a marooned Englishman? Here, it seems, Defoe was trying to address the question behind the nation’s obsession with marooning and shipwreck: can an Englishman remain English in the uncivilized world? According to Rogers’ account, Selkirk had lost much of what the nation considered English, as the crewmembers had difficultly speaking with him or sharing their customs. And, as seen before, Dampier raised the question with Mr. Wafer, who has so adopted the natives’ ways that he is unrecognizable to an Englishman. For this reason, Crusoe’s first forays into the landscape are based as much on cultural as physical survival. It is not enough that he finds food and shelter, but he must secure a bastion for his English civilization—even before he acknowledges it as such. As Siedel writes: “To set a man on an empty island means that everything has to be converted to Crusoe’s use to have significance; hence the novel is in a direct and metaphoric sense about varieties of conversion” (57). This harkens back to Crusoe’s statement about his writing being “debtor and creditor,” where his experience is converted into quantifiable, useful terms. In this way Crusoe, despite his claims, is providing a guide for future readers who find themselves divorced from English society. Crusoe’s house not only resembles the English home with its kitchen and cellars, but is enclosed by a defensive wall, a conversion which is both “direct and metaphorical,” as it keeps out natives and encloses his sense of identity. Crusoe’s kingdom continues to expand beyond a simple enclosure, however, and comes to resemble an idealized version of home—the home he could never aspire to in England, but is allowed to imagine in Fausett’s “imaginary absence of society.” Not even a year into his stay, Crusoe fashions a second house on the island, writing: “I built me a little kind of bower and surrounded it at a distance with a strong fence…well staked and filled between with brushwood…so that I fancied now I had my country house and my seacoast house. And this work took me up to the beginning of August” (98). Ambitious

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plans, though Crusoe’s journal documents them authoritatively with descriptions and dates: we know exactly how long he spent on the house, its extent, and his reflections upon making it. While it would sound ludicrous for Woodes Rogers to write that Selkirk had established himself as a tropical landowner, with a “country house and a seacoast house,” Defoe has no such fears. His journal reads like a true account of exploration, as Crusoe slowly clears away the island to reveal, among other things, himself. Thus, we are not at all surprised (or disbelieving) when he announces: “[the island] was all my own, and I was king and lord of all this country indefeasibly and had a right of possession; and if I could convey it, I might have it in inheritance, as completely as any lord of a manor in England” (96-97). This is a remarkable passage, as there is little that resembles it in marooning literature. While four years was sufficient to reduce Selkirk to a comparative savage, in less than a year Crusoe has become hyper-English, magnifying himself to encompass the most traditional embodiment of national prestige. Finding no trace of England in the island, Defoe’s citizen-traveler must hew it out of the rock, carve it into the trees, and bellow it from the mountaintops. Civilization must be created where none exists, and valiantly defended with walls, spikes, doors, and guns. The wreckage from the ship is thus a powerful metaphor for English civilization, as the flotsam and jetsam are enough to build a mighty empire for Crusoe and his descendants. Yet the most lasting monument to Crusoe is not the houses he builds, but his journal and his book, which enshrines Crusoe’s experience in the unassailable fortress of language. However, as Crusoe converts much of the natural landscape in his writing, so, too, does he transform his spiritual makeup. A crucial passage in his journal consists of the visions and reflections Crusoe experiences that ultimately “save” him from his sinful past. In many ways this follows the outline of Selkirk’s marooning, as reported by Rogers, who writes: “[Selkirk] employ’d himself in reading, singing Psalms, and praying; so that he said he was a better Christian while in this Solitude, or than, he was afraid, he should ever be again” (4). This is a tantalizing glimpse at Selkirk’s inner life, though nothing more is said on the subject. Perhaps Defoe picked up on the irony that a man could become a better Christian in a world that knew nothing of God. Or perhaps he found it distressing that Selkirk’s experience failed to stick, leaving him much as he was before he set foot on the island. Crusoe’s journal allows us to follow the twists and turns of his mind as he contemplates sin and salvation; at the same time, it tests whether any such miraculous conversion can change the nature of man. Crusoe’s visions begin as a fever dream, recorded in a delirium of regret and self-pity. In a passage reminiscent of Dampier, Crusoe writes: “Prayed to God for the first time since the storm off of Hull, but scarce knew what I said, or why; my thoughts being all confused” (84). Like Dampier’s moment of prayer in the storm near Sumatra, Crusoe scrambles for the sacrament of divine protection. This is followed by a conventional vision of hellfire, so studied that Defoe suggests parody—or irony. The scene concludes with the image of a devil “[moving] forward towards me, with a long spear or weapon in his hand, to kill me…all that I can say I understood was this: “Seeing all these things have not brought thee to

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repentance, now shalt thou die” (85). Of course, Crusoe does not die, but wakes up to confront the horror of his godless self. For an introspective journal, the style is self-consciously generic, moving away from lived experience to echo tradition. Not surprisingly, Crusoe laments ignoring his father’s advice and interprets fate as divine punishment for becoming a sailor. Here we get a sense of Crusoe as “an enemy to all English sailors,” since he blasts the profession in no uncertain terms: “…the good instruction of my father was then worn out by an uninterrupted series, for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation with nothing but such as were like myself, wicked and profane to the last degree” (85). Passages such as this, read out of context, certainly support Gildon’s portrait of Defoe as one who writes “according to my own Nature, for I always hated the English, and took a Pleasure in depreciating and vilifying of them.” However, if Defoe’s message is as simple as that, to vilify English sailors and keep them within the moral bounds of England, Crusoe has a tough time making the connection. Though he regrets the company he keeps, he makes no vow to abandon the seafaring life or fundamentally change his beliefs. Instead, his understanding his shaped by an epiphany of a different sort: that no man, however isolated, is truly abandoned by God. As he writes: “And if nothing happens without His knowledge, He knows that I am here and am in this dreadful condition; and if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all this to befall me” (89). This is the first instance of Crusoe’s “divine chain of miracles,” where events are linked by a supernatural cause and effect, all for the greater good of God, man, and England. Through Crusoe’s interpretation, his isolation is not an elaborate lesson to scare him back to England, but a path that leads him to a greater role of individual and national enterprise. This reading is supported by the voice of the “vision” itself, which confronts Crusoe in yet another conventional showpiece. Crusoe seeks to understand the nature of his sin, even having the audacity to question: “What have I done to be thus used?” (90). The answer is immediate and suitably ambiguous: WRETCH! Does thou ask what thou hast done? Look back upon a dreadful misspent life and ask thyself what thou hast not done; ask, Why is it that thou wert not long ago destroyed? Why wert thou not drowned in Yarmouth Roads? Killed in the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee man-of-war? Devoured by the wild beasts on the coast of Africa? Or drowned here, when all the crew have perished but thyself? Dost thou ask, What have I done? (90) Though the voice does not answer “what have I done?” it poses a more important question for Crusoe’s narrative: why would a Deity continually pluck Crusoe from one disaster after another if not for some divine plan? Again, the first storm Crusoe encounters should have taught him the dangers of sailing if such was His purpose; however, it is not sailing or traveling that Crusoe’s God objects to, it is the “dreadful and misspent life” that disgusts Him. Crusoe’s aimlessness, lack of religion, and uncertain national ties are the most obvious culprits, all stereotypical “sins” of the English sailor. Such men were known to turn pirate, endanger vessels, sleep on the watch, and join mutinous revolts. Crusoe repents his past sins and records his reflections dutifully in his journal; indeed, in a passage that

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contradicts his reasons for writing it, he claims: “I added this part here to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction” (94). Crusoe—and by extension, Defoe—must have expected this to be read by a wide audience, particularly an audience accustomed to painful ordeals at sea. If sailors could sail in the awareness of God—a God who never abandoned them even in the most unexplored regions—then they would be less apt to disgrace their calling. The immediacy of Crusoe’s reflections, written in the style of previously published travelers, was received as gospel by sailors who had known or felt some part of his experience. Indeed, Crusoe became a kind of patron saint, revered by those who either knew Defoe’s story first-hand or from elaborate retellings. 39 Proof of his influence can be seen in the newfound popularity of the name Crusoe, which was adopted by more than one mariner; in one amusing case, a sailor who wisely deserted from Commodore Anson’s disastrous voyage in 1740 was recorded as one “(William) Robinson Crusoe” (Williams, 19). Hardly the anathema suggested by Gildon as “the enemy of all English sailors.” Crusoe spoke to the men who contemplated the uncertainty of leaving behind family, language, and customs, and all for the slimmest chances of survival. In the eighteenth century, England began concentrating on long distance voyages to stake their claim in Pacific markets; unfortunately, the technology for such travels lagged far behind, making scurvy, shipwreck, and starvation not a question of if but when. So what held them together? What made them weather a torturous rounding of the Cape to search for islands with only the most imprecise latitude coordinates? Crusoe’s life shows that no one survives such horrors by a whim of chance; every life has meaning if he or she studies it carefully, records his or her thoughts, and discerns the divine hand and its hidden message. However, it is important to note that this “conversion” does not transform Crusoe in any significant way; it merely gives his life a “text” that can be interpreted, projected, and espoused to others. But it was never Defoe’s intention to remove all trace of humanity from Crusoe, leaving him a worn ascetic in his remote island cave. In the tradition of spiritual autobiography, Crusoe has lapses and reversals, confusions and contradictions. We can see this most tellingly when Crusoe attempts to sail to the other side of his island after constructing a canoe. Caught in unexpected currents, Crusoe is carried far out to sea, almost beyond sight of the island. Recalling this event, Crusoe writes: “Now I looked back upon my desolate solitary island as the most pleasant place in the world, and all the happiness my heart could wish for was to be but there again” (134). He uses this experience as a metaphor for those who continually seek new lands and experiences, rather than enjoying the fruits of home. After

39 Many of these retellings conflated the fictional Crusoe with the real Selkirk, forgetting that Crusoe was washed up near the Orinoco River, on the eastern coast of South America. Nevertheless, this misunderstanding continued for centuries, until one of the islands of San Fernando (where Selkirk languished for years) was officially named as Isla Robinson Crusoe. This must (in part) attest to the inability of many readers to see Crusoe as a fictional character, since his story had to be confirmed by the actual island that appears in the work. This is also why many readers and scholars assume that Selkirk was the sole inspiration for Crusoe, though Defoe had a wealth of literary and cultural sources.

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all, this is Crusoe’s transgression as well, since he abandons a merchant’s life in Hull, and is similarly dissatisfied by his plantation in Brazil, which promises his father’s “middle station of life” (34). And yet, though Crusoe realizes he has everything he would ever desire to be happy in his island kingdom (and indeed, a higher social position than he would find in England), not even religion can slake his wanderlust. He remains conflicted, as in the following passage: From this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible for me to be more happy in the forsaken, solitary condition than it was probable I should ever have been in any other particular state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for bringing me to this place. I know not what it was, but something shocked my mind at that thought, and I durst not speak the words. “How canst thou be such a hypocrite,” said I, even audibly, “to pretend to be thankful for a condition which however thou may’st endeavor to be contented with, thou wouldst rather pray heartily to be delivered from?” (110). Clearly God meant Crusoe to find peace, but not contentment. The passage has an almost Buddhist tinge to it, suggesting that one must learn to despise the very thing one wants—in this case, fleeing the island for the comfort of home. Only once Crusoe can almost thank God for delivering him on this island can he ever truly escape. Yet the fact remains that this is the same Crusoe who could not be tied down in Hull or Brazil; little has changed except his greater awareness of home. It is also important to note that Crusoe’s religion does not take the place of action or intellect. In the case of Selkirk, who found religion on his island abode, his faith kept him largely inactive. Compare this to Crusoe’s first eight months (meticulously recorded in his diary), which along with a religious epiphany, find time to fashion a stylish English abode, raise goats, build a canoe, and explore his island. Again, his purpose is not to depict Crusoe as a hermit, but rather as a man whose faith has awakened his inner self—a self that is profoundly rational, market-driven, and English. And while he recognizes the “divine hand of miracles” in his salvation, he also realizes that God gives him the means, but he must achieve the ends. This sense of Crusoe is expressed clearly in Virginia Ogden Birdsall’s study of Defoe, Defoe’s Perpetual Seekers, which notes that Crusoe’s adventurers as a whole comprise virtually an allegory of man’s capacity to survive and prosper by means of his own intelligence. From his fashioning of his first crude shelter on the island to his governing of a colony, his story is a record of man’s ability to triumph over nature by virtue of his brainpower—to impose his will on recalcitrant forces to the end of his own prosperity. (33) This is a vitally important message for the nation’s sailors, who faced the very real possibility of surviving or perishing on their wits alone. In the tradition of guidebooks (of which Defoe wrote a considerable number), Crusoe explains point by point how to transform savagery into civilization, documenting (again, though his journal) his frustrating attempts at baking bread, sowing corn, and raising goats. While Crusoe’s kingdom at times seems somewhat unbelievable, particularly in comparison to Selkirk’s “real” experience, Crusoe is at pains to

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downplay any fictional or divine interpretation. In a fascinating moment, Crusoe describes his wonder and joy upon growing barley, since his island “[was] a climate which I know was not proper for corn” (76). Nevertheless, the seeds he had carelessly scattered about (thinking them worthless), turns out to be “perfect green barley of the same kind as our European, nay, as our English barley” (76). How to account for this seeming miracle? Initially, Crusoe suggests the divine hand of providence, but cools upon proper reflection. As he writes in his journal: “I must confess, my religious thankfulness to God’s Providence began to abate too upon the discovering that all this was nothing but what was common; though I ought to have been as thankful for so strange and unforeseen Providence, as if it had been miraculous” (76). Though Crusoe recognizes the “providence” of having discarded seed grow English barley, he also recognizes that such is the law of nature that anyone, with time and practice, can master. In a way, this isolated scene functions as an allegory for much of the work, since Crusoe accidentally stumbles into a world he finds foreign and uninviting, only to discover “European—nay…English” possibilities. If the barley is as green and tasty as any English barley, then so, too, can one relish an English way of life in the wilds of South America. In general, Crusoe uses religion to stamp a divine order on actions that have already occurred, rather than trusting in faith to make something happen. Indeed, Crusoe often abandons his faith when he is unable to find a rational, logical “reading” of his life. In one notable instance, Crusoe is crushed when a wrecked Spanish ship turns out to be empty—except for a dog. Having lost what he believes is his one opportunity to speak to a European again, he falls into a deep depression, cursing his fate and even contemplating death. Quite simply, his life makes no sense, as he cannot see the divine order shaping events to such a lonely existence. Of course he soon recovers, remarking confidentially to the reader: “Pray note, all this was the fruit of a disturbed mind, an impatient temper, made, as it were, desperate by long continuance of my troubles…All my clam of mind in my resignation to Providence, and waiting the issue of the dispositions of Heaven, seemed to be suspended” (193). For all his submission to God and fate, Crusoe is unable to have implicit trust in the divine order of things; unless he can rationally understand his existence and the forces that shape it, religion is little more than a memory of home—distracting, but ineffectual against the horrors of isolation. Likewise, religion is never able to conquer Crusoe’s irrational fear of cannibals. From the moment he sets foot on the island, he sees the specter of cannibalism all around him, and such fears motivate his elaborate keep and its defenses. This is nowhere more apparent than in the most famous episode of the book, the strange footprint Crusoe encounters on the beach. R.L. Stevenson rightly called this moment one of the most dramatic in all literature, and this was certainly the case for Defoe’s readers. For here was the implicit threat of all shipwreck and marooning literature: that the “footsteps” of another world could leave their own mark—and erase your own. Crusoe’s initial reaction is to stand and gaze upon it “like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition” (149). And indeed, this is the appearance of an apparition, as Crusoe has spent his entire stay dreaming it up,

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expecting to find some hint of it behind every rock and skulking in the darkness of every cavern. 40 Though expected, the footprint cannot make sense in Crusoe’s world because it negates the meticulous order of English identity. Interestingly, Crusoe’s first interpretation is to “read” himself into a spiritual autobiography like The Pilgrim’s Progress, attributing the footprint to the devil. But Defoe ultimately dismisses such thoughts as a mere “amusement,” and reflects: “it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea upon a high wind would have defaced entirely” (150). Lacking the comfort of order, Crusoe hastily abandons religion as well, since it can tell him nothing of the present: “my fear banished all my religious hope, all that former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of His goodness, now vanished” (151). In the end the intellect prevails, as Crusoe persuades himself that it was his own footprint, carelessly left in the sand. Having settled the matter, Crusoe then offers one of his most revealing observations on the nature of prayer and spirituality: “I must testify from experience that a temper of peace, thankfulness, love and affection is much more the proper frame for prayer than under the dread of terror and discomposure; and that under the dread of mischief impending, a man is no more fit for a comforting performance of the duty to praying to God than he is for repentance on a sickbed” (158). In essence, thoughts of God are best thought in tranquility, when one’s heart and mind are at peace. To confuse a situation with fruitless prayer is to invite “the dread of mischief,” which in Crusoe’s case would be death at the hands of a cannibal. This is perhaps Crusoe’s most vital message of survival for those who would follow him, and a revision of Dampier and other explorers who would reserve God for impending disaster, when their minds might be better occupied in saving their lives.

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If the island has allowed Crusoe to meditate on the nature of man and England, the footprint suggests its opposite—that which can destroy man and corrupt the values of England. Though Crusoe is naturally disgusted by cannibals when he lands on the island, the footprint forces him to define who and what is a “savage,” and how Englishness can be preserved on the brink of Otherness. Crusoe’s definition of a “savage” is explained early in the work, years before he encounters any of the indigenous people of the area. As he writes: “[the] savage coast between the Spanish country and Brazil [contains] the worst of savages; for they are cannibals, or men-eaters, and fail not to murder and

40 Defoe plays with the idea of writing in its fictional and non-fictional forms through Crusoe’s frequent premonitions and dreams. When he finds the foot on the island, it is dramatic, but not surprising, as we have been expecting to find it for a hundred pages. Even Crusoe is not entirely sure he hasn’t dreamed it up himself, much like a person who sees the thing he most loves (or hates) all around him. A similar thing happens with Friday: Crusoe has a vivid dream of rescuing Friday from his cannibal pursuers long before the actual event occurs (with slight variations). Is this yet another instance of the “divine chain of miracles,” or a Prospero-like instance of Crusoe creating his own story, summoning and dismissing characters at will?

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devour all the human bodies that fall into their hands” (106). This is an amusing but nonetheless accurate view of natives from the point of view of many English sailors. Indeed, this was the very thing Dampier attempted to refute in his A New Voyage Round the World, writing: “As for the common Opinion of Authropophagi, or Man-Eaters, I did never meet with any such People: All Nations or Families in the World, that I have seen or heard of, having some sort of Food to live on…would scarce kill a Man purposely to eat him” (325). Crusoe is quite dogmatic in this belief, uncharacteristically holding on to it even against the evidence of reason. Partially this stems from the tremendous fear of being eaten alive and one’s remains not receiving a proper burial, a religious superstition that affected even the most faithless sailors. But even more importantly is the convenience of the cannibal to represent the utter negation of English values. In a world without the signs and symbols of home, it allows Crusoe something tangible to work with, a benchmark of civilized identity. This becomes apparent shortly after the footprint episode, when Crusoe stumbles upon the remains of a cannibal feast. As with the foot print, Crusoe is thunderstruck and ultimately overwhelmed by the proximity of Otherness. He soon becomes faint until “Nature discharged the disorder from my stomach; and having vomited with an uncommon violence, I was a little relieved” (160). There are two “natures” at work in this passage: the physical disgust at the thought of consuming human flesh, and the repugnant values of a truly alien culture, which is thoroughly against his English “Nature.” Needless to say, this invites a convenient reflection for Crusoe on the nature of national identity: “…I looked up with the utmost affection of my soul, and with a flood of tears in my eyes, gave God thanks that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these” (160). Here God has personally delivered Crusoe from the darkness of civilization by placing him physically and spiritually in England; even apart from his country, Crusoe remains English in a way that defines him as morally superior to the cannibals. It is not surprising that religion is evoked only after Crusoe has made sense of it logically. Having witnessed the “Nature” of his body to reject such notions, he can comfortably invoke the “divine chain of miracles” as the force that predestined his nationality. However, this line of reasoning leaves Crusoe with a profound dilemma: if he is morally superior to the cannibals, whose very existence threatens his physical and spiritual well-being, does he have the right to execute them? Defoe begins obsessing on ways to set upon and kill the cannibals when they return to the beach, making elaborate accounts of how many he can kill with one shot. He paints the scene vividly and prophetically, since the “real” event will follow his descriptions quite accurately (much as he dreams up his meeting with Friday). However, the more he plans the massacre, the less convinced he is by its logic. As he writes: “What authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on, and to be, as it were, the executioners of His judgments one upon another… “How do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case?”” (165). Crusoe’s logic goes far beyond the bounds of a simple

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morality tale, allowing a fleeting glimpse of its true author, Defoe. In a telling detail, Crusoe adds: these people were not murderers in the sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts; any more than those Christians were murderers, who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw down their arms and submitted. (166) This single meditation has become a profound allegory for religious hypocrisy, implicating not only England but all of Christian Europe. As Peter Hulme writes in Colonial Encounters: “The point is almost too well made. On this criterion Carib practice is indeed little different from Christian; which helps Crusoe decide on his policy of non-intervention, but also throws the whole ideological basis of European colonialism into doubt” (199). Is this an instance of Defoe’s treasonous sentiments as suggested by Gildon? While there is no mistaking its thrust—even if Crusoe, himself, is unaware of it—the passage also allows Crusoe to construct English identity against another Other, in this case, the Spanish. As Dampier continually positions English conduct against the lawless trade of Spain, so Crusoe underlines the fundamental morality that separates Spain from England: …this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their barbarities practiced in America, where they destroyed millions of these people, who, however they were idolaters and barbarians and had several bloody human bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by even the Spaniards themselves, at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe…for which they very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion. (166) What is important about this passage is less its condemnation of colonial cruelty, but the relative innocence of English travelers. In Spanish America, England is scarcely known at all, and in many cases, would be seen as a welcome relief from centuries of Spanish oppression. Defoe’s point seems lifted straight from Dampier, both of whom stress the need for fair dealing and open trade instead of slavery and murder. While there is no question that the savages are godless and perform bloody sacrifices, God has ordered it so, placing them far from England in a world devoid of His light. So long as the proper boundaries are established and respected, it is not for England to administer judgment. This is exactly the interpretation Crusoe offers during his education of Friday: “it could not be but that if these creatures were all sentenced to absence from Himself, it was on account of sinning against that light which, as the Scripture says, was a law to themselves, and by such rules as their consciences would acknowledge to be just, though the foundation was not discovered to us” (204). As Crusoe cannot know the nature of God, he cannot presume to punish the cannibals for their crimes, however deplorable. In this reflection lies the true hope of a South

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American empire, where England could exist side by side with the natives, turning a blind eye to their savagery in exchange for a share of the colonial bounty. As seen in Behn and Dampier, this was the dream of many a citizen- traveler, though its achievement would remain something of an El Dorado, attainable only in fiction. As a way of affecting this partnership of citizen and savage, Crusoe needed to find a convert to his cause, a “savage” who is at once enlightened enough to recognize God’s wisdom, but docile enough to accept England’s interpretation of His will. As suggested earlier, Crusoe seems to consciously summon Friday from the depths of his imagination, as the dream Friday and the real one appear in virtually the same manner. Likewise, the real Friday is unquestioningly obedient to Crusoe, viewing him as something of an avenging angel with God-like powers. 41 Crusoe writes approvingly as Friday “kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head: this, it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave forever” (198). While Crusoe quickly picks him up, this is exactly the kind of companion he might have wished for: a loyal servant willing to be trained in the ways of civilized (and in this case, English) society. It does seem strange, however, that Crusoe would be so willing to embrace a native companion, considering his xenophobic dread of foreign contact. And yet Defoe prepares us for this development in two important ways, the most obvious of which is Crusoe’s longing for human companionship. As Crusoe remarks after saving Friday: “though I could not understand [his words], yet I thought they were pleasant to hear, for they were the first sound of a man’s voice that I heard, my own excepted, for above twenty-five years” (198). This very human longing is compounded by the nature of Crusoe’s isolation; having rediscovered his duty to God and country, he discovers a kind of sin in remaining alone on the island. Michael Seidel points out the allegorical passage where Crusoe discovers an old, dying goat in a cave—initially mistaking it for the devil. Crusoe is shocked by the sight, which in some ways can be identified as himself. Seidel continues: Here is an unviolated Crusoe on the one hand and an unrescued Crusoe on the other. There are trade-offs. To live like a goat is to die like one. In the parrot scene Crusoe hears his past; in the footprint scene he fears for the present; and in the old goat scene he projects his future…Prospects are something Crusoe must have; he is restless by nature…So his silent life, so comforting to him in previous circumstances, becomes an obstacle. (69-71) Having atoned for the sin of wanderlust on his island, Crusoe must now escape the opposite sin of staying put—fine for a merchant, but reprehensible for a citizen-traveler. Once the footprint appears, a steady stream of guests wash up on the island, from Friday, to the Spaniards, and finally, the English ship and its mutineers. Every new arrival is instrumental in removing the “obstacle” of the

41 Crusoe repeats this deus ex machina technique when rescuing the English crew taken captive by mutineers at the end of the work. When Crusoe appears out of the bushes of a seemingly deserted island, a thunderstruck sailor exclaims: “Am I talking to God, or man? Is it a real man, or an angel?” (248). Crusoe makes light of this suggestion, but at the same time demands loyalty in return for his aid.

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island and returning Crusoe to active duty. However, it is ultimately the character of Friday who not only rescues Crusoe from his isolation, but suggests the shape of his subsequent narrative. Crusoe’s description of Friday and his education is fascinating, as it builds on examples already current in travel literature through Behn and Dampier. The most obvious link to Oroonoko is found in Crusoe’s description of Friday, which if not influenced directly by that work, was inspired by the corpus of writings that capitalized on Behn’s African hero. According to Crusoe, Friday had all the sweetness and softness of an European in his countenance …especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. The colour of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not of an ugly yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America are. (200) This portrait carefully distances itself from familiar depictions of the native in earlier travel writing, where they appeared dark, dull, and bestial—the very antithesis of fair-skinned (and apparently bright-eyed) Englishmen. Like Behn, Crusoe reveals a native mind that is curiously European, with inborn sympathies and knowledge. Indeed, Friday quickly takes to the English language, and is soon communicating in a broken, but highly intelligent form of English. This allows Crusoe to do something quite unprecedented in travel literature: namely, to show the English education of an unlettered savage. The idea was not completely unfamiliar to readers of travel literature, though the native in question was never English in a transportable way; in other words, it was not an Englishness that could return to England and pass itself off as civilization or culture. Oroonoko, again, is the most notable predecessor in this regard, though Behn’s narrator does not civilize him as much as make him attractive to an English audience. While grounding him in classical literature and displays of chivalrous conduct—both anachronistic signs of culture—the narrator is consciously aware of his Otherness, as she reveals in an aside to her readers: “I neither thought if convenient to trust him much out of our view, nor did the country who feared him; but with one accord it was advised to treat him fairly, and oblige him to remain within such a compass” (115). Interestingly, Crusoe initially reveals the same bias about Friday early in their relationship: “I barred [my room] up in the night…so that Friday could no way come at me in the inside of my innermost wall without making so much noise in getting over that it must needs waken me” (203). Both travelers realize that civilization is a double-edged sword, allowing the native to see beyond the mystery of English superiority and possibly use it against them. For this reason Behn’s narrator never completely trusts Oroonoko, and indeed, abandons him the moment he oversteps his bounds. Crusoe, on the other hand, sees something deeper in their relationship, which causes him to drop his hesitation and proclaim: But I needed none of all this precaution; for never man had a more faithful, loving, sincere servant than Friday was to me; without passions, sullenness, or designs, perfectly obliged and engaged; his very affections were tied to me, like those of a child to his father; and I dare say he would

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have sacrificed his life for the saving mine upon any occasion whatsoever. (203) What makes the passage strange is that the same could equally be applied to Oroonoko throughout much of the text. He was “perfectly obliged and engaged,” looked upon the narrator as his “Great Mistress,” and risked his life on her behalf during the tiger hunt, among other episodes. So what makes Crusoe drop his hesitation and embrace—and educate—Friday as an English subject? Part of Crusoe’s reasoning can be traced back to his own experience as a Turkish slave. At the first opportunity, he betrayed his master and fled to the high seas, taking another slave, Xury, in tow. The entire history of Spanish America has borne this theory out, as slaves will inevitable rise up and frustrate the colonial enterprise. The trick, Crusoe realizes, is to find a middle way between slave and companion, so that the “slave” will work dutifully without longing for the shores of home. As Peter Hulme writes of the Crusoe-Friday relationship: Defoe has Friday offer lifelong subjection…In Lockeian terms this move is theoretically invalid since Friday has no life to give, but its practical effects are incalculably beneficial to Crusoe since Friday’s ‘subjection’—his self- interpellation as a subject with no will—removes any need for force…Crusoe underlines to him that his previous life has been forfeited, providing a weekly mnemonic to remind him who was responsible for giving him that second life. (206) Crusoe’s theatricality, as mentioned before, affects the transformation from slave to debtor. By appearing as miraculously as an angel, Friday sees him as something more than human, and selflessly pledges his life and service (the same technique Crusoe uses later with bona fide Englishmen). This relationship also allows Crusoe to initiate Friday into the secrets of English culture without fearing the results of this knowledge. Indeed, by making Friday into an Englishman, he actually become a more capable and reliable servant, as seen in the battle with the cannibals and the mutineers (where he proves himself a cunning marksman). However, while revealing the secrets of Englishness, Crusoe is careful never to dispel its mystery; Friday must have a healthy superstition of English artifacts and customs, which he will learn to master but never be the master of. This is seen in Friday’s relationship with Crusoe’s gun, which initially he “would not so much touch…but would speak to it and talk to it as if it had answered him, when he was by himself; which, as I afterwards learned of him, was to desire it not to kill him” (206). Crusoe never dispels the notion of the gun’s godhood, a practice time-honored in travel literature from Columbus onward. In a popular Dutch work of travel/marooning literature (which preceded and no doubt inspired Robinson Crusoe itself), Hendrik Smeeks’ The Mighty Kingdom of Krinke Kesmes (1708), the travel author gives the following advice to would-be explorers: “Whoever wishes to explore an alien Country…must be able to perform for such People awesome and wondrous Miracles, at the right time and at the right place, for they make him as highly regarded as one who might wish to establish a new Religion by means of faked Miracles” (23). Ironically, Crusoe uses miracles and stagecraft to do just that— “establish a new Religion,” though the miracles are not fakes but the legitimate

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artifacts of English civilization. In this way, Crusoe creates the ideal slave- subject, one who can understand and operate the cultural machinery of England, yet have no desire to undermine it or flee to a savage homeland. Crusoe takes the reader step by step through Friday’s education, breaking this instruction into three key parts: diet, guns, and religion. As Crusoe writes, “I let him into the mystery, for such it was to him, of gunpowder and bullet, and taught him how to shoot” (216). On Crusoe’s island, firepower is often the sole reminder of his English civilization, as it is the means for his overpowering the cannibals, and ultimately, returning to England itself. Later in the narrative, Friday can stand as an equal with other Englishmen through his proficiency with firearms, though there are instances when Friday seems to be performing for an audience (as in the grotesque bear-baiting scene at the end of the book). Yet even more important is the issue of Friday’s diet, which Crusoe is strictly—and at times, ridiculously—dogmatic about. Shortly after being rescued, Friday suggests that he and Crusoe eat the bodies of the dead cannibals; this suggestion invokes an uncharacteristically brutal response from Crusoe, who threatens to shoot him if he ever mentions cannibalism again. To Crusoe, cannibalism is the ultimate boundary of English identity, beyond which an Englishman cannot sail with hope of return. For this reason, it becomes the test of Friday’s rehabilitation: if Crusoe can cure him of his taste for human flesh, he can mold Friday in his English—though subservient—image. Here Defoe has a bit of fun with his creation, since Crusoe insists on defining Englishness in obvious dichotomies such as animal flesh/human flesh, even when these distinctions have little substance. In an unintentionally humorous passage (for Crusoe, that is), Crusoe hatches a plan to cure Friday of his cannibalistic urges by “let[ting] him taste other flesh” (205). After Crusoe shoots a deer—the sound of which terrifies Friday, who fears he, too, has been slain—he feeds it to Friday, who miraculously “liked it very well” (206). Indeed, Friday’s only objection to the “civilized” dish is the presence of salt, which he will never submit to. Crusoe then teaches Friday to cook meat in a fashion “I had seen many people do in England” (207), which is basically a barbecue; this is ironic since barbecues were an Arawak custom which was picked up by Spanish and French sailors. 42 In essence, Crusoe is teaching Friday to eat English-style in the most indigenous manner possible. Not surprisingly Friday “took so many ways to tell me how well he liked it that I could not but understand him; and at last he told me he would never eat man’s flesh any more, which I was glad to hear” (207). Crusoe’s interpretation is convenient given the communication barrier at this stage of their friendship, though possibly erroneous given Friday’s later explanation of his culinary habits. When Crusoe suggests that shipwrecked sailors were eaten by Friday’s people, the later balks at the suggestion: “No, they make brother with them…They no eat mans but when make the war fight” (217). This is an

42 And here the work comes full circle, since barbecues were the origin of the name “buccaneers” who made their living curing buffalo meat in this fashion. As buccaneers like Dampier, Selkirk, and Rogers are Crusoe’s most immediate ancestors in the line of citizen-travelers, Crusoe’s ignorance is telling—especially as Defoe was quite aware of the pedigree.

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uncomfortable message for Crusoe, as it suggests that cannibalism is less an uninhibited pleasure than a strictly defined war ritual. Indeed, when Friday later talks of returning home to his nation, Crusoe angrily turns on him and asks: “What would you do there?...Would you turn wild again, eat men’s flesh again, and be a savage as you were before?” (218). This ignorance of Friday’s culture underlines Crusoe’s greatest fear—namely, his inability to define the cultural parameters of Englishness. In one sense he knows that Friday is less savage than the natives of popular mythology, yet he has little else to rely on in his struggle for cultural survival. Lines must be blurred and visions conjured up to justify Crusoe’s unorthodox teachings, which underline the razor’s edge of truth and fiction indicative of all travel writing. Equally problematic is Crusoe’s religious instruction, which teeters precariously between fictional and non-fictional genres, as well as Defoe’s intentions for writing the work. This instruction opens conventionally enough, with Friday explaining his culture’s notion of God, and Crusoe responding with good-natured intolerance. This leads to an interesting reflection of Crusoe’s, which echoes another branch of travel literature: “I observed that there is priestcraft even amongst the most blinded, ignorant pagans in the world, and the policy of making a secret religion, in order to preserve the veneration of the people to the clergy, is not to be found in the Roman, but perhaps among all religions in the world” (211). The passage is striking in its allegorical use of pagan divinities to point to the religious hypocrisies of Europe. While Crusoe’s mention of “the Roman” seems a superfluous aside, it actually carries the full brunt of the passage. This moment is an obvious link to earlier utopian literature, which used the outside world as a mirror for European society; in the case of Defoe, he is using Friday to unmask a fundamental human construct, the need of “middlemen” to interpret—and often distort—the will of God. Of course, on a deserted island, there can be no clergy and churches, forcing a man to have an intimate and unfettered relationship with God. Thus, Defoe is showing the paradox of Crusoe’s role as religious mentor, when his need for mystery and theatrics continually betrays him as a pagan prestidigitator. The reader is aware of this before Crusoe, which allows Defoe to toy with the voices of two travel genres—the travelogue ethnography and the utopian satire. Crusoe fully intends to teach Friday religion in the same way he has instructed his readers how to grow crops, tend goats, survey islands, and build an English dwelling. He goes on at length about the powers of the devil and God’s providence, though Crusoe summarizes this important instruction (as if to suggest its ephemeral nature). It is only when Friday digests this information and decides to respond that we return to actual, recorded speech—but in this case, Friday’s, not Crusoe’s. Whatever its origin in utopian literature (or religious allegory), Defoe meticulously relates the dialect of Friday, anxious to depict him a flesh and blood creature of the island instead of a convenient satiric prop. Questioning Crusoe’s vision of the world, Friday says: “if God much strong, much might as the Devil, why God no kill the Devil, so make him no more do wicked?” (212). Crusoe stammers and gives a halfhearted answer, as much to say that the Devil will be punished at some predetermined time. Friday finds this baffling

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as well, especially as Crusoe explains that all men sin, but are tolerated to live so that they may repent of their sins. Friday responds: “Well, well…so you, I, Devil, all wicked, all repent, God pardon all” (213). Crusoe finds a flimsy pretext to end the conversation rather than entertain such a simplistic view of religion. And yet, as he makes abundantly clear, he can think of no proper argument to laugh this away. To reassure himself after this uneasy encounter, Crusoe plunges into a conventional monologue with God, asking His power to instruct a poor savage in the ways of religion. Yet even as Crusoe asks for the strength to civilize Friday, he realizes that he, himself, has become “civilized” in a much more profound way. As he writes: “I really informed and instructed myself in many things that either I did not know or had not fully considered before, but which occurred naturally to my mind upon my searching into them for the information of this poor savage” (214, my emphasis). Without drawing attention to it, Defoe allows this moment of religious instruction to mirror the theme of isolation itself. As Crusoe finds his landscape a natural model of England, so, too, the “natural” mind of Friday reveals the hidden mysteries of God—as well the root cause of English identity. The knowledge that Crusoe and all Englishmen have in their hearts must be seen through other eyes, experienced in another’s voice, for it to “sound” as English. Indeed, the notion of religion itself is like an instrument that only Friday can play properly, though when played, it chirps the most traditional airs of England. Hearing these melodies, Crusoe can only remark: “The savage was now a good Christian, a much better than I, though I have reason to hope…that we were equally penitent, and comforted, restored penitents; we had here the Word of God to read and no farther off from His Spirit to instruct than if we had been in England” (215). By reconstructing culture from the ground up, and in a sense, converting himself, Crusoe has symbolically returned home—or more precisely, brought the best of England to his island. The seemingly blasphemous statement that Friday “was now a good Christian, a much better than I,” attests to his ability set the values of England in greater relief, so Crusoe can “see” them and in turn chart his own identity. For perhaps the first time in literature, and certainly in travel writing, Defoe suggests that England is a set of ideas and customs that are transportable, allowing Crusoe and Friday to live and worship as “if we had been in England.” The search for Crusoe’s brand of Englishness, or at least his confidence in having found it, inspired more travelers to explore the far corners of the world than countless maps or treasure galleons. And like so many fabled riches, this, too, would prove something of an El Dorado, as even Defoe must have realized while writing it. In many ways, the question is less whether we believe in Crusoe (though the power of his myth in contemporary culture suggests we still do), but whether Defoe believed in him. And while Crusoe claims to find England in his island prison, is what he finds of any use to the reader? Virginia Ogden Birdsall makes the sensible point that “is it not really Crusoe’s Christian God that Friday worships, but Crusoe himself…And the fact is that Crusoe often sees himself, or suggests that others see him, as a powerful and even a godlike figure, the center of a perfectly ordered and wholly nourishing life” (30). Defoe plants numerous

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references to Crusoe’s stagecraft throughout the text, notably in the earlier passage when Crusoe scoffs at the pagan (and Roman) notion of secret religions. Yet to the end, Crusoe perpetuates this very ploy, terrifying natives with guns that appear as “lightning and thunder,” and even hoodwinking his fellow Englishmen by appearing on the scene as an avenging angel. For all his talk of the “divine chain of miracles,” the miracles seem more like Crusoe’s uncanny ability to manipulate people and places; what else can we make of Friday’s flat statement that: “Me die when you bid die, Master” (225). In the same way Friday was conjured up by his fevered imagination, so Friday will end in much the same way—when his presence is no longer necessary for Crusoe’s equilibrium. And indeed, even the island is carelessly tossed away once Crusoe discovers his true identity, much like a peasant discovering his ancestral knighthood. After a dearth of twenty five years, natives, Spaniards, and Englishmen arrive on his island, provide Crusoe with subjects and a sizeable army, and depart en route to England. As Crusoe earlier marveled at his island kingdom, now he can truly survey everything that a monarch commands: My island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked…I was absolute lord and lawgiver; they all owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives…It was remarkable, too, we had but three subjects, and they were of three different religions. My man Friday was a Protestant, his father was a pagan and a cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist. However, I allowed liberty of conscience throughout my dominions. (234) While this passage is gloriously over the top and betrays many of Crusoe’s weaknesses (not the least his incurable megalomania), it offers an important memorial to his island experience. While Crusoe is the unquestioned “lord and lawgiver,” he is by no means a tyrannical despot, as he enjoys painting the Spanish; he tolerates all races and religions, allowing a “liberty of conscience” to guide his subjects. As England took Her place in the scramble for empire, She risked becoming yet another imperial power, conflated with Spanish atrocities, French ignorance, and Dutch indifference. Defoe, like Behn and Dampier before him, imagined an empire based on trade and tolerance, where “Fridays” would be taught the ways of England, and thus preserve the national character. Crusoe’s kingdom is based on chicanery and stagecraft, to be sure; no man could be Crusoe or hope to enjoy the chain of miracles that sustains him in his cultural quest. Yet what Crusoe leaves behind him, despite the myth of his existence, is a vision of colonial England as self- sustaining and vitally different from the cultural genocide of Spanish America. Defoe could imagine this world much as Behn and Dampier imagined it in their writings. However, like them, he was less certain of its realization through the “lack of forethought” of England’s cultural emissaries—Her sailors. At the end of Robinson Crusoe, Crusoe returns to his island to see what has become of the English mutineers he allowed to live there, having instructed them to cultivate the land and live in peace with their indigenous neighbors. The history of the island is one of conflict and division: the English fought with other Spanish refugees

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(whom Crusoe had earlier befriended), divided their forces—some saying, others fleeing the island—and then fighting a decimating war with the Carib Indians. Though the colony is not lost (Crusoe reports finding “twenty young children”), it is hardly the thriving utopia Crusoe imagined upon leaving it. And while he promises to send the colony precious cargo—including English women—he ends the work with a note of ambiguity, telling of future revolts, struggles, and crisis. Thus the work ends with the same figure that began it: the English sailor, who stands tenuously between the new world and the old, longing to return home and yet willing to tempt fate in even more distant and dangerous waters. Crusoe is an attempt to make sense of a century of travel, shipwreck, marooning, and colonization in a way that can be useful to England. Fittingly, his final words preface a departure with the hopes of return: “I may perhaps give a further account…hereafter” (299).

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Chapter Four: ‘To Wheel In Among Them Worse Manners Than Their Own’: Domestic Travel in Fielding’s The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon

I

Robinson Crusoe, in many ways the prototypical work of a citizen-traveler, created an identity that encompassed the archetype’s split personality: a dogmatic nationalist with an almost postmodern awareness of his quixotic quest. The fears and uncertainties of Crusoe can be read between the lines of his “book,” revealing a conscious creation of literary trickery and travelogue. Throughout the work, we get the sense of a narrative being written, rather than experienced; the story of Crusoe is the story of imposing one’s will and ideas onto a savage world, which is then presented as an authentic narrative of travel. Defoe’s genius—though to some critics, such as Gildon, his greatest flaw—is to answer the question of English identity in a character who is as tenuous as the question itself. The fortress of stones and words that encloses Crusoe’s world is far from impenetrable, particularly when Crusoe continually betrays the slipshod nature of his faith. And yet, we can believe in Crusoe because of the essential reality of his fiction: for it is of sufficient strength to create England out of the debris of a shipwreck, and return Crusoe to prosperity and civilization. But who could follow in Crusoe’s wake? While Defoe would write two sequels to Robinson Crusoe, many writers and critics viewed Crusoe as a dead-end, fit more for parody than development. Indeed, Swift’s Lemuel Gulliver became an archetype for the anti-Dampier/Crusoe traveler, whose misguided hubris eventually alienates him from the values of home. Yet the most important descendant of Crusoe is not to be found in elaborate travel fictions, or arguably in the annals of travel writing at all: Fielding’s posthumously published The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1754), an uneasy composite of autobiography, pamphlet, travelogue, and novel, creates the truest embodiment of the citizen-traveler post- Crusoe. Here we find less a proclamation of national identity than a diagnosis of the cultural rot of a rapidly-expanding empire. In his final work—and his only approximate book of travel writing—Fielding navigates the Scylla and Charbydis of eighteenth-century travel writing, a tortured course between truth and fiction, freedom and prison, and the aims of reading and experiencing travel. For many years Fielding’s late work was relatively ignored by critics, who understandably had difficulty placing it within the context of the more recognizable Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones. However, like another misunderstood work, his late novel Amelia (1751), Fielding was attempting to reinvent himself by questioning the conventions of the novel and travelogue respectively. For despite the innovations of Dampier, Behn, and Defoe (among others), much travel writing continued along the same lines as it had for centuries: empirical accounts of lands and cultures from an authoritative, and often pompous, traveler. Perhaps the best illustration of this comes from the published account of Admiral Anson’s voyage around the world, which culminated in his capture of a Spanish treasure galleon, the Nuestra Senora de

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Covadonga. The published account, A Voyage Round the World by George Anson (1748) 43, following close on the heels of the famous capture, proved wildly successful in London—much as Dampier’s book had been some fifty years before. As Glyn Williams writes in The Prize of All the Oceans: the book resembled the narratives of voyages and discoveries published by Haklyut in the late Elizabethan period. It was at one level a stirring story of adventure on the high seas, at another a reasoned plea for the expansion of British enterprise in the South Sea. To a modern reader the literary style may seem to veer uneasily between the pedestrian and the turgid…[t]he book was above all a work of information, whose intention was explained in the Introduction as the encouragement of ‘the more important purposes of navigation, commerce, and national interest. (222- 224) While all travel writing purported to be “useful” to the nation, this distinction became increasingly problematic due to the innovations of fiction. How did a work without a “citizen” at the heart of its narrative tie its travels to a national project of travel? And how could an unadorned history, translated into the conventional pattern of travelogue, express Williams’ sense of “the more important purposes of navigation, commerce, and national interest?” At the heart of these questions was the sense of anachronism that unconsciously crept into the stale format of travel: if Anson’s voyage (for all its novelty) traced a familiar path from Haklyut backwards, it was of questionable value to a country with radically different views of citizenship and nationality (again, the age of imperialism coincides with the rise of print journalism and a more communal sense of the English nation). While the same themes of travel persisted, the audience no longer spoke the same language as Drake and Raleigh. It was less the universal, mythological aspects of travel that attracted writers such as Defoe and Fielding, than the minute, even mundane moments that made these travelers human. That Fielding had Anson’s narrative in mind is clear from the Preface of The Journal, which refers to it explicitly in a passage defending the truth of Fielding’s narrative. While denigrating the larger part of so-called travel writing, Fielding claims to have avoided the mindless miscellany of their authors, writing: “from [these] faults we have endeavored to steer clear in the following narrative…which…I do solemnly declare doth, in my own impartial opinion, deviate less from truth than any other voyage extant; my Lord Anson’s alone being, perhaps, excepted” (Preface, 10). This is dubious praise at best,

43 Despite the appellation “by George Anson,” the authorship of the work remains in question, particularly considering the tradition of “authorized” accounts of famous voyages. The full title page of the work reads: “A Voyage Round the World In the Years MDCCXL, I, II, III, IV by George Anson, Esq; Afterwards Lord Anson…COMPILED, From his PAPERS and MATERIALS by RICHARD WALTER, M.A., Chaplain of His Majesty’s Ship the Centurion, in that Expedition” (Anson, i). The role of Richard Walter in compiling the work is equally problematic, as many contemporaries claimed that Anson’s log books were insufficient to produce a work its size and scope, and that other hands shaped and at times created the narrative. Whatever its origin, many scholars, including Glyn Williams, in The Prize of All the Oceans, agree that: “[it] is valuable not as an impartial account—for that was never its purpose—but as a narrative that reflects the views of the expedition’s commanding officer” (241).

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particularly given Anson’s hyperbolic assurance of his book’s veracity and importance. In the Introduction alone, we find the following statement, perhaps exactly what Fielding had in mind: besides the number and choice of these marine drawings and descriptions, there is another very essential circumstance belonging to them, which much enhances their worth; and that is, the great accuracy with which they were executed. I shall express my opinion of them…when I say, that they are not exceeded, and perhaps not equaled, by any thing of this nature which hath, as yet, been communicated to the world: for they were not copied from the works of others, or composed at home from imperfect accounts…but the greatest part of them were delineated on the spot…under the direction and under the eye of Mr. Anson himself. (Anson, 2) Such a passage would not be out of place in Dampier, or in any number of earlier writers writing of worlds seen and imagined. But this, it seems, is exactly why Fielding calls attention to it. Anson’s work (and in many ways, Dampier’s as well) are stories of adventure and exploration that attempt to instruct and educate by the way; the true story is of the individual, or hero-adventurer, which follows an broken line from Anson to Drake to Odysseus. Fielding’s Preface lumps Homer with the greater part of travel writing, censuring his method in no uncertain terms: “in reality, the Odyssey, the Telemachus, and all of that kind, are to the voyage- writing I here intend, what romance is to true history, the former being the confounder and corrupter of the latter…I must confess I should have honoured and loved Homer more had he written a true history of his own times in humble prose, than all those noble poems that have so justly collected the praise of the ages (7-8). What does Fielding mean by a “true history”? The term is problematic at best, for if Homer’s world lacked the modern distinctions of truth and fiction, Fielding’s England is equally uncertain. If Anson’s travels could be read as history, so, too, could Defoe’s A Tour Through the Whole of Great Britain, and for that matter, Robinson Crusoe. Yet all contain fiction and fact in equal measure, and all are bound by the motley conventions of travel writing which defy truth at every turn—and indeed, need to “lie” to preserve the author’s ethos and the reader’s interest. The examples of Anson and Homer are not chosen lightly by Fielding, as they represent the grand tradition of travel writing, as well as the emerging idea of a citizen-traveler. While Homer tells an epic “history” of famous heroes, and Anson tells the accumulated “truth” of his own travels, both are ultimately concerned with the mythology of the traveler. Despite the fantastic nature of Odysseus’s travels, the whole of the poem concerns him—his fears, his desires, his triumph. The same is equally true of Anson, who, despite the “great accuracy” of his observations, is primarily concerned with memorializing his naval legacy. This sense of ego and hero-making seems to trouble Fielding, as he uncovers it again and again in works that occupy this vague realm of travel history. Toward the end of his Preface, Fielding writes: “What motive can a man have to sit down, and to draw forth a list of stupid, senseless, incredible lies upon paper, would be difficult to determine, did not Vanity present herself so

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immediately as the adequate cause” (9). In other words, so much of what we read about the outside world is merely a frame to immortalize a hero; not, as we would like to think, as a conscious attempt to instruct a nation of readers. This is certainly the case when we recall that all the great travelers produced no one book of their travels; Columbus, Drake, Raleigh, Cavendish, Anson, and much later, Captain Cook are remembered for their heroic, semi-mythological exploits which transcend the work of a single book or narrative. If Dampier is one of the first widely read travelers to produce a book, rather than a myth of travel, even he could not entirely escape the self-representation required of the hero-adventurer. Yet the danger of such writing, as Fielding suggests, is that self-promotion is mistaken for actual fact; a “list of stupid, senseless, incredible lies upon paper” transcends its value as propaganda and assumes the status of cultural myth and history. While few eighteenth century readers read The Odyssey as an authentic travel narrative, the same cannot be said for Anson’s travels; contemporary readers would read it as a legitimate work of travel (and by extension, history), recounting the lands, people, and battles witnessed by Anson himself. However, one of the chief paradoxes of eighteenth-century travel writing is laid bare in this example: Anson’s Preface boasts that the “greatest part of [the narrative was] delineated on the spot…under the direction and under the eye of Mr. Anson himself,” which suggests that writing “on the spot” is accurate and “historical,” while its opposite, compiling diverse accounts or editing a documentary account is not. In the passage quoted above, Anson anticipates this fear, remarking: “[that his impressions] were not copied from the works of others, or composed at home from imperfect accounts.” The word “imperfect” stands out, since all earlier travel writing is questionable: the only authentic account is the one that can boast no literary pedigree (or was not inspired or cribbed from previous accounts). Lest this be seen as a paranoia unique to Anson, similar fears can be found in the introductions and prefaces to any number of travel writers, William Dampier not excepted. In his Preface to A New Voyage Round the World, Dampier writes: “[the book] is composed of a mixt [sic] Relation of Places and Actions, in the same order of time in which they occurred: for which end I kept a Journal of every Day’s Observations…I would not prejudice the Truth and Sincerity of my Relation, tho’ by Omissions only (Dampier, 1). Even here, in a work that straddles the traditions of the hero-adventurer and citizen-traveler, we find one of the few definitions of truth in seventeenth/eighteenth century travel writing: that which is composed without the aid of art, time, or example. Quite clearly, Fielding’s Preface sets out to contradict this definition of truth, particularly as it relates to national history. His attacks on contemporary travel writing reflect the neoclassical ethos of truth in fiction, “truth” in this case meaning ideas and values which transcend the age and remain valid for all time (which is not always the case when recording the merits of a single individual, such as Anson). As Fielding continues in the Preface: Instead of filling their pages with monsters which no body hath ever seen, and with adventures which never have nor could possibly have happened to them, [these writers] waste their time and paper recording things and

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facts of so common a kind, that they challenge no other right of being remembered, than as they had the honour of having happened to the author, to whom nothing seems trivial than in any matter happens to himself. (9) Here we find another way Fielding links Homer to Anson: if in The Odyssey we find a hero extolled through his fantastic adventures, in Anson’s case it is quite the opposite—he is to be remembered (enshrined in history) as much for his heroic deeds as what direction the wind blew or when land was sighted on such and such a day. The irony is that both approaches are equally, to Fielding’s mind, misguided, as they are both equally fantastic. As discussed in previous chapters, much contemporary travel writing had difficulty drawing a line between narrative and miscellany: anything that could verify a voyage as lived was recorded, no matter how tedious or tangential. This becomes even more erratic when married to the hagiography of a hero-adventurer such as Anson, whose reputation relies on the authenticity of his narrative. All well and good, unless the business of hero-making is mistaken—as Fielding fears—for the cultural experience of England. What, then, should be the true business of a travel writer? How should he or she record a “true history” of an individuals’ travels and the nation that sponsors them? Fielding’s Preface invokes the neoclassical ethos found in other critics of travel writing and fiction, mostly notably Samuel Johnson. Indeed, in formulating his own ideas about travel writing, Johnson was undoubtedly influenced by Fielding’s example in The Journal and elsewhere. In The History of Rasselas, for example, we find the famous passage: The business of a poet…is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristicks [sic] which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness. 44 (Johnson, 27) Again, this is almost a verbatim transcript of Fielding’s argument in the Preface of The Journal. Johnson’s point, similar to his later ideas about travel writing in The Idler No. 97 (1760), is that one cannot mistake the particular for the general. It is the weakness of travel writers to lose themselves in the fragrances, sensations, and reflections of foreign lands. Such recording mistakes the tastes of the individual for the needs of the whole. If anyone, whether “vigilant or careless” could make the same reflections, what uniquely qualifies one as a writer? In what way is such a work “useful” to a nation of readers who look to travelers—

44 Johnson later found these very qualities embodied in the work of Shakespeare, who, not surprisingly, was a considerable influence on all eighteenth century travel writers. As Johnson writes: “Particularly manners can be known to a few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied…Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature…In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species (244). Again, these are the very hallmarks of a citizen-traveler as practiced by Fielding in The Journal.

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and indeed, all writers—to bridge the gap between the known and unknown? If a work is “true” merely through its accumulation of facts, it speaks only of particulars and ignores the “general properties and large appearances,” which translate the experience of travel into the cultural capital of England. The ideal poet (or in this case, traveler) Johnson speaks of is realized in a line of works from Dampier to Defoe, where a citizen-traveler records the “general properties” of English identity in its relative absence. Fielding builds on this tradition through his fictional persona, who, though sharing much of Fielding’s biography, is nevertheless carefully constructed as a “species” rather than an individual. Here the traveler skirts a dangerous paradox, for the citizen- traveler must be a recognizable “citizen,” which is to say a traveler whose ideas and consciousness reflect the nation of his birth. At the same time, following Johnson’s advice, he must never “number the streaks of the tulip,” and mistake his journey for the narrative of a lone individual (since an individual records what interests him, personally, with no thought for the reader). In other words, the traveler must remain translucent, so that the traveler is never mistaken as an end in himself. It is less what he sees than how he sees it that is important, which requires careful pruning and reflection. This double key of travel is the essence of the citizen-traveler’s craft, and allows the reader to experience the anxieties of a traveling nation—that is, of an England that was rapidly assuming a global identity. For this reason, Fielding rejects the “histories” of Homer and Anson as they speak of individual, rather than collective journeys. Fielding’s Journal, though seemingly small in scope, has the grandest ambitions: to capture the moment of cultural embarkation through the pains of domestic travel. Of course, the very nature of his work as a narrative that skirts the genres of travel, memoir, political tract, novel, and history, makes it difficult to read on its own terms. While its central theme, a “journal of a voyage to Libson” places it squarely in the travel-writing tradition, it bears little relation to its travel-writing peers. Even its central character, the dying author himself, is a citizen-traveler of an unusual stamp, only distantly related to Dampier’s famous example. Not surprisingly, few contemporaries quite knew what to make of it. An unsigned notice in The London Magazine, on February 25, 1755, writes that the work “must give…an extraordinary Relish to Persons of Benevolence and Humanity,” while concluding “it seems to have been published for the Benefit of his Children” (HF, The Critical Heritage, 387). Many critics agreed with this, ignoring the question of what it was to focus on its instructive and “beneficial” qualities. The following month, The Gentleman’s Magazine followed suit, writing: “this little book would be very valuable for the instruction which it contains, if the entertainment was wanting; the remarks upon his own situation, upon the manners of others, upon many intolerable inconveniences, which arise either from the defect of our laws, or the ignorance of those by whom they should be executed, deserve the attention not of individuals only but of the public” (HF, The Critical Heritage, 388). This description seems cribbed from the Preface of the work itself, taking at face value Fielding’s definition of a “true history.” Yet such a reading carries a disturbing paradox, one that was not lost upon Fielding’s contemporaries any more than the current generation of critics. If Fielding proposes to write a true

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history of England through his travels, then why is his journal full of elaborate details of his illness, personal habits, and general spleen against English innkeepers? Horace Walpole, in a letter to Richard Bentley dated March 27, 1755, offers a humorous footnote on this very problem: “You will receive, some time or other…the following books…three volumes of World’s, Fielding’s Travels, or rather an account of how his dropsy was treated and teased by an innkeeper’s wife in the Isle of Wight” (HF, The Critical Heritage, 390). To his detractors, this is the sole impression made: a feeble author looking in vain for treatment, being abused by servants and innkeepers, and offering only a few grudging lines on the object of his journey, the city of Lisbon. Even Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to the Countess of Butte in 1755, praises the work for a fleeting (if memorable) passage involving the rescue of a drowning kitten (HF, The Critical Heritage, 394). For such an ambitious work, it seems ironic that only the little moments—the innkeeper’s wife, the kitten—stand out. Can a true history, at least by Fielding’s definition, be built upon such flimsy examples? The Preface and Introduction to The Journal remain the most important clue to reading and interpreting Fielding’s enigmatic masterpiece. In the Preface alone, Fielding takes such pains to describe what a travel writer is not, that one wonders who could possibly qualify (Fielding included) for the position: “To render [the traveler’s] relation agreeable to the man of sense, it is therefore necessary that the voyager should possess several eminent and rare talents; so rare, indeed, that it is almost wonderful to see them ever united in the same person” (6). And indeed, Fielding never claims to be either a travel writer or a practitioner of travel writing. Travel almost seems incidental to his true purpose, which he describes as “making use of a vehicular story, to wheel in among them worse manners than their own” (11). If the Preface sounds somewhat evasive— if not defensive—this may be precisely the point. By avoiding the label of travel writing, and constantly attacking his peers and predecessors in travel, he seems to ask pardon for the very sins of his manuscript. While attacking those travel writers who would “think [themselves] guilty of infidelity, should he omit the minutest thing in the detail of his journal” (9), Fielding presents a journal full of the “minutest” details of his Lisbon voyage. Any one of his encyclopedic arguments against the greater part of travel writing, such as invention, vanity, pedantry, and pretension, can be equally (if not entirely correctly) applied to The Journal. However, like Crusoe before him (whose journal was remarkably self- aware of its literary invention), Fielding is aware of the paradox of his quest: to write a “true history” in travel form, which seeks to reform through the most vainglorious method of all—the daily journal of a seaborne invalid. On the one hand, such a character is the antithesis of an Odysseus or Anson; he can have no heroic adventures, nor create a national mythos around his charismatic personality. Yet on the other hand, such a character is confined to a relatively limited perspective (since he remains largely immobile in the ship), and can see very little of the world around him. If the chief importance of travel writing (and history, by his definition) is to show a “true” relation of the world and its ways, an invalid’s journal seems a poor perspective given the more global reach of most

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travel writing. What could Fielding possibly “see” that would justify his quixotic journey and defend him from charges of promoting his personal legacy? It is interesting that The London Magazine concluded that The Journal “seems to have been published for the Benefit of his Children,” and more recent critics, such as William Burling in his article ‘Merit Infinitely Short of Service’: Fielding’s Pleas in the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon,” interprets much of the work as a public relations campaign to secure a government pension. There is a solid basis for Burling’s interpretation, particularly given Fielding’s Introduction, which documents his tireless efforts against in London. These governmental reforms are less recounted than argued, as if the ailing Fielding is indeed making a case for himself: “no man will, I believe, scruple to acknowledge, that the winter of 1753 stands unrival’d, during a course of many years, and this may appear the more extraordinary to those who recollect the outrages with which it began” (14). This passage is also interesting in how it seems to contradict the very notion of vanity expressed in the Preface. Only a few sentences later, we find Fielding boasting: “I had vanity enough to rank my self with those heroes who, of old times, became voluntary sacrifices to the good of the public” (14). Is it vanity, then, that persuaded Fielding to document his sad voyage away from England—or was it simply the thought of his children and a deserved government pension? While Fielding may have felt the need to defend his legacy, his role in this passage seems less the maligned public servant than the conventional citizen-traveler. The representation of Fielding in this passage is very much along the lines of Dampier, who is able to translate his voyage (particularly in hindsight) as a heroic sacrifice for the nation. By alluding to his criminal reforms in London, Fielding is establishing himself as a traveler with a specific national agenda; it is thus no surprise that his travels will have very little to do with Lisbon, and everything to do with his fleeting impressions of English society. Also like Dampier, Fielding is at great pains to distance himself from the fantastic travelers of legend, 45 while at the same time invoking their national legacy. Ronald Paulson, writing of this passage in the Introduction, remarks: “Although he has dissociated himself form the epic in favor of the plain prose of history (as he insists in the preface, history, not romance or epic), he recalls the classical norms…But he complements this with the example of Don Quixote, whose travels invoke the image of an old and decrepit and exploitable person like Fielding” (The Life of H.F., 319). Throughout the text, we have the image of history balanced between the twin poles of Odysseus and Don Quixote, the one heroic, the other ironic. The conflict of Fielding’s journal is as much physical and spiritual: he is determined to write a work that will parallel (if not exceed) his reforms in London. However, this self-righteous role amuses the author of Tom Jones, who seeks to defuse, deflate, and deconstruct his pretentious rhetoric. How we ultimately read the success or failure of The Journal largely depends on

45 As Dampier writes in his own Preface, concerning the unvarnished (and perhaps, unlearned) style of his narrative: “Nor have I given my self any great Trouble since my Return, to compare my Discoveries with those of others” (3). Of course, this does not stop Dampier from retracing the footsteps of Drake, Magellan, and Raleigh at every turn, appropriating their discoveries and accomplishments.

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which voice we choose to follow, and which one we think is the “historical” Fielding.

II

Fielding assumes the role of a citizen-traveler early in the Preface, and develops his theme throughout the narrative in a way that allies his physical condition with the aims of a national epic. His claim that he was “making use of a vehicular story, to wheel in among [English readers] worse manners than their own,” is the modus operandi of the citizen-traveler, who views travel as a “vehicle” to chart the national character. Not surprisingly, Samuel Johnson uses Fielding’s approximate wording when, writing in 1760, he rhapsodizes on the proper role of the travel writer: He that would travel for the entertainment of others should remember that the great object of remark is human life…[h]e only is a useful traveler who brings home something by which his country may be benefited; who procures some supply of want or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it. (Johnson, 182). Like Johnson, Fielding intends to forgo the epic treatment in favor of what is historical and real—in this case, “human life”; particularly when the human life in question undergoes the most common (even mundane) experience of all: moving from one place to another in a national system of travel. While all travel writers deal, in one form or another, with the physical experience of travel, few examine the realities that define the literal act. Fielding had long betrayed an interest in the pains and frustrations of travel, as documented on-foot and coach-bound in Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews. In The Journal, Fielding expands this interest to the highways of the sea, chronicling the petty tyrannies and disasters that befall the English traveler. Surprisingly, his physical condition, far from limiting his ability to “[bring] home something by which his country may be benefited,” becomes emblematic of his reforming impulse. If Fielding’s aim is to show society a true picture of itself, he cannot travel in the style of Fielding, the famous author; he must literally become the lowest, most anonymous piece of cargo, cursed by every sailor and begrudged entrance to every port on his desultory course to Lisbon. In his second journal entry, dated Thursday, June 27, Fielding makes the following address to his readers: “There are many evils in society, from which people of the highest rank are so entirely exempt, that they have not the least knowledge or idea of them…Such, for instance, is the conveyance of goods and passengers from one place to another” (25). For such people, travel necessarily evokes the romantic struggles of heroic men; any thought of discussing “goods and passengers” would be beneath their contempt and unsuitable for serious literature. Fielding is aware of the novelty of his task, reminding his readers that “no antient [sic] or modern author (if we can trust the catalogue of Dr. Mead’s library) hath ever undertaken it, but that it seems (in the stile [sic] of Don Quixote)

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a task reserved to my pen alone” (25). The mention of Don Quixote’s narrator, who undertakes the unprecedented task of recording the knight-errant’s adventures, is important: Fielding’s journal walks a perilous line between extreme seriousness and extreme foolishness, as few would consider his theme—much less his character—in the grand tradition of travel writing. And yet, is not the heroic task of the citizen-traveler to seek out new worlds to improve and inspire the English character? While Fielding scarcely leaves the coast of England in his travels, the England he presents to his readers is not familiar: it is riddled with monstrous characters and personalities, who delight in torturing honest travelers for mere sport. This nightmare world has all the hallmarks of contemporary satire and fiction; and yet, as Fielding makes clear in his Preface, his journal “[deviates] less from truth than any other voyage extant” (10). While the embellishment of Fielding’s journey will be discussed later, of present concern is what such devilry says of the “history” of English travel. Warming to his theme, Fielding writes of seaborne travel that “the owner being indeed little more than an appendage to his trunk, or box, or bale, or at best a small part of his own baggage, very little care is to be taken in stowing or packing them up with convenience to himself: for the conveyance is not of passengers and goods, but of goods and passengers” (27). In a nation that has become a global empire, with explorers extending English influence to the far corners of the globe, is it strange to find domestic travel as uncertain—and unwelcome—as the South Seas. The English traveler (though ignored by poets and travel writers) must be shuffled about like so much cargo, his desires and fears unheeded, his destination reached only after a circuit of misery, humiliation, and haggling. And yet, as Fielding explains in his journal, nothing can be accomplished without such travel: indeed, the day-to-day conveyance of people and goods is at the very heart of the English nation. Fielding emphasizes the powerlessness of the traveler and the barbarity of travel through his physical body. His decrepit, diseased state, which Fielding informs us is “no longer what is called a Bath case” (14), is itself the vehicle which allows his readers to “see” England from the perspective of cargo. Despite his wealth and class, Fielding must subject himself to the manumission of a “bashaw” of a captain, as well as his degenerate crew, who hold Fielding and his party in utter contempt. At the start of The Journal, Fielding is literally “loaded” into the ship, as he has lost the use of his legs, and has to be hoisted aboard with pullies. The following passage evokes the atmosphere of pagan grotesquerie familiar to readers of Dampier, Behn and Defoe; yet the setting is utterly mundane, and can be found in any shipyard in England. As Fielding writes: In this condition, I ran the gauntelope (so, I think, I may justly call it) through rows of sailors and watermen, few of whom failed of paying their compliments to me, by all manner of insults and jests on my misery. No man who knew me will think I conceived any personal resentment at this behavior; but it was a lively picture of that cruelty and inhumanity, in the nature of men, which I have often contemplated with concern; and which leads the mind into at rain of very uncomfortable and melancholy thoughts. (23)

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At every stage of his journey, some character or incident frustrates Fielding’s progress with these “uncomfortable and melancholy” thoughts. The irony is that Fielding has paid for the privilege of having sailors and spectators jeer at him, and then be ill-used in the company of a captain who, upon hearing his displeasure, exclaims “that had he known we were not to be pleased, he would not have carried us for 500l.” (24). The unique identity of the traveler is allegorical of Fielding’s own body, which undergoes the double isolation of personal freedom and country; the traveler is not allowed to move through the country unobstructed (having to rely on the whims of his captain and sailors), and is treated everywhere as a foreigner—and an unwelcome foreigner at that. As Fielding writes: “from this conveyance arises a new kind of relation, or rather of subjection in the society; by which the passenger becomes bound in allegiance to his conveyer. This allegiance is indeed only temporary and local, but the most absolute during its continuance, of any known in Great-Britain, and, to say truth, scarce consistent with the liberties of a free people” (27). In this way, Fielding defines the unique paradox of travel: the closer to the source of civilization, the more travel confines, inhibits, and enslaves the traveler.46 To make even the most unremarkable voyage in the country, the traveler must bind himself, body and soul, to the captain and his crew. In return for this lack of freedom, the traveler is to be scorned and robbed, with the possibility (but not the promise) of reaching his or her final destination. The themes of strangeness and alienation are realized by the frame of the work itself, since it is the journal of an ailing and unrecognizable (to readers of his previous fiction) Fielding. As Fielding notes when being hoisted aboard ship: “Indeed so ghastly was my countenance, that timorous women with child has abstained from my house, for fear of the ill consequences of looking at me” (23). As Fielding’s appearance has changed, so, too, does his narrative take on an uncertain stamp, bearing the voices of multiple genres, perspectives, and levels of irony. As Terence Bowers notes in “Tropes of Nationhood: Body, Body Politic, and Nation-State in Fielding’s Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon,”: Here we should note that the breakdown of Fielding's body would not have the ominous significance it has if the lower strata of the body politic did their jobs. If the working men and women Fielding encounters obediently served as his arms and legs according to traditional models of the social order, then his decaying body would affirm the health of the corporate body. But Fielding finds that there is no larger cooperative, corporate body on which he can rely. It is, like his own body, going through a series of disruptive and intestine conflicts (5-6).

46 It is interesting to compare Fielding’s method of travel with Dampier’s: while Fielding remains confined aboard ship, at times starving for lack of food (and his wife suffers piteously from a toothache that cannot be pulled), Dampier roams unmolested across the Pacific, blurring the boundaries between citizen and buccaneer. He finds food and wealth in abundance, follows his own timetable, and establishes open trade with the natives. Fielding, on the other hand, is at pains to get even the most basic necessities from domestic ports.

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Seen in this light, the work serves less as a reminder of faithful service to England, than a diagnosis of a nation that is itself “no longer a Bath case” (again, Fielding’s condition being allegorical of the state of England itself). By packing himself away as human freight, Fielding is delivered through the ranks of English society, bestowing the plight of the individual traveler with universal, and indeed, epic consequences for a nation of readers. If a mere journey to Lisbon—which could be accomplished within a week under the right circumstances—can become such a sickly, labored affair, then surely this rot will spread to the far corners of the empire. Without a reliable system of travel, no trade or discourse with the outside world can exist; and it is trade, as Fielding stresses, that makes England the greatest of nations. Lacking movement, personal freedom is an illusion, creating a physical and metaphorical prison which isolates England from her rightful dominion. Thus Fielding’s travels focus on the mode of travel itself: not the destination, but the import and export of goods on the triumphant “wooden castles” that crowd the illustrious Thames. It is this very image that comes to dominate Fielding’s journey, as a meditation on national identity at once stable and fluid, able to be carried sound from London to Lisbon—and beyond. However, this very frame of travel contains its own paradox, since it protests to be very thing it is not: a truthful, day by day account of Fielding’s travels. This paradox is expressed clearly in the Preface of The Journal, where Fielding writes: “To make a traveler an agreeable companion to a man of sense, it is necessary, not only that he should have seen much, but that he should have overlooked much of what he hath seen” (5). What is seen and reported upon should justify inclusion by “some observations and reflections naturally resulting from it” (10). This definition of the “useful traveler” may seem at odds with Fielding’s intention to provide a travel narrative that “deviate[s] less from truth than any other voyage extant” (10). However, as explained above, Fielding was less interested in a running account of his journey, than a voyage that reflected the “general properties” of the people and places he encountered. And yet The Journal is written as exactly that: a day-to-day journal of the events and experiences on an interminable voyage to Lisbon. The artifice resembles Anson (and his ilk) to the point of parody; yet Fielding wants to do more than satirize, he wants the reader to understand—or at least be bewildered by—his methods. By contrasting a traditional framework with his neoclassical philosophy of travel, Fielding undermines the very nature of a traveling diary. Suddenly, the parade of sensations and images can no longer be read as random; everything vibrates with the author’s trademark humor and sense of purpose. Whether Captain Veale was really as nasty as Fielding makes him out is scarcely the point; rather, he is important for what he says as a “species” of human character. After the Preface, it is impossible not to read his travels in a double key, seeing the cacophonous parade of images yet “hearing” Fielding’s useful credo warbling above. Fielding further complicates this stance when discussing the traveler’s responsibility to his audience: “I shall lay down one general rule, which I believe to be of universal truth between relator and hearer…that is, that the latter never

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forgive any observation of the former which doth not convey some knowledge that they are sensible they could not possibly have attained of themselves” (6). This can be perceived as something of a challenge to the reader, particularly in a work that purports to be a “historical” travel narrative. Does Fielding want the reader to read with the intention of tripping him up; or is this merely a ruse to obscure the artistic nature of Fielding’s quasi-fictional travels? Either way, it creates a strained relationship with the reader, which Melinda Alliker Rabb notes in her article, “Confinement and Entrapment in Fielding’s A Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon”: If Fielding solicits sympathy, he also harbors anger at his plight and toward the public he holds responsible for it. This anger takes the form of estrangement between the narrator and implied reader…[his rule] anticipates readers who “never forgive” an artistic lapse. Self-absorption (however understandable) makes him disregard the audience’s pleasure…Almost no one is welcome unconditionally in this narrative. (254-255) Clearly, Fielding is divided about his own reasons for writing the book, but knows the public will be the better for it. However, betraying his own suspicions about travel writing and pretentious authors, he assumes an audience that will hold him to his word—even when he prefers to ignore it. It is a perilous stance, particularly for an author who claims to be a “voluntary [sacrifice] to the good of the public.” Whether he is punishing his readers for his own affliction, or he finds it impossible to take himself seriously, the narrative echoes this struggle from beginning to end. Ultimately, the question must be what “pleasure” The Journal gives his audience, and whether the historian’s observations can trump the author’s suspicions and irony. For like Crusoe, Fielding sails a razor’s edge of meaning, coming off either as England’s savior or its sourest critic. One could easily imagine Charles Gildon’s criticisms applying wholesale to Fielding: “[he] is so far a profest [sic] Enemy of his Country’s Prosperity and Safety…[that he] employs all the force of his little Rhetorick to dissuade and deter all People from going to Sea (8). Perhaps the crowning moment of Fielding, the historian, occurs relatively early in the narrative; indeed, at this point he is still within sight of London (though he is five days into his journey!). After documenting a Hogarthian display of mutiny and disorder,47 Fielding turns away from his personal ills and contemplates the glory of English shipyards. What begins as an admiring survey of the “floating castles” in Deptford and Woolwich quickly becomes an epistle on maritime power. Ironically, this poetry is set in motion by something of a white elephant: the Royal Anne, which Fielding identifies as “the largest ship ever built, and which contains ten carriage guns more than had ever yet equipped a first

47 Fielding even evokes his famous contemporary in the following ironic passage: “Besides the disagreeable situation in which we then lay, in the confines of Wapping and Redriffe, tasting a delicious mixture of the air of both of these sweet places, and enjoying the concord of sweet sounds of seamen, watermen, fish- women, oyster-women, and of all the vociferous inhabitants of both shores, composing altogether a greater variety of harmony than Hogarth’s imagination hath brought together in that print of his, which is enough to make a man deaf to look at” (24).

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rate” (31). However, lest we admire the ingenuity that conceived of such a vessel, Fielding remarks in an aside: “It is true, perhaps, that there is more of ostentation than of real utility, in such ships of this vast and unwieldy burthen, which are rarely capable of acting against an enemy” (31). Is this a lament on wasted resources and manpower? He continues in a seemingly satiric strain, noting that the expense of such vessels is justified (despite their impotence), if “the building…contributes to preserve, among other nations, the notion of the British superiority in naval affairs…Indeed, I should be sorry to allow that Holland, France, or Spain, possessed a vessel larger and more beautiful than the largest and most beautiful of ours” (31-32). The language of this passage seems more befitting a Thwackum than Fielding, as it attributes naval superiority to mere size, and furthermore, the very greatness of the England to chicanery and illusion. However, the invocation of the Royal Anne, despite its irony, serves as a Trojan Horse for Fielding’s more “historic” theme: the significance of England’s maritime trade. Fielding remarks in an off-hand way that England’s ground army has become reduced and tawdry in comparison to the “goodness and splendor” of her continental neighbors. The same, however, is not true of her navy, which in any case is the true backbone of a global empire. As examples such as the Royal Anne demonstrate, England’s pomp and circumstance are reflected in every timber and sail of her fleet, whether or not they could withstand a protracted battle on the high seas. Naturally, Fielding is less concerned with the appearance of the nation’s ships than what they stand for: an unbroken chain of commerce flowing into the bountiful Thames. He says as much when he writes, again with a hint of irony: for, continue so [the navy] will, as long as the flourishing state of our trade shall support it, and this support it can never want, till our legislature shall cease to give sufficient attention to the protection of our trade, and our magistrates want sufficient power, ability, and honesty to execute the laws: a circumstance not to be apprehended, as it cannot happen till our senates and our benches shall be filled with the blindest ignorance, or with the blackest corruption. (32) This passage is a direct counterpoint to Fielding’s Introduction, which documents the “blindest ignorance” and the “blackest corruption” in all ranks of society. Fielding’s “it can never want” and “it cannot happen” is the hollow refrain of a man who has few illusions about political power. Having been at the heart of the wheeling and dealing of London politics, he is painfully aware that such “protection” rests on the selfish influence of England’s “senates and benches.” And trade, though crucial to England’s economy, was not universally accepted amongst the nation’s elite. As Laura Colley writes in Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837: [I]n terms of wealth, status, and power, men of trade in this society came a long way behind men of land, and continued to do so for a very long time…So while broad-acred Members of Parliament virtually always spoke approvingly of commerce, they spoke of it as a worthy occupation indispensable to the well-being of the nation, not as their occupation, and not as their children’s occupation if they could help it. (60)

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This crucial division of trade as specifically, but not universally English, forms a running complaint of The Journal. Whose duty was it to minister to the nation’s ships and cargo? To whom did it fall to accommodate the nation’s passengers and send them speedily on their way? The problem, as Fielding expresses it, is that no one is anxious to take responsibility; and worse still, the larger part of the nation saw the immediate (selfish) appeal of trade rather than its national responsibility. As a counterpoint to this corruption, Fielding abandons his own voyage for an extend “tour” of London’s shipyards. Whereas London itself inspires little but scorn for its Hogarthian miseries, the docks are seen as something wholly different, reflecting the purest strains of English nationalism. Fielding observes: “the yachts are sights of great parade, and the King’s body yacht, is, I believe, unequalled in any country, for convenience as well as magnificence…We saw likewise several Indiamen just returned from their voyage. These are, I believe, the largest and finest vessels which are any where employed in commercial affairs” (33). This initially seems a rather stock description, again focusing on the large, opulent display of English vessels. However, its very repetition underlines its importance to his theme: trade and the English traveler. For at such docks one can see the whole panoply of English trade and empire; it is no surprise that Fielding views the “King’s body yacht,” which represents the king’s literal body upon the waters. Additionally, Fielding is just in time to witness the arrival of “several Indiamen,” bearing precious teas and spices, all of which, as Colley argues, have become undeniably “English” by adoption. 48 Fielding continues to note the “small craft” used in American, European, and African markets, all of which “forms a most pleasing object to the eye, as well as highly warming to the heart of an Englishman, who has any degree of love for his country, or can recognize any effect of the patriot in his constitution” (33). Fielding’s use of “patriot” has a double meaning here: naturally, the sight of so many massive ships bearing exotic cargo invokes a surge of national sentiment, particularly with English flags waving triumphantly in the breeze. Yet equally important is the patriotism inspired by the location itself: London. For it is here that Fielding begins his journey, and here that Fielding can “see” his entire theme written in water, sails, spires, and canons. Though much is written of London in contemporary poetry and novels, Fielding seems to emphasize how little his readers saw of the “historical” London visible from any common dockyard. Writing of the unique nature of Fielding’s London, Colley notes: Home to at least one in every dozen Britons, visited at some point in their lives by perhaps as many as one in six, London was a league apart from every other European capital. Only one in forty Frenchmen lived in Paris in the eighteenth century, and a mere one in eighty Spaniards made their

48 Writing in Britons, Forging the Nation 1707-1837, Colley writes: “Exotic goods which had previously been imported only in small quantities for a cosseted elite—silk, rice, dyestuffs, coffee, tobacco, and above all, tea and sugar—now became far more abundantly and broadly available…moralists like John Wesley and Jonas Hanway were complaining that traveling salesmen were even selling tea by the cup to haymakers at harvest-time, and that the ‘very chambermaids have lost their bloom by drinking tea.’ …the colonial consumer goods had by now become sufficiently widespread to bring the spoils of empire to the level of every village shop, and the attractions of empire to the minds of many more Britons than ever before” (69).

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home in Madrid. Neither city was a major port…Of all the major European powers, only Great Britain—and to a less concentrated degree the Dutch Republic—possessed a metropolis of trade and population that was also its centre of power. (64) Seen in this way, London was the alpha and omega of all English travel; any voyage out naturally returned to London—and indeed, every famous explorer from Dampier to Anson sailed triumphantly down the Thames to celebrate his colonial largess. It is a sight that Fielding wishes emblazoned on the minds of every Englishman and woman: the sight not only of a great city, but of what made it great. By meditating on the power of trade to connect England to the most distant ports of the globe, one can better understand what it means to be English; not in a provincial way, but as a truly global citizen of Britain. Not coincidentally, Fielding’s citizen-traveler echoes the much earlier lines of Alexander Pope in Windsor Forest (1713), who also celebrated the glory of a naval empire: The time shall come, when free as Seas or Wind Unbounded Thames shall flow for all Mankind, Whole Nations enter with each swelling Tyde, Earth’s distant Ends our Glory shall behold, And the new World launch forth to seek the Old. Then Ships of uncouth Form shall stem the Tyde, And Feather’d People crowd my wealthy Side, And naked Youths and painted Chiefs admire Our Speech, our Colour, and our strange Attire! (397-406) Pope envisions an entire world linked by the “unbounded Thames,” carrying English ships to distant lands, and returning home laden with riches and foreign dignitaries to “admire/Our speech, our Colour, and our strange Attire.” That London is the capital of this world is without question, since it is the destination of the “New World [launching] forth to seek the Old.” It is this sense of patriotism that Fielding invokes when he examines the dockyards, reading in them the entire history of the British empire, as well as the hope of future greatness. The dockyard passage also reflects the reforming impulse found in the Introduction, particularly in the famous phrase “I had vanity enough to rank my self with those heroes who…became voluntary sacrifices to the good of the public” (14). Though Fielding is departing the shores of England for his final voyage, The Journal was his attempt at posthumous instruction. By “wheeling” the reader into “worse manners than their own,” Fielding allows the average citizen to see the ills of English society through the traveler’s perspective. In essence, by playing upon the tradition of foreign travels, such as Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters on England, Fielding is both citizen and stranger, asking “what is England?” while carefully providing the answer. A significant example occurs when Fielding describes the view from certain houses along the Thames. He laments that too many houses are built upon the narrower channel, which “affords not half so noble a prospect, and where the continual succession of the small craft, like the frequent repetition of all things, which have nothing in them great, beautiful, or admirable, tire the eye, and give us distaste and aversion

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instead of pleasure” (33). Pleasure, it seems, is to be found in the parade of commerce along the Thames, which Fielding later confesses: “is, in my opinion, the noblest object which the art of man hath ever produced; and far beyond the power of those architects who deal in brick, in stone, or in marble” (68). This passage seems to condemn the landed gentry who identify themselves with brick, stone, and marble, while ignoring the more sublime prospect of waterborne trade. To correct the nation’s hydrophobia, Fielding suggests a sweeping reform of the capital’s amusements: namely, “the sailing ourselves in little vessels of our own, contributed only for our ease and accommodation, to which such situations as our villas, as I have recommended, would be so convenient and even necessary” (34). By bringing England closer to the water—and thus to the instructive view of ships and trade—her citizens would better understand their place in the empire. While Fielding admits “[t]his amusement…would be of the expensive kind,” this is obviously not a serious objection, since “such expense would not exceed the reach of a moderate fortune, and would fall very short of the prices which are daily paid for pleasures of a far inferior rate” (34). This is an amusing counterpoint to Fielding’s war against the criminal underworld, as it suggests that reform begins equally at the top, among the landed gentry who gleefully accept the profits of a seafaring nation. Fielding’s role as citizen-traveler also allows him to weigh in on the popular reforms of the day, particularly the question of the nation’s poor. The lower classes of England concerned Fielding keenly in The Journal, as their relative “freedom” threatened to unbalance the delicate systems of trade and travel. As we have earlier seen, Fielding was ruthlessly mocked by the sailors who hoisted him aboard ship, and the chaos of dockyard life appalled Fielding, the reformer (though the novelist recorded these scenes with obvious relish). Wherever he goes in his travels, Fielding meets the same rudeness and incivility, and the progress of his journey is often checked by the unhelpful character of his fellow citizens. For example, when anchored off Deal, Fielding can find no decent way of getting to shore; the captain will not spare his boat, and the locals charge exorbitant fees for a two mile ferry. Though the country should be the property of every English citizen, Fielding laments: “these good people consider the sea as a large common, appendant to their manor, in which when they find any of their fellow creatures impounded, they conclude, that they have a full right of making them pay at their own discretion for their deliverance” (41). The result is that Fielding is a foreigner in his own country, which is full of begrudging and at times violent natives. In a rare instance when Fielding’s family finds hospitality among the “natives,” he pointedly writes: “So polite a message convinced us, in spite of some arguments to the contrary, that we were not on the coast of Africa, or on some island where the few savage inhabitants have little of human in them besides their form” (63). Such episodes conform to the citizen-traveler’s (as well as Johnson’s) credo that “[h]e only is a useful traveler who brings home something by which his country may be benefited; who procures some supply of want or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others” (Johnson, 182), with the added irony that Fielding has never left home: home has become a land torn between the freedoms of the

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lower classes and the servitude of the traveler. His travels thus take on a new dimension, almost a sort of diatribe against the “savagery” of lower-class manners, and the misapplications of English liberty. Fielding is very open in his misgivings about the term “liberty,” which, as he states, “scarce any two men with whom I have ever conversed, seem to have one and the same idea [about]” (60). However, as he tours London and the southern coast of England, he comes up with a working definition, inextricably bound up in the miserable plight of the English traveler: “By liberty…I apprehend, is commonly understood the power of doing what we please: not absolutely, for then it would be inconsistent with law, by whose control the liberty of the freest people, except only the Hottentots and the wild Indians, must always be restrained” (60). This invocation of the “Hottentots and the wild Indians” is yet another strategy of transforming the familiar landscape of England into a pagan wilderness, where the traveler is literally at peril of his or her life. The root cause of this freedom (which obeys the law, but only just), is found in the boorishness of the lower classes, which Fielding, the Whig reformer, finds particularly unnerving. As he writes: “the lowest class of our people having shaken off all the shackles of their superiors, and become not only as free, but even freer, than most of their superiors…[are the only ones] therefore, who [are] possessed of absolute liberty” (61). Naturally, this idea of “absolute liberty” is horrifying to the citizen-traveler, as it is totally at odds with national interest, trade, and simple hospitality. Fielding reinforces this reading through his literal body—crippled and unable to function under its own steam—which must be “supported” by the lower classes in the forms of servants, sailors, and innkeepers. Not surprisingly, we can read a significant political message in this choice of metaphor: “The body metaphor appealed to Fielding precisely because it expressed the notion that society was not a level, horizontally organized entity, not an open space to which all had access, but a stratified, hierarchically ordered entity that was yet unified, organic, and thus "natural" and Godgiven (Bowers, 5). As his body has failed him, so, too, has Fielding’s society run away with itself—the legs obeying their own inclinations, the arms grasping for personal profits without thought of the body politic. For Fielding, the traveler, freedom remained a hierarchical notion, in which every man and woman contributed to the movement of people, goods, and ideas; the lower classes, by working the pullies of travel, the merchants by devising trade, and the nobility by actively encouraging and funding their endeavors. The note of pessimism, and at times, open contempt that creeps into Fielding’s Journal can be, in part, traced to the perceived failure of his London reforms. The “strange” England that the reader encounters in The Journal largely reflects Fielding’s own sense of disorientation. The work opens in despair, as Fielding records “the most melancholy sun I had ever beheld arose” (22), and ends in sullen defeat: “About seven in the evening I got into a chaise on shore, and was driven through the nastiest city in the world” (107). This bitter trajectory is the frame for his national reforms, which records less a literal journal of travel than the artistic representation of physical and spiritual alienation. As

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Brian McCrea writes in Henry Fielding and the Politics of Mid-Eighteenth Century England: One crucial difference between the Voyage and his earlier work is largely responsible for its dark tone: here he has no model for the essential political virtue of enlightened self interest…the taunts of the watermen humiliate him personally, but also because they mock the brave definitions of patriotism and political greatness that he gave in earlier writings. The “cruelty and inhumanity” of the watermen, which “is an excrescence of an uncontrolled licentiousness mistaken for liberty” (p.202) reduces the lifelong Whig to seeking protection from a “petty bashaw. (192) As McCrea explains, his faithless sacrifices—which ultimately destroyed his health—are scorned by the very nation he sought to protect, offering instead its own version of “liberty” that Fielding had no sympathy for. This condition of being a stranger in a strange land (some of which is contrived, some real) forces him into a role of national critic, where his views can seem misanthropic at best, and at worst, blindly intolerant. However, even his most extreme views, such as putting the poor to work and denying them the “liberty” of being vagrants, merely reflected the ethos of reform in London society. The poor were constantly reminded of their duty to the realm, and in Jonas Hanway’s Letter to the Encouragers of Practical Public Love (1758), we find the following echo of Fielding: “remember that true liberty consists in doing well; in defending each other, in obeying your superiors and in fighting for your King and Country to the last drop of your blood” (Colley, 97). Additionally, Fielding’s own brother, the famous blind-magistrate John Fielding, advocated “recruiting orphans and unemployed men for the as a sterling solution to crime, disorder, and poverty” (Colley, 97). What Fielding objected to was less personal freedom than a complete breakdown of modern civilization. If, as Fielding writes, “every man spunges and raps whatever he can get; and will haggle as long and struggle as hard to cheat his employer of two pence in a day’s labor, as an honest tradesman will to cheat his customers of the same sum in a yard of cloth or silk” (62), then who will await the Indiamen’s return from the peripheries of empire? Who will build new ships to overshadow the navies of France and Holland? And who will protect the honest traveler as he attempts to leave, possibly for the last time, his native land?

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Fielding’s most pointed criticisms of lower-class freedoms are also his most memorable: the characters of Captain Veale and the innkeeper, Mrs. Francis. What is problematic about both characters is their overtly “fictional” appearance, by which is meant their relationship to familiar comic types found in Fielding’s novels, as well as the novels of his contemporaries. 49 Many critics found both characters an oasis of satirical humor in what was otherwise a

49 For a discussion of the similarities between Mrs. Francis and Mrs. Jewkes in Richardson’s Pamela, see Tom Keymer’s “The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon: Body, City, Jest.”

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relatively dry and uncertain book. However, these very characteristics prompted a slight backlash against Fielding’s work, notably in an anonymous letter addressed to Samuel Richardson dated March 31, 1755. 50 The letter defends the character—which Fielding savaged—of Mrs. Francis, an innkeeper who took in Fielding and his entourage at Ryde in the Isle of Wight. According to the letter: I must confess the sight of her, having as he observes many symptoms of a deep jaundice in her look, rais’d in my mind nothing but compassion; and in her behavior we saw yet less of the character of those infernal deities…I am surprised that so great an observer of the humours of the lower class of people, had never discovered that the circumstance of paying them, will not always make them amends for the trouble you give them (qtd. in Paulson, 391-92). This is a surprising counterpoint to Fielding’s characterization of Mrs. Francis as a skinflint, pretentious harpy, whose indifference to Fielding’s condition obliges him and his party to sleep in a barn, only to be overcharged the following morning for their accommodations. In a final blast against Fielding, the anonymous letter writer concludes: “in ransacking every place for the means to gratify his depraved appetite, in tormenting himself, and all about him: afraid to see his own figure, unwilling to correct himself, he exposed that of others, and railed at their Faults” (Paulson, 392). While this letter may have been something of a smear campaign against Fielding (suggested by its anonymous origin), it is significant for what it suggests of Fielding’s method (already hinted at throughout The Journal): namely, that Fielding took considerable license with the nature of his travels to tell a true “history” of England. The character of Mrs. Francis (and subsequently, Captain Veale) is indicative of how Fielding approached not only travel writing, but wrote of the “general properties” of English life. As in the Preface, Fielding makes grandiose claims for the veracity of his work, explaining a particularly savage passage of Mr. and Mrs. Francis with the aside: “The foregoing is a very imperfect sketch of this extraordinary couple; for every thing is here lowered instead of being heightened” (59). This is an extraordinary confession, as it suggests the couple’s true character is too grotesque for a non-fictional account of travel. Yet it reminds us that to be “useful” to an English reader, he must make do with an “imperfect sketch,” which speaks more to the general character of such people than the subtleties which would be lost in fiction. There is something uniquely Fieldingesque about this confession, which is at once pedantic and utterly ingenious. Indeed, it smacks of the Preface’s claim that the work “deviate[s] less from truth than any other voyage extant; my Lord Anson’s alone being, perhaps, excepted.” As it is unlikely that Fielding found very much “truth” in Anson’s account (which he would have considered too vain, according to his definition in

50 Ronald Paulson speculates that the letter was written by Margaret Collier, who accompanied Fielding, his wife, and his daughter on the journey to Lisbon. A signed letter from her to Richardson, on October 5, defended charges that she, and not Fielding, was the true author of the work. As she writes: “I was sadly vexed, at my first coming, at a report which had prevailed here, of my being the author of Mr. Fielding’s last work, ‘The Voyage to Lisbon’; the reason which was given for supposing it mine, was to the last degree mortifying, (viz. that it was so very bad a performance, and fell so far short of his other workds, it must needs be the person with him who wrote it)” (Paulson, 395).

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the Preface), it is similarly doubtful that Fielding wanted the reader to align the two works as “histories” of travel. Likewise, Fielding’s claim of lowering rather than heightening his portrait of Mrs. Francis and her husband is suspect as it borrows from the very language of Anson’s (and similar travelers) accounts. As Anson’s travels boast that “[the observations] were not copied from the works of others, or composed at home from imperfect accounts…but the greatest part of them were delineated on the spot…under the direction and under the eye of Mr. Anson himself” (Anson, 2), Fielding continually makes a similar claim of “on-the- spot” authenticity. However, he also calls his observations “imperfect,” and reminds his reader that much of what is seen must be forgotten—or at least altered for the public to derive any use from it. Read against the grain, passages like these seem to question the very conventions of travel writing, since what is truthful often cannot be “truthfully” related to a skeptical reader. And it is the reader, ironically, who seems to make such verbal trickery necessary for Fielding. Recalling the author-reader relationship as noted by Raab, Fielding’s “anger takes the form of estrangement between the narrator and implied reader…[his rule] anticipates readers who “never forgive” an artistic lapse.” What seems to both amuse and aggravate Fielding is a body of readers for whom all truth and history is already known; a travel writer cannot deviate from a preset standard of rules and conventions, though writing about worlds scarcely seen and people seldom known. With such a readership, an authentic work is merely consistent—not truthful. Thus, Anson and so many travel writers betray their calling by telling readers what they already know, which is the paramount sin of travel. Fielding, on the other hand, reserves the right to lower or heighten at his will, since he is primarily concerned with “general” history and character (which may or may not have occurred on his journey). As he writes in the Preface: “if any merely common incident should appear in this journal…the candid reader will easily perceive it is not introduced for its own sake, but for some observations and reflections naturally resulting from it” (10). In other words, nothing appears for its own sake, or even as it is in life; Fielding only shows us that which is “strange,” or which we wouldn’t otherwise “see” as a non-traveler. Thus Mrs. Francis, Captain Veale, and indeed, the very population of London itself, is not “delineated on the spot,” but is carefully edited to show a vision of English character and morals. Following the testimony of the anonymous letter to Samuel Richardson, many critics read the episode at Deal as the spontaneous overflow of fictional spirits. Charles L. Batten, in Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Instruction in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature, interprets Fielding’s interactions with Mrs. Francis as an attempt to “[manipulate] the narrative portions of his travel account in order to provide The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon with a little humor and suspense” (51). It is interesting that so many critics look for the novelist—largely in vain—in this final, enigmatic work. As Batten suggests, the passage does provide both humor and suspense in an otherwise reflective narrative. However, if Fielding’s chief concern was to sprinkle novelistic embellishments throughout his travels, they are curiously unbalanced; indeed, these episodes are not quite funny or suspenseful enough to justify their claim as entertainment. This

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becomes abundantly clear in the character of Mrs. Francis, whose “humor” is surprisingly unpleasant. Upon Fielding’s arrival at Mrs. Francis’s inn at Deal, we are told that “Mrs. Francis…no sooner received the news of our intended arrival, than she considered more the gentility, than the humanity of her guests” (49). She repeatedly ignores Fielding’s requests for food, and when Fielding tries to shift for himself (by procuring a large and bloody piece of venison), she is appalled by his tactlessness. As Fielding writes: “[she] left the room with no pleasant countenance, muttering to herself, that had she known the litter which was to have been made, she would not have taken such pains to wash her house that morning. ‘If this was gentility, much good may it do such gentlefolks, for her part she had no notion of it!’” (49). In this scene Mrs. Francis bears an uncanny resemblance to the sailors in London: rude, contemptuous, and utterly aloof from national sympathy. Her indifference ultimately drives Fielding’s party into a nearby barn for lodging, which Fielding assures us is more accommodating than her room or manners. In mock-offense, Mrs. Francis exclaims “she would not dispute [their] pleasure, but it was the first time, she believed, that quality had ever preferred a barn to a house” (50). And in this she is entirely correct: despite the distinctions of class, a gentleman-traveler had no rights on his travels; he must endure all this abuse and more, which is merely part of the fee of “civilized” travel, the alternative being a barn or some other “savage” hovel along the road. The episode is entirely in keeping with Fielding’s general theme of an “uncivilized” England, which would not be out of place in Dampier’s travels. Yet the true climax only occurs when Fielding receives his bill of fare for the evening. Mrs. Francis’s bill is a grotesque creation right out of Joseph Andrews, including a cornucopia of civilized comforts such as “Bread and Beer, Wind (a local liquor), Dressing dinner, Tea, Firing, Lodging (!) and Servants Lodging” (52). The final tally comes to thirteen shillings and ten pence, which, though a bargain in other circumstances (as Fielding admits), is hardly suitable for their “Hottentot” accommodations. Predictably, Mrs. Francis responds with the indignation due one of her status, claiming: She scorned to overcharge gentlemen: her house had been always frequented by the very best gentry of the island; and she had never had a bill found fault with in her life, tho’ she lived upwards of forty years in the house…for her part she did not get her livelihood by travelers, who were gone and away, and she never expected to see them more, but that her neighbors might come again; wherefore, to be sure, they had the only right to complain. (53) This is a pregnant passage masquerading as a comic diversion. For despite her resemblance to Mrs. Jewkes and other fictional furies, she personifies everything Fielding resented about lower class freedoms and the pains of travel. Namely, that she “scorned to overcharge gentlemen,” by which is not meant those of a higher class, but those who take what they get and don’t sully her floor with venison blood. In forty years no bill had ever been “found fault with,” since no one had the audacity to question an innkeeper’s rights—a grotesque reversal of traditional hospitality. Yet even more to the point are her concluding lines, which state that travelers of are no account (since they come and go), and only her

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neighbors had any right to complain. It is this infuriatingly provincial view of “neighbors,” that disturbs Fielding, as she is unable to distinguish between local and national concerns. Affixing herself to the body of trade, she sucks travelers dry (all of whom are ‘neighbors’ in the larger sense), while relying on the patronage of local gentry. Unwilling to debate the matter, Fielding simply pays the bill, 51 though he takes refuge by skewering her character a few pages later as a “tyrant, a trickster, and a bully” (57). These swipes at Mrs. Francis belie her role as a comic foil, and are among the most mean-spirited passages in all of Fielding. 52 Clearly, then, it was not simply the woman that rankled him, but her ideal: the unbound lower classes and their monopoly on travel. If Mrs. Frances plagues Fielding by land, then Captain Veale is his affliction by sea. Not surprisingly, both are brutally characterized in Fielding’s Journal, standing as much for individual types as for the collective mass of the debased lower classes. Our first glimpse at Captain Veale betrays all the hallmarks of “liberty” that so disturbed Fielding: He had been the captain of a privateer, which he chose to call being in the King’s service, and thence derived a right of hoisting the military ornament of a cockade over the button of his hat…He had taken it into his head that he was a gentleman, from those very reasons that proved he was not one; and to shew himself a fine gentleman, by a behavior which seemed to insinuate he had never seen one. He was, moreover, a man of gallantry; at the age of seventy he had the finicalness of Sir Courtly Nice, with the roughness of Surly; and while he was deaf himself, had a voice capable of deafening all others. (29) The comparison to two characters in Crowne’s comedy, Sir Courtly Nice (1685) is perhaps the most telling detail: Captain Veale is not to be read as a truthful representation of the captain of The Queen of Portugal; on the contrary, he is “lowered” according to Fielding’s formula to encompass a type found in the comedies of Congreve, Behn, and others. Yet Fielding’s characterization is rarely played for laughs. This petty tyrant, who fashions himself a gentleman and the “King’s servant,” has absolute authority on his vessel—a kind of free state floating autonomously in English waters. In this way, all such captains resemble privateers who have English “papers,” but play fast and loose with matters of national interest (which also suggests the character and book of Dampier). But what is particularly galling to Fielding is how he and his family are expected to bow and scrape before this ridiculous subject. As captain of his own vessel, Veale is literally the monarch of his cramped quarters, temporarily suspending the rights and freedoms of his guests (despite the significant sums they have paid for this honor!). Fielding’s progress is continually checked by Veale’s unnecessary stops—often for several days—his demands for additional supplies

51 The unsigned letter to Samuel Richardson contradicts him on this point as well, claiming: “Tho’ Mr.F. has printed the bills that were made him at the Inn, he paid them no more than he chose” (Paulson, 392). 52 Fielding gave full reign to his descriptive powers when he writes of Mrs. Francis: “She was a short, squat woman…every feature of her countenance was sharp and pointed; her face was furrowed with the small- pox; and her complexion, which seemed to be able to turn milk to curds, not a little resembled in colour such milk as had already undergone that operation” (57).

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(often at Fielding’s expense), and his refusal to offer even the slightest amenities to his travelers. Fielding refers to Veale early in the Journal as an “angry bashaw,” and the characterization sticks: Fielding and his party are indeed something of galley slaves on a Turkish ship, the English coast indistinguishable from the wilds of Africa or the Ottoman Empire. We see the “strangeness” of Fielding’s surroundings most clearly in a heated argument over the ownership of Fielding’s cabin. Though Fielding had paid for the use of this cabin, Veale insists on entering it at leisure, and even using it to storing cargo. When Fielding objects to this treatment in his cabin, the captain thunders: “no d—me, ‘tis my cabin. Your cabin! D—me! I have brought my hogs to a fair market. I suppose, indeed, you think it your cabin, and your ship, by your commanding in it; but I will command in it, d—n me! I will shew the world I am the commander, and no body but I!” (88). This passage is laced with satire, since Veale intends, through Fielding, to assert his authority to the entire world as “commander” of his vessel. Yet more to the point is Veale’s inability to understand his role in the exchange of trade and empire. He is more concerned with laying claim to property (his ship, his cabin, his travelers, his cargo), than acting as its custodian. This ignorance is laid bare in the following exchange, where Veale reacts to the sum Fielding has paid for his passage: “Did you think I sold you the command of my ship for that pitiful thirty pounds? I wish I had no seen you nor your thirty pounds aboard of her.’ He then repeated the word thirty pounds often, with great disdain, and with a contempt which, I own, the sum did not seem to deserve in my eye…being, indeed, paid for the freight of — weight of human flesh, which is above 50 percent. Dearer than the freight of any other luggage, whilst in reality it takes up less room, in fact, no room at all” (88). To Fielding’s mind, this is wrong on any number of levels. For one, is any such sum pitiful in the interests of trade? What is more important—the captain’s vanity or the nation’s wealth? By choosing to humble Fielding, the captain again sides with his “kingdom” over the interests of England, deciding what sum is contemptible and what worthwhile for his “privateering” interests. As Fielding remarks a few pages later, “I cannot conceive [thirty pounds] to be pitiful in itself; nor do I believe it is so thought by the greatest men in the kingdom; none of whom would scruple to search for it in the dirtiest kennel, where they had only a reasonable hope of success” (90). If even the “great” will stoop for such a “pitiful” sum, then what right does Captain Veale have to assign or relinquish value? Again, whether this event truly occurred or not is less important than what it represents to Fielding’s traveler. To Fielding, travelers are “dearer than the freight of any other luggage,” since the movement of people from London to the diverse corners of the world is what constitutes a global empire. Great Britain is only a political idea, or at best a philosophical construct, without the ability to travel freely throughout its boundaries and experience it as a living nation. Yet such a system did not exist in Fielding’s England, nor indeed at the close of the eighteenth century. As Tobias Smollett remarks in Humprhy Clinker (1771), speaking of his creation, Mrs. Tabitha: “She was so little acquainted with the geography of the island, that she imagined we could not go to Scotland but by sea…the people at the other end of the island know as little of Scotland as of

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Japan” (250). Such ignorance or “strangeness” (Fielding suggests) can only be the fault of those, like Captain Veale, who look upon travelers as beneath their contempt. For it is clear that Veale is not an isolated example; like Defoe, Fielding views the nation’s sailors—the very men who are responsible for a sense of national identity—as grossly deficient. If Defoe can write in Robinson Crusoe that sailors are “the least of all mankind given to forethought” (247), Fielding can go him one better, envisioning sailors as men without vision or conscience, ungovernable by any English law on the books. As Fielding writes: “They acknowledged [the captain] to be their master while they remained on ship-board, but did not allow his power to extend to the shores, where they had no sooner set their foot, than every man became sui juris, and thought himself at full liberty to return when he pleased” (76). The irony is that (according to Fielding) the sailors preferred their ships to dry land, and only ventured abroad to visit the houses of entertainment that lured sailors to abandon their duties. In a humorous aside, Fielding links this contemporary dilemma with—of all subjects— Homer’s Odyssey, finding a new interpretation for an age-old story: “I suppose Ulysses to have been the captain of a merchant-ship, and Circe some good alewife, who made his crew drunk with the spirituous liquors of those days. With this the transformation into swine, as well as other incidents of the fable, will notably agree; and thus a key will be found out for unlocking the whole mystery” (77). While this reading cannot be taken very seriously, its use of Homer underlines the epic/historic aspirations of his text. While laughing at his subject, Fielding remains dogmatic in his quest to present a true history of the nation from the eyes of a traveler. For this reason his principal theme remains the “pains of travel,” particularly as practiced by those most trusted emissaries of Englishness, England’s captains and sailors. Lest Fielding sound like a prude for his disapprobation of sailor’s amusements, Fielding reminds us that nothing—not travel, not trade, not even civilization itself—can “move” without the discipline of sailors. This works on two levels in his narrative. Most obviously, it makes the most mundane voyage, such as a relatively short voyage to Lisbon, an interminable journey of want and misery. As Fielding writes: “It will, doubtless, surprise many of my readers to hear, that when we lay at anchor within a mile or two of a town, several days together, and even in the most temperate weather, we should frequently want fresh provisions and herbage…as much as if we had been a hundred leagues from land” (76). Captain Veale refuses to send his boat out for provisions since he knows the temper of his men; even if they did return, it would likely not be for days, and with questionable provisions. And though other boats are readily available, the locals charge exorbitant fees for passage to and from the shore. So Fielding must remain as if off the coast of Africa, or thousands of miles at sea, a prisoner of his own countrymen. Yet it is not only the individual traveler who is held for ransom; the nation, too, suffers from the vice and freedom of her sailors. Unwittingly, the sailors set in motion a dismal cycle of national ruin, starting with “grief and disreputation to the innocent captain, loss and disappointment to the worthy merchant, and not seldom great prejudice to the trade of a nation, whose manufactures are thus liable to lye unsold in a foreign warehouse, the market

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being forestall’d by some rival whose sailors are under a better discipline” (80). The message is clear: either the captain runs his ship like a penitentiary, or consigns his merchandise to foreign hands. Under normal circumstances, this would be tantamount to an act of treason, particularly in an age when desertion is a hanging offense. And yet such hypocrisy is tolerated among the nation’s sailors, further blurring the lines between sailor, pirate, and buccaneer—and making Veale’s former title of privateer suitably ironic. While the ended around the 1720’s (as celebrated in the famous work, A General History of the Pyrates, posthumously attributed to Defoe), a new dawn of looting and skullduggery has emerged on the heels of travel. Veale is a stark contrast to his privateering ancestors—such as Drake—who brought home the spoils of the Spanish empire; instead, he and his crew loot the very citizens who map the face of the British empire. From the first page to the last, a sense of tragic inevitability dogs the footsteps of Fielding’s Journal. As the work opens in gloom, so it ends in comic dejection, as Fielding recoils from the sight of “nasty” Lisbon and her dismal inhabitants. While there is no real change in Fielding’s traveler (unlike Crusoe, and to some degree, Behn’s narrator in Oroonoko), there is also no real progress in the journey: we do not get anywhere, since Lisbon’s shores do not dispel the gloom of the preceding narrative. Even more disappointing for the armchair traveler is the bathetic conclusion: Fielding has no time for sightseeing in Lisbon, as we have seen all that we need to see; indeed, he might have sailed to France, Spain, or Iceland for all we get of Portugal. The teasing title of the work (which, admittedly, does not promise a journal of Lisbon, but of a voyage to Lisbon) is perhaps the greatest clue to the genre and purpose of the work. It is a contrived journey, made along the pathways of art and reason rather than the fickleness of random experience. And yet, the narrative is no less truthful for that, as Tom Keymer writes in his essay, “The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon: Body, City, Jest”: “The conclusion to draw, however, is not that Fielding sets out to deceive, but that he sets out to fashion quotidian experience into a work of art that owes its shape to more than contingency alone…[it is] not a work of neutral documentation but…one in which the raw materials of life are imaginatively transformed” (234). This work is not the feeble jest some critics have mistaken it for, though the work is full of sardonic humor; on the contrary, it is a way to translate the experience of a traveling nation into a journal of doubt, disillusion, and threadbare hope. As Fielding writes in the Preface: “Nature is not, any more than a great genius, always admirable in her productions, and therefore the traveler, who may be called her commentator, should not expect to find every where subjects worth of her notice” (5). Like any true historian, the traveler must balance experience with sentiment, and make observations that his readers “could not possibly have attained of themselves” (6). For this reason we are not surprised—though perhaps, disappointed—when Fielding ends much as he began, his traveler broken in body and spirit, his journal breaking off not in his own words, but a borrowed quote from Horace: “This is the end of the story and the journey” (107).

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However, this ending does take us somewhere quite new and unexpected, both as a work of travel literature and a vision of expanding empire. Perhaps most surprising is how Fielding reacts to Lisbon, which is completely at odds with his critique of travel writing in the Preface. At the end of the Preface, Fielding recalls “a play (if I mistake not, it is one of Mrs. Behn’s, or of Mrs. Centlivre’s) where this vice [self importance] in a voyage writer is finely ridiculed…[t]he humor, it is true, is here carried very far; and yet, perhaps, very little beyond what is to be found in writers who profess no intention of dealing in humor at all” (9- 10). Keymer rightly identifies this play as Behn’s The Feigned Courtesans (1679), which features a fussy, pretentious tutor by the name of Tickletext, who compares all the wonders of continental Europe to London—and predictably finds them wanting. In a typical exchange, Tickletext is asked his opinion of Rome’s architecture, which meets with a conventional (if heightened) response: “Your buildings are pretty buildings, but not comparable to our university- buildings; your fountains I confess are pretty springs, and your statues reasonably well carved, but sir, they are so ancient they are of no value! Then your churches are the worst that ever I saw, that ever I saw” (Behn, 107). Compare this to Fielding’s remarks upon arriving at Lisbon: “As the houses, convents, churches & c. are large, and all built with white stone, they look very beautiful at a distance, but as you approach nearer, and find them to want every kind of ornament, all idea of beauty vanishes at once” (106). It is a curious echo of Behn’s caricature, and one whose satire seems at Fielding’s expense. Of course, this is consistent with the rest of the text, which continually undercuts Fielding’s high-handed purpose in undertaking The Journal. In the very passage where Fielding extols the great Indiamen on the Thames, Raab points out that “later in the paragraph, the “floating castles” become “useless, vast and unwieldy burthen[s]”…These counteractive phrases and sentences set snares for the reader, whose expectations are irregularly satisfied and undercut” (237). It is important to note that these “expectations” are largely the travel writing conventions that so annoy Fielding. Thus, we find his passionate reforms blindsided by ironic passages which betray the very limitations of the genre. It is only fitting that Fielding ends with an absurd portrait of Fielding as Tickletext, as this provides a sober comment on the inability of travel writing to write a “true history” when both the form and the audience expect something else. So much of The Journal embodies this sense of futility, of attempting to write something that cannot be written to an audience who is incapable—or unwilling—to understand. Part of this quality possibly stems from Fielding’s fears of anachronism, which is reflected in the Introduction; here he is at great pains to remind the reader of his London reforms, even offering the vainglorious claim that “I had vanity enough to rank my self with those heroes who, of old times, become voluntary sacrifices to the good of the public.” Yet Fielding, the author, has great fun with his subject, subjecting him to countless miseries, humiliations, and absurd impersonations (as in the example of Tickletext). But it would be wrong to view the work as a failure, or worse still, as Fielding’s admission of failure. Despite his feeling of alienation, Fielding still views travel—and the role of the traveler—as the surest way to “discover” England for a new generation of

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readers. We see this in his constant identification with the travels of Odysseus, whose legendary exploits belie his importance as a prototypical citizen-traveler. Though not a “history” by Fielding’s definition, The Odyssey still allowed its readers to map the boundaries of national identity and view the world as Greek— or in Fielding’s case, English. Only by sailing away from England can one grasp the nation in its proper perspective, and understand the symbiotic relationship of citizens, trade, and travelers. Though Fielding explores the pains and tortures of travel, he also allows us fleeting glimpses of a more harmonious prospect. Toward the end of the work, as Fielding lies between England and Portugal in the English Channel (literally between two worlds), he writes: tho’ our voyage was retarded, we were entertained with a scene which as no one can behold without going to sea, so no one can form an idea of any thing equal to it on shore. We were seated on the deck, women and all, in the serenest evening that can be imagined. Not a single cloud presented itself to our view, and the sun himself was the only object which engrossed our whole attention. He did indeed set with a majesty which is incapable of description, with which while the horizon was yet blazing with glory, our eyes were called off to the opposite part to survey the moon, which was then at full, and which in rising presented us with the second object that this world hath offered to our vision. Compared to the pageantry of theatres, or splendor of courts, are sights almost below the regard of children. (101) Like the earlier passage about Indiamen, this passage evokes the beauty of a world unseen by the common English citizen, though it exists daily in his or her midst. The sunset and moonrise evokes both the sublimity of nature and the endless possibilities of individual/national renewal. For the first time in the narrative, the entire crew—Fielding, his family, Veale, and the sailors—are all united in a common “vision” of shared humanity. This passage is quickly swallowed up by his arrival in Lisbon, and is never again referred to; however, it suggests the unique perspective of the citizen-traveler to uncover new growth amidst imperial decay, and the common bonds which unite a nation of diverse men and women, of all ideas and classes, as English. Though Fielding is not naïve enough to end his work with this passage, he does record its appearance, in the hopes that it will be discovered on subsequent voyages, in the hearts and minds of English travelers.

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Epilogue

Travel writing remains something of an enigma in the modern canon, holding a distinguished, but often overlooked position at the periphery of English literature. After all, travel writing, by its very nature, was written for immediate use. The discoveries, landmarks, and meditations of the traveler are themselves a kind of expiration date, fading away at the first mention of a new coastland or inlet. Not surprisingly, few travel writers wrote for posterity; most were content to cash in on the latest discoveries from New Holland or South America. And even those who, like George Anson, wanted to leave a distinguished record of their naval service, were less concerned with the realities of travel than the glorification of the traveler. In this way travel writing can be read side-by-side with the business of map-making. The charm of old maps lies chiefly in their skewed vision of the world, which we cannot read as truth, but as a projection of the fears and desires of an expanding empire. A telling example of this is a sixteenth-century French map of Sir Francis Drake’s circumnavigation between 1577 and 1580. 53 The map charts the journey and discoveries of Drake, recording the most up-to-the-minute vision of the globe, including the entire coast of North and South America, Africa, Japan, and Greenland, along with other speculative fictions such as the Southern Continent and a vast landmass labeled “Nova Guina,” lying just south of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean. The map betrays the hopes of reaching the fabled markets of Asia via Japan, which is conveniently just off the coast of California, and immediately north of an imaginary continent which blankets much of Micro and Melanesia. Another fantasy appears in the much-touted Northwest passage, which appears as an open seaway just north of Norway and extends unbroken to China. These are more than simple mistakes or miscalculations; they betray a vision of the world as it should have been, so that new markets could be reached and a profitable trade established for the nation. The shelf life of this map was understandably short, but its appeal and message remains: the world could be circumnavigated and discovered for England—chiefly by those with the vision and daring of Sir Francis Drake. Which brings us to the second quality of this map, the portrait of Drake himself staring haughtily at the viewer. Clearly this is meant to be Drake’s map, peppered with his discoveries and corrections. Two frames on either side of the map provide a brief narrative of Drake’s adventures: one shows him encountering a band of canoe-faring natives, while the other depicts him weathering a ferocious storm in uncharted waters. Additionally, an English coat of arms appears on the coast of “Nova Albio,” or Western North America, and even more strangely on the northern coast of Antarctica, which Drake could never have visited. 54 Yet the title of this map betrays its perspective—the heroic

53 The British Library Maps C.2.a.7.(1)., found in Whitfield, Peter. New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration. New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 102-103. 54 The closest approach to the coast of Antarctica would not occur until Captain Cook’s Second Voyage. Writing on January 30, 1774, Cook describes their journey through a vast field of ice dotted with “Seven Ice Hills or Mountains, many of them vastly large” (331). The ice ultimately arrested their voyage south

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enterprise of Sir Francis Drake and his Circumnavigation of the World. The seas are populated with doppelgangers of Drake’s ships, and Greenland’s discovery (indistinguishable from Canada) is attributed to Drake in 1579, though it appears on much earlier maps. Though this view of the world would be continually expanded and corrected, what would remain is the portrait of Drake himself. This is a map as carefully written as Anson’s more famous account, which uses travel as a backdrop to record the legacy of an English hero. While England is referenced in the coat of arms, we read Drake less as an Englishman than as a superhuman figure in the mold of Columbus and Magellan, a hero for all men and for all time. Much English travel writing orbited these twin poles of purpose: travel as news report and hagiography. We can see this clearly in Haklyut’s famous compilation of English voyages, which also records the heroic adventures and discoveries of Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh. Yet an abrupt change occurred around the time of Dampier, not coincidentally at the moment England took its most decisive steps toward becoming a global empire. The change consisted chiefly in the role of the traveler him or herself, focusing less on the temporal aspect of travel than the permanent depiction of a citizen-traveler. While this a term is somewhat anachronistic, as it was certainly not used by any of the authors in this study, it reflects a modern sense of how travel changed from an individual to a national occupation. But even this statement requires come clarification, for even travel writings in the mold of Drake seem relatively (to modern eyes, at least) anonymous. As stated previously, there is no discussion of the traveler’s inner life or thoughts; he or she glides blithely through the narrative observing, discovering, and claiming the world for England. Yet England seems almost an afterthought, an allegiance that is more to underscore the traveler’s exploits than to motivate the traveler in question. The change that occurred with Dampier’s A New Voyage Round the World was a shift in the experience of the traveler. He or she is, in the best sense, a “citizen” of England, whose travels originate and return to their native land. While there is no trace of the vanity that Fielding so despises in travel writing, so, too, does it lack the mindless miscellany deplored by Johnson. Every observation and discovery is carefully winnowed through the lens of the traveler, who, like Addison’s Spectator, experiences the outside world for his “club” back home—in this case, the English nation. Though this traveler would increasingly become a complex (and fictionalized) individual, he or she follows Johnson’s later definition of the traveler as someone “who brings home something by which his country may be benefited; who procures some supply of want or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it” (SW, 182). Like Johnson’s definition of art itself, nature is not to be mindlessly copied in a work of truth; that which is true will naturally cull from the riches of the world, reproducing

just north of the tip of Antarctica, and many degrees below the Antarctic Circle. It would take over a century for the continent to be successful reached—by which time the face of the world had changed dramatically.

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only that which can have a moral benefit for the nation. Thus, the ephemeral nature of travel will pass away, leaving the timeless message of the traveler; not who the traveler was, naturally, but what traveler said, and how these words defined the experience of a traveling England. After all, it was pointless and egotistical to assume that a mere journey abroad qualified one to write a book of travel. Even the most encyclopedic mind could not answer the eternal questions of travel. What was required was a traveler substantial enough to be homesick, yet transparent enough to loose himself in the minds and hearts of his readers. In this way, the Preface of Fielding’s The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon comes closest to theorizing the nature of the citizen-traveler: a traveler who navigates the Scylla and Charybids of saying too much and too little. Though the accumulation of detail common to so much contemporary travel writing does not necessarily invoke the vanity of Anson, the two approaches are often allied. As Anson’s published account boasts of its meticulous detail and accuracy, so many a “heroic” narrative equated accuracy with encyclopedic detail in facts, figures, and latitude coordinates. This not only proved the journey was true, but verified the heroism of its subject. Yet why would any traveler—naval hero or not—wish to write solely of him or herself? To return to Johnson’s famous quote from Rasselas: ““The business of a poet…is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest” (27). To “number the streaks of the tulip” is to assume that one’s readers had never seen them—or to admire one’s reflection in the details. It speaks of an egotism that forgets the purpose of travel, much less the reason for writing (or reading) a book of travel. The citizen-traveler allows England to see the “species” rather than the individual, ironically by creating a more recognizable Englishman/women than any previous traveler in print. It is this sense of the citizen-traveler that Samuel Johnson would develop in his later work, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), where several unusual detours paint a picture of Scotland quite at odds with its romantic history (or the later evocations of Sir Walter Scott). Surveying an austere landscape of barren rocks and mountains, Johnson writes: It will readily occur, that this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveler; that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath, and waterfalls; and that these journeys are useless labors, which neither impregnate the imagination, nor enlarge the understanding…[yet] these ideas are always incomplete, and that at least, till we have compared them with realities, we do not know them to be just. As we see more, we become possessed of more certainties, and consequently gain more principles of reasoning, and found a wider basis of analogy. (Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 32) In essence, this scene underlines his central philosophy of travel: that the traveler must record only that which “enlarge[s] the understanding,” and allows the reader to make a “just” impression of the world. It is a type of travel that allows no room for imagination or embellishment; instead, it is a ruthless seeking out of facts to complete a map of two worlds—that within and outside of England.

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It is no coincidence that Johnson journeys to the Western Islands of Scotland, a place that was as distant to the minds of most Londoners as Tahiti. And yet, the fate of both worlds was linked to the future destiny of Britain, and without understanding the one, the English reader lacked the “certainties” of his or her nation’s existence. What separates Johnson’s travels from those of travel writers in the previous century remains the role of the traveler: while professing facts and observation above all, the journey is uniquely Johnson’s own. The reader is never without Johnson’s—and at times, Boswell’s—impressions of Scotland or the pains of traveling in the peripheries of civilization. In this way, Johnson develops the citizen-traveler in the relatively domestic sphere, though without the mercantile interests or optimism of Dampier or Defoe. What Johnson offers instead is an elegiac meditation on a vanishing culture, and the inevitable sacrifices that come with the realization of a global empire. Roughly contemporary with Johnson is Lawrence Sterne’s groundbreaking A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768), which professes quite opposite sentiments in the guise of another citizen-traveler. Sterne memorably satirizes Johnson’s breed of traveler—in this case, Tobias Smollett—who responds to the sentiments of travel with dumb indifference. As Sterne remarks, substituting “Smelfungus” for Smollett: “I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon—he was just coming out of it—‘Tis nothing but a cock pit, said he—I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus of Medicis, replied I—for in passing though Florence, I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in nature” (Sterne, 52). This is an indictment of those travelers for whom all Europe can only pale against the wonders of England (which even Fielding mocked in the Preface of The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon). And yet Sterne takes this a step further, annoyed by those who only travel to improve themselves by a closer knowledge of the “certainties” of the world. In what can be read as a direct response to Johnson (though written a decade before Johnson’s travels), Sterne remarks, upon meeting a tiresome countryman: “As an Englishman does not travel to see Englishmen, I retired to my room” (Sterne, 37). Clearly, Sterne is not interested in measuring the realities of England against the people and wonders of Europe; he wishes to record only that which moves him to joy, rapture, or pity (the very egotism Fielding rails against in his Preface). The very thought of a dour Fielding or Johnson writing of nasty Lisbon or craggy expanses would shrivel the stem of his quill. However, this is not to suggest that he abandons the core of the citizen- traveler’s art. In A Sentimental Journal, Sterne admits to his habit of “translating” the world around him, which sounds remarkably like the business of Johnson’s useful traveler: “For my own part, by long habitude, I do it [translate gestures and social language into “English”] so mechanically, that when I walk the streets of London, I go translating all the way; and have more than once stood behind in the circle, where not three words have been said, and have brought off twenty different dialogues with me, which I could have fairly wrote down and sworn to” (Sterne, 79). What is remarkable about this passage is how Sterne attempts to translate what is seen of the world (by the indifferent traveler, perhaps) to what is

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actually understood by the common citizen. In this way, he is not simply showing what anyone could see, but what only the experienced traveler can know—and more importantly, how the foreigner sees the Englishman. This is itself almost a translation of Johnson’s more stodgy idea that “ as we see more, we become possessed of more certainties, and consequently gain more principles of reasoning, and found a wider basis of analogy.” Sterne is not interested in meeting fellow Englishmen on the road, but he is concerned that Englishmen understand what is truly felt beneath the masks and guises of foreign society. A modern, yet utterly vital take on the citizen-traveler mold. Though a large gulf separates the travels of Dampier and Sterne, the role of the traveler betrays their common ancestry: a fictional traveler whose ties to England allow the reader to see the tenuous boundaries between home, travel, nation, and empire. While many of these journeys fail to drive home the criticisms and failings of empire expected by the twenty-first century, they are unique in suggesting their existence—and at times, offering a tentative stab at resolving their cultural and psychological conflicts. If Defoe was the most ambitious apologist for the new order, then perhaps Behn was the most honest. Her vision of a romantic past being grotesquely hacked apart by avaricious colonists prefigures much of subsequent travel literature, particularly the harrowing journey of Marlowe in Heart of Darkness. Even Johnson, writing of the Scottish Highlanders, can lament the inevitable ends of travel: “such were the qualities of the Highlanders, while their rocks secluded them from the rest of mankind, and kept them an unaltered and discriminated race. They are now losing their distinction, and hastening to mingle with the general community” (67). Ultimately, as such writings suggest, there is nothing anonymous—or empirical— about the business of travel. It affects the traveler in a profoundly immediate way, demanding that he or she confront cultural beliefs and philosophies that bind an entire nation. It is a paradox of travel writing that the most parochial message was achieved by the most exotic means; for in every journey beyond, we are left with the inevitable question: will the traveler return home? And if so, does home have the same meaning for him or her? It is the role of the citizen-traveler to bridge this paradox, affirming his or her identity while at the same time embracing the unknown. Our continued fascination with the classics of travel writing suggests that the journey continues in the present century, though all the maps are colored in and history has provided the bloody answers of exploration and conquest. What remains is our own uncertain identity beyond the tenuous boundaries of nationality, and how the experience of a single man or woman can represent— and indeed, transform—the consciousness of a nation of readers.

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