ors and Inconsistencies in Defoe'
Robinsom Crusoe
BY --
WILLIAM T. HASTING
Reprinted from Modern Language Notes, June, 191
BALTIMORE
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS



























ERRORS AND INCONSISTENCIES IN
DEFOE'S ROBINSON ORUSOE
* ~ * ! I
§ #
t . .
It is generally recognized that Robinson
Crusoe is a triumphant piece of verisimilitude,
that it is unsurpassed among fictitious narra-
tives for its air of guileless veracity. It is not
so generally recognized that in securing this
realism and this appearance of truth Defoe was
led not infrequently to violate actual “truth *
or consistency. He sought his effect not by
truth of characterization, plausibility of motive
and sequence of events, and the other common
devices for securing general convincingness, so
much as by minute particularity of detail in
his statement of facts. This method, together
with his unconquerable fondness for making
out coincidences in dates, put upon him a task
too great to be accurately executed by one who,
like him, wrote from hand to mouth. Some of
his slips were triumphantly pounced upon by
a hostile contemporary writer, Charles Gildon,
in a rare pamphlet, The Life And Strange
Surprizing Adventures of Mr. D De Jº
of London, Hosier . . . with Remarks Serious
and Comical upon the Life of Crusoe . . . 1719.
Since then other writers have noted an error
here and there. But many of Gildon's criti-
cisms were petty or absurd, and some of the
most important discrepancies have not been
pointed out at all, so that it seems worth while
3 to attempt a fairly complete statement of them
here. However long the list, of course it can-
not at all belittle the famous story. 3.
The inadvertencies are of two kinds, con-
fusions in the chronology of Crusoe’s life and
contradictory statements about Crusoe’s situa-
tion and experiences. Gildon concerned him-
self almost wholly with the second sort of fault.
The errors in chronology are, however, more im-
#
come on the fourteenth day after Crusoe’s j ( :
“near two years” (p. 151) of labor; this would
portant, because, besides the general light they
throw on Defoe's methods, they furnish good
corroborative evidence against the existence in
the story of any precise and literal allegory
of Defoe's own life, such as Defoe in 1720
alleged to exist. The best way to examine
them is to review the outline of the story.
II
agº
Only the events of Crusoe’s life before and
after his years of solitude are precisely dated,
and the chief difficulties are with them. We
may deal first with the events of his life on the
island, which are roughly figured from the time
of the shipwreck. Crusoe was shipwrecked on
September 30 (pp. 69, 76), so that his “year’
ends on that date, near the end of the wet
Season (p. 117). There are no great difficulties
with the first four years, three of the four
anniversaries of his landing being noted care-
fully (pp. 114, 124, 136, 142). There is a
contradiction, however, in the two statements
of the time of the disappearance of the wreck.
In the general narrative of the shipwreck the
storm which broke up the ship is said to have
landing, i. e., on October 14 (pp. 61, 62); but
in the journal we are informed that the storm
occurred on the night of October 25 (p. 77).
Then after the reference to the 4th anniversary
come eight pages of generalizations, followed , , ," " ... ::::::::::::.
by the statement that “after this [probably the . . .
anniversary], for five years” (p. 150) little A. 14 °
happened. He first built a periagua, after
bring him to the summer preceding the end of
his 6th year, but on “the 6th of November,
in the sixth year of my reign” (p. 152),
i. e., just at the beginning of his sixth year-
*Page references are to Aitken's edition of Defoe
works, vol. 1. . . .














he makes his first voyage in the periagua.
There is no reference to what happened at
the end of the five years of quiet (cf. above,
p. 150), which would fall at the end of the
9th year on the island. In his next allusion
to time, when his ammunition is running low,
he is “in the eleventh year ” (p. 160). The
next time indication is in connection with the
discovery of the footprint. After seeing it he
cogitates for “weeks and months” (p. 174),
finally reflecting that he has “lived here fifteen
years” (p. 178) without seeing anyone. He
then spends “two years ” in terror, working on
fortifications, etc. (p. 181), which brings him
to the end of his 17th year. He then makes a
tour of the island and sees the signs of canni-
bals, upon which occasion he considers (p. 184)
that he has “been here now almost eighteen
years.” This is going a little too fast. He
“keeps close ’’ nearly to the end of his twen-
tieth year (p. 184), and then lives more freely
for some time. He actually sees the cannibals
at the end of another two years, in “the month
of December . . . in my twenty-third year”
(p. 201).
So far there have been only three slight
errors, but what follows is difficult to untangle.
On p. 205 Defoe writes: “I wore out a year
and three months more before I ever saw any
more of the savages, and then I found them
again, as I shall soon observe; . . . in the month
of May . . . in my four and twentieth year,
I had a very strange encounter with them. .
The perturbation of my mind, during this fif-
teen or sixteen months’ interval, was very
great. I . . . dreamed always frightful dreams.
. . . But, to waive all this for a while . . . it
was the sixteenth of May ’’ that the Spanish
ship was wrecked. After the account of the
wreck he reports living comfortably “near two
years more ” (p. 215), and two pages later
says: “I am now to be supposed retired into
my castle, after my late voyage to the wreck.”
In the next paragraph (p. 217) he continues,
“It was . . . in March, the four and twentieth
year,” etc., that he dreamed of rescuing Friday.
. Then, in “about a year and a half” (p. 223)
Friday is brought by the cannibals.
The first sentences of the first passage mean
that the savages came again, and Friday was
rescued, in May of the 24th year (of course
fifteen or sixteen months would give March or
April). But the statements on pp. 217 and
223 substitute for the “frightful dreams” of
#
;
the earlier passage a single dream, which comes
at the end of the fifteen months precisely, and
put off the rescue of Friday to the end of the
25th or the beginning of the 26th year. The
“sixteenth of May ’’ and the “near two years
more ” remain to be considered. At first glance
Defoe seems to be setting the date of the wreck
in May of the 24th year; what he really means
is May of the 23d year, the May following the
first sight of the savages. The “two years
more” means nothing, for the dream concerning
Friday occurred ten months after the wreck
and Friday was rescued a year and a half after
that. The “late voyage to the wreck” is an
attempt impressionistically to bridge the gap
between May and the following March.
Friday came in the fall, probably just at the
beginning of the 26th year (p. 227). Defoe
makes three references to the length of Friday’s
life on the island. The first is vague and im-
pressionistic,+“ during the long time that Fri-
day had now been with me,” etc. (p. 240),
when he had been with Crusoe considerably
less than a year. The second runs: “the con-
versation which employed the hours between
Friday and I was such, as made the three
years which we lived there together perfectly
and completely happy . . .” (p. 245). Crusoe
and Friday, according to this statement, lived
there from the beginning of the 26th to the
beginning of the 29th year; i.e., Crusoe’s stay
was a little over 28 years, as he says at the end.
But the quoted sentence seems to imply that
they were, for the three years, alone on the
island. In the third passage this fact is as-
sumed and the date of Friday’s arrival is
pushed back to fit the assumption: “I was now
entered on the seven and twentieth year of my
captivity in this place; though the three last
years that I had this creature with me ought
rather to be left out of the account . . .”
(p. 255). As a matter of fact/Friday had
been with him just one year instead of three.
Now at the beginning of the 27th year,
º

“when the settled season began to come in ’’
(p. 256), Friday’s father and the Spaniard are
rescued from the cannibals. About a year is
spent in laying in a store of provisions, and
then Friday’s father and the Spaniard go to
rescue the other Spaniards. It was “the first
measures used by me, in view of my deliverance,
for now twenty-seven years and some days’
(p. 277), a statement which apparently means
merely that he had been on the island 27 years
and some days, as my computation indicates to
be the fact. The rescuers left “on the day
that the moon was full, by my account in the
month of October *; and then follows a state-
ment that Crusoe lost the reckoning of days, but
“had kept a true reckoning of years” (p. 278).
This remark can hardly save Defoe from criti-
cism, though no doubt he intended it to do so.
In this particular case Crusoe’s computations
would have been set right by the change in the
season, which took place about October 15. It
seems fair to assume, then, that the date on
which the rescuers went away was not later than
November 1. About a week later, “no less
than eight days,” as Defoe puts it (p. 278), the
English ship which has been seized by the
mutineers comes to the island. The action
which follows covers five days. 1st day: Two
boatloads of mutineers come ashore and are
surprised. 2d day: Conferences; planning;
midnight attack on the ship. 3d day: Ship
taken at 2 a. m. ; Crusoe packs up his goods.
4th day: Crusoe goes on board; the ship does
not sail that night. 5th day: Crusoe leaves
the island after he “had been upon it eight
and twenty years, two months, and 19 days.”
Adding the “no less than eight days” and the
five days of the final action, one finds that
instead of leaving the island on December 19,
Crusoe should have been leaving by the middle
of November at the latest. Moreover, Friday's
father and the Spaniard, who had been gone
only a fortnight, left a few days after the end
of Crusoe’s 27th year on the island; so that
the “eight and twenty years” is not consistent
with the preceding details. In other words,
according to the details of the narrative there
is more evidence in favor of a “captivity” of
27 years than of one of 28. In favor of 28
we have this statement at the end of the
story; the words of the title page, which are
merely borrowed from the text; and one of the
references to the length of Friday’s stay (p.
245), which is virtually cancelled by the next
reference to Friday. x
The uncertainty on this point is important
in its bearing on the consistency of the dates
which Defoe gives for the chief events of
Crusoe’s life. The only point considered by
the critics in connection with the chronology
of the story has been the discrepancy between
the statement that Crusoe was 28 years on the
island and the statement that he was ship-
wrecked in 1659 and left the island in 1686.
Mr. Thomas Wright suggested that 1686 was a
misprint for 1687; Mr. Aitken replied (1, lvij)
that the date was an error but that the mistake
was Defoe's, not the printer’s, because “in the
next paragraph we are told that Crusoe reached
England in June 1687, not 1688.” Then in
The Speaker for April 20, 1895, Mr. Quiller-
Couch suggested that the error is in the date
of the shipwreck, which should be 1658. This
suggestion Mr. Aitken accepted, in a letter in
The Speaker of May 4, 1895, and in a note
prefixed to Vol. VII of his edition (p. xvii),
and he pointed, as corroborative evidence, to
Crusoe’s statement (p. 147) that he was ship-
wrecked on his 26th birthday. But what is to
be done with the statement that Crusoe set
sail from Brazil on his ill-fated voyage to
Guinea “the same day eight year’ (p. 43)
that he left Hull; when it is perfectly clear
that he left Hull in the year 1651? Obviously
no single change in the text can set all to
rights.
To return to the dates. 1651 is fixed as the
time of leaving Hull because Crusoe was born
in 1632, wished to go to sea at the age of 18
(p. 5), but stayed at home “almost a year
after this ’’ (p. 6). This corroborates the date,
September 1, 1651, which appeared in the text
as early as the 4th edition but was left blank
in the first edition (p. 6). It is interesting
to note that in the first edition the date of
Crusoe’s departure for Guinea, September 1,
/* A
f /tºv-Sz
1659, is also omitted (p. 43). This omission
of dates which were to be chosen later so as to
accord with later statements does not weaken
the standing of the date 1659, for Defoe twice
uses it in the first edition in referring to the
date of his shipwreck, on pp. 70, 76. Leaving
Hull, then, on September 1, 1651, Crusoe in
six days reaches Yarmouth Roads, remains
there eight days, is caught in a storm on the
eighth day and shipwrecked on the ninth (pp.
9, 11, 12). The wreck should have occurred
on September 16. But on p. 147 he says that
he escaped from that wreck and from Sallee
on the same day of the year, and on p. 311
he says that the day of his leaving the island,-
i. e., December 19,-was the same day of the
month that he escaped from Sallee. This
means that he escaped from the wreck and from
Sallee on September 19. Here is a discrepancy
of three days in the two statements of the date
of the wreck in Yarmouth Roads. After going
to London, at the end of September 1651, he
makes two voyages to Guinea, and on the Sec-
ond he is captured by the Moors, on September
1 (p. 147). The year is uncertain. It seems
hardly likely that he could pick up his captain
in London, make one voyage, and start on a
second one, between October 1651 and August
1652; yet this would be necessary if he were
to be captured September 1, 1652. If he was
captured in 1653, the two years he remained
a slave in Sallee (p. 20) before his escape on
September 19 [1655 (?)], and the four years
he spent in Brazil as a planter (p. 41), would
bring him just to September 1659, the time
named in the text for the voyage to Guinea
and the shipwreck on the island. But there
is one more complication. He said on p. 311
that he “arrived in England, the 11th of June,
in the year 1687, having been thirty and five
years absent.” This makes the year in which
he started his second trip to Guinea 1652. I
have just mentioned the difficulty in assuming
this date. It would, of course, make 1658 the
year of his shipwreck. If one is anxious, how-
ever, to establish some consistency in the dates,
apparently the simplest thing to do would be:
(i) assume that twenty-eight years is a mistake
{
for twenty-seven; (ii) assume that thirty-five
years is a mistake for thirty-four, made under
the influence of the miscalculation just before
it (the two statements occur in successive sen-
tences); (iii) assume that twenty-six, on p.
147, is a mistake for twenty-seven. These three
changes, the first two of which are virtually
one, would make the main outline of the chro-
nology, I think, consistent. Of course they
will not remove the lesser slips; but they are
at least more satisfactory than the simple
changing of 1659 to 1658. As a matter of fact,
the text should be recognized to be inconsistent
and then left unchanged.
III
Gildon, in his scurrilous attack on Robinson
Crusoe, makes some general criticism of the
book in addition to pointing out particular
slips. “If the faults of it,” he says, “ had
extended no farther than the frequent Sole-
cisms, Looseness and Incorrectness of Stile,
Improbabilities, and sometimes Impossibilities,
I had not given you the trouble of this epistle.”
But he objects to the lack of patriotism which
compares Englishmen with Spaniards to the
latters' advantage; to the unfair treatment of
English seamen; to the impieties and super-
stition and too great tolerance of Catholics.
And if he can prevent the spread of these
ideas, “I shall not think my Labour lost.”
Most of Gildon’s general remarks and many
of his specific complaints are petty enough, as
the above quotation indicates. In my list I
shall include only those which seem pertinent.
P. 14. “ telling his father who I was,” etc.
Gildon observes that Crusoe “got on board a
ship, without so much as ever saying one Word
to the Master of her, who we must suppose
"never saw him for about three Weeks, till,
after his Ship was cast away, he met him in
Yarmouth, and was there inform’d by his Son,
who, and what he was; tho’ presently after he
had heard this, he asks him, who, and what he
Was, as if he had known nothing of the Mat-
ter . . . -
P. 15. “not tempt Providence to my ruin,”
etc. Gildon remarks most seriously: “If
Storms are sent by Providence to deter Men
from Navigation, I may reasonably suppose,
that there is not one of all that vast Number
I have mention'd, to whom Providence has not
sent the same Warning.”
Pp. 52–54. “I pulled off my clothes . . . and
took the water . . . I went to the bread-room
and filled my pockets with biscuit . . . I had
the mortification to see my coat, shirt, and
waistcoat . . . swim away; as for my breeches
. I swam on board in them, and my stock-
ings.” Gildon observed: “I shall not take
Notice of his striping (sic) himself to swim on
Board, and then filling his Pockets with Bisket,
because that is already taken Notice of in
Publick; and in the last. Edition, at least, of
the Book, you have endeavour'd to salve this
Difficulty, by making him keep his Breeches
on . . .” Aitken points out that “as for my
breeches,” etc., appeared in the first edition;
he is hardly fair, however, in finding no fault
in Defoe's method, for certainly it looks as if
the detail were tucked in as an afterthought;
the reader finds contradiction enough in the
first two statements. -
P. 69. “for want of books and pen and
ink.” On p. 70 he possesses ink.
P. 70. “three . . . Bibles.” Gildon wonders
“why Robinson should put three on Board for
his Voyage to Guinea, when one was likely to
be more than he would make use of, if we may
believe his own Account of the little regard he
had to any Religion.” -
P. 104. “certainly I lost a day in my ac-
count.” This remark seems to be introduced
merely for the sake of the immediate incident.
Later he makes two other statements concern-
ing errors in his reckoning which are inconsis-
tent with this and with each other, and the
second of which seems to be intended to cover
up possible discrepancies in his statements:
(i) p. 115,-" I found at the end of my account,
I had lost a day or two in my reckoning ”;
and (ii) p. 278,-‘as for an exact reckoning
of days, after I had once lost it, I could never
recover it again *; etc.
P. 116. “it grew as if it had been but newly
sown.” This is inconsistent with statements in
this sentence, in the next sentence, and in the
sentence on p. 127 beginning “The ground I
had . . ,” all of which are to the effect that
the seed first sown was lost altogether.
P. 131. “I wanted . . . salt.” But on p.
236 Crusoe tries to get Friday to eat salt with
his meat. -
P. 136. “How I did afterwards,” etc. Defoe
forgets his promise.
P. 145. “falling early into the seafaring
life,” etc. Gildon estimates that Crusoe “never
kept Company with Seamen above three Weeks
in all his Life, and that was from Hull to Yar-
mouth.” On his other voyages he associated
only with the Masters of the vessels, and on
his first trip to Brazil he knew so little of the
language of the crew that he could not have
picked up much evil. He must have had “a
strange Alacrity in Sinking,” etc.
P. 160. “there were pipes in the ship,” etc.
Defoe has forgotten that Crusoe saved a pipe
from the wreck; cf. p. 51.
P. 175. “I had not stirred . . . for three
days,” etc. Gildon asks what happened to the
goats when Crusoe went off for a six days’ trip
(p. 166), if they were “almost spoiled ” by
three days’ neglect.
P. 196. “ looking farther into the place,” etc.
Gildon asks how Crusoe could see the goat's
eyes if the place was “perfectly dark,” and
adds that the “dim light ° mentioned later in
the sentence does not help the situation, because
if there was a dim light it was not perfectly
dark.
P. 213. “if I may guess . . . she must have
been bound . . . to the Havanna.” This con-
jecture in regard to the ship, since, as the
“may ” shows, it is made at the time of com-
position, after all the events of the story have
taken place,—is inconsistent with the fact that
he had exact information from the Spaniard;
cf. p. 272. -
P. 224. “he outstripped them.” Aitken men-
tions “the improbability that the savages who
pursued Friday would be unable to swim across
a creek, or would not shoot at him with an
arrow when they saw he was gaining upon
them.”
P. 227. “the first sound of a man’s voice that
I had heard . . . for above twenty-five years.”
Aitken quotes “critics' to the effect that
“Crusoe could hardly have lived by himself for
so many years without becoming insane; he
certainly would not at the end of the time have
been quite as intelligent as he was at the be-
ginning, nor would he have remembered such
Spanish as he had once known " (I. lxiv). 4.
P. 272. “ and Portuguese.” No Portuguese
are mentioned afterwards in this part of the
story or in the Farther Adventures.
P. 274, “fourteen, still alive.”
parently a slip for “sixteen.” We might
assume that there were fourteen Spaniards and
two Portuguese, in keeping with the statement
made just before, but in the sequel of the
story the number of Spaniards is twice at least
given as sixteen; cf. Farther Adventures, pp.
50, 93.
P. 277. “I gave him a strict charge in writ-
This is ap-


ing.” Gildon points out that Crusoe’s ink had
been exhausted long before.
P. 302. “Our strength was now thus ordered
for the expedition.” In the first edition the
latter part of this paragraph read as follows
(spelling and punctuation modernized): “3.
The other two whom I had kept till now in my
apartment, pinioned, but upon the captain’s
motion had now released. 4. The single man
taken in the boat. 5. These five released at
last; so that they were thirteen in all, besides
five we kept prisoners in the cave and the two
hostages.” Here, as elsewhere, Defoe succeeds
in getting an effect of verisimilitude with his
figures, but here at least his use of them was
only “impressionistic ’’; in reality he was
rather badly muddled. He evidently felt that
something was wrong, for in the table of errata
at the end of the first edition he attempted to
patch things up by the following changes: “ for
apartment read bower; dele the single man
taken in the boat 5; for thirteen read twelve;
[for] and the two read for.” These changes,
which have been followed in all subsequent
editions I have seen, only make the muddle
worse, as can be shown by a brief review of the
narrative.
18 mutineers came ashore, 8 in the first boat
and 10 in the second. Of the first 8, 2 were
killed, and 6 surrendered, of whom 2 at once
joined the captain’s party, 2 were sent to the
cave, and 2 were “pinioned,” in a place not
specified. Of the 10 men of the second gang,
1 was “knocked down '' by the captain and
apparently killed (at least, there is no reference
to him later); 1, “the single man taken in the
boat,” joins the captain’s party at once; 2 are
shot and killed by the captain and Friday; 6,
therefore, remain to be made prisoners. Of
these 6, 3 are sent to the cave; “the other[s],”
number not given, are pinioned in the bower.
The situation at the end of the day is, then, as
follows: there are 10 prisoners, of whom 5 are
in the cave, 2 pinioned in a place not named,
and 3,--in regard to whom it is to be noted that
Defoe does not give their number directly,–
are in the bower; there are 8 in the captain’s
party, Crusoe and Friday, the captain and the
two passengers, the 2 men from the first gang
of mutineers, and the “man taken in the
boat'; the total number of men alive on the
island is 18.
Defoe's mistakes begin to appear when Cru-
soe rearranges the men for the expedition to
the ship on the second day. The paragraph
beginning “However, that we might be very
secure” is entirely inconsistent with previous
statements, and the references in it cannot be
satisfactorily interpreted. It is clear, however,
from the original form of the paragraph enu-
merating the attacking force, that Defoe has
swelled the numbers on the island from 18 to
22, 20 named in the paragraph and Crusoe
and Friday besides. The corrections in the
table of errata reduce the total number to 19,
but this is not the 18 of the previous night.
Moreover two inconsistencies are involved in
the changes: first, “the single man taken in
the boat,” if not listed separately as in the
first version, must disappear altogether; second,
the two following paragraphs of the text indi-
cate that after the 12 of the attacking force
had left there were 7 on the island besides
Crusoe and Friday, making a total of 21.
Defoe has apparently at one time counted two
of his dead mutineers as living and at another
time resuscitated four of them; and in trying . .
to patch things up, he has involved himself
Worse by erasing altogether the man in the
boat. There is no feasible way of securing a
consistent text, and the original reading had
best be left intact. -
P. 326. “two hours before night.” Gildon
remarks that if it was so near nightfall, if
they had three leagues to go, and if the travel-
ing was bad on account of the snow, it is highly
improbable that they would stop to give Friday
a chance to “make laugh * with the bear.
|P. 341. “ 1694.” In the Farther Adven-
tures the date is given as 1693.
IV
There is perhaps no more appropriate way of
concluding these notes than by quoting, from
Defoe's Preface to the Farther Adventures, his
impartial “Editor’s opinion ” of the first vol-
ll Iſle.
“The success the former part of this work
has met with in the world, has yet been no
other than is acknowledged to be due to the
surprising variety of the subject and to the
agreeable manner of the performance.
“All the endeavors of envious people to
reproach it with being a romance, to search it
for errors in geography, inconsistency in the
relation, and contradictions in the fact, have
proved abortive, and as impotent as malicious.”
WILLIAM T. HASTINGS.
Brown University.
_s “
* **
*
Li
J
t
'i
i
y
W
t
:
-lill
\\Pº
gº
~~~~:----~~
nivERSITYOF
*gº ſº
§
ºV
*
º
§
***~...~... . ...— ..., _r-arg # ºxº
IIIHTITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT sºlſ||
º
m Im. i
LIBRARYºž
“...
º l
Elliſiifºliº lifºliº iſ
:
:-º-
tº
º:
Fij