The Man Who Was Robinson Crusoe

by Rick Wilson

His association with Clapham

  Robinson Crusoe’s gun was sold at Sothebys saleroom yesterday for £215, the buyer being a Mr C. J. Sawyer.

  The gun, an old flintlock musket, believed to be the authentic weapon carried by Alexander Selkirk during his four years’ exile on Juan Fernandez Island, was sold by order of the executors of the late Mrs Randolph Berens, of Prince’s Gate, South-West London.

  The gun was bought some years ago by her late husband who took great pains to verify its authenticity. There seems to be little reason to doubt that this relic was the property of Alexander Selkirk, of Largo, N.B., upon whose adventures Daniel Defoe founded his story of Robinson Crusoe.

  The gun is an old flintlock musket, crudely carved with the name and date Alexander Selkirk, 1701’ and below is a curious little carving of a seal crawling over a crag of rock – a significant fact, as Selkirk’s real name was Seal Craig.

  The relic has been traced to Clapham, where Selkirk lived for a time after his rescue, but as he died at sea his possessions were sold.

  The Rev R. Berens had been able to trace the gun back to 1875 only, when it was sold by somebody at Clapham for ten shillings to a man who, failing to see anything of interest in it, offered it after two years to the custodian of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford for twenty shillings. They saw little of interest in the gun. But two days later Mr Berens, being in Oxford on a visit, strolled by chance into the museum and immediately recognised an important find.

  It was on loan at the British Museum for two years, and was now purchased by Mr C. J. Sawyer for £215.

  Chapter 7

  Homecoming and Sophia

  There is little doubt that Alexander Selkirk had missed his family and his old home village throughout his travels, but we can assume that he resolved to go back there in the spring of 1714 – apparently without a long-term life plan at the age of 38 – not only to see his family but also to settle a few scores. That meant the locals, the kirk and his brothers and father John. His mother Euphan, who had always believed in him, was another matter …

  In a world with virtually no means of reliable or fast communication, she must have ached with the pain of not knowing what had become of the son who had promised so much. She had probably resigned herself to his death. She was in for a surprise.

  How did her seventh son and his sea chest – presumably containing much of his new found fortune – get back to Largo? Money, of course, was now no object, for he could enlist the help of coachmen and ferrymen whenever he wished. They would have responded with alacrity, for here they would see a conspicuously wealthy man. The animalistic monarch of Juan Fernandez had long since changed his dirty, ragged goatskins for the refined gentleman’s suiting of the time – a long and flared coat, waistcoat, cravat, shirt with lace ruffles at the wrists and neck, knee breeches, silk stockings and high-heeled silver-buckled shoes. While he wanted to make sure his appearance back home backed up his assertion that ‘I am now worth eight hundred pounds’, it is hard to believe that such a tough guy might have gone the whole fashion hog of the period and worn make-up or powdered shoulder-length hair tied at the neck. Or even a wig or tricorn hat. But one thing is certain: the simple inhabitants of Lower Largo would not have been accustomed to seeing anyone quite like this on their streets before.

  To get back among them he probably took a boat from somewhere on the Thames estuary to Edinburgh’s port of Leith. He may have hired a particularly energetic ferryman prepared to row him north-east across the vast expanse of the River Forth estuary to Largo’s neighbouring village of St Monans, as suggested in the fictionalised story of his life by Martin Ballard. But this would be a prodigious task of rowing unlikely to be achieved over these lively waters before a Sunday morning church service. This writer prefers to believe that, laden as he was with at least his sea chest and musket, he took a coach or buggy to South Queensferry and made use of the ferry there in the same way as its founder, Queen Margaret, did regularly in the 11th century*

  But however Selkirk got over to Largo, his entrance was to be a particularly dramatic one. Let’s say it was a Saturday evening when he alighted from the boat at North Queensferry before staying at an inn overnight and managing, over a few drinks, to hire a local horse and cart with driver. Very early on Sunday morning, keen to get going, they would have loaded up his gear and made their way along the coast road to Largo and the half-mile of Main Street to his parents’ house. When he stopped before the cottage and took down his heavy sea chest, he was not even sure he should bother knocking on the door. It was the Sabbath and that meant his family would be in the kirk up the hill, where prayers of gratitude for the local harvests and pleadings for eternal life and forgiveness were being offered up.

  Despite the fact that ‘the influence of religion had poured the balm of peace and consolation into his weary soul’ on his island, he remained wary of that establishment, bearing in mind his early life experiences played out there. But he was longing to see and embrace his family – his beloved mother, difficult father and even his hard-to-tolerate brothers, most of whom were fishermen, though David now ran their father’s tannery. So he paid off his carter, left his precious goods behind the cottage, then set off on foot up the hill, rising round the familiar Serpentine Walk that followed the Largo Burn up to Upper Largo. He might have been a hardened, cynical old buccaneer in many respects, but here, at this moment, his heart was bursting with childish excitement, anticipation and pride, for he was keen to make a grand entrance as a prodigal son long since assumed dead. Indeed, he hoped to create such a stir with his entrance as would be remembered for generations in the annals of the village.

  Elegantly dressed, he climbed the ten broad steps up to the entrance, slightly nervous about finally creating a good memory in this place where only bad memories had existed before. He turned the iron latch handle, the heavy outer door creaked ajar, then he opened the interior doors and moved into the body of the kirk where his presence was immediately noted – as any stranger would be in such a country church – by the hesitating minister, the Reverend William Moncrieff, as 300 or so faces turned to see what was holding their minister’s gaze.

  But he was not immediately recognized and joined the congregation on the pews. He then managed to sit through a little of the service, before his mother, who had been unable to concentrate on the minister’s sermon, suddenly recognised him after turning to study his face several times. ‘Uttering a cry of joy’, she rushed over the pews and her fellow-worshippers, oblivious to the impropriety of her conduct in the house of God, the interruption of the service, the outrage (yet again) of Reverend Moncrieff, and the general disruption caused, to bury herself in the arms of her son, who might have written of the moment thus:

  So finely attyr’d was I upon my Arrival in Largo that, upon entering the Kirk in search of my Family, neither one of them nor any of my Erstwhile Acquaintances did recognise their Prodigal Son in the First Instance, though he creat’d a Fair Disruption of the Proceedings in the Good Lord’s House (may He forgive me). Till, all at once, my Mother arose and gave out an Almighty Scream, whereupon she clamber’d and ran toward me, to embrace me with Great Emotion and Further Disregard for all others, so come-over was she with Recognition, Joy and Pride that her Seventh (and thus fortunate) Son had evidently so fulfill’d her Faith; had travell’d the World aseeking his Fortune and had, to all appearances, Succeed’d.

  His father was wide-eyed with disbelief at the scene, but neither of his parents could hide their delight and pride at being finally reunited with their son and even his brothers seemed glad, if somewhat apprehensive, to see him. So it was a happy band of Selcraigs that went back down the hill from the church to the cottage on the main street for a day of revelry and rejoicing. Alexander was, of course, brought immediately under his parents’ wing, but they were much older now and seemed less able to cope; so after a few days and less-than-comfortable nights he was given a berth in the nearby house of his brother John and sister-in-law Margaret, with
whom he had had that bitter and violent altercation in 1701 just before he went off to make his fortune.

  Was his apparent fortune now an instrument of peacemaking? No doubt any lingering grievances they might have harboured were assuaged by some increased rent, for Alexander was not shy about paying his way. Indeed, like him or not – and there was an enduring resentment towards him among many of his contemporaries – most of the villagers could not help but be impressed by the apparition who moved amongst them with all the precious and exciting goods, mementoes and gifts he brought with him. These included silver and gold, ‘several summes of money’, those fine clothes, ‘a considerable parcell of linnen cloth’, his musket, his brown stoneware flip-can, his sea books and instruments, and (surely the most impressive of all) the written accounts of his castaway experience by Captain Woodes Rogers and Richard Steele which, having just been published, had made him already quite famous in the south of England (the publication of Robinson Crusoe was still five years away). He had been much celebrated and ‘courted by the curious and the learned’ in London.

  By contrast, of course, Lower Largo was a quiet backwater. At first, it seemed to be something he was looking for, and in the first flush of reunion he bought considerable property there – lands, tenements, outhouses gardens, yards, orchards, and ‘a large house by the Craigie Well’ – while the lonely and beautiful spots in and around the village seemed to remind him of his Pacific island. Indeed he had confided to Steele that his return to English society ‘could not restore to him the tranquillity of his solitude.’

  Perhaps it was to regain that solitude that he had made his way back to Scotland; not just to show off as a wealthy city gent. Despite having been flattered by his star status in Bristol and London, which he must have enjoyed and despite being welcomed back into the Largo fold, he still preferred his own company and seemed to hanker after it more than ever.

  His sentiments at this time were certainly manyfold, but as long as the novelty of homecoming in Largo went on, he would be, if not happy, certainly in close pursuit of happiness. His great comfort was the surrounding presence of the glistening Firth of Forth with its extensive vista out to the North Sea, and every day after breakfast he would take provisions for the day and go exploring beyond the village. He retraced his boyhood footsteps, breathing the sharp salty air as he walked along the rock-edged beaches of Largo Bay, often barefoot. He climbed up into the bay’s wooded hinterland to wander and meditate alone through the little sheltered valley of Keil’s Den, where, under the overhanging trees, he loved to listen to the babbling of the little brook that cleaved through it down to the shore.

  Water, water, everywhere. It seemed he couldn’t exist out of its sight and sound and as a lifelong mariner it was always a comfort to him, though he knew it could be unpredictable and viciously malevolent. Everywhere in the vicinity he seemed to want to seek out, or recreate, places that reminded him of his beloved island. Two places in particular were undeniable revisitings of his life on Juan Fernandez.

  One was a self-made cave in his parents’ garden, behind the family cottage (see chapter 3). Of that, John Howell wrote in his 1829 biography:

  Attached to his father’s house was a piece of ground, occupied as a garden, which rose in a considerable acclivity backwards. Here on the top of the eminence, soon after his arrival at Largo, Alexander constructed a sort of cave, commanding an extensive and delightful view of the Forth and its shores. In fits of musing meditation he was wont to sit here in bad weather, and even at other times, and bewail his ever having left his island. This recluse and unnatural propensity, as it appeared to them, was cause of great grief to his parents, who remonstrated with him and endeavoured to raise his spirits. But their efforts were made in vain; nay, he sometimes broke out before them in a passion of grief, and exclaimed, ‘Oh, my beloved island! I wish I had never left thee! I never was before the man I was on thee! I have not been such since I left thee! and, I fear, never can be again!

  Dr Lamond, who resided in Largo, and died there a very old man, used often to point out to John Selcraig, the teacher, the spot where the cave was formed, as he remembered, when a child, to have seen the solitary Alexander sitting under its roof*

  The other conspicuous reference to Alexander’s island existence came with his frequent fishing trips. There was little in or around Lower Largo to spend his money on, but he did see a rowing boat he wished to buy, for it reminded him of one he had played in as a boy, and may indeed have been the same one. Money being no object, an irresistible offer was made and he then spent many hours on excursions going north along the coast – mainly on the three-mile coastal voyage to Ruddons Point and Kingscraig Point where two arms of romantic grass-topped cliffs rise up from seaweed-clad rocks as they create a pincer around the beach of Shell Bay near the unspoiled village of Earlsferry. It was, and is, a very pretty spot, which today accommodates part of the Fife coastal walking path (‘planned to extend from the Forth bridges in the south to the Tay bridges in the north’) and – facing out into the bay – a popular caravan site, next to which is an information board that states ‘here columns of basalt formed in fire from the earth’s mantle to make spectacular cliffs.’

  In truth they are not wildly spectacular, but they are relatively high, rugged and beautiful and from the top you can see how they could evoke memories of the more dramatic, jagged topography of Juan Fernandez. You can sit there amid the grass looking out to sea and easily imagine the daily tension of looking for a rescuing white sail on the horizon. Although Selkirk often moored his boat at the point where the meandering salmon-rich Cockermill Burn comes down into Shell Bay, it was lobster he was after – as they reminded him of those distant Pacific crayfish that helped sustain him on his island – and having set his pots along Kingcraig Point, he would row out to inspect them regularly. It was behaviour that at once amused and irritated the local fishermen. They could see that Selkirk could handle a boat all right, indeed with some expertise, but why was such a well-off man bothering to compete with them when they all knew he would be going home to a good meal in the evening, come what may?

  For his part, Alexander found their small-minded attitude intensely parochial. In more tolerant moods he could maybe see their point, for he knew about struggling for survival and, hard as it was, how it could nevertheless make life meaningful, more so than his was at this moment, perhaps. He knew that now he was just going through certain empty motions and that something would soon have to change.

  The fact was that for both himself and his village community the novelty of their emotional reunion was rapidly wearing off and his disillusionment was growing by the day. This was certainly not a new experience for Selkirk, as he had always found it hard to settle anywhere and was ever on the lookout for new experiences. He might have written of his growing plight in words such as these:

  My Emotions regarding my Homecoming to Scotland were mix’d with Great Confusion, for ‘twas with both an Agreeable Lightness of Spirit at the Prospect of seeing my People again and an Overwhelming Despair at the Loss of my Belov’d Island that I had journey’d North. Aye and yet to be at Sea once more, if only upon the Chill Waters of Seatoun of Largo in a Dingey in Which I had once play’d as a Lad, was Good to my Senses and did, as the Walks taken Overlooking the Far Horizons of the North Sea, set me happily in Mind of yon Distant Paradise.

  Yet such Joy in my Homecoming was not to Endure the Differences that had grown atwixt my Self and mine Own Guid Fowk, and little Time had elaps’d afore Parental and Sibling and General Disapproval began once more to tire my Heart. More and more was I giv’n to my Fishing, biding in my Cave or far from the House of my Loved Ones, walking and Pondering upon my Past (yon enchant’d Isle!) and my Uncertain Future.

  The villagers would whisper about Alexander’s strange habits, especially his skulking in the home-made cave in his parents’ garden where, when not gazing wistfully out of it across the bay, he would sometimes be seen weeping with hunched and shaking shou
lders. It naturally disturbed his parents most of all, for although they liked having him so near, it was undoubtedly strange and worrisome behaviour. But when his father spoke out against it, his mother – as always – would defend her boy, reminding her husband of the solitary experience he had been through and of how – because of it – he had forgotten all his social skills. His father, on the other hand, would remind her that the boy had always been withdrawn and had never been strong on such skills.

  Indeed, Alexander’s enjoyments were all solitary and he was uncomfortable in the presence of other people. His interaction with his relatives and friends shrank from near-normal to minimal, as all the ancient cracks in his village relationships began to reappear; when he came home of an evening it was to a welcome more from his brother John’s two cats than from the brother himself.

  Just as he had with the cats on his island, the former castaway had formed a remarkable affinity with the animals of the house who seemed to keenly await his return every night. Up in his room in the evenings, he taught them the kind of rolling-over and leaping-up tricks he had taught his island cats. Missing his pets one night, John found them in his brother’s company and was shown one or two of the animals’ responses to Alexander’s clicked fingers. John was not only surprised and impressed – ‘I didna think you could teach such things tae a cat’ – but worried too. It was clear that Alexander was becoming stranger and more reclusive by the day.

  It simultaneously dawned on both of them that the world-ranging mariner was never going to fit in back in Largo and, although he had initially appreciated its relative simplicity, it was almost inevitable that a man who had travelled to America, Asia and Africa – and even had a piece of South America entirely to himself for four and a half years – would begin to get restless in the unchanged atmosphere of his native village. Not that he hankered after fame – and he already had a fortune. Nor was he pining for the big city. His feeling was more complex than that and he couldn’t quite put a finger on it; but he knew it was something to do with ‘belonging’ and geography, his island and the sea. And he knew the feeling was becoming mutual, not just among his relatives and friends but among the wider village.