The love-letters of Mr. H. & Miss R., 1775-1779

“Robinson Crusoe now—what nature! It affects us throughout, exactly in the way you mentioned. But, shall I finish my dissertation? come—as writing to you gives me so much pleasure, and as I cannot do anything to you but write this morning, I know you will excuse me. Did you ever hear to what Crusoe owed his existence? You remember Alexander Selkirk’s strange sequestration at Juan Fernandez. It is mentioned, I believe, in Walter’s account of Anson’s voyage, when Captain Woodes Rogers met with him and brought him to England, he employed the famous Daniel de Foe to revise his papers. That fertile genius improved upon the materials, and composed the celebrated story of Robinson Crusoe. The consequence was that Selkirk, who soon after made his appearance in print, was considered as a bastard of Crusoe, with which spurious offspring the press too often teems. In De Foe, undoubtedly, this was not honest. Had Selkirk given him his papers, there could have been no harm in working them up his own way. I can easily conceive a writer making his own use of a known fact, and filling up the outlines which have been sketched by the bold and hasty hand of fate. A moral may be added, by such means, to a particular incident; characters may be placed in their just and proper lights; mankind may be amused (and amusements, sometimes, prevent crimes), or, if the story be criminal, mankind may be bettered, through the channel of their curiosity. But I would not be dishonest, like De Foe; nor would I pain the breast of a single individual connected with this story.”

Yet Croft, who thus denounces Defoe, announced subsequently that he himself had acted with precisely the same dishonesty in the matter of Mr. Hackman’s correspondence. A further light is thrown upon the matter by an advertisement to the eighth edition of “The Case and Memoirs;” the author, who, on the evidence of a rhymed lampoon in one of the papers of the day, was one Manasseh Dawes,[11] a barrister and literary hack, says that, being a gentleman, he wishes to keep that character inviolate; consequently, he thinks it necessary to declare that all the facts are genuine, as he will testify and explain, if necessary, on an application to him at Mr. Kearsly’s (the publisher), and he hopes that, therefore, his numerous readers will not now suppose that he has “intruded anything on the public with intent to catch the penny of curiosity, at the expense of truth and candour.”

[11] Public Advertiser, June 3, 1779.

When this was written Kearsly had possession of the real facts of the case, and was able to invite investigation.

The enormous success of “Love and Madness” tempted Croft to declare himself the author of the Chatterton excerpt, and also to hint that of the entire work only the outline was true. The word outline is easily expansible, and, considering that the letter about Chatterton, and two or three other obvious additions, formed half the volume, he was, perhaps, justified in claiming his portion. Croft says that he dedicates the ninth edition to Johnson, because the Doctor had expressed his appreciation of the work. But Boswell records[12] that Johnson censured and much disapproved of “Love and Madness,” on account of the mingling of the fact with the fiction—that is to say, the inclusion of the Chatterton papers among the Hackman-Reay correspondence.

[12] Boswell’s Johnson (Henry Morley), iv. 134.

As several of the connecting links in the narrative are missing, I have endeavoured to weave the letters into a coherent narrative; in one or two instances I have been obliged to suppress certain passages, by reason of their having been written at a time when there was a greater license of expression than is permissible nowadays. I have also omitted, in two of the letters, references to Chatterton which Croft introduced to give verisimilitude to his assertion that the long letter containing the life of the poet was written by Hackman.

No record of Croft’s own work tallies at all with the idea that he created such a romance. But, apart from the controversy, the story and the letters seem to me to be a veritable “human document” of strong interest. And, after exhaustive investigation, I am convinced that such a document is only explainable on the grounds of a real living correspondence and that these letters are, without doubt, those that passed between Hackman and Miss Reay.

April, 1895.