CHAPTER I - START IN LIFE

CHAPTER I - START IN LIFE

I WAS born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a

good family, though not of that country, my father being a

foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a

good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived

afterwards at York, from whence he had married my

mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very

good family in that country, and from whom I was called

Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of

words in England, we are now called - nay we call

ourselves and write our name - Crusoe; and so my

companions always called me.

I had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-

colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders,

formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart,

and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the

Spaniards. What became of my second brother I never

knew, any more than my father or mother knew what

became of me.

Being the third son of the family and not bred to any

trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling

thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me

a competent share of learning, as far as house-education

and a country free school generally go, and designed me

for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but

going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly

against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and

against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and

other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in

that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of

misery which was to befall me.

My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and

excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design.

He called me one morning into his chamber, where he

was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly

with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons,

more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving

father’s house and my native country, where I might be

well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune

by application and industry, with a life of ease and

pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on

one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other,

who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise,

and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature

out of the common road; that these things were all either

too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the

middle state, or what might be called the upper station of

low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the

best state in the world, the most suited to human

happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the

labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind,

and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and

envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might

judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing - viz.

that this was the state of life which all other people envied;

that kings have frequently lamented the miserable

consequence of being born to great things, and wished

they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes,

between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave

his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he

prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

He bade me observe it, and I should always find that

the calamities of life were shared among the upper and

lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the

fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many

vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay,

they were not subjected to so many distempers and

uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who,

by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the one

hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean orinsufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon

themselves by the natural consequences of their way of

living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all

kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and

plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that

temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all

agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the

blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way

men went silently and smoothly through the world, and

comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of

the hands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for

daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed circumstances,

which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest, nor

enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret burning

lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy

circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and

sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter;

feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day’s

experience to know it more sensibly,

After this he pressed me earnestly, and in the most

affectionate manner, not to play the young man, nor to

precipitate myself into miseries which nature, and the

station of life I was born in, seemed to have provided

against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my bread;

that he would do well for me, and endeavour to enter me

fairly into the station of life which he had just been

recommending to me; and that if I was not very easy and

happy in the world, it must be my mere fate or fault that

must hinder it; and that he should have nothing to answer

for, having thus discharged his duty in warning me against

measures which he knew would be to my hurt; in a word,

that as he would do very kind things for me if I would stay

and settle at home as he directed, so he would not have so

much hand in my misfortunes as to give me any

encouragement to go away; and to close all, he told me I

had my elder brother for an example, to whom he had

used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going

into the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his

young desires prompting him to run into the army, where

he was killed; and though he said he would not cease to

pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me, that if I

did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I

should have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having

neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist

in my recovery.

I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was

truly prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know

it to be so himself - I say, I observed the tears run down

his face very plentifully, especially when he spoke of my

brother who was killed: and that when he spoke of my

having leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was so

moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his

heart was so full he could say no more to me.

I was sincerely affected with this discourse, and, indeed,

who could be otherwise? and I resolved not to think of

going abroad any more, but to settle at home according to

my father’s desire. But alas! a few days wore it all off; and,

in short, to prevent any of my father’s further

importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite

away from him. However, I did not act quite so hastily as

the first heat of my resolution prompted; but I took my

mother at a time when I thought her a little more pleasant

than ordinary, and told her that my thoughts were so

entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never

settle to anything with resolution enough to go through

with it, and my father had better give me his consent than

force me to go without it; that I was now eighteen years

old, which was too late to go apprentice to a trade or clerk

to an attorney; that I was sure if I did I should never serve

out my time, but I should certainly run away from my

master before my time was out, and go to sea; and if she

would speak to my father to let me go one voyage abroad,

I came home again, and did not like it, I would go no

more; and I would promise, by a double diligence, to

recover the time that I had lost.

This put my mother into a great passion; she told me

she knew it would be to no purpose to speak to my father

upon any such subject; that he knew too well what was

my interest to give his consent to anything so much for

my hurt; and that she wondered how I could think of any

such thing after the discourse I had had with my father,

and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my

father had used to me; and that, in short, if I would ruin

myself, there was no help for me; but I might depend I

should never have their consent to it; that for her part she

would not have so much hand in my destruction; and I

should never have it to say that my mother was willing

when my father was not.

Though my mother refused to move it to my father,

yet I heard afterwards that she reported all the discourse to

him, and that my father, after showing a great concern at

it, said to her, with a sigh, ‘That boy might be happy if he

would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the

most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no

consent to it.’

It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose,

though, in the meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to

all proposals of settling to business, and frequently

expostulated with my father and mother about their being

so positively determined against what they knew my

inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull,

where I went casually, and without any purpose of making

an elopement at that time; but, I say, being there, and one

of my companions being about to sail to London in his

father’s ship, and prompting me to go with them with the

common allurement of seafaring men, that it should cost

me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father nor

mother any more, nor so much as sent them word of it;

but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without

asking God’s blessing or my father’s, without any

consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an

ill hour, God knows, on the 1st of September 1651, I

went on board a ship bound for London. Never any

young adventurer’s misfortunes, I believe, began sooner,

or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner

out of the Humber than the wind began to blow and the

sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and, as I had never

been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body

and terrified in mind. I began now seriously to reflect

upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by

the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my

father’s house, and abandoning my duty. All the good

counsels of my parents, my father’s tears and my mother’s

entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my

conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of

hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the

contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to God

and my father.

All this while the storm increased, and the sea went

very high, though nothing like what I have seen many

times since; no, nor what I saw a few days after; but it was

enough to affect me then, who was but a young sailor, and

had never known anything of the matter. I expected every

wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time

the ship fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or

hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; in this

agony of mind, I made many vows and resolutions that if

it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if

ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go

directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship

again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never

run myself into such miseries as these any more. Now I

saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the

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