Altogether Defoe was exceedingly prosperous, dropped all pretence of poverty, built a large house at

Stoke Newington, with stables and pleasure-grounds, and kept a coach.

We get a pleasant glimpse of Defoe’s life at this period from the notes of Henry Baker, the naturalist;
who married one of his daughters and received his assistance, as we have seen, in starting The
Universal Spectator. Baker, originally a bookseller, in 1724 set up a school for the deaf and dumb at
Newington. There, according to the notes which he left of his courtship, he made the acquaintance of
“ Mr. Defoe, a gentleman well known by his writings, who had newly built there a very handsome
house, as a retirement from London, and amused his time either in the cultivation of a large and
pleasant garden, or in the pursuit of his studies, which he found means of making very profitable.”
Defoe “ was now at least sixty years of age, afflicted with the gout and stone, but retained all his
mental faculties entire.” The diarist goes on to say that he “ met usually at the tea-table his three
lovely daughters, who were admired for their beauty, their education, and their prudent x Lee's Lsife,
vol. i. pp. 406-7.160 DANIEL DEFOE. [chap.

conduct; and if sometimes Mr. Defoe’s disorders made company inconvenient, Mr. Baker was
entertained by them either singly or together, and that commonly in the garden when the weather was
favourable.” Mr. Baker fixed his choice on Sophia, the youngest daughter, and, being a prudent lover,
began negotiations about the marriage portion, Defoe’s part in which is also characteristic. “He knew
nothing of Mr. Defoe’s circumstances, only imagined, from his very genteel way of living, that he
must be able to give his daughter a decent portion; he did not suppose a large one. On speaking to Air.
Defoe, ho sanctioned his proposals, and said ho hoped ho should be able to give her a certain sum
specified ; but when urged to the point some time afterwards, his answer was that formal articles he
thought unnecessary; that he could confide in the honour of Air. Baker; that when they talked before,
he did not know the true state of his own affairs; that he found he could not part with any money at
present; but at his death, his daughter’s portion would be more than he had promised ; and he offered
his own bond as security.” The prudent Air. Baker would not take his bond, and the marriage was not
arranged till two years afterwards, when Defoe gave a bond for £500 payable at his death, engaging
his house at Newington as security.

Very little more is known about Defoe’s family, except that his eldest daughter married a person of the
name of Langley, and that he speculated successfully in South Sea Stock in the name of his second
daughter, and afterwards settled upon her an estate at Colchester worth £1020. His second son, named
Benjamin, became a journalist, was the editor of the London Journal, and got into temporary trouble
for writing a scandalousX.] HIS MYSTERIOUS END. 161
and seditious libel in that newspaper in 1721. A writer in Applebee's Journal, whom Mr. Lee identifies
with Defoe himself, commenting upon this circumstance, denied the rumour of its being the well-
known Daniel Defoe that was committed for the offence. The same writer declared that it was known
“ that the young Defoe was but a stalking-horse and a tool, to bear the lash and the pillory in their
stead, for his wages ; that he was the author of the most scandalous part, but was only made sham
proprietor of the whole, to screen the true proprietors from justice."

For all his recurring complaints to Harley about the irregularity of his emoluments
during the years he was his secret agent, Defoe was extremely well paid
for his services, to the tune of £300 to £400 a year (some 30 to 40 thousand
pounds, very roughly, in modern purchasing power), and he was able to live like
the prosperous merchant he never quite succeeded in being at his large house
in the London suburb of Stoke Newington, which with its four acres of land
surrounding it was a virtual country estate with well-tended gardens and walks.1
His son-in-law, Henry Baker, described this establishment as “a very handsome
house . . . a retirement from London” where Defoe “amused his time either in
the cultivation of a large and pleasant garden, or in the pursuit of his studies.” 2
We also know that he accumulated a substantial library for such pursuits. He
337

11
Political Journalist and Moral
Censor: 1715–31
enjoyed this extremely comfortable life thanks to what he earned from his
writing and his work for the government, supplemented by occasional business
ventures in commodities like wine, ale, pickles, tobacco, and linen. Later, in the
1720s as Novak reports he had a warehouse on a street near Tower Dock where
he kept merchandise that he dealt in such as cheese, bacon, honey, oysters, and
anchovies.3 He also seems to have been a horse dealer in a fairly substantial way,
and as the many references in A Tour to horse fairs around the country make
clear he understood that trade very well.4 Moreover, any notion of him as a dour
Puritan needs to be dispelled. He was, as Paula Backscheider observes, stylish in
his dress to the point of foppishness.We know from miscellaneous comments in
his letters and elsewhere that he was when it came to food and drink and other
good things in life something of a bon vivant.5 As early as the 1690s as a young
merchant about town, he fancied himself a dandy, in Michael Shinagel’s words
“aping the style of life of the gentry and playing the role of the gentleman.”6
In that light, we can understand his assumption of the patronymic French
prefix to add to plain English “Foe” and his acquisition of a coat of arms,
featured in the elaborate frontispiece of the 1703 edition of A True Collection
of the Writings of the Author of the True-born Englishman. When it came to literary
taste, he was no gloomy sectarian, for in his writing he quotes from a wide
range of reading in imaginative secular literature. His writings reveal that he
was well read in the great English poets, not only the Milton of Paradise Lost
but also
Dryden (some of his plays as well as his poems), and even the scabrous
Rochester, a poet he quotes frequently.

With the fall of the Tories in 1714, Defoe was very quickly employed in
another capacity by the new Whig administration but probably had to endure
quite a large reduction in pay from that source (from about £400 to about
£50 a year). He was still doing very well for a writer in those days. As Paula
Backscheider outlines his arrangements, one of his printers, John Baker, paid him
two guineas on every five hundred six-penny pamphlets printed, with editions
ranging from 1,000 to 3,000 copies. From another printer, Richard Janeway, he
received four guineas plus 20 or 25 copies of the pamphlet for every 1,000 sold,
and Defoe would arrange for these personal copies to be sold by other book-
Political Journalist and Moral Censor: 1715–31
338
sellers. These were generous and unusual terms.8 When he began to write for
various Tory journals, he acquired a fair amount of income from their editors
for his contributions. Defoe, then, continued to live very well, mainly on the
proceeds of his writing.

Novakl: His freedom lasted just a month. On 5 July he appeared in court to be

charged with libel.
The indictment stressed his action in writing and publishing The Shortest Way as a
direct
affront to Queen Anne.45 He had to confront a group of judges who were not at all
friendly: Sir Edward Ward, Sir John Fleet, Sir Edwin Clarke, and Sir Thomas
Abney.46
Abney was the practitioner of occasional conformity who had been attacked by
Defoe in
the second printing of An Enquiry into the Occasional Conformity of Dissenters, Ward
and Fleet were connected with the East India Company, which Defoe criticiz ed on
numerous occasions, Lovell was singled out as a hanging judge in Defoe’s Reformation
of
Manners and was a good example of the kind of resentment Defoe might have had to
encounter:
He has his Publick Book of Rates to show,
Where every Rogue the Price of Life may know:
And this one Maxim always goes before,
He never hangs the Rich, nor saves the Poor.
God-like he nods upon the Bench of State;
His Smiles are Life, and if he Frown ’tis Fate:
…
Fraternities of Villains he maintains,
Protects their Robberies, and shares the Gains,
… (p.186)
With haughty Tone insults the Wretch that dies,
And sports with his approaching Miseries.47
It might be thought that anyone willing to write such a personal attack upon a
villainous
but eminent figure of the law would have the wisdom to make certain that he would
never be in a position to face him. But it should be clear by now that Defoe seldom
paid
much attention to his safety. On 7 July a list of prisoners in Newgate included
‘Daniel De
Foe find for publishing a Seditious Pamphlett call’d the Shortest Way with the
Dissenters’.48 The trial had not been long. Defoe’s attorney, Sir William
Colepepper, one
of the five Kentish petitioners and a close friend, persuaded Defoe to plead guilty
and
appeal for mercy. Sir Simon Harcourt, the Queen’s Attorney-General, who had
appeared
in Defoe’s Reformation of Manners as a magistrate who ought to be driven from a
position of power, delivered a speech on the danger to the state of pamphlets such
as
Defoe’s, and Defoe was sentenced to a fine of 200 marks (about £133), to stand
three
separate times in the pillory, to be on ‘good behaviour’ for seven years, and to
remain in
Newgate until he could give some evidence of that good behaviour.
The parish was affected by religious and political movements. A clergyman was gaoled for repeating
London gossip about the queen in 1562 (fn. 74) and in 1623 a tailor from Newington near London
was in trouble for remarks about James I. (fn. 75) The parish was strongly parliamentarian during the
Civil War, and Col. Alexander Popham and, after 1664, Gen. Charles Fleetwood were among its
inhabitants. (fn. 76) The Fleetwoods and Hartopps, and later the Abneys, were the protectors of
nonconforming ministers and teachers who settled at Newington Green after the Restoration.

In 1661 Henry Danvers (d. 1687), who had been a parlimentary colonel and who had a house at Stoke
Newington, was described as one of a group of dangerous men in London who were preparing a
rising. (fn. 77) In 1675 a shot was fired at the king from a house which was probably in High Street.
(fn. 78)

In 1681 Titus Oates was at Newington, presumably to see Danvers, whom he met there in 1682, and
in 1685 Danvers was accused of 'treasonous practices', probably in connexion with Monmouth's
rebellion. (fn. 79) Daniel Axtel (d. 1687), whose house at Stoke Newington was searched in 1678 for
seditious libels, was the son of an executed regicide and fled to Carolina. (fn. 80)

The parish was affected by religious and political movements. A clergyman was gaoled for repeating
London gossip about the queen in 1562 (fn. 74) and in 1623 a tailor from Newington near London
was in trouble for remarks about James I. (fn. 75) The parish was strongly parliamentarian during the
Civil War, and Col. Alexander Popham and, after 1664, Gen. Charles Fleetwood were among its
inhabitants. (fn. 76) The Fleetwoods and Hartopps, and later the Abneys, were the protectors of
nonconforming ministers and teachers who settled at Newington Green after the Restoration.

In 1661 Henry Danvers (d. 1687), who had been a parlimentary colonel and who had a house at Stoke
Newington, was described as one of a group of dangerous men in London who were preparing a
rising. (fn. 77) In 1675 a shot was fired at the king from a house which was probably in High Street.
(fn. 78) In 1681 Titus Oates was at Newington, presumably to see Danvers, whom he met there in
1682, and in 1685 Danvers was accused of 'treasonous practices', probably in connexion with
Monmouth's rebellion. (fn. 79) Daniel Axtel (d. 1687), whose house at Stoke Newington was searched
in 1678 for seditious libels, was the son of an executed regicide and fled to Carolina. (fn. 80)

In 1649 the parish was said to be small and most of the inhabitants attended Islington church, while
many from west Hackney came to Stoke Newington church. (fn. 83) Sixty houses were assessed for
hearth tax in Stoke Newington village in 1674 and another 24 at Newington Green. Another 19
cottages not chargeable in 1664 should probably be added to the total. There were 13 houses in Stoke
Newington village and one at Newington Green with 10 or more hearths. (fn. 84) By manorial custom
houses could be replaced by buildings of equal value, as happened in the 1680s. Tenementing, like the
division of the Three Pigeons into five tenements by 1692, also implies a demand for housing.

Protestant nonconformity and London commerce, exemplified in Daniel Defoe, (fn. 89) featured
strongly in local society. In 1698 a London gentleman, wishing to find a place out of town for his
mother, rented a house in Stoke Newington. (fn. 90) In 1708 a London mercer, whose sick wife
needed to live in the country, leased a house in Church Street and found that he could make a living
from wealthy lodgers. (fn. 91) In 1720 Stoke Newington was 'pleasantly situated and full of fine
country houses for citizens, being about 3 or 4 miles from London'. (fn. 92) In 1798 merchants'
country retreats, where the women could spend much of their time, especially in summer, included
'genteel villas and pleasure grounds' near the New River. (fn. 93)

Henry Baker

On the other hand, if Baker took pleasure in his dialogues with Defoe, it is not at all
difficult
to believe that Defoe enjoyed Baker’s conversation and even learned a great deal
from
him. Baker’s system of teaching deaf children appears to have involved bonding
with each
of them as a kind of surrogate father or older brother. After winning the confidence
of
these children, he succeeded in teaching them to vocaliz e. He recogniz ed the
intelligence
of these deaf children and spoke of their ability to use sign language to express the
most
complicated ideas.4 Having perfected his techniques in the home of his relative,
John
Foster, he spent much of his life on this humanitarian task. 5 He had a rigid system
of fees,
but no (p.650) contemporary appears to have accused him of greed. Aside from what
he earned as a teacher of the deaf, he had no other income that would enable him
to
achieve the level of life he admired in Defoe and his family. His scientific interests,
particularly those that were to produce his popular treatise on the use of the
microscope,
eventually brought him the honour of being elected president of the Royal Society.
He
translated Molière and wrote competent poetry. In short, he was close to being the
ideal
man of mid-eighteenth-century Britain: a person of sensibility who dedicated
himself to
literature and to the progress of science and a benefactor to the handicapped. 6
Small
wonder, then, that Defoe enjoyed talking with Baker, and that Baker found his
conversation as ingenious as those who knew him during the reign of Queen Anne.
Doubtless much that Defoe had to say about theories of language and education
during
the last years of his life was influenced by this knowledgeable young man. 7
When Henry Baker came to visit the Defoe family in 1727, he described the scene in
a
manner that has somewhat comic overtones to the modern reader. After Defoe
withdrew
to his study, Baker found himself in the garden with Mrs Defoe and three of her
daughters. Then, by some seemingly magical process, he discovered himself alone
with
Sophia, the youngest of the sisters. Having already sensed himself falling deeply in
love
with her, he had tried to resist making what might prove an imprudent match, but
now he
felt himself impelled to take her hand and ask her if she were engaged. Sophia
replied,
‘Yes, Sir, engaged,—to God and to my Father; but to none beside.’ 8 Probably she
had
most of his attention from the beginning and perhaps it was obvious enough to have
caused everyone to leave them alone. For anyone but an eager young man such as
Henry Baker was, it might have seemed as if they were being deliberately thrown
(p.651) together. What is important for our purposes is that the Defoe household that
he perceived would have seemed essentially stable and prosperous in 1724.

He was born in Chancery Lane, London, 8 May 1698, the son of William Baker, a clerk in chancery.
In his fifteenth year he was apprenticed to John Parker, a bookseller. At the close of his indentures in
1720, Baker went on a visit to John Forster, a relative, who had a deaf-mute daughter, then eight years
old. As a successful therapist of deaf people, he went on to make money, by a system that he kept
secret.[1] His work as therapist caught the attention of Daniel Defoe, whose youngest daughter Sophia
he married on 30 April 1729.
In 1740 he was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society. In 1744 he
received the Copley gold medal for microscopical observations on the crystallization of saline
particles.
He was one of the founders of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and
Commerce in 1754 (later the Society of Arts), and for some time acted as its secretary. He died in
London, and was buried at St Mary le Strand.
Universal Spectator
Under the name of Henry Stonecastle, Baker was associated with Daniel Defoe in starting the
Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal in 1728. Defoe in fact did little except at the launch of the
publication, intended as an essay-sheet rather than a newspaper. It appeared until 1746, running to 907
issues.[2] Baker's involvement as editor continued until 1733.[3] Among the major early contributors
was the journalist John Kelly.[4]
Works
He contributed many memoirs to the Transactions of the Royal Society. Among his publications were
A Short History of Speech (1723), The Microscope made Easy (1743), Employment for the
Microscope (1753),[5] where he noted down the presence of dinoflagellates for the first time as
"Animalcules which cause the Sparkling Light in Sea Water", and several volumes of verse, original
and translated, including The Universe, a Poem intended to restrain the Pride of Man (1727).[6][7]

And
worst of all, the engagement between Sophia and Henry Baker began to founder
over
questions involving the extent of Sophia’s dowry.
(p.675) I
Defoe’s most recent biographer has tended to blame Henry Baker for a venal
approach
to the marriage and to life in general.1 But this is certainly not in keeping with
everything
we know about him. What Defoe said about trade as a form of crime without
morality
seems to have applied to his dealings over Sophia’s dowry. On 23 August 1728 he
delivered an ‘ultimatum’ to Baker stating that Baker would have to take Sophia on
Defoe’s
terms. This was a question of money, and the author of The Complete English Tradesman
knew all about that. Defoe’s motives were not all bad. After all, he had three other
daughters to worry about. He saw Henry Baker as a young man earning good sums
by
treating deaf children. It seems as if Defoe thought he could take advantage of him,
and it
would appear as if this is what he tried to do, plunging Henry Baker and Sophia into
complete misery. The marriage finally took place on 30 April 1729, but only after
Sophia
appears to have suffered a nervous collapse. Shortly before the ceremony, Defoe
wrote
to Baker about a technical problem with the agreement, remarking that he had
caught the
error even though he had to read it ‘but Hastily and in Disorder that night on
Account of
our family being So Disscomposed’ (H 470).
James Sutherland puz z led over negotiations that stalled over a difference of £5 a
year,
the 5 per cent interest on £500 that Baker wanted or the 4 per cent Defoe
considered
‘the ordinary Interest of Money’ (H 463).2 Baker was not making extraordinary
Last Productive Years
Page 3 of 19
demands, and that may have been apparent to more members of the family than
Sophia.
Defoe’s picture of a disordered household in the letter to Baker quoted above may
have
involved more than a distraught Sophia. Other members of the family may also have
expressed their anger at the way Defoe had been handling the matter. In a letter to
Sophia written a little over a month after the marriage, Defoe expresses his
unhappiness
at something Sophia said to him, stating that the reason for his sadness was his love
for
his daughter ‘beyond the Power of Expressing’ (H 471). He then goes on to say that
‘Had Deb, The Hasty, the Rash, and so far Weak, Said Ten Times as much to me it had
Made no Impression at all’ (H 471) compared to the unkind words that Sophia had
delivered. If, as is likely, ‘Deb’ was a nickname for one of Defoe’s other daughters,
it
would appear that Defoe’s behaviour toward Sophia and (p.676) Henry was not
without
repercussions within the Defoe household as a whole.
It seems clear that once the marriage became a matter of business, of money and
property, Defoe treated it without decent feeling. Henry Baker’s letters to Sophia
speaking of Defoe as ‘dark and hideous’ in his dealings might show his frustration
more
than keen character analysis, but it suggests that there was a hard side to Defoe’s
character that cannot be ignored.3 However unpleasant, the negotiations involved
dealing
with leases, mortgages, interest, deaths, and wills. These matters are best handled
by
lawyers, and John Foster, the attorney of Enfield with whom Henry Baker was
living, was
perfectly right to suggest that certain matters should be absolutely unambiguous.
Although Defoe resented having to renegotiate the lease on his house in Stoke
Newington, Baker was right to insist that the title be clear. Defoe expressed
resentment
at Baker’s insistence that Sophia’s portion be kept by him in case his wife died
before him
and without issue. He suggested that the very image of Sophia’s death was a
terrible
thing to contemplate and that Baker was putting him through unnecessary anguish
in
forcing him to contemplate such a possibility. Anyone who has ever made out a will
can
sympathiz e with Defoe’s uneasiness about being forced to imagine the future death
of a
favourite child and, far more significantly, his own mortality. But Defoe was clearly
using
this display of emotion to make Baker feel guilty about raising such matters. It is
impossible not to think that he was trying to manoeuvre Baker into taking less. That
he
would gamble at driving his daughter into a near-psychotic depression and
eventually
arousing the anger of his entire family is hardly surprising in someone who loved to
take
risks.
Baker’s behaviour toward Sophia throughout this agoniz ing struggle appears to
have
been admirable. Contemporary love letters were bound by conventions, but Baker’s
feelings appear to have been genuine. His mother opposed the match, but Baker
persevered, staging the relationship between Sophia and himself as a battle of
young
lovers against parents incapable of understanding their passion. He thought that
Defoe
felt ‘contempt’ for him. ‘You’, he wrote to Sophia, ‘are my good genius, and your
father is
my evil one. He, like a curst infernal, continually torments, betrays, and overturns
my
quiet; you like a divinity, allay the storm he raises and hush my soul to peace. Ruin
and
wild destruction sport around him and exercise their fury on all he has to do with,
but joy
and happiness are your attendants and bless where’er you come.’ This satanic
image of
Last Productive Years
Page 4 of 19
Defoe may (p.677) be the product of an emotionally distraught lover—a lover who
went
so far as proposing a double suicide to Sophia—but it bears an eerie resemblance to
the
satanic representations of the incendiary Defoe created by his enemies throughout
his
life. Again, Baker saw him as ‘One who is under the necessity of being crafty,
ungenerous,
dishonest’.4 Sophia defended her father against her lover’s accusations, but the
anger
that appears to have emerged a month after she became Baker’s wife suggests that,
as a
result of this quarrel, she harboured considerable resentment toward the father she
had
worshipped only second to God.5