Something had occurred, or was imagined by him to have occurred, which
compelled him to fly from his home and go into hiding. He was at work on
a book to be entitled _The Complete English Gentleman_. Part of it was
already in type when he broke off abruptly in September, 1729, and fled.
In August, 1730, he sent from a hiding-place, cautiously described as
being about two miles from Greenwich, a letter to his son-in-law, Baker,
which is our only clue to what had taken place. It is so incoherent as
to suggest that the old man's prolonged toils and anxieties had at last
shaken his reason, though not his indomitable self-reliance. Baker
apparently had written complaining that he was debarred from seeing him.
"Depend upon my sincerity for this," Defoe answers, "that I am far from
debarring you. On the contrary, it would be a greater comfort to me than
any I now enjoy that I could have your agreeable visits with safety, and
could see both you and my dear Sophia, could it be without giving her
the grief of seeing her father _in tenebris_, and under the load of
insupportable sorrows." He gives a touching description of the griefs
which are preying upon his mind.

"It is not the blow I received from a wicked, perjured,
and contemptible enemy that has broken in upon my spirit;
which, as she well knows, has carried me on through greater
disasters than these. But it has been the injustice, unkindness,
and, I must say inhuman, dealing of my own son, which
has both ruined my family, and in a word has broken my
heart.... I depended upon him, I trusted him, I gave up
my two dear unprovided children into his hands; but he
has no compassion, but suffers them and their poor dying
mother to beg their bread at his door, and to crave, as it
were an alms, what he is bound under hand and seal, besides
the most sacred promises, to supply them with, himself at