"Crusoe arrives at Lisbon" for Daniel Defoe's "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1863-64)

Crusoe arrives at Lisbon (page 189) — the volume's fiftieth composite wood-block engraving for Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64). Chapter XIX, "Return to England." The previous illustration, The Captain hung at the Yard-arm, constitutes a quiet denouement to the violent action that culminate in Crusoe's return to Europe. Full-page, framed: 14 cm high (including caption) x 21.9 cm wide. The framing border unites two different motifs, the vines and leaves of the tropical island and the ropes and knots associated with the sailing ship that Providence has directed to rescue Crusoe.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

The Passage Illustrated

But after making several reflections upon the circumstances of my life, and how little way this would go towards settling me in the world, I resolved to go to Lisbon, and see if I might not come at some information of the state of my plantation in the Brazils, and of what was become of my partner, who, I had reason to suppose, had some years past given me over for dead. With this view I took shipping for Lisbon, where I arrived in April following, my man Friday accompanying me very honestly in all these ramblings, and proving a most faithful servant upon all occasions. When I came to Lisbon, I found out, by inquiry, and to my particular satisfaction, my old friend, the captain of the ship who first took me up at sea off the shore of Africa. He was now grown old, and had left off going to sea, having put his son, who was far from a young man, into his ship, and who still used the Brazil trade. The old man did not know me, and indeed I hardly knew him. But I soon brought him to my remembrance, and as soon brought myself to his remembrance, when I told him who I was. [Chapter XIX, "Return to England," p. 187]

Commentary

Having returned to England, Crusoe immediately sets out for Lisbon to visit the Portuguese sea-captain who picked him up three decades earlier off the African coast. Defoe's putting his protagonist onto the Continent and into a series of adventures at this late point in the narrative of The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe may strike modern novel-readers as somewhat anticlimactic. However, Defoe was essentially making up the conventions of the new prose narrative form on the fly, and was perhaps already thinking in terms of a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, published almost immediately after the first novel, and subsequently published with itduring the Victorian eraas"Part Two." The presentillustration continues the visual themes of ships and the sea, of foreigners and foreign locales, and of commerce, whichtaken togetheramount to roughly half of the woodblock engravings.

As befits what has become a British imperial narrative, the magnificent vessel, with topsails extended but mainsails already furled in preparation for dropping anchor, dominates the composition, including a coastal Portuguese vessel in the foreground. The illustrator depicts late seventeenth-century Lisbon as a centre of maritime commerce, with a substantial city filling up the hillside above the board. The diminutive size of the figures in the right foreground is consistent with the much diminished role that Crusoe will play henceforth. The equivalent 1891 illustration does not bother with a panorama of the harbour, but depicts instead the meeting of Crusoe and the old Portuguese captain who rescued him off the African coast.

Related Material

Relevant illustration from the other Cassell edition, 1891

Above: Wal Paget's lithograph contrasting the mature Crusoe in contemporary 'English clothing and the aged Portuguese sea-captain, now retired, who saved Crusoe as a youth: "Upon this he pulls out an old pouch." [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Bibliography

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. Related by himself. With upwards of One Hundred Illustrations. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1863-64.

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Exciting Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, as Related by Himself. With 120 original illustrations by Walter Paget. London, Paris,and Melbourne: Cassell, 1891.

Last modified 22 March 2018