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Crusoe gives Atkins a Bible
William Luson Thomas
Engravers: Butterworth and Heath
1863-64
Wood-engraving
17 cm high (including caption) by 14 cm wide, framed.
Cassell's Robinson Crusoe, page 301.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
It came next into my mind, in the morning before I went to them, that amongst all the needful things I had to leave with them I had not left them a Bible, in which I showed myself less considering for them than my good friend the widow was for me when she sent me the cargo of a hundred pounds from Lisbon, where she packed up three Bibles and a Prayer-book. However, the good woman’s charity had a greater extent than ever she imagined, for they were reserved for the comfort and instruction of those that made much better use of them than I had done.
I took one of the Bibles in my pocket, and when I came to Will Atkins's tent, or house, and found the young woman and Atkins’s baptized wife had been discoursing of religion together — for Will Atkins told it me with a great deal of joy — I asked if they were together now, and he said, "Yes"; so I went into the house, and he with me, and we found them together very earnest in discourse. "Oh, sir," says Will Atkins, "when God has sinners to reconcile to Himself, and aliens to bring home, He never wants a messenger; my wife has got a new instructor: I knew I was unworthy, as I was incapable of that work; that young woman has been sent hither from heaven — she is enough to convert a whole island of savages." The young woman blushed, and rose up to go away, but I desired her to sit-still; I told her she had a good work upon her hands, and I hoped God would bless her in it.
We talked a little, and I did not perceive that they had any book among them, though I did not ask; but I put my hand into my pocket, and pulled out my Bible. "Here," said I to Atkins, "I have brought you an assistant that perhaps you had not before." The man was so confounded that he was not able to speak for some time; but, recovering himself, he takes it with both his hands, and turning to his wife, "Here, my dear," says he, "did not I tell you our God, though He lives above, could hear what we have said? Here's the book I prayed for when you and I kneeled down under the bush; now God has heard us and sent it." When he had said so, the man fell into such passionate transports, that between the joy of having it, and giving God thanks for it, the tears ran down his face like a child that was crying. [Chapter VIII, "Sails from the Island for the Brazils," page 325]
The scene occurs, as Crusoe explains, in the north-east quadrant of the island assigned to English colonists. The young European woman seated to the right, beside Mrs. Atkins, has been recently married to Crusoe's artisan, a Jack-of-all-Trades, whom Crusoe has brought with him to the island. Her presence in the text is easily overlooked, but Paget, perhaps modelling his lithograph on the wood-engraving correctly includes her, since she was in the house, discoursing with Mrs. Atkins on religious matters, when Crusoe arrived with the Bible — which should, however, be pocket-sized.
The prominence of the Bible in both parts of Robinson Crusoe undoubtedly reflects Defoe's Protestantism. However, a number of nineteenth-century illustrators have underscored the importance of scripture reading to Crusoe's moral life, as in George Cruikshank's "Jesus, . . . give me repentance", and both Cassell's editions show Crusoe delivering religious instruction to his new servant as a fundamental part of civilising the aboriginal.
Moreover, in the second half of the story among the provisions that Crusoe has brought to the island are several Bibles, intended to reinvigorate the Christian convictions of the young colonists. The presence of the printed book as the mechanism or technology of religious instruction, much more prevalent in British Protestant than European Catholic culture, is crucial to understanding Crusoe's motivation for returning to the island in The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. The Cassell's mid-nineteenth-century illustration of Crusoe's conducting religious instruction with Friday, his spiritual discussions with the French priest, and his presentation of the Bible to Atkins and his recently baptised native wife, may be an oblique allusions to British Victorian Bible societies and colonial missionary work in this period. Dickens in Bleak House (1851-53), on the other hand, seems to have found overseas Christian missions by British Bible societies a worthy subject of satire in the ridiculous figure of the philanthropic Mrs. Jellyby, who has devoted so much of her time to the spiritual welfare of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha on the banks of the Niger that she has totally neglected her own children.
In the 1864 wood-engraving, as the elderly Crusoe (centre) presents a standard-sized Bible to the Atkins family, Will and his wife seem overcome with surprise. Thomas adds to the informality of the Atkins household by depicting both husband and wife as going barefoot, whereas their English guest is wearing both a seventeenth-century bonnet and shoes. In the background the illustrator has shown the basketwork walls without windows that are a Crusoe legacy.
Left: The Wehnert engraving of the same scene, Crusoe giving Bible to Will Atkins (1862). Right: The original Stothard scene of Crusoe's return, Robinson Crusoe distributing tools of husbandry among the inhabitants (1820). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Above: Cruikshank's realisation of Crusoe's visiting Will and his wife, Crusoe presents a Bible to Will Atkins and his native wife (1831). [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Above: Wal Paget's realisation of Crusoe's visiting Will and his wife, "I have brought you an assistant" (1891). [Click on image to enlarge it.]
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner. As 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 2 April 2018