"The Burial of Friday" for Daniel Defoe's "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (1863-64)

The Burial of Friday (page 313) — the volume's eighty-first 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). Part II, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Chapter VIII, "Sails from the Island for the Brazils." Full-page, framed: 13.9 cm high x 22 cm wide. Running head: "Crusoe leaves the Island" (p. 307).

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.]

Passage Illustrated: Crusoe's vessel lowers Friday into the ocean

And now I name the poor fellow once more, I must take my last leave of him. Poor honest Friday! We buried him with all the decency and solemnity possible, by putting him into a coffin, and throwing him into the sea; and I caused them to fire eleven guns for him. So ended the life of the most grateful, faithful, honest, and most affectionate servant that ever man had. [Chapter VIII, "Sails for the Brazils," page 311]

Commentary

A number of illustrators have represented the scene of confrontation between further hostile aboriginals and Crusoe, including George Cruikshank (1831) and Wal Paget (1891), but only Paget has depicted the moment of Friday's death. In the 1864 sequence, the illustrators depict the firing of a broadside to honour the burial at sea of Man Friday, whom Crusoe has come regard as a son rather than a mere servant, and the running head before both pages prepares the reader for Friday's death ahead of the engagement with the islanders.

Although the contest between islanders and Europeans which Cruikshank and Paget have depicted in vigorous detail engages the patriotic reader's attention, the pathetic death of the faithful Friday must have engaged the reader's emotions. In fact, it may well be the defining moment of the Father Adventures since from now on Crusoe, despite such companions as his nephew, his old pilot, and the Scottish merchant, is quite alone. Although the death of Friday in combat with the islanders comes as a great shock to Crusoe, and therefore serves as a climax to the portion of the story dealing with his return to the island, most narrative-pictorial series avoid the subject. Both Cruikshank in 1831 and the Cassell illustrators in 1864 depict Friday's death in the context of a panoramic naval battle between the well-armed European ship and a flotilla of native canoes. Although the 1864 illustration, The Burial of Friday, highlights Friday's burial at sea by a discharge of the forward cannon, this extensive sequence does not depict Friday's actual death, leaving the first-person narrator to convey Crusoe's grief: "I was the most disconsolate creature alive for want of my man Friday" (333). Paget, on the other hand, in "Killed poor Friday" makes the pathetic death of the sometimes impish, always faithful Friday insistently real.

Related Material

Parallel Illustration by George Cruikshank (1831) and Wal Paget (1891)

Above: Cruikshank's vignette of the naval engagement between a flotilla of canoes and Crusoe's three-masted vessel, Islanders attack Crusoe's ship, killing Friday (1831). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Above: Paget's closeup of the death of Crusoe's delivering beloved companion, transfixed by two arrows to the heart, Killed poor Friday (1891). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

References

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 8 April 2018