[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Justyne, Leitch, Macquoid, Morgan, Pasquier, and G. H. Thomas —> Next]
Crusoe and the Tartar Idol
Engravers: Butterworth and Heath
Illustrators: Justyne, Leitch, Macquoid, Morgan, Pasquier, and G. H. Thomas
1864
Wood-engraving
19 cm high by 12.5 cm wide, framed.
Cassell's Robinson Crusoe, page 376.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
But what signified all the astonishment and reflection of thoughts? And thus it was, and I saw it before my eyes, and there was no room to wonder at it, or think it impossible; all my admiration turned to rage, and I rode up to the image or monster — call it what you will — and with my sword made a stroke at the bonnet that was on its head, and cut it in two; and one of our men that was with me took hold of the sheep-skin that covered it, and pulled at it, when, behold, a most hideous outcry and howling ran through the village, and two or three hundred people came about my ears, so that I was glad to scour for it, for we saw some had bows and arrows; but I resolved from that moment to visit them again. [Chapter XV, "Description of an Idol, which they Destroy," page 373]
Crusoe, incensed against the idolatry of the heathen Tartars, has been determined to destroy the idol ever since he heard that the pagans tortured to death a young Russian soldier who had "affronted them in their worship." Assisted by two Scots merchants from Moscow (one of whom appears on horseback behind the conquering Crusoe), he is determined to destroy the travelling fetish which its worshippers call "Cham-Chi-Thaungu." Crusoe's Christian zeal, however nobly motivated, may result in "a new war with all the Tartars in the country" (375) — a general rebellion of a hundred thousand fierce nomads against the slight garrison of Russians who have been colonizing the region.
The centrepiece of the Cruikshank engraving, to which the Cassell's illustrator would undoubtedly have had access, is the massive idol that travels from one Tartar village to another across this wide region administered by the Russians. The Cassell illustrator focuses on the equestrian figure of Crusoe, in the triumphant pose of William of Orange, and the partially destroyed idol, which the Cassell illustrator has modelled on the 1831 image which Cruikshank has provided. Note, in particular, the top-knot, horns, and hypnotic eyes. On the other hand, the 1864 illustration omits entirely the idol's woebegone-looking caretakers, the bearded Tartar priests, and the bonfire of furze. The 1864 backdrop, moreover, does not appear to be the Siberian forest of the earlier illustration, but open grassland. Defoe describes the object of pagan veneration succinctly as "an old stump of a tree, an idol made of wood, frightful as the devil" (373). Whereas Cruikshank had made it twice the height of man, the present illustration has reduced the idol to a mere mask of Polynesian appearance. The incident, moreover, that the Cassell's illustrator has realised occurs three days before Crusoe's expedition to destroy the idol utterly — the scene which Cruikshank had realised in 1831. Neither moment is the subject of the extensive Paget narrative-pictorial sequence of 1891.
In the John Major edition Cruikshank's woodblock vignette is both less dramatic and more amusing: The destruction of the Tartar idol with tar and gunpowder. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
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.
Last modified 16 April 2018