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Crusoe having just rescued Friday
George Cruikshank
1831
Wood-engraving
full-page, framed
Frontispiece for Volume One of Daniel Defoe's Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1831), facing title-page.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The poor savage who fled, but had stopped, though he saw both his enemies fallen and killed, as he thought, yet was so frightened with the fire and noise of my piece that he stood stock still, and neither came forward nor went backward, though he seemed rather inclined still to fly than to come on. I hallooed again to him, and made signs to come forward, which he easily understood, and came a little way; then stopped again, and then a little farther, and stopped again; and I could then perceive that he stood trembling, as if he had been taken prisoner, and had just been to be killed, as his two enemies were. I beckoned to him again to come to me, and gave him all the signs of encouragement that I could think of; and he came nearer and nearer, kneeling down every ten or twelve steps, in token of acknowledgment for saving his life. I smiled at him, and looked pleasantly, and beckoned to him to come still nearer; at length he came close to me; and then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head; this, it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave for ever. I took him up and made much of him, and encouraged him all I could. But there was more work to do yet; for I perceived the savage whom I had knocked down was not killed, but stunned with the blow, and began to come to himself: so I pointed to him, and showed him the savage, that he was not dead; upon this he spoke some words to me, and though I could not understand them, yet I thought they were pleasant to hear; for they were the first sound of a man's voice that I had heard, my own excepted, for above twenty-five years. [Volume I, Chapter XIV, "A Dream Realised," p. 192]
Crusoe mentions the parrot, another survivor of the wreck on a number of occasions. He is a significant companion until the arrival of Friday because Crusoe has taught him how to speak English. But now for the first time in decades, Crusoe hears another human voice — and yet neither the eradication of Friday's pursuers nor this startling experience of hearing another human being speak concerns Cruikshank in this anticipatory frontispiece.
David Blewett describes the frontispiece for the 1831 John Major edition as "idealized" in that, despite the violent incident which is the illustration's textual context, Cruikshank depicts the European colonist as gentle and Friday is virtuous. It is, moreover, not at all characteristic of Cruikshank's satirical and caricatural style:
this frontispiece, the only full-page drawing in the edition, is an indication of the hold the scene had acquired in the minds of readers, or at any rate in the minds of book publishers. Clearly either Major or Cruikshank (and quite possibly both) felt that this important scene should be the one that the reader would encounter as he opened the book at the title-page. With the exception of Crusoe's stockade, it retains all the features of the Brown Pollard frontispiece to the 1785 edition, to which it is clearly indebted [PI. VII]. A graceful young man with long hair, light-brown skin, and gentle features crouches before a serene and confident Crusoe. [Blewett,p. 35]
Despite the fact that he carries conspicuously the tools and weapons of European civilisation, Cruikshank's benign Crusoe is a combination of a hairy John the Baptist and Christ as the Good Shepherd and Prince of Peace. "Crusoe extends his hand, palm upward, in a non-threatening and traditional gesture of succour" (Blewett, p. 35). Cruikshank has included all the textual elements that the reader would expect to find in a faithful realisation: the two dead savages, the stream, and well in the background the other cannibals, cavorting around a bonfire. However, Cruikshank has minimised these contextual pieces in order to focus on the meeting of the European man gone back to nature and the natural man being introduced to civilisation. "Though the tropical vegetation introduces a more or less realistic note rarely struck in the eighteenth-century illustration, the scene is essentially symbolic, a survival of a central icon in the eighteenth-century imagination, and a powerful image of the meeting of two worlds"(Blewett,p. 35).
In the backdrop Cruikshank has placed the Cannibals, continuing to dance around the fire where they were conducting the feast from which Friday escaped. Owing to the river that Friday traversed, only two of the aborigines have pursued him, and Crusoe and Friday have just killed them both in order to save Friday. The sprawled corpse in the background is likely that of the archer whom Crusoe has shot. Since he is the young man's saviour, it is probably no coincidence that Cruikshank has endowed Crusoe with Christ-like features. However, Cruikshank's Christ-Crusoe is not carrying the lost sheep as in the traditional image of the Good Shepherd as the Saviour from the New Testament; rather, goat-skin-clothed Crusoe carries the tools and weapons of European technology (sabre, hatchet, and rifle) with which colonists will assault the North American forest and the tropical jungle — and subdue the original inhabitants.
First edition (1831) title-page reads:
The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, with introductory verses by Bernard Barton, and illustrated with numerous engravings from drawings by George Cruikshank expressly designed for this edition. Vol. I. London: Printed at the Shakespeare Press, by W. Nichol, for John Major, Fleet Street. 1831.
The first John Major edition is two small octavo volumes (6 9/16 x 4 1/16 inches; 166 x 104 mm.). [viii], xvi, 434, [1, imprint, verso blank]; [ii], 406 pp. Together, these slight volumes contain two engraved frontispieces and thirty-eight woodcut illustrations dropped into the text. It was bound without a half-title for volume two. Neither frontispiece was reproduced in the 1890 edition issued by Routledge.
Left: Stothard's 1790 realisation of the rescue scene, an illustration of which Cruikshank was probably aware, Robinson Crusoe first sees and rescues his man Friday (copper-plate engraving, [Chapter XIV, "A Dream Realised"). Centre: Phiz's steel-engraved frontispiece, with the surviving pursuer about to attack the unwitting Crusoe, Robinson Crusoe rescues Friday (1864). Right: Colourful realisation of the same scene, with a decidedly subservient and Negroid Friday: Friday's first interview with Robinson Crusoe. (1818).
Left: The 1815 children's book woodblock engraving of Crusoe bidding Friday to rise, On his coming close to me, he kneeled down again. Centre: Sir John Gilbert's realisation of the rescue scene, Crusoe rescues Friday (1867?). Right: Realistic but emotionally muted realisation of the same scene, Crusoe and Friday (1863-64). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner, with introductory verses by Bernard Barton, and illustrated with numerous engravings from drawings by George Cruikshank expressly designed for this edition. 2 vols. London: Printed at the Shakespeare Press, by W. Nichol, for John Major, Fleet Street, 1831.
De Foe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Written by Himself. Illustrated by Gilbert, Cruikshank, and Brown. London: Darton and Hodge, 1867?].
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. (1831). Illustrated by George Cruikshank. Major's Edition. London: Chatto & Windus, 1890.
Patten, Robert L. "Phase 2: "'The Finest Things, Next to Rembrandt's,' 1720–1835." Chapter 20, "Thumbnail Designs." George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art, vol. 1: 1792-1835. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers U. P., 1992; London: The Lutterworth Press, 1992. Pp. 325-339.
Last modified 7 March 2018