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The Passage Illustrated: The Iconic Moment

But now I come to a new scene of my life.

It happened one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me, but I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground to look farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the print of a foot — toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could I in the least imagine; but after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way. [Chapter XI, "Finds the print of a man's foot on the sand," pp. 110-11]

Commentary: The Footprint Foregrounded

The picture intervenes between the opening and closing of the passage that it realizes, so that one reads through both textual and visual description of the iconic moment. Moreover, even when purchasing the book in the 1890s the reader has been prepared for this pivotal moment in the story since it appears in colour on the ornamental cover. Consequently, the reader, having had plenty of time to consider this illustration, re-plays his or her initial, proleptic reading of the moment of discovery, even as the narrator recalls his terror ("I fled like one pursued") and his inability to sleep that night, even in a secure location. Robert L. Patten has analyzed Cruikshank's pencil sketch upon which he based his caricatural 1831 wood-engraving. Undoubtedly Wal Paget had had the benefit of seeing Cruikshank's celebrated rendering of Crusoe's discovery. However, the late-nineteenth-century realist avoids the kind of symbolism inherent in the 1831 illustration in which the goatskin parasol acts as a kind of exclamation point to Crusoe's shocked downward glance. Here, instead of recoiling at the realisation that, after all these years, he is not alone on this little island at the mouth of the Orinoco, Paget's castaway in full goatskin "island" dress seems both curious and puzzled as he shields his eyes from the tropical sun in order to assess the naked footprint. Clearly, implies Paget, he cannot for a moment think it is his own, for the illustrator shows Crusoe wearing mocassins. Otherwise, the picture is quite undistinguished, with a generalised seashore and gulls in the background; Paget adds no extraneous details to distract the reader from studying Crusoe's response.

The design on the spine, too, is derived from one of Paget's illustrations, "I was now landed", so that the outside of the book prepares the reader for two of the story's chief moments, both so well known in Anglo-American and French cultures that neither illustration would have puzzled potential purchasers and readers of the Cassell's volume in the 1890s.

Related Material

• Daniel Defoe
• Illustrations of Robinson Crusoe by various artists
• Illustrations of children’s editions
• The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe il. H. M. Brock at Project Gutenberg
• The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe at Project Gutenberg

Parallel Scenes by Cruikshank (1831), the 1818 Children's Book, Gilbert (1867?), and the Cassell Edition (1863-64)

Left: Thomas Stothard's elegant realisation of Crusoe's discovering the native's footprint on the beach: Robinson Crusoe discovers the print of a man's foot (copperplate engraving, 1790). Centre: George Cruikshank's more emotionally charged realisation of this same moment, Friday's Footprint — Crusoe discovers a human footprint on the beach (wood-engraving). Right: The 1863-63 Cassell's Illustrated Edition of the earth-shaking discovery, Crusoe see a Foot-print on the Sand. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Left: The 1818 children's book's depiction of Crusoe's stunning discovery, Robinson Crusoe's terror at the print of the human foot. Centre: Gilbert's Crusoe is not startled so much as shocked and surprised as he puts his hand to his brow in this full-page composite woodblock engraving, Robinson Crusoe discovers a Footprint (1860s): Chapter XI, "Finds the print of a man's foot on the sand." Right: The original Paget lithograph upon which Cassell's based the embossed cover: "I stood like one thunderstruck." [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Referenceas

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 Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner. As Related by Himself. With upwards of One Hundred and Twenty Original Illustrations by Walter Paget. London, Paris, and Melbourne: Cassell, 1891.

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Last modified 31 March 2018