Thomas Stothard's "Robinson Crusoe travelling in Chinese Tartary" for Defoe's "Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe"

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Robinson Crusoe travelling in Chinese Tartary.

Artist: Thomas Stothard

Engraver: C. Heath

1790

Copper-engraving

11 cm high by 8.2 cm wide

Source: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, facing page 352.

[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Stothard initially provided fifteen plates in Harrison's 1782 edition, then a more comprehensive set for John Stockdale's 1790 edition. Stothard added five plates to the second group of illustrations for this edition.

Passage Illustrated: Crusoe and a party of Tartars from "Further Adventures"

We were all this while in the Chinese dominions, and therefore the Tartars were not so bold as afterwards; but in about five days we entered a vast wild desert, which held us three days’ and nights’ march; and we were obliged to carry our water with us in great leathern bottles, and to encamp all night, just as I have heard they do in the desert of Arabia. I asked our guides whose dominion this was in, and they told me this was a kind of border that might be called no man’s land, being a part of Great Karakathy, or Grand Tartary: that, however, it was all reckoned as belonging to China, but that there was no care taken here to preserve it from the inroads of thieves, and therefore it was reckoned the worst desert in the whole march, though we were to go over some much larger.

In passing this frightful wilderness we saw, two or three times, little parties of the Tartars, but they seemed to be upon their own affairs, and to have no design upon us; and so, like the man who met the devil, if they had nothing to say to us, we had nothing to say to them: we let them go. Once, however, a party of them came so near as to stand and gaze at us. Whether it was to consider if they should attack us or not, we knew not; but when we had passed at some distance by them, we made a rear-guard of forty men, and stood ready for them, letting the caravan pass half a mile or thereabouts before us. After a while they marched off, but they saluted us with five arrows at their parting, which wounded a horse so that it disabled him, and we left him the next day, poor creature, in great need of a good farrier. We saw no more arrows or Tartars that time. [Chapter 14, "Attacked by Tartars," page 352]

Commentary

The passage through the hostile territory of Tartary (Mongolia) in Central Asia marks the last stage in Crusoe's Asiatic adventures. In the background, the Tartar horsemen are shadowing the party of Chinese dignitaries and their European guest (left foreground). Crusoe has Chinese several archers serving as bodyguards in Stothard's illustration, even though Defoe does not specifically mention them, and the guide pointing at the warriors in the distance looks curiously European. Crusoe seems appropriately nervous about the Tartars' intentions. In that the mount in the left-hand margin is a camel rather than a horse, Stothard seems to be anticipating Crusoe's having purchased such a beast about a month after the Tartars harassed Crusoe and his party. The illustration by Phiz is full of energy as violence is about to erupt, as opposed to the sense of calm that pervades the Stothard plate.

Cruikshank's Scenes of Combat with the Tartars (1831)

Left: As Crusoe regain consciousness, he discovers that his companions have driven off the robbers in Crusoe, regaining consciousness, sees the dead Tartar. Right: Cruikshank's dramatic tailpiece for Farther Adventures: Crusoe and his partyy deliver a furious volley from behind a stockade of stacked tree trunks in The Europeans fire a withering volley at the charging Tartar horde in Russia. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Phiz's Interpretation of the Counter-attack on the Tartars (1864)

Above: Phiz's highly dramatic, full-page illustration of the Portuguese pilot's grabbing the Tartar, Robinson Crusoe attacked and robbed by Tartars. [Click on image to enlarge it.]

The Cassell's Interpretation of the vigorous Cavalry charge of the Europeans (1863-64)

Above: The Cassell's team produced a pair highly dramatic, full-page illustrations for the Tartary section; particularly dynamic is A Fight with the Tartars. [Click on image to enlarge it.]

Related Material

Bibliography

Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Written by Himself. Illustrated by Thomas Stothard; engraving by C. Heath. London: Bliss, Sands, and Foster, 1820.

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.

De Foe, Daniel. Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, including A Memoir of the Author, and an Essay on his Writings. Illustrated by Phiz. London & New York: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1864.

14 February 2018