Friday and his Father (page 225) — the volume's fifty-sixth 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 I, "Revisits Island." Full-page, framed: 14 cm high x 22.3 cm wide.
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Crusoe and Friday return to the Island
As we went on shore upon the tide of flood, near high water, we rowed directly into the creek; and the first man I fixed my eye upon was the Spaniard whose life I had saved, and whom I knew by his face perfectly well: as to his habit, I shall describe it afterwards. I ordered nobody to go on shore at first but myself; but there was no keeping Friday in the boat, for the affectionate creature had spied his father at a distance, a good way off the Spaniards, where, indeed, I saw nothing of him; and if they had not let him go ashore, he would have jumped into the sea. He was no sooner on shore, but he flew away to his father like an arrow out of a bow. It would have made any man shed tears, in spite of the firmest resolution, to have seen the first transports of this poor fellow’s joy when he came to his father: how he embraced him, kissed him, stroked his face, took him up in his arms, set him down upon a tree, and lay down by him; then stood and looked at him, as any one would look at a strange picture, for a quarter of an hour together; then lay down on the ground, and stroked his legs, and kissed them, and then got up again and stared at him; one would have thought the fellow bewitched. But it would have made a dog laugh the next day to see how his passion ran out another way: in the morning he walked along the shore with his father several hours, always leading him by the hand, as if he had been a lady; and every now and then he would come to the boat to fetch something or other for him, either a lump of sugar, a dram, a biscuit, or something or other that was good. In the afternoon his frolics ran another way; for then he would set the old man down upon the ground, and dance about him, and make a thousand antic gestures; and all the while he did this he would be talking to him, and telling him one story or another of his travels, and of what had happened to him abroad to divert him. In short, if the same filial affection was to be found in Christians to their parents in our part of the world, one would be tempted to say there would hardly have been any need of the fifth commandment. [Chapter II, "Intervening History of the Colony," page 226]
Commentary
The present illustration is another that unites the two halves of the Crusoe narrative, recalling Friday and Crusoe's rescuing the elderly aboriginal and the Spaniard from the cannibals in Crusoe rescues the Spaniard in Chapter XVI, "Rescue of the prisoners from the Cannibals." The illustrator has given the father a goatskin coat similar to that worn by Crusoe earlier, and gives both men European-style breeches, but otherwise depicts them very much as Carib Indians. Thomas has created a suitable backdrop: the tropical jungle, the seashore. That Crusoe is still in the longboat (right) implies that Friday in his eagerness has raced ahead of his master to clutch his father's face once again. However, the text makes it clear that both Friday and Crusoe have arrived together, and that Crusoe has restrained Friday "from jumping into the sea, to swim ashore to the place" (p. 224). These two unrestrained aboriginals, then, enjoy a very different relationship from that of Crusoe and his stern Protestant parent, as Crusoe the narrator implies in his allusion to the Fifth Commandment in the New Testament.
Related Material
- The Reality of Shipwreck
- 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
Other Interpretations of the Return of Friday and Crusoe (1790, 1818, 1831)
Left: The children's book's depiction of Friday's joyful meeting with his father after the rescue, Friday and his Father (1818). Centre: E. H. Wehnert's doubly emotional reunion, of the Spaniard and Crusoe and of Friday and his father: Crusoe 's Second Landing on the Island. Right: Wal Paget's parallel scene, a large-scale realisation of the Spaniard's welcoming an elegantly dressed Crusoe on the beach, "Do you not know me?" (1891). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Above: Cruikshank's small-scale realisation of the meeting on the beach of the long-absent son and the aged parent, Friday and his Father (1831). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Bibliography
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 26 March 2018