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Crusoe and the Spaniard conversing together
Justyne, Leitch, Macquoid, Morgan, Pasquier, Thomas, & Weir
Engravers: Butterworth and Heath
1863-64
Wood-engraving
16.5 cm high (including caption) by 14 cm wide, framed.
Cassell's Robinson Crusoe, page 269.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Having thus given an account of the colony in general, and pretty much of my runagate Englishmen, I must say something of the Spaniards, who were the main body of the family, and in whose story there are some incidents also remarkable enough.
I had a great many discourses with them about their circumstances when they were among the savages. They told me readily that they had no instances to give of their application or ingenuity in that country; that they were a poor, miserable, dejected handful of people; that even if means had been put into their hands, yet they had so abandoned themselves to despair, and were so sunk under the weight of their misfortune, that they thought of nothing but starving. One of them, a grave and sensible man, told me he was convinced they were in the wrong; that it was not the part of wise men to give themselves up to their misery, but always to take hold of the helps which reason offered, as well for present support as for future deliverance: he told me that grief was the most senseless, insignificant passion in the world, for that it regarded only things past, which were generally impossible to be recalled or to be remedied, but had no views of things to come, and had no share in anything that looked like deliverance, but rather added to the affliction than proposed a remedy; and upon this he repeated a Spanish proverb, which, though I cannot repeat in the same words that he spoke it in, yet I remember I made it into an English proverb of my own, thus: —
“In trouble to be troubled, Is to have your trouble doubled.”
. . . . They were all together when I talked thus to them; and before I delivered to them the stores I had brought, I asked them, one by one, if they had entirely forgot and buried the first animosities that had been among them, and would shake hands with one another, and engage in a strict friendship and union of interest, that so there might be no more misunderstandings and jealousies. [Chapter VI, "The French Clergyman's Counsel," pp. 268-72]
Robinson Crusoe (centre) and the Spanish Governor (left) are conversing with the Spanish settlers about the circumstances under which they lived on the South American continent, and how they managed to tolerate the three rowdy ex-mutineers on the island.
In the lengthier programs of illustration across the nineteenth century artists have realised the return of the absent Governor, sixty-one-year-old Robinson Crusoe, to the island south of Trinidad and east of the mouth of the Orinococo — apparently administered jointly by those old enemies, Spain and Britain. Whereas George Cruikshank in 1831 realised the joyful reunion of Friday and his father, and Edward Henry Wehnert in 1862 included Friday and his father in the background of Crusoe's Second Landing on the Island, a title which underscores the very different manner in which the former castaway arrives, now honoured by the thriving European colony. The Cassell illustrator, here depicts the two fathers of the colony, the Spaniard whom Crusoe saved (left) and Crusoe (centre). Although both are older than the other colonists, the illustrator has distinguished Crusoe by providing him with a fashionable European suit, as opposed to the lighter, tropical garb of the new Governor.
Left: Thomas Stothard's study of Crusoe's distributing supplies to the colonists of both nationalities, Robinson Crusoe distributing tools of husbandry among the inhabitants. Right: Wal Paget's parallel scene, a large-scale realisation of the celebratory meal that Crusoe stages for the colonists upon the eve of his departure, "We made a splendid feast." (1891). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Above: Cruikshank's small-scale realisation of Crusoe's generosity, Crusoe distributing agricultural implements (1831). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
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.
Last modified 31 March 2018