"Made me a very low bow." (See p. 303), signed by Wal Paget, bottom left. Paget has not used as his model the young, thin-haired Jesuit of the 1864 Cassell edition; rather, he conceives of the French Catholic priest as dressed in fashionable, seventeenth-century clothing, including a shirt with elaborate sleeves. Half of page 305, vignetted: 10 cm high by 12 cm wide. Running head: "The Marriage Ceremony" (page 305).
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Passage Illustrated: An Enlightened Young Catholic Priest
I replied to him thus: “Why, sir, it is a valuable thing, indeed, to be an instrument in God’s hand to convert thirty-seven heathens to the knowledge of Christ: but as you are an ecclesiastic, and are given over to the work, so it seems so naturally to fall in the way of your profession; how is it, then, that you do not rather offer yourself to undertake it than to press me to do it?”
Upon this he faced about just before me, as he walked along, and putting me to a full stop, made me a very low bow. “I most heartily thank God and you, sir,” said he, “for giving me so evident a call to so blessed a work; and if you think yourself discharged from it, and desire me to undertake it, I will most readily do it, and think it a happy reward for all the hazards and difficulties of such a broken, disappointed voyage as I have met with, that I am dropped at last into so glorious a work.” [Chapter VI, "The French Clergyman's Counsel," page 303]
Commentary
The scene occurs, as Crusoe explains, in the north-east quadrant of the island assigned to English colonists as Crusoe and his passenger, the French Catholic priest, are walking through the jungle towards the plantation of Will Atkins. Unlike Thomas Macquoid in the 1864 illustration Crusoe and the Priest, Paget does not place the scene in the context of lush tropical vegetation, but focusses on the well-dressed, middle-aged Governor, Robinson Crusoe (complete with cane, gold-braided coat, and topboots) and the young French priest as the latter asks for Friday's assistance in his new-found mission to the Caribbean island.
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
Relevant illustrations from other nineteenth-century editions, 1820-1891
The original Cassell illustration of Crusoe and the priest discussing marrying the colonist to their native wives, Crusoe and the Priest (1864). [Click onimages to enlarge them.]
References
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 4 April 2018