"I proved very dexterous" — sixth illustration for Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1891)

I proved very dexterous

Wal Paget (1863-1935)

lithograph dropped into the text

approximately 8.4 cm high by 7 cm wide, vignetted.

1891

Robinson Crusoe, page 13.

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.]

Passage Illustrated — Running Head: "Prisoner at Sallee," page 13

Here I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to effect it, but found no way that had the least probability in it; nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational; for I had nobody to communicate it to that would embark with me — no fellow-slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotchman there but myself; so that for two years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination, yet I never had the least encouraging prospect of putting it in practice.

After about two years, an odd circumstance presented itself, which put the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in my head. My patron lying at home longer than usual without fitting out his ship, which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used constantly, once or twice a week, sometimes oftener if the weather was fair, to take the ship’s pinnace and go out into the road a-fishing; and as he always took me and young Maresco with him to row the boat, we made him very merry, and I proved very dexterous in catching fish; insomuch that sometimes he would send me with a Moor, one of his kinsmen, and the youth — the Maresco, as they called him—to catch a dish of fish for him. [Chapter II, "Slavery and Escape," page 13]

Commentary

Of the hundred and twenty illustrations devised by Wal Paget, a significant number involve portrait studies of Robinson Crusoe in his various moods — forty-two in the sixty-eight illustrations of Part One. Already, readers have seen him in "island dress" with Poll the parrot, as a castaway on the shore, as a young sailor, and as the survivor of the wreck at Yarmouth. Here, he concentrates on pulling up the fish without losing it.

Related Material

Parallel Scene from the Cassell Edition (1863-64)

Above: Cassell's highly realistic wood-engraving of the brooding, resentful Crusoe working as a slave in Sallee, Crusoe a Slave. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Reference

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.

Last modified 25 April 2018