"Grinding my tools" — illustration for Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1891)

Grinding my tools

Wal Paget (1863-1935)

half-page lithograph

12 cm high by 7.4 cm wide, vignetted.

1891

Robinson Crusoe, embedded on page 57.

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: The Resourceful Mr. Crusoe

April 22. — The next morning I begin to consider of means to put this resolve into execution; but I was at a great loss about my tools. I had three large axes, and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the hatchets for traffic with the Indians); but with much chopping and cutting knotty hard wood, they were all full of notches, and dull; and though I had a grindstone, I could not turn it and grind my tools too. This cost me as much thought as a statesman would have bestowed upon a grand point of politics, or a judge upon the life and death of a man. At length I contrived a wheel with a string, to turn it with my foot, that I might have both my hands at liberty. Note. — I had never seen any such thing in England, or at least, not to take notice how it was done, though since I have observed, it is very common there; besides that, my grindstone was very large and heavy. This machine cost me a full week’s work to bring it to perfection.

April 28, 29. — These two whole days I took up in grinding my tools, my machine for turning my grindstone performing very well. [Chapter V, "Builds a House — A Journal," pp. 59-60]

Commentary: The Resilient Amateur

Jean-Jacques Rousseau admired Robinson Crusoe because he was a versatile amateur — practitioner of many trades, though master of none. Having learned how to produce usable barley and rice seeds (and demonstrating the patience necessary to turn a few seeds into enough to sow a field in four years), Crusoe here jury-rigs the grindstone in order to sharpen his tools, particularly the hatchers that are so useful in clearing jungle trails. The only objection might make of the fidelity of Paget's lithograph is that the apparatus looks far too professional. Paget here exemplifies Crusoe's pragmatism, but exaggerates the quality of his devices and solutions.

Related Material

Relevant Illustration from the Cassell Edition (1863-64)

Above: The earlier Cassell's version of Crusoe'smaking baskets, a handicraft that leads him to devising a new means of building walls which the colonists on his island later adopt, Crusoemaking baskets. [Click on the image toenlarge 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 27 April 2018