"Upon seeing this boat, Friday stood musing a great while" — illustration for Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1891)

Upon seeing this boat, Friday stood musing a great while (See p. 159), signed "Wal Paget" just below Friday's feet, lower right. The centrally positioned illustration dominates the page, forcing the accompanying text to retreat around it with Crusoe in a niche at the top. One-third of page 161, vignetted: 9.1 cm high by 12.5 cm wide. The running head, "Plans for Leaving the Island" (page 161) seems a little premature since it will be almost forty pages before Crusoe and Friday board ship bound for Europe.

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.]

The Passage Illustrated: The Noble Savage educates the Master

I described to him the country of Europe, particularly England, which I came from; how we lived, how we worshipped God, how we behaved to one another, and how we traded in ships to all parts of the world. I gave him an account of the wreck which I had been on board of, and showed him, as near as I could, the place where she lay; but she was all beaten in pieces before, and gone. I showed him the ruins of our boat, which we lost when we escaped, and which I could not stir with my whole strength then; but was now fallen almost all to pieces. Upon seeing this boat, Friday stood, musing a great while, and said nothing. I asked him what it was he studied upon. At last says he, “Me see such boat like come to place at my nation.” I did not understand him a good while; but at last, when I had examined further into it, I understood by him that a boat, such as that had been, came on shore upon the country where he lived: that is, as he explained it, was driven thither by stress of weather. I presently imagined that some European ship must have been cast away upon their coast, and the boat might get loose and drive ashore; but was so dull that I never once thought of men making their escape from a wreck thither, much less whence they might come: so I only inquired after a description of the boat. [Chapter XV, "Friday's Education," page 159]

Commentary

Although the chapter title has traditionally been "Friday's Education," Friday clarifies the problems that Crusoe has encountered in boat-construction, including the species of tree he has selected. Although most of the nineteenth-century illustrators of The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe have described Crusoe's initial attempts at boat-building, including Wehnert's description of Crusoe felling trees to make planks, only Thomas Stothard had actually described Crusoe's working with Friday on yet another dugout canoe.

In his initial attempts at boat-building, before Friday's arrival, Crusoe had built far too big a vessel too far away from where he would have to launch it, so that he wasted months of patient labour. His second major attempt, which Cruikshank depicts in Crusoe builds a large dugout canoe, proves far more successful because he addresses the problem of location and, with Friday's advice, chooses a more suitable species of tree with which to construct the hollowed-out canoe. Jean-Jacques Rousseau held up the novel and its resilient protagonist as examples of practical knowledge; however, determined though he may be to find a solution, Crusoe remains a complete amateur at every practical problem he attempts to solve through ingenuity, common sense, and trial-and-error. His motto might well be "If it works, it's good," but his patient pragmatism results in his taking years to build a viable craft which proves extremely useful in salvaging cargo from the Spanish wreck shortly before Friday's arrival.

Related Material

Parallel Scenes from Stothard (1790), Cruikshank (1831) and Cassell's (1863)

Left: Stothard's 1790 realisation of the formerly solitary protagonist now working alongside the ultimate "practical human being," the Noble Savage, Friday: Robinson Crusoe and Friday making a boat. (Chapter XVI, "Rescue of the Prisoners from the Cannibals," copper-engraving). Right: The parallel scene from the Cassell's Illustrated edition, Crusoe makes a Boat, in which Crusoe looks a little discouraged. (1863) [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Above: Theparallel scene from Cruikshank's illustrations for the 1831 John Major edition, Crusoe builds a large dugout canoe, before Crusoe received the benefit of Friday's expertise.

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 4 May 2018