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Robinson Crusoe rescues Friday
Phiz
1864
Steel-engraving
14 cm high by 8.2 cm wide, frontispiece, vignetted
Frontispiece for Violume One of Daniel Defoe's Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, facing title-page.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
The poor savage who fled, but had stopped, though he saw both his enemies fallen and killed, as he thought, yet was so frightened with the fire and noise of my piece that he stood stock still, and neither came forward nor went backward, though he seemed rather inclined still to fly than to come on. I hallooed again to him, and made signs to come forward, which he easily understood, and came a little way; then stopped again, and then a little farther, and stopped again; and I could then perceive that he stood trembling, as if he had been taken prisoner, and had just been to be killed, as his two enemies were. I beckoned to him again to come to me, and gave him all the signs of encouragement that I could think of; and he came nearer and nearer, kneeling down every ten or twelve steps, in token of acknowledgment for saving his life. I smiled at him, and looked pleasantly, and beckoned to him to come still nearer; at length he came close to me; and then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head; this, it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave for ever. I took him up and made much of him, and encouraged him all I could. But there was more work to do yet; for I perceived the savage whom I had knocked down was not killed, but stunned with the blow, and began to come to himself: so I pointed to him, and showed him the savage, that he was not dead; upon this he spoke some words to me, and though I could not understand them, yet I thought they were pleasant to hear; for they were the first sound of a man's voice that I had heard, my own excepted, for above twenty-five years. [Chapter XIV, "A Dream Realised," p. 203]
In this frontispiece, which juxtaposes the human drama and tranquil natural backdrop, Phiz creates intense suspense that only reading the text 200 pages will resolve. So absorbed is Phiz's Crusoe to allay the fears of the naked and bound supplicant that he has turned his back on the fierce-looking aboriginal warrior (clearly not a Negro) who is clutching a tomahawk. The archer whom Crusoe has shot lies just to the right rear, even though this corpse should be at a considerable distance from Friday and the colonist. Perhaps Crusoe is thus transfixed in Phiz's keynote illustration because Crusoe, for the first time in decades, has just heard another human voice. Phiz is apparently responding here to George Cruikshank's frontispiece for the first volume of the 1831 John Major edition of the novel.
Although Phiz has veered away from so many of the island scenes that gripped the imaginations of previous illustrators, he has recognized the central importance of the first meeting of Friday and Crusoe by making it the subject of his frontispiece. He acknowledges the influences of such illustrators as Stothard (1790) and Cruikshank (1831) by emphasizing the beauty of the natural setting, but puts his own stamp on the scene by including the fierce, brooding aboriginal warrior attempting to rise, immediately behind Friday's benign rescuer. Friday, failing to apprehend the danger, gazes up at his deliverer with a mixture of wonder and adoration; however, his gesture suggests that he is trying to formulate a question. The reader will have to make his or her way through over two hundred pages of text to explore the inner meaning of the scene with its multiple tensions: age versus youth, clothed versus naked, armed versus defenceless, standing versus on his knees, the natural environment versus natural elements manufactured into weapons and clothing. Whether Crusoe will apprehend the danger posed by his fallen adversary will only be revealed on page 203, so that the proleptic reading will remain incomplete for hours or even days.
Left: Stothard's 1790 realisation of the rescue scene, an illustration of which Cruikshank was probably aware, Robinson Crusoe first sees and rescues his man Friday (copper-plate engraving, [Chapter XIV, "A Dream Realised"). Centre: Cruikshank's elegant engraved frontispiece of the same moment, with a Christ-like Crusoe, Crusoe having just rescued Friday (1831). Right: Realistic but emotionally muted realisation of the same scene, Crusoe and Friday (1863-64). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
De Foe, Daniel. Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, including A Memoir of the Author, and an Essay on his Writings. Illustrated by Phiz. London & New York: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1864.
Lester, Valerie Browne. Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004.
Last modified 17 February 2018