"Inch by inch upon great rollers." — illustration for Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1891)

Inch by inch upon great rollers

Wal Paget (1863-1935)

half-page lithograph

16 cm high by 11.9 cm wide, irregularly vignetted.

1891

Robinson Crusoe, embedded on page 164; signed "Wal Paget" lower right.

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: Crusoe and Friday work side by side

Upon the whole, as I found by all his discourse a settled affection to me, and that nothing could part him from me, so I found all the foundation of his desire to go to his own country was laid in his ardent affection to the people, and his hopes of my doing them good; a thing which, as I had no notion of myself, so I had not the least thought or intention, or desire of undertaking it. But still I found a strong inclination to attempting my escape, founded on the supposition gathered from the discourse, that there were seventeen bearded men there; and therefore, without any more delay, I went to work with Friday to find out a great tree proper to fell, and make a large periagua, or canoe, to undertake the voyage. There were trees enough in the island to have built a little fleet, not of periaguas or canoes, but even of good, large vessels; but the main thing I looked at was, to get one so near the water that we might launch it when it was made, to avoid the mistake I committed at first. At last Friday pitched upon a tree; for I found he knew much better than I what kind of wood was fittest for it; nor can I tell to this day what wood to call the tree we cut down, except that it was very like the tree we call fustic, or between that and the Nicaragua wood, for it was much of the same colour and smell. Friday wished to burn the hollow or cavity of this tree out, to make it for a boat, but I showed him how to cut it with tools; which, after I had showed him how to use, he did very handily; and in about a month’s hard labour we finished it and made it very handsome; especially when, with our axes, which I showed him how to handle, we cut and hewed the outside into the true shape of a boat. After this, however, it cost us near a fortnight’s time to get her along, as it were inch by inch, upon great rollers into the water; but when she was in, she would have carried twenty men with great ease. [Chapter XVI, "Rescue of the Prisoners from the Cannibals," pp. 162-63]

Commentary: After Crusoe rescues Friday

A constant in the various nineteenth-century programs of illustration for the novel is the scene in which Crusoe decides to intervene in the cannibals' rite by coming to the rescue of one of their intended victims.However, whereas the earlier illustrators such as Thomas Stothardhave focussed on Crusoe's serving as Friday's saviour and preserver as he runs from his captors, Paget explores Crusoe's "educating" Friday to European technology and thinking, including his superior technology and his obsession with building a boat. The boat-building of Man Friday, already wearing breeches in emulation of his master, and Crusoe in the background occurs in the context of a forest of deciduous trees rather than a tropical jungle.

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. This one, however, almost moves towards the reader out of the centre of the page through Paget's use ofd linear perspective.

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