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The two Englishmen retreating with their wives and children
Artist: Thomas Stothard
Engraver: C. Heath
1790
Copper-engraving
11 cm high by 8.2 cm wide
Source: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, facing page 248.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Stothard initially provided fifteen plates in Harrison’s 1782 edition, then a more comprehensive set for John Stockdale’s 1790 edition. Stothard added five plates to the second group of illustrations for this edition, emphasizing Crusoe as a community and military leader of the joint English-Spanish colonisation of the Caribbean island.
When the two poor frightened men had secured their wives and goods, they sent the other slave they had of the three who came with the women, and who was at their place by accident, away to the Spaniards with all speed, to give them the alarm, and desire speedy help, and, in the meantime, they took their arms and what ammunition they had, and retreated towards the place in the wood where their wives were sent; keeping at a distance, yet so that they might see, if possible, which way the savages took.
They had not gone far but that from a rising ground they could see the little army of their enemies come on directly to their habitation, and, in a moment more, could see all their huts and household stuff flaming up together, to their great grief and mortification; for this was a great loss to them, irretrievable, indeed, for some time. They kept their station for a while, till they found the savages, like wild beasts, spread themselves all over the place, rummaging every way, and every place they could think of, in search of prey; and in particular for the people, of whom now it plainly appeared they had intelligence.
The two Englishmen seeing this, thinking themselves not secure where they stood, because it was likely some of the wild people might come that way, and they might come too many together, thought it proper to make another retreat about half a mile farther; believing, as it afterwards happened, that the further they strolled, the fewer would be together.
Their next halt was at the entrance into a very thick-grown part of the woods, and where an old trunk of a tree stood, which was hollow and very large; and in this tree they both took their standing, resolving to see there what might offer.
They had not stood there long before two of the savages appeared running directly that way, as if they had already had notice where they stood, and were coming up to attack them; and a little way farther they espied three more coming after them, and five more beyond them, all coming the same way; besides which, they saw seven or eight more at a distance, running another way; for in a word, they ran every way, like sportsmen beating for their game.
The poor men were now in great perplexity whether they should stand and keep their posture or fly; but after a very short debate with themselves, they considered that if the savages ranged the country thus before help came, they might perhaps find their retreat in the woods, and then all would be lost; so they resolved to stand them there, and if they were too many to deal with, then they would get up to the top of the tree, from whence they doubted not to defend themselves, fire excepted, as long as their ammunition lasted, though all the savages that were landed, which was near fifty, were to attack them. [Chapter IV, "Renewed Invasion of Savages," pp. 247-248]
Although many readers would have been more engaged by Defoe's descriptions of the European settlers' battles with the aboriginal peoples — whom he describes as "cannibals," "wild people," and "savages" — Stothard is often more interested in domestic and family scenes, and in the natural backdrop and vegetation that frames the Giottoesque figures. In particular, the artist enhances the beauty of the female figures (who, of course, must also be aboriginals, but who look here more like Greek Caryatids) by placing them in classical dress, complemented by the Renaissance Italian clothing of the young men. However, all is not tranquil in the green moment; Stothard communicates the party's apprehension that the pursuing natives may overtake them, encumbered as they are by the young children, by having the two armed colonists look back to the left, the direction from which the pursuers will approach. We cannot see their expressions, and therefore must embue their faces with looks betokening caution and anxiety.
"Stothard learned to draw not from life studies, but from copying antique sculpture and the works of Raphael, and he urged all young artists to do the same" (Blewett, p. 32). This statuesque composition, foregrounding the four adults in varied poses, bears a marked resemblance in its figures and overall composition to Raphael's tapestry designs for the Stanze della Segnatura and Stanze di Raffaello in the Vatican apartments of the Pope.
A favourite theme of Renaissance Italian painters, "The Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt" (based an account in The Gospel of St. Matthew, 2:13-23), had provided painters an opportunity to develop natural backdrops of mountain and desert that were the beginning of the genre of landscape painting. Stothard, a student of Raphael's neoclassical torsos, may have been familiar with Giotto di Bondone's Flight into Egypt, a fresco mural in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (early 14th c.) and Tuscan artist Gentile da Fabriano's similarly titled oil painting of the early 15th c. , in both of which the pursuing henchmen of King Herod are merely understood rather than depicted, as in The Massacre of the Innocents. The group in Stothard's illustration move forward, left to right, in a dignified silence, aware that they are being pursued, but not showing evidence of panic or undue haste. Compare Stothard's treatment of the theme to that of Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld in Flight into Egypt (mid-nineteenth century). Thus, Stothard implies that colonizing the South American island in the service of civilisation and empire (as well as from such self-serving motives as the accumulation of personal wealth) is a divine mission for the young English plantation-owners.
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Written by Himself. Illustrated by Thomas Stothard; engraving by C. Heath. London: Bliss, Sands, and Foster, 1820.
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner. (1831). Illustrated by George Cruikshank. Major's Edition. London: Chatto & Windus, 1890.
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.
14 February 2018