[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> Guy Fawkes —> W. H. Ainsworth —> Next]
Guy Fawkes and Humphrey Chetham rescuing Father Oldcorne & Viviana Radcliffe from the Pursuivant
George Cruikshank
May 1840
Steel-engraving
12 cm high by 9 cm wide vignetted, facing p. 67
Fourth monthly engraving for William Harrison Ainsworth's Guy Fawkes, fifth number.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Serialised in Bentley's Miscellany, vols. 7-10, in twenty-three monthly parts.
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.]
The pursuivant was taken so completely unawares by the sudden appearance of Guy Fawkes and his companions, that he made no attempt at resistance. Nor were his attendants less confounded. Before they recovered from their surprise, Humphrey Chetham seized Viviana in his arms, and darting through the panel, called to the priest to follow him. Father Oldcorne was about to comply, when one of the soldiers, grasping the surcingle at his waist, dragged him forcibly backwards. The next moment, however, he was set free by Guy Fawkes, who, felling the man to the ground, and interposing himself between the priest and the other soldier, enabled the former to make good his retreat. This done, he planted himself in front of the panel, and with a petronel in each hand, menaced his opponents. [Book One, "The Plot," Chapter V, "Chat Moss," page 31 — the illustration is positioned in Chapter X, "The Fate of the Pursuivant," facing p. 67]
Ainsworth here stitches the Catholic persecution plot that opened the novel to romantic complications that involve Viviana Radcliffe. The Pursuivant, who had conducted the execution of the priests in Manchester and had led the search for the prophetess, now attempts to apprehend another fugitive priest, Father Oldcorne. The story's chief historical characters, the ex-soldier Guy Fawkes and the young Manchester merchant, Humphrey Chetham, now rescue the priest and in the process first encounter the novel’s beautiful heroine, Viviana. Ainsworth and Cruikshank have taken plot devices, such as hidden passages, sliding panels, and hairbreadth escapes, from the Gothic Romances of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe.
In Cruikshank's illustration of the rescue, Viviana kneels in submission to the authority of the Pursuivant, who seems thoroughly cowed by the pistol-pointing Fawkes, readily identifiable by his feathered hat. To create a more compact and tense scene, Cruikshank has Fawkes point one long-barrelled pistol directly in the commander's face, but point the other down, taking the eye back to the hidden passage, in which we see the figure of Humphrey Chetham. His stylish clothes and furbelow collar, as well as his trim Van Dyke beard, effectively establish his affluence. Cruikshank's overall design effectively realizes the suspenseful moment, although he has not included the man whom Fawkes has knocked to the ground at the opening of Chapter V. The sudden appearance of Fawkes and his companion actually occurs in the last paragraph of Chapter IV, "The Search," which marked the curtain of the February and March instalments. By the time that the reader of the volume edition encounters the illustration, Fawkes and his party have already escaped into the night and are about to disembark from a boat on the shore near Ordsall Hall, the residence of the Radcliffes to which the pursuivant has apparently set fire.
Ainsworth, William Harrison. Guy Fawkes, or The Gunpowder Treason: An Historical Romance. With 22 illustrations by George Cruikshank. London: Cunningham & Mortimer, 1841 (first edition). Rpt., London: George Routledge & Sons, n. d.
Vann, J. Don. "Guy Fawkes in Bentley's Miscellany, January 1840-Noevmber 18401." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. P. 20.
Last modified 12 August 2018