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Simon Renard and Winwike the warder on the Roof of the White Tower
George Cruikshank
April 1840
steel-engraving
12.5 cm high by 10.1 cm wide, framed.
Full-page illustration for Book II, Chapter VII, of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Tower of London, facing p. 128.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Springing upon the platform, Renard was about to rush to the battlements, when Winwike offered to lead him to the best point of view. As he followed his conductor towards the southwest angle, Renard cast his eye over the roof. Cannon were placed on the raised platform, while armed men were stationed at twenty paces distant from each other. In the centre of the building stood a tall staff, from which floated the royal banner.
Depositing his caliver against the wall of the turret, Winwike told his companion to look around. Renard obeyed, and a glorious panorama met his gaze. Immediately beneath him lay the fortress, with its chain of flowers — its ramparts — its fortifications — its bridges, and its broad deep moat. Beyond was spread out old and picturesque London, with its numerous steeples, above which rose the massive tower of St. Paul's. A little on the left was old London Bridge, covered with out-houses — the noise of the falling water, and the mills, being distinctly audible where they stood. Nearer, was the river glittering in the sunbeams, and filled with a forest of masts. Renard contemplated this prospect for some time in silent admiration.
"There you behold the Tower of London," said Winwike, pointing downwards.
>"And there I read the history of England," replied Renard. [Chapter III. — "How Simon Renard Ascended to the Roof of the White Tower; And of the Goodly Prospect He Beheld Therefrom," p. 128.]
The wood-engraving that opens Book the Second, "Mary the Queen," in the April 1840 (fourth) instalment is not a depiction of that site in 1553 since, despite the royal standard flying from the roof of the White Tower, Cruikshank has not included either warders or cannons. In other words, this view of the roof of the White Tower is what the artist and the writer saw when inspecting the precincts of the Tower of London in 1840. In the logic of the illustration, Ainsworth is the genial antiquarian and Cruikshank the auditor — in fact, Renard somewhat resembles the illustrator in his facial features. When we encounter an illustration of Winwicke and Renard on the roof in the third chapter, "How Simon Renard Ascended to the Roof of the White Tower; And of the Goodly Prospect He Beheld Therefrom," we find a vista of Renaissance rather than nineteenth-century London. Ainsworth refers to the "massive tower of St. Paul's" and "old London Bridge" (128), both of which Cruikshank has placed in the background to reinforce the historical rather than present-day setting of the plate in Chapter III. The steel-engraving moves in for the closeup, depicting the yeoman warder in a casual pose and the Imperial ambassador at the parapet, beside a cannon and a pile of small-bore cannon-balls on a wooden ramp in one of the turrets. The wood-engraving serves merely as a prosaic headnote. In the steel-engraving Cruikshank moves in for the closeup, depicting the yeoman warder as the commentator and the Imperial ambassador as his auditor at the parapet of one of the crenellated turrets, beside a cannon and a pile of small-bore cannon-balls on a wooden ramp.
Cruikshank makes nothing remarkable of the roof of the White Tower in 1840; he offers us a prosaic architectural study devoid of figures and action. But this same place served as the theatrical backdrop for mystery, suspense, and tragedy in English history, as Ainsworth shows the reader through the dialogue between the English warder and the Spanish ambassador. What they see over the embattlemented parapet of the turret is much more than Cruikshank reveals in the initial wood-engraving. In the 1840 scene, Cruikshank has faintly sketched in a few church spires and the dome of new St. Paul's Cathedral, post-dating the Great Fire of London in 1666. In the picture of the scene from the platform in 1553, Cruikshank reconstructs the panoramic view of Old London, with the churning waters of the Thames running underneath the arches of the former London Bridge, not the crossing which Londoners used after 1827, when architect John Rennie's New London Bridge opened. However, the illustrator's focus is not the old bridge but the foregrounded figures, the affable yeoman of the Tower (a markedly Saxon type), gesturing towards the vista, and the black-clad Spanish ambassador, a decidedly foreign type.
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Last modified 9 October 2017