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Death of Black Bess
Sir John Gilbert, R. A.
1878
Wood-engraving
5 ⅞ by 4 inches (15 cm by 10 cm), vignetted
Final illustration for W. H. Ainsworth's Rookwood: A Romance, facing p. 296 (1882 edition).
In one volume, with illustrations by Sir John Gilbert. London: George Routledge and Sons, Broadway, Ludgate Hill; New York: 416 Broome Street, 1878.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
He answered, and then fell. With gasps and glazing eyes he lay, And reeking limbs immovable, — His first, and last career was done. — Byron, Mazeppa (1819).
"And art thou gone, Bess?" cried he, in a voice of agony, lifting up his courser's head, and kissing her lips, covered with blood-flecked foam. "Gone, gone! and I have killed the best steed that was ever crossed! And for what?" added Dick, beating his brow with his clenched hand — "for what? for what?"
At this moment the deep bell of the Minster clock tolled out the hour of six.
"I am answered," gasped Dick; "it was to hear those strokes."
Turpin was roused from the state of stupefaction into which he had fallen by a smart slap on the shoulder. Recalled to himself by the blow, he started at once to his feet, while his hands sought his pistols: but he was spared the necessity of using them, by discovering in the intruder the bearded visage of the gipsy Balthazar. The patrico was habited in mendicant weeds, and sustained a large wallet upon his shoulders.
"So it's all over with the best mare in England, I see," said Balthazar; "I can guess how it has happened — you are pursued?"
"I am," said Dick, roughly.
"Your pursuers are at hand?"
"Within a few hundred yards."
"Then, why stay here? Fly while you can."
"Never — never," cried Turpin; "I'll fight it out here by Bess's side. Poor lass! I've killed her but she has done it — ha, ha! — we have won — what?" And his utterance was again choked.
"Hark! I hear the tramp of horse, and shouts," cried the patrico. "Take this wallet. You will find a change of dress within it. Dart into that thick copse — save yourself."
"But Bess — I cannot leave her," exclaimed Dick, with an agonizing look at his horse.
"And what did Bess die for, but to save you?" rejoined the patrico.
"True, true," said Dick; "but take care of her, don't let those dogs of hell meddle with her carcase."
"Away," cried the patrico, "leave Bess to me."
Possessing himself of the wallet, Dick disappeared in the adjoining copse. — Book IV, "The Ride to York," Chapter 12, "Cawood Ferry," p. 296-297 [1882 edition].
YORK, FOUR DAYS! — Stage Coach begins on Friday, the 18th of April, 1706.All that are desirous to pass from London to York, or from York to London, or any other place on that road, let them repair to the Black Swan, in Holborn, in London, or to the Black Swan, in Coney Street, in York. At both which places they may be received in a Stage Coach, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the journey in four days — if God permits! — and sets forth at five in the morning. And returns from York to Stamford in two days, and from Stamford, by Huntingdon, in two days more. And the like stages in their return. Allowing each passenger fourteen pounds' weight, and all above, three pence per pound. Performed by Benjamin Kingman, Henry Harrison, and Waller Baynes. — Placard, preserved in the coffee-room, of the Black Swan Inn at York.— Book IV, "The Ride to York," Chapter VII, "The York Stage," p. 278 [1878 edition].
In these chapters leading up to the death of valiant mare, there is more than a little nostalgia for the coaching era, during which the run from London to York took four days, for coincidentally the novel in its illustrated form was published during the same year that saw the first great boom in English railway construction, 1836, initiating a decade of "railway mania." In the serialised Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, written shortly after Rookwood, Charles Dickens recalls a world only just vanishing, the largely rural England of the stagecoach and toll-road, about to be transformed by the "Iron Horse" and the Industrial Revolution. When Ainsworth wrote this prose paean to eighteenth-century's England's greatest horseman, regular rail service between York and the capital was still five years away; nevertheless, in 1834 it must have been apparent to everybody in England that rail travel would shortly connect all the major cities of the United Kingdom. In the decade preceding Ainsworth's writing Rookwood railway pioneer George Stephenson was successful in establishing regular freight service, and, in 1825, completed the Stockton to Darlington Railway to move coal in quantity. By 15 September 1830 Stephenson had inaugurated the first passenger railway service to the industrial towns of Manchester and Liverpool with a new locomotive designed by his son, Robert. Called "The Rocket," this new design, even pulling carriages on the Manchester-Liverpool run, managed the then-astounding top speed of thirty miles per hour, in contrast to the 20-mile-per-hour pace that Dick Turpin and Black Bess set from Kilburn to Edmonton. The speed of technological development was so rapid that, by 1833, "The Rocket" was already obsolete, and had to have its engine redesigned. The death of the gallant mare, Black Bess, therefore marks the end of "The Romance of the Road," and begins a new chapter in English literature.
In the Cruikshank copper engraving, Death of Black Bess (1836), the spire of a York church (barely evident, in contradiction of the textual description of "towers and pinnacles") reveals Dick Turpin's destination as at least a mile away. In the Cruikshank composition, Dick Turpin stands, immobilized and grief-stricken, in the middle of the road; more fittingly, in the Gilbert wood-engraving the bareheaded rider kneels beside his dead companion, more to him than a mere beast of burden, but rather a fallen champion. The horse's shadow (left) reveals that it is now broad day (the Minster of York has just struck the hour of six), and therefore that valiant Black Bess has delivered her rider to his destination in under twelve hours, as opposed to the four days advertised by the 1706 poster for the York-to-London coach service.
Compare Sir John Gilbert's handling of this tragic scene of parting in Death of Black Bess, in which the inconsolable Dick Turpin, hat and crop at his feet, kneels in homage at the head of his dead mount, now at peace, seemingly asleep. Cruikshank had chosen an earlier moment in the chapter, when Bess has just fallen. Gilbert has chosen a later moment, when Balthazar, Patrico of the Gypsies, disguised as a peddler, has roused the mourner from his stupefaction; even as the old man attempts to console him, Dick raises his hand in farewell. The distant roofs of cottages and the nearby fence suggest that Bess had been able to deliver her rider to the suburbs of York. Hearing the shouting of the party of pursuers and the tramp of horses, Dick with difficulty will shortly tear himself away from Bess's side, heeding Balthazar's upbraiding in the rhetorical question, "And what did Bess die for, but to save you?" (296, facing the Gilbert illustration in the 1882 edition, and just the page following the illustration in the 1878 edition). Gilbert's final illustration, again, a closeup, seems more effective in communicating the highwayman's severe grief, and yet heightens the suspense as the reader wonders whether Dick will have the emotional control necessary to leave his beloved companion to escape Coates, Paterson, and Major Mowbray, none of whom is evident in either illustration. By the close of the chapter, the valiant highwayman is still at large, for Bess's final effort fording the River Ouse has robbed them of their prey. And, since this is Gilbert's final illustration, the picture implies that, for the artist at least, the best part of the story is over.
Left: Sir John Gilbert's first plate in the sequence, Hornsey Gate. Centre: Gilbert's depiction of Turpin's passage through the town of Edmonton, Turpin leaping the cart. Right: Gilbert's third plate in the sequence, The Gibbet — Turpin's confronting Barbara Lovel's dead sons. [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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Last modified 26 February 2017
Last updated 4 August 2026