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The Miser discovering the loss of the mortgage money
George Cruikshank
April 1842
Steel-engraving
12.2 cm high by 10 cm wide, framed
Initial illustration for the volume edition of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter: A Tale, facing title-page.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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The miser, meanwhile, having obtained access to his chamber, threw his hat upon the bed, passed on, and unlocked the door of the closet. Marching up to the large chest in which he had deposited the bags of gold on the previous night, he sat down upon it, and was for some time lost in deep and painful reflection. He then rose, and taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, applied one of them to the lock of the chest. It would not turn, and imagining he must have made some mistake, he drew it out, and tried another. This however, did not fit at all, and returning to the first, he perceived on examination that it was the right one. On examining it, he found to his surprise and dismay, that the chest was not locked. Well knowing he had not left it in this state, he felt convinced that something was wrong, and it was long before he could prevail upon himself to raise the lid. When he did so, he fell back with a cry of anguish and despair. The chest was empty!
For some minutes, he remained as if transfixed, with his hands stretched out, his mouth wide open, his eyes almost starting from their sockets, and fixed upon the void where his treasure should have been. At length he shrieked, in accents of despair — "I have been robbed — robbed of my gold robbed — robbed! It is a wicked thing a cruel thing to rob me. Others do not love gold as I love it. I love it better than wife, child, mistress — better than life itself. Would that they had killed me rather than take my gold. Oh! those fair shining pieces, so broad, so bright, so beautiful! what can have become of them?" [Chapter XV, "Mrs. Clinton's Alarm—The Miser's Unexpected Return—The Disappearance of the Mortgage Money—The Effrontery of Philip Frewin and Diggs," page 87]
Anthony Burton, who dismisses most of the illustrations for the serialisation of The Miser's Daughter: A Tale as rushed and incomplete, singles out for particular praise this much reproduced steel engraving. According to Burton, it demonstrates Cruikshank's mastery of pose, expression, emotion, and even lighting:
The miser stands "transfixed, with his hands stretched out, his mouth wide open, his eyes almost starting from their sockets." The gestures could easily be made grotesque. But Cruikshank throws the miser into a pose in which he appears to be rooted to the ground by conflicting impulses. . . . . His right leg seems to carry him away from his coffer, but his left arm and tilted head reveal a contrary movement. His head seems to have sunk on his chest, suggesting that he is collapsing in despair; or else his shoulders are hunching up round his ears as horror stiffens him. The ambiguous posture conveys an unresolved tension. His horror and despair are thrown into relief by the dull emptiness of his surroundings. Cruikshank never surpassed the mastery of tonal gradation that shows here. Light enters from the window on the miser's right and has to force its way through the dusky room before it can fall on his pallid cheek and brow. Behind him, through the door, we see receding rooms also filled with a strange dusty light that suggests emptiness and disuse. The gaping apertures of window and door mock at the gaping emptiness of the miser's money-chest. [Burton, p. 113]
In addition to posing the miser's forehead and hands melodramatically to brace him from an anticipated fall, Cruikshank brings several key objects out of the darkness by highlighting them selectively — in particular, the miser's carefully guarded keys and the nails in the shoes hanging on the wall, which reflect the light coming into the gloom from the window at left. With his love of melodramatic poses and heightened emotional confrontations, Cruikshank found this study in shock and disbelief a suitable way of introducing the volume edition of the novel, even though the full implication of the miser Scarve's discovery of the theft only becomes apparent to the volume reader after fourteen chapters later. In contrast, the serial reader discovered the plate’s meaning immediately after starting the fourth (April 1842) instalment in Ainsworth's Magazine.
Ainsworth, William Harrison. The Miser's Daughter: A Tale. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. First published in 3 volumes by Cunningham and Mortimer, London, 1842. London, Glasgow, and New York: George Routledge, 1892.
Burton, Anthony. "Cruikshank as an Illustrator of Fiction." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation, ed. Robert L. Patten. Princeton, NJ: Princeton U. P., 1974, rpt. 1992. Pp. 93-128.
Cruikshank, George. The Miser's Daughter: A Tale. First published in 3 volumes by Cunningham and Mortimer, London, 1842. London, Glasgow, and New York: George Routledge, 1892.
Patten, Robert L. George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art, vol. 2: 1835-1878.Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1992.
Vogler, Richard A. Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. Dover Pictorial Archive Series. New York: Dover, 1979.
Worth, George. William Harrison Ainsworth.New York: Twayne, 1972.
Last modified 9 June 2018
