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The Jacobite Club pursued by the guard
George Cruikshank
May 1842
Steel-engraving
12.9 cm high by 10.3 cm wide, framed
Ninth illustration for the volume edition of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter: A Tale, Chapter 18, facing page 108 (initial plate for the May 1842 number in Ainsworth's Magazine).
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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It was a beautifully bright night—the moon being at the full, and the sky filled with fleecy clouds. On the left, lay ridges of pointed-roofed houses, covered with the warm-looking and mellow-tinted tile, so preferable to the cold blue slate—broken with stacks of chimneys of every size and form—dormer windows, gables, overhanging stories and other picturesque and fantastic projections; and the view being terminated, at some quarter of a mile's distance, by the tall towers and part of the roof of Westminster Abbey. . . . .
"Be composed, father," rejoined Firebras, sternly. "You ought to be equal to the circumstances in which you may be placed. Ha!"
The latter exclamation was occasioned by a joyous shout, announcing that their friends had succeeded in opening the door; and the next moment, the good news was confirmed by Sir Bulkeley Price, who clambered over the roof to acquaint them with it. On hearing this, the party instantly beat a retreat; and their flight was accelerated by the officer and the tall grenadier, who at that moment sprung out of the window. Even Sir Norfolk was urged to a little more expedition than usual; and two or three of his mighty strides brought him to the top of the roof. Cordwell Firebras would not have been much behind him, if Father Verselyn had not caught hold of his coat tails to help him up the ascent, which he felt wholly unable to accomplish without assistance.
By this time, the officer was well nigh upon them; and, finding his summons to surrender wholly disregarded, he made a pass at the priest, which took effect in the fleshy part of his leg, restoring him at once to more than his former agility. Uttering a loud yell, and clapping his hand to the wounded limb to staunch the blood, Father Verselyn bounded over the roof and made to the door, through which the landlord and Mr. Travers had already disappeared, and through which Mr. Cripps was now darting.
Between the two roofs lay a small flat space, used by its former proprietor as a place to dry clothes on, as was evident from the four tall posts at the corners. On this place Firebras and Sir Norfolk came to a stand, resolved to dispute the passage with their pursuers. Sword in hand, and calling to them to surrender, the foremost officer dashed down the roof. But his precipitation placed him at the mercy of Firebras; for his foot slipping, the latter struck his sword from his grasp. Sir Norfolk, in the interim, had encountered another foeman with equal success. This was the tall grenadier, who as he descended made a thrust at the baronet with his halbert, which the latter very adroitly parried, and lunging in return, disabled his adversary by a wound in the arm. At the same moment, too, the tiles gave way under the weight of the grenadier, and he sunk above the knees in the roof.
Other foes were now at hand. The second officer, carrying a lantern in one hand, and a drawn sword in the other, appeared on the roof; while the tall caps and bayonets of the rest of the grenadiers were seen above it. Though Sir Norfolk, whose blood was up, would have willingly awaited the advance of these new opponents, he yielded to the entreaties of Firebras, and followed him through the door, which was instantly secured behind them by a couple of strong bolts. [Chapter XVIII, "The Jacobite Club Surprised by the Guard — The Flight and Pursuit — Mr. Cripps's Treachery — His Reflections," pp. 110-111]
The dozen Grenadiers — whom Sir Norfolk Salusbury denigrates as the "trifurciferous myrmidons of the Hanoverion usurper" (109) — nearly catch up with and arrest the club members, but, despite Cripps' subtle attempts to halt their progress, the Jacobites escape. For the sake of economy and balance, Cruikshank describes only five of the twelve pursuers. In this and the previous illustrations as watercolours in Joseph Grego's Cruikshank's Water Colours (1903), undoubtedly to distinguish him by both figure and political affiliation, Cruikshank has dressed Crew in a blue surcoat, suggestive not merely of his youth but also of his Whiggish and Hanoverian loyalties, whereas Sir Norfolk Salusbury, the foremost of the plotters, wears Tory Red. (Since the escape scene as a watercolour is numbered "10" at head sheet, Cruikshank must have counted one of the three wood-engraved portraits among the first nine for the novel.)
The looming presence of the twin square Gothic towers of Westminster Abbey forms the backdrop for the escape by members of the Jacobite Club. The etching first appeared in the May 1842 issue of Ainsworth's Magazine (vol. 1, no. 5), and subsequently in volume 2 of the October 1842 triple-decker, page 35. Accompanying Book II, Chapter 11, the illustration shows soldiers pursuing members of the clandestine Jacobite Club over the rooftops. Cordwell Firebras and Sir Norfolk are making a stand to defend themselves, while the other conspirators attempt to escape through a window to the right as householders from buildings nearby observe the unfolding action through the windows beyond. Cruikshank's dark plate lacks the concentration and energy of one of his final plates for Dickens's Oliver Twist in which housebreaker Bill Sikes makes a desperate attempt to escape from the police in The Last Chance (February 1839). The 1839 illustration lacks Cruikshank's penchant for comedy (seen here in the officer's having fallen through the tiles), but is vastly superior as pure melodrama. Although Cruikshank has borrowed the essentials of the composition (the curious onlookers in the background and the foregrounded escape from a roof-top) from the earlier illustration, the number of figures involved and the night-time setting in the Ainsworth illustration result in a lack of clarity which only the reader's resorting to the text can resolve.
Ainsworth, William Harrison. The Miser's Daughter: A Tale. With 20 illustrations by George Cruikshank. First published in 3 volumes by Cunningham and Mortimer, London, 1842. London, Glasgow, and New York: George Routledge, 1892.
Grego, Joseph (intro). Cruikshank's Water
Colours. [27
Vann, J. Don. "The Miser's Daughter in Ainsworth's Magazine January-October 1842." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1988. Pp. 22-23.
Last modified 20 June 2018