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Introduction

In 1831, twenty-six-year-old William Harrison Ainsworth, an amateur dramatist and practising attorney, transformed Cuckfield Place, Sussex, owned by his friend William Sergison, into gloomy Rookwood Place for his first mature novel after the minor gothic work Sir John Chiverton (1826). Published in three volumes by Richard Bentley in April, 1834, with a full program of illustration by George Cruikshank added in the fourth edition, Rookwood. A Romance went through five large editions in only three years, making Ainsworth's name and fortune, and leading directly to his having sufficient literary gravitas to assume the post of editor of Bentley's Miscellany (1837) when his protegé, twenty-five-year-old Charles Dickens, quarrelling over his contract with the publisher, resigned the post in 1838.

In the opening chapters, the reader encounters the initial problem posed by the recent death of Sir Piers Rookwood, for it has left in doubt who will succeed him as lord of the manor: Ranulph (his son by Lady Rookwood) or Luke (his apparently illegitimate son, to whose mother, Susan Bradley, Sir Piers was secretly married prior to his marriage to Lady Rookwood). Since Luke is the elder, if his legitimacy can be established, he will inherit the estate and marry Eleanor Mowbray, who stands to inherit estates from Sir Reginald Rookwood, Sir Piers' father. In order to court Eleanor, Luke abandons Sybil Lovel, a gypsy girl who was his fiancée. The crazed sexton Peter Bradley (in fact, Alan Rookwood, Sir Reginald's wronged brother in disguise) and the legendary highwayman Dick Turpin offer to assist Luke, who is poisoned when he kisses a strand of Sybil's hair sent him by her grandmother, Barbara Lovel, queen of the gypsies. Thus, Ranulph wins Eleanor and his father's estate. Finally, the curse upon the house of Rookwood is lifted when the widow, Lady Rookwood, discovers the very dagger with which the founder of the family murdered his wife.

Into the convoluted inheritance plot involving sibling rivalry, disguise, and deception Ainsworth injects the historical figure of "Jack Palmer," the Yorkshire alias for the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin (1705 – 1739), who becomes embroiled in the Rookwood family plot but whose allegiances are never clear. Although his ride has little to do with the main inheritance plot, Turpin determines to give himself a plausible alibi by riding his remarkable mare, Black Bess, the 200 miles from London to York in a single night — a feat entirely of Ainsworth's own making. The historical Turpin, as Ainsworth notes in his conclusion, was hanged for horse thievery, one of some two hundred capital offences in eighteenth-century England. Like gaol-breaker Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin the highwayman was venerated as a hero of the people, his feats real and legendary, exploits recorded by Richard Bayes in The Genuine History of the Life of Richard Turpin (1739). London water-colourist and engraver Edward Hull (1823-1906) capitalised on the popularity of Ainsworth's story, publishing six prints of notable events in Turpin's career. Those engravings and Ainsworth's novel were in turn undoubtedly the impetus for George Dibdin-Pitt's recreating Turpin's notable exploits in an 1845 melodrama staged at The City of London Theatre, and for Marie Tussaud to include a wax sculpture of Turpin in her public exhibition of historical personages.

Extensive Passage Illustrated

Rookwood Place was a fine, old, irregular pile, of considerable size, presenting a rich, picturesque outline, with its innumerable gable-ends, its fantastical coigns, and tall crest of twisted chimneys. There was no uniformity of style about the building, yet the general effect was pleasing and beautiful. Its very irregularity constituted a charm. Nothing except convenience had been consulted in its construction: additions had from time to time been made to it, but everything dropped into its proper place, and, without apparent effort or design, grew into an ornament, and heightened the beauty of the whole. It was, in short, one of those glorious manorial houses that sometimes unexpectedly greet us in our wanderings, and gladden us like the discovery of a hidden treasure. Some such ancestral hall we have occasionally encountered, in unlooked-for quarters, in our native county of Lancaster, or in its smiling sister shire; and never without feelings of intense delight, rejoicing to behold the freshness of its antiquity, and the greenness of its old age. For, be it observed in passing, a Cheshire or Lancashire hall, time-honored though it be, with its often renovated black and white squares, fancifully filled up with trefoils and quatrefoils, rosettes, and other figures, seems to bear its years so lightly, that its age, so far from detracting from its beauty, only lends it a grace; and the same mansion, to all outward appearance, fresh and perfect as it existed in the days of good Queen Bess, may be seen in admirable preservation in the days of the youthful Victoria. Such is Bramall — such​Moreton, and many another we might instance; the former of these houses​ ​ may, perhaps, be instanced as the best specimen of its class, — and its​ ​ class in our opinion,is​the best — to be met with in Cheshire,​ ​ considered with reference either to the finished decoration of its​ ​ exterior, rich in the chequered colouring we have alluded to, preserved​with a care and neatness almost Dutch, or to the consistent taste​exhibited by its possessor to the restoration and maintenance of all its original and truly national beauty within doors. As an illustration of​old English hospitality​— that real, hearty hospitality for which the​squirearchy of this country was once so famous​— Ah! why have they​ ​ bartered it for other customs less substantially English?​— it may be mentioned, that a road conducted the passenger directly through the great hall of this house, literally "of entertainment," where, if he listed, strong ale, and other refreshments, awaited his acceptance and courted his stay. Well might old King, the Cheshire historian, in the pride of his honest heart, exclaim, "I know divers men, who are but farmers, that in their housekeeping may compare with a lord or baron, in some countries beyond the seas;​— yea, although I named a higher​degree, I were able to justify it.​"We have no such "golden farmers" in​these degenerate days!

The mansion, was originally built by Sir Ranulph de Rookwood — or, as it was then written, Rokewode — the first of the name, a stout Yorkist, who flourished in the reign of Edward IV., and received the fair domain and broad lands upon which the edifice was raised, from his sovereign, in reward for good service; retiring thither in the decline of life, at the close of the Wars of the Roses, to sequestrate himself from scenes of strife, and to consult his spiritual weal in the erection and endowment of the neighboring church. It was of mixed architecture, and combined the peculiarities of each successive era. Retaining some of the sterner features of earlier days, the period ere yet the embattled manor-house peculiar to the reigns of the later Henrys had been merged into the graceful and peaceable hall, the residence of the Rookwoods had early anticipated the gentler characteristics of a later day, though it could boast little of that exuberance of external ornament, luxuriance of design, and prodigality of beauty, which, under the sway of the Virgin Queen, distinguished the residence of the wealthier English landowner; and rendered the hall of Elizabeth, properly so called, the pride and boast of our domestic architecture.

The site selected by Sir Ranulph for his habitation had been already occupied by a vast fabric of oak, which he in part removed, though some vestiges might still be traced of that ancient pile. A massive edifice succeeded, with gate and tower, court and moat complete; substantial enough, one would have thought, to have endured for centuries. But even this ponderous structure grew into disuse, and Sir Ranulph's successors, remodelling, repairing, almost rebuilding the whole mansion, in the end so metamorphosed its aspect, that at last little of its original and distinctive character remained. Still, as we said before, it was a fine old house, though some changes had taken place for the worse, which could not be readily pardoned by the eye of taste: as, for instance, the deep embayed windows had dwindled into modernized casements, of lighter construction; the wide porch, with its flight of steps leading to the great hall of entrance, had yielded to a narrow door; and the broad quadrangular court was succeeded by a gravel drive. Yet, despite all these changes, the house of the Rookwoods, for an old house — and, after all, what is like an old house? — was no undesirable or uncongenial abode for any worshipful country gentleman "who had a great estate."

The hall was situated near the base of a gently declining hill, terminating a noble avenue of limes, and partially embosomed in an immemorial wood of the same timber, which had given its name to the family that dwelt amongst its rook-haunted shades. Descending the avenue, at the point of access afforded by a road that wound down the hill-side, towards a village distant about half a mile, as you advanced, the eye was first arrested by a singular octagonal turret of brick, of more recent construction than the house; and in all probability occupying the place where the gateway stood of yore. This tower rose to a height corresponding with the roof of the mansion; and was embellished on the side facing the house with a flamingly gilt dial, peering, like an impudent observer, at all that passed within doors. Two apartments, which it contained, were appropriated to the house-porter. Despoiled of its martial honors, the gateway still displayed the achievements of the family — the rook and the fatal branch — carved in granite, which had resisted the storms of two centuries, though stained green with moss, and mapped over with lichens. To the left, overgrown with ivy, and peeping from out a tuft of trees, appeared the hoary summit of a dovecot, indicating the near neighborhood of an ancient barn, contemporary with the earliest dwelling-house, and of a little world of offices and outbuildings buried in the thickness of the foliage. To the right was the garden — the pleasaunce of the place — formal, precise, old-fashioned, artificial, yet exquisite! — for commend us to the bygone, beautiful English garden — really a garden — not that mixture of park, meadow, and wilderness[3], brought up to one's very windows — which, since the days of the innovators, Kent, and his "bold associates," Capability Brown and Co., has obtained so largely — this was a garden! There might be seen the stately terraces, such as Watteau, and our own Wilson, in his earlier works, painted — the trim alleys exhibiting all the triumphs of topiarian art. . . . — Book I, "The Wedding Ring," Chapter VI, "The Hall," Vol. 1, p. 127-135 .

Commentary on Cruikshank's Title-page Vignette

Although George Cruikshank was at his best in terms of caricature and physical humour in illustrating Dickens's Sketches by Boz and The Adventures of Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress, he was certainly more prolific in his illustrations for Ainworth's novels, including his considerable body of work in Bentley's Miscellany and Ainsworth's Magazine. Although Cruikshank later proved fractious with both Dickens and Ainsworth, asserting that he was largely responsible for the creative vision, plots, and characters of the novels which he illustrated, he provided atmospheric copper engravings that effectively complemented Ainsworth's sometimes improbable and somewhat formulaic "romances."

"De gustibus notwithstanding, few will dispute the excellence of the plates for Rookwood or The Tower of London and Cruikshank himself believed that his work for Ainsworth included many of his finest designs" (Muir, 46). The title-page vignette for Rookwood is case in point, as it introduces the reader to the story's chief setting as if it is a framed portrait of a manse rather than a mere historical backdrop. As Percy Muir notes, "This unfortunate egotism on the part of the artist cannot affect the enormous advance in both technique and artistic perception shown in his illustration of the Ainsworth novels" (44-45). The best of these is his etching of the highwayman Dick Turpin's heroic ride to York, showing the horse and rider clearing a toll-booth gate. Although the novel first appeared with a frontispiece in 1834, only from the 1836 (fourth) edition onward did it feature Cruikshank's plates.

The large title-page vignette, with Rookwood Place framed by the boughs of ancient trees, does not merely establish the story's chief physical setting, a Yorkshire country-house in the 1730s; rather, with the framing boughs it prepares the reader for the family curse: whenever a branch falls from one of the estate's lime-trees, a death in the Rookwood family will shortly occur. Such an incident almost immediately occurs, after which the owner of the manor, Sir Piers Rookwood, dies suddenly, leaving his wife and two sons, one illegitimate and one not, to quarrel over the inheritance.

Related Materials

• The illustrations of Sir John Gilbert, R. A. for Rookwood, A Romance (1878)
• William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882) — King of the Historical Potboiler: A Brief Biography
• A Chronology of William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882)
• An Introduction to Ainsworth's Rookwood, A Romance (1836)
• An Introduction to Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard. A Romance (1839)

Bibliography

"Ainsworth, William Harrison." http://biography.com

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. A Romance. With 28 illustrations by George Cruikshank. In three volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1839.

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Rookwood. A Romance. With 12 illustrations by George Cruikshank. London: George Routledge, 1882.

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Rookwood. A Romance. With illustrations by Sir John Gilbert. London: George Routledge, 1878.

Carver, Stephen. Ainsworth and Friends: Essays on 19th Century Literature & The Gothic. Accessed 1 November 2016. https://ainsworthandfriends.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/william-harrison-ainsworth-the-life-and-adventures-of-the-lancashire-novelist/

Dickens, Charles. Pilgrim ed. of the Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 5 (1847-1849). Ed. Graham Storey and Katherine Tillotson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1981.

Golden, Catherine J. "Ainsworth, William Harrison (1805-1882." Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, ed. Sally Mitchell. New York and London: Garland, 1988. Page 14.

Kelly, Patrick. "William Harrison Ainsworth." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 21, "Victorian Novelists Before 1885," ed. Ira Bruce Nadel and William E. Fredeman. Detroit: Gale Research, 1983. Pp. 3-9.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1978.

Sutherland, John. "Rookwood" in The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19893. Pp. 544-545.

Worth, George J. William Harrison Ainsworth. New York: Twayne, 1972.

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Last modified 11 January 2017