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The Hornsey Gate
George Cruikshank
1836
Etching on copper
10.3 x 8 cm vignetted
Eighth illustration for Rookwood: A Romance.
Fourth Edition, complete in one volume, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. London: William Macrone and Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1836.
“Stop thief! stop thief! a highwayman! Not one of them was mute; And all and each that passed that way Did join in the pursuit.” John Gilpin.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Dick Turpin and Tom King were nearly apprehended at the Kilburn inn by the Rookwood lackey, Titus Tyrconnel, and the family attorney Coates, aided by the Chief Constable for Westminster, Patterson. In the ensuing fray, in attempting to free Tom from Patterson's grasp, Turpin has inadvertently killed his friend, who has been betrayed by his doxy, Susan, to the minions of the law. Since Jerry and the Magus, his other companions, have effected their escape, Turpin now has only himself to save. Thus, turning his back on "the great Babel" of London, Turpin turns Black Bess's head towards Hampstead Heath, the Hendon Road, Crackskull Commons, and Highgate Hill, as, apparently "for the first time" he considers "executing his extraordinary ride to York" (266).
The whole neighbourhood was alarmed by the cries, and by the tramp of horses: the men of Hornsey rushed into the road to seize the fugitive, and women held up their babes to catch a glimpse of the flying cavalcade, which seemed to gain number and animation as it advanced. Suddenly three horsemen appear in the road — they hear the uproar and the din. "A highwayman! a highwayman!" cry the voices: "stop him, stop him!" But it is no such easy matter. With a pistol in each hand, and his bridle in his teeth, Turpin passed boldly on. His fierce looks — his furious steed — the impetus with which he pressed forward, bore down all before him. The horsemen gave way, and only served to swell the list of his pursuers.
"We have him now — we have him now!" cried Paterson, exultingly. "Shout for your lives. The turnpike man will hear us. Shout again — again! The fellow has heard it. The gate is shut. We have him. Ha, ha!"<./p>
The old Hornsey toll-bar was a high gate, with chevaux-de-frise on the upper rail. It may be so still. The gate was swung into its lock, and, like a tiger in his lair, the prompt custodian of the turnpike trusts, ensconced within his doorway, held himself in readiness to spring upon the runaway. But Dick kept steadily on. He coolly calculated the height of the gate; he looked to the right and to the left — nothing better offered; he spoke a few words of encouragement to Bess, gently patted her neck, then struck his spurs into her sides, and cleared the spikes by an inch. Out rushed the amazed turnpike man, thus unmercifully bilked, and was nearly trampled to death under the feet of Paterson's horse.
"Open the gate, fellow, and be expeditious," shouted the chief constable.
"Not I," said the man, sturdily, "unless I gets my dues. I've been done once already. But strike me stupid if I'm done a second time."
"Don't you perceive that's a highwayman? Don't you know that I'm chief constable of Westminster?" said Paterson, showing his staff. "How dare you oppose me in the discharge of my duty?"
"That may be, or it may not be," said the man, doggedly. "But you don't pass, unless I gets the blunt, and that's the long and short on it."
Amidst a storm of oaths, Coates flung down a crown piece, and the gate was thrown open.
Turpin took advantage of this delay to breathe his mare; and, striking into a by-lane at Duckett's Green, cantered easily along in the direction of Tottenham. Little repose was allowed him. Yelling like a pack of hounds in full cry, his pursuers were again at his heels. He had now to run the gauntlet of the long straggling town of Tottenham, and various were the devices of the populace to entrap him. The whole place was up in arms, shouting, screaming, running, dancing, and hurling every possible description of missile at the horse and her rider. Dick merrily responded to their clamour as he flew past, and laughed at the brickbats that were showered thick as hail, and quite as harmlessly, around him. — Book IV, "The Ride to York," Chapter 4, "The Hue and Cry," p. 267-268 [1878 edition].
Since the moment flagged by a previous illustration, The Bridal, much has transpired: at the close of Book III, "The Gipsy," Dick Turpin has escaped from Lady Rookwood's minions, Titus Tyrconnel and attorney Coates, carrying both the lawyer's bill of exchange and the marriage certificate which establishes Luke's legitimacy. Sybil is dead, killed by her own grandmother in fulfilment of the Rookwood curse, and Luke is free to marry heiress Eleanor Mowbray, if he can outwit Lady Rookwood. Sure that the young heir will succeed if he has the highwayman's support, Turpin is determined to ride back to Yorkshire. Mrs. Mowbray, meanwhile, is determined to see her daughter marry Lady Rookwood's son, Ranulph, and has the support of Barbara Lovel, who has apparently turned against Luke. Finally, the jollity of the drinking scene in The Bower at Kilburn has been disturbed by the arrival of the Chief Constable of Westminster, attorney Coates, and Titus Tyrconnel, the Rookwood varlet. Their abortive attempt to apprehend the highwaymen, Tom King and Dick Turpin, results in Turpin's accidentally killing his friend. As Jerry Juniper and Zoroaster escape across the bowling-green, Turpin jumps on Black Bess and begins his legendary two-hundred mile ride.
Since a galloping horse can keep up such a pace for perhaps twenty miles, the heroic two-hundred-mile ride over mixed terrain over eleven hours is a manifest impossibility. The motivation Dick Turpin's ride, like so many other plot elements in the Ainsworth "romance," remains unclear. He has only been back in the area around Kilburn (now, Greater London) for five days, when, drinking with his fellow highwayman Tom King, Dick considers the possibility of riding back to Yorkshire to come to the assistance of young Luke Rookwood, whose tenuous claim to the Rookwood inheritance is not likely to succeed without the marriage certificate that establishes the legitimacy of his birth — asserting that his mother was not Sir Piers' mistress, but his wife. After the events in the crypt of the abandoned priory and Luke's marriage not to the heiress, Eleanor Mowbray, but to his childhood sweetheart, Sybil Lovell, Luke has had to flee, a price on his head, and his Gypsy supporters have been hunted down. Barbara Lovel's twin sons have been executed for murder, although whose murder is unclear. Over his administration of the punch-bowl in the arbour at Kilburn, Dick muses that, having accomplished his "errand to town" (cashing in a bill of exchange he had stolen from Lawyer Coates), and having assisted Tom King in some vague enterprise (doubtless of a criminal complexion), he intends to "start to Yorkshire to-night" ("The Rendezvous at Kilburn," p. 249). At this point, he does mention trying to accomplish this equestrian feat in one night. His intention seems to be to assist Luke Rookwood, since he is now in danger from Lady Rookwood, and "The whole county of York, . . . no doubt, is up in arms by this time" (250). While Tom King and Dick Turpin are walking to the bowling-green, Tom has a presentiment of mortal danger which coincides with the arrival of a lady in a carriage (his mistress, Susan, turned informer) and three horsemen who have come to apprehend the highwaymen. Pursued up Windmill Hill after accidentally shooting his companion, Turpin pauses briefly to drink in the panoramic view of the metropolis and the surrounding countryside:
Turpin turned for an instant to reconnoitre his pursuers. Coates and Titus he utterly disregarded; but Paterson was a more formidable foe, and he well knewthat he had to deal with a man of experience and resolution. It wasthen, for the first time, that the thoughts of executing his extraordinary ride to York first flashed across him; his bosom throbbedhigh with rapture, and he involuntarily exclaimed aloud, as he raised himself in the saddle, "By God! I will do it!"— Chapter 4, "The Hue and Cry," p. 266 [1878 edition].
Thus, upon so flimsy a pretext as Turpin's determining to elude the Constable of Westminster, Ainsworth and his illustrators begins one of English literature's most exciting chase sequences, in which the secondary protagonist continually evades his pursuers through a combination of his own brilliant horsemanship, Black Bess's remarkable and utterly improbable endurance, and the ineptitude of the minions of the law. Since Hornsey is a parish at the beginning of the Great North Road, only six miles north of London's Charing Cross, it is logical that Dick Turpin's initial obstacle should be its toll gate, since his stopping to pay the fee would enable Paterson, Coates, and Tyrconnel to catch up. Moreover, the Hornsey toll-gate presents a very real danger to the horse who attempts to vault, the chevaux-de-frise of spikes on the upper rail. So celebrated a moment in the ride could not be avoided by the novel's second illustrator, John Gilbert, whose version of the scene is not merely different in style, but in perspective. George Cruikshank gives us the scene as if it were being staged at Astley's hippodrome, with the startled toll-keeper looking out of his booth just in time to see the rear hooves of Black Bess, the rates for various kinds of vehicles as well as riders posted immediately behind the air-borne Dick Turpin. In the 1834 frontispiece, the barrier looks much higher than that in Cruikshank's illustration; it was, in fact, about 12 feet in height, making Turpin's clearing it all the more remarkable. Although earlier Dick Turpin, having accidentally killed Tom King in the fray at the bowling green in Kilburn, throws way one of his pistols, Ainsworth specifies that, as he surmounts the Hornsey Gate, "With a pistol in each hand, and his bridle in his teeth, Turpin passed boldly on" (267). Other artists of the 1830s have shown the highwaymen with a flintlock pistol in either hand, closely pursued; however, Cruikshank focusses on Turpin's feat as a rider and correctly does not show him trying to shoot the posse. However, the juxtaposition of the tollgate, the keeper "ensconced within his doorway" (267), and the horse and rider are fundamentally the same, even if Cruikshank, unlike the other illustrators of the 1830s, has elected not to depict the pursuers. An interesting detail is that, in the 1836 illustration, the weathervane on the tollbooth and the wind-blown bush both indicate that Turpin and Bess have cleared the hurdle with the wind against them.
Having studied the Cruikshank illustration, Sir John Gilbert, in contrast, moves the perspective down the road, well behind Dick Turpin in the distance, and immediately to the rear of the three riders who are attempting to apprehend him. Already the horseman has cleared the bar of the tollbooth, and will likely elude his three pursuers since they cannot possibly equal Turpin's feat, and will have to wait for the keeper to let them pass. The same wind that opposes Dick and Bess in the 1836 plate is less evident here, and it is only just dawning on the the pursuers that Dick has cleared the gate and that they will not be able to duplicate his equestrian achievement. Nothing distinguishes those in pursuit as Gilbert subordinates everything in his composition to the concept of the chase, but the modelling of the figures and horses is thoroughly convincing, compelling the reader to find out what the trio will do once they realize that the highwayman has given them the slip. Whereas Cruikshank places his viewer immediately opposite the tollbooth to watch the highwayman "bilk" the petty functionary of his fee, Gilbert, using linear perspective, places the reader behind the pursuers, giving the reader their sense of Turpin as as small figure on the horizon.
The heroic ride of the notorious highwayman Dick Turpin (1705 — 1739) has little to do with the main plot, and is an adventure entirely of Ainsworth's own making, but brilliantly narrated. A total digression, the pursuit is by far the best thing in the novel. 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 has been venerated as a hero of the people for his feats both real and legendary, as 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, notably the daring ride in which the single rider would appear to be the underdog, pitted against determined pursuers who have the possibility of obtaining fresh horses. 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's including a wax sculpture of Turpin in her public exhibition of historical personages.
It is not insignificant that the novel is interspersed with ballads, for one feels that Turpin belongs properly to the ballad tradition. Consequently, Ainsworth's famous description of Turpin's ride, good as it is, clashes with the Gothic atmosphere of Rookwood Place. — Patrick Kelly, DLB, p. 8.
Thus, rather than begin, as George Cruikshjank had, with the The Old Manse, the title-page vignette of the seventeenth-century Rookwood mansion in Yorkshire, John Gilbert has chosen to focus on Dick Turpin's legendary ride. In the Gilbert frontispiece for the 1878 edition, with ease, the gallant rider surmounts a donkey-drawn cart in a village high-street, causing consternation among the onlookers. Thus, the later illustrator responds to the text as if it were largely a rogue novel.
The Gilbert program of illustration consists of four illustrations associated with the Rookwood inheritance plot — The Vault, The Rescue of Lady Rookwood, Jerry Juniper, The Marriage, and The Death of Lady Rookwood — and four associated with Dick Turpin and his swashbuckling two-hundred-mile ride north: Turpin leaping the cart, Hornsey Gate, The Gibbet, and The Death of Black Bess. Moreover, Turpin rather than the eiron, Luke Bradley (Rookwood) dominates this program as the stalwart highwayman who seems reluctant to shoot anybody appears in a total of six of the illustrations, suggesting that Gilbert, like other nineteenth-century readers, recognized that Dick Turpin, alias "Jack Palmer," is the most compelling character in the story, although his intrusion seems unwarranted from the perspective of plot construction. Gilbert, indeed, begins the 1878 Routledge volume with one illustration associated with the Ride to York, Turpin leaping the cart, and the 1882 volume with another of the same ilk, Hornsey Gate, contradicting Cruikshank's emphasis in his 1836 title-page vignette, The Old Manse, Rookwood, on the somewhat confusing conflicts between the various Rookwoods over the matter of who should inherit after Sir Piers' death. Even in the 1836 series one detects a greater interest in Dick Turpin than in Sir Luke Rookwood, for the former appears in seven out of a dozen illustrations, the latter in but four.
Left: George Cruikshank's The Last Chance (Part 22 of Oliver Twist, February 1839). Right: George Cruikshank's Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess escaping from Clerkenwell Prison (July 1839). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
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Last modified 23 February 2017