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Interior of the By-ward Tower
George Cruikshank
February 1840
wood-engraving
9.2 cm high by 7.5 cm wide, vignetted, p. 44.
"Interior of the By-ward Tower," wood-engraving for the sixth chapter of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Tower of London. A Historical Romance.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Arrived at the entrance of the By-ward Tower, the giants volunteered to take charge of the prisoner till the morning — an offer which was gladly accepted by the herald, who, intrusting him to their care, departed. But the Gospeller was not to be got rid of so easily. He begged to be admitted, and, partly by entreaties, partly by a bribe to the dwarf, succeeded in his object. The first care of the giants, on entering their abode — an octagonal chamber of stone, about sixteen feet wide, and twenty high, with a vaulted coiling, supported by sharp groined arches of great beauty, springing from small slender columns, — was to light a candle placed in front of an ancient projecting stone fireplace. Their next was to thrust the prisoner into the arched embrasure of a loop-hole at one side of it. [Book One, Chapter VI. — "Of the Solemn Exhortation Pronounced to the Giants By Master Edward Underhill, the 'Hot-Gospeller,' at their Lodging in the By-ward Tower; and of the Effect Produced Thereby," pp. 44-45]
Cruikshank details none of these properties in his wood-engraving at the head of Chapter Six. Rather, he shows the bare stage, devoid of actors, leaving Ainsworth to describe the action and the characters. There is neither fire in the chimney-piece, no cupboards, just some disused spars. The illustrator merely sets the scene in the wood-engraving, then elaborates upon it with jolly giants Gog, Og, Magog, the warders who resemble their natural father, King Henry VIII, whom Jane and the reader encounter as she arrives at Traitor's Gate:
Its arched gothic doorway was guarded by three gigantic warders, brothers, who, claiming direct descent from the late monarch, Harry the Eighth, were nicknamed by their companions, from their extraordinary stature, Og, Gog, and Magog. Og, the eldest of the three, was the exact image, on a large scale, of his royal sire. [Chapter Two, p. 27]
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Last modified 23 September 2017