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Secret Staircase in the Salt Tower
George Cruikshank
July 1840
Wood-engraving
10.1 cm high by 6.8 cm wide, vignetted
Illustration for Book II, Ch. XVI, of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Tower of London, p. 220.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Having seen Cholmondeley safely bestowed, the jailor repaired to the entrance of the subterranean dungeons, and lighting a torch, opened the door of a small recess, from which he took a mattock and spade. Armed with these implements, he proceeded to the vault, beneath the Devilin Tower, where he commenced digging a grave. After labouring hard for a couple of hours, he attained a sufficient depth for his purpose, and taking the torch, ascended to the small chamber. Lifting the skeleton frame in his arms, he returned to the vault. In placing the torch on the ground it upset, and rolling into the grave was extinguished, leaving him in profound darkness. His first impulse was to throw down the body, but having, in his agitation, placed the hands, which were clasped together, over his neck, he found it impossible to free himself from it. His terror was so great that he uttered a loud cry, and would have fled, but his feet were rooted to the spot. He sank at last on his knees, and the corpse dropped upon him, its face coming into contact with his own. Grown desperate, at length, he disengaged himself from the horrible embrace, and threw the body into the grave. Relieved by this step from much of his fear, he felt about for the spade, and having found it, began to shovel in the mould. [Chapter XVI. — "What befel Cicely in the Salt Tower," p. 221]
Left: The wood-engraving of the mysterious staircase as it looked in 1840, Secret Staircase in the Salt Tower (July 1840). Centre: Chamber in the Salt Tower as it appeared, elegantly decorated, in 1840 (July 1840). Right: The brutal jailor callously trying to shift his victim's location in order to avoid detection, Lawrence Nightgall Dragging Cicely Down the secret stairs in the Salt Tower (July 1840). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Seventeen years after Ainsworth published the novel, architect Anthony Salvin restored the Salt Tower's exterior and windows; perhaps the attention he devoted to it was the direct result of the importance of the Salt Tower in the novel. The Salt Tower appears first in North View of the Salt Tower, and again in Masque in the Palace Garden of the Tower, Secret Staircase in the Salt Tower, Chamber in the Salt Tower, and Arched Door in the Salt Tower Communicating with Secret Staircase, Basement Chamber in the Salt Tower, as well as torture scenes probably enacted in the dungeons of the Salt Tower, significantly Elizabeth confronted with Wyat in the Torture-Chamber in Chapter 34 in the final instalment. Ainsworth's firing the public imagination probably led to the government's commissioning Salvin, at the behest of Prince Albert, to undertake a comprehensive restoration of the Tower's mediaeval and Tudor buildings.
Ainsworth now drops the political-historical plot in favour of the strain of Gothic romance. He causes Cholmondeley to be recaptured by Nightgall, and reincarcerated, and then proceeds to deal with the perverted jailor's treatment of Cicely. The sadistic Nightgall, implies Ainsworth, buries Alexia alive in the basement of the Devlin Tower, then goes to visit her imprisoned daughter in the Salt Tower, where most of the chapter's action occurs. Fearing that the young esquire may have detected where she has been held a prisoner, Nightgall attempts to move her. Her screaming and refusal to leave her place of confinement voluntarily prompt Nightgall to drag her down a secret staircase to a dark chamber beneath the Tower leading to the Iron Gate.This staircase appears a number of times in the illustrations for this chapter, although Cruikshank contrasts the cheerfully furnished chamber of 1840 with plainer views which suggest how the staircase, doorway, and chamber would have looked three hundred years earlier.
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Last modified 16 October 2017