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Frontispiece: Turpin Leaping the Cart
Sir John Gilbert, R. A.
1878
Wood-engraving
14 x 9.5 cm, vignetted
Frontispiece for W. H. Ainsworth's Rookwood: A Romance.
In one volume, with illustrations by Sir John Gilbert. London: George Routledge and Sons, Broadway, Ludgate Hill; New York: 416 Broome Street.
“I see how Ruin, with palsied hand Begins to shake our ancient house to dust.” — Yorkshire Tragedy.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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A few more miles' hard riding tired the volunteers, and before the chase reached Edmonton most of them were "nowhere." Here fresh relays were gathered, and a strong field was again mustered. John Gilpin himself could not have excited more astonishment amongst the good folks of Edmonton, than did our highwayman as he galloped through their town. Unlike the men of Tottenham, the mob received him with acclamations, thinking, no doubt, that, like "the citizens of famous London town," he rode for a wager. Presently, however, borne on the wings of the blast, came the cries of "Turpin! Dick Turpin!" and the hurrahs were changed to hootings; but such was the rate at which our highwayman rode, that no serious opposition could be offered to him.
A man in a donkey-cart, unable to get out of the way, drew himself up in the middle of the road. Turpin treated him as he had done the dub at the knapping jigger, and cleared the driver and his little wain with ease. This was a capital stroke, and well adapted to please the multitude, who are ever taken with a brilliant action. "Hark away, Dick!" resounded on all hands, while hisses were as liberally bestowed upon his pursuers. — Book Four, "The Ride to York," Chapter 4, "The Hue and Cry," p. 301.
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 the 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, Ainsworth begins Dick Turpin's heroic ride to York, in which he continually eludes his pursuers through a combination of his own brilliant horsemanship, Black Bess's remarkable 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 the toll gate, since stopping to pay the fee would enable Coates and his fellows to catch up. The toll gate presents the first real obstacle to the horse who attempts to vault because it has the chevaux-de-frise of spikes on the upper rail. So celebrated a moment in the ride could not be avoid by the novel's second illustrator, Sir John Gilbert, whose version of the scene is not merely different in style, but in perspective. George Cruikshank, however, offers his finest illustration in the entire narrative-pictorial sequence of twelve copper engravings as he depicts Turpin's career through a major town, for whereas Tottenham, through which he has already passed, was but a village in the eighteenth century, Edmonton was a town with sufficient shopkeepers and apprentices to take up Constable Paterson's hue and cry, and effectively prevent or slow the valiant horseman. Whereas Gilbert presents a closeup of Turpin's surmounting the donkey-cart in Turpin Leaping the Cart, putting the reader in the midst of the action and showing by the reactions of just three onlookers to Turpin's juggernaut, in the original Cruikshank realisation of this narrative moment, Turpin's flight through Edmonton (1836), a dozen bystanders convey in their facial expressions and postures a variety of reactions, ranging from shock, awe, surprise, momentary terror (down left) and exultation (signified by the waving of hats, lower right). Against a backdrop of seventeenth-century buildings, their casement windows thrown wide open, Turpin lightly vaults over the cart, whose owner, a surprisingly well-dressed bourgeois rather than the peasant of the Gilbert illustration, vainly attempts to pull the recalcitrant donkey out of the way. The dynamic, self-confident action of the horseman contrasts the pandaemonium his passage creates, suggesting both George Cruikshank's 1828 wood-engraving John Gilpin's Ride and an 1832 award-winning version of the same mad gallop by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), both of which are masterful visual responses to William Cowper's ballad "The Diverting History of John Gilpin" (1765). Cruikshank's version, John Gilpin's Ride (3). "Stop, stop, John Gilpin, here's the house", is particularly pertinent as a model for both Cruikshank and Gilbert as the moment realised involves a startled publican's stepping into the street and a dog's chasing Gilpin's horse, exactly as described by the Gilbert and Cruikshank illustrations of Turpin's dash through Edmonton.
Having studied the Cruikshank illustration, Sir John Gilbert, in contrast, moves the perspective immediately in front of Turpin and donkey-cart, involving the viewer in the action. The determined horseman is caught in the very act of vaulting over the cart, Bess's rear hoof just clearing the donkey's head, her front legs barely missing the wheel of the cart. Nothing distinguishes the peasant, whose straw hat and smock-frock are metonymies for his social station, as Gilbert subordinates every background detail to the gigantic figures of horse and rider in his composition. Turpin raises his whip and glances down at the cater, as if menacing him if he tries to block his passage.
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), whose heroic ride north 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 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. 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.
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Last modified 14 February 2017
