"The Gibbet," Sir John Gilbert's seventh illustration for W. Harrison Ainsworth's "Rookwood. A Romance" (1878)

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> Sir John Gilbert, R. A. —> Next]

The Gibbet

Sir John Gilbert, R. A.

1878

Wood-engraving

14 x 9.5 cm, vignetted

Seventh illustration for W. H. Ainsworth's Rookwood, A Romance, facing p. 321 (1878 edition).

In one volume, with illustrations by Sir John Gilbert. London: George Routledge and Sons, Broadway, Ludgate Hill; New York: 416 Broome Street, 1878.

“See there, see there, what yonder swings
And creaks 'mid whistling rain,
Gibbet and steel — the accursed wheel —
A murderer in his chain.” William and Ellen.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated

As the eddying currents sweep over its plains in howling, bleakDecember, the horse and her rider passed over what remained ofLincolnshire. Grantham is gone, and they are now more slowly looking up the ascent of Gonerby Hill, a path well known to Turpin; where often, in bygone nights, many a purse had changed its owner. With that feeling of independence and exhilaration which every one feels, we believe, on having climbed the hill-side, Turpin turned to gaze around. There was triumph in his eye. But the triumph was checked as his glance fell upon a gibbet near him to the right, on the round point of hill which is a landmark to the wide vale of Belvoir. Pressed as he was for time, Dick immediately struck out of the road, and approached the spot where it stood. Two scarecrow objects, covered with rags and rusty links of chains, depended from the tree. A night crow screaming around the carcases added to the hideous effect of the scene. Nothing but the living highwayman and his skeleton brethren was visible upon the solitary spot. Around him was the lonesome waste of hill, o'erlooking the moonlit valley: beneath his feet, a patch of bare andlightning-blasted sod: above, the wan, declining moon and skies, flakedwith ghostly clouds; before him, the bleached bodies of the murderers,for such they were.

"Will this be my lot, I marvel?" said Dick, looking upwards, with an involuntary shudder.

"Ay, marry will it," rejoined a crouching figure, suddenly springing from beside a tuft of briars that skirted the blasted ground. Dick started in his saddle, while Bess reared and plunged at the sight of this unexpected apparition.

"What, ho! thou devil's dam, Barbara, is it thou?" exclaimed Dick, reassured upon discovering it was the gipsy queen, and no spectre whom he beheld. "Stand still, Bess — stand, lass. What dost thou here, mother of darkness? Art gathering mandrakes for thy poisonous messes, or pilfering flesh from the dead? Meddle not with their bones, or I will drive thee hence. What dost thou here, I say, old dam of the gibbet?" — Book IV, "The Ride to York," Chapter 10, "The Gibbet," pp. 321-22 [1878 edition].

Commentary

Gilbert thus reminds readers of the original inheritance plot, which Ainsworth recalls here before having Luke Rookwood appear by Dick Turpin's side as he approaches York. Beneath the gibbet the horseman encounters an apparition which resolves itself into the haggard figure of the Gypsy Queen, Barbara Lovel, who has determined to die with the corpses of her twin sons, who have been hanged as murderers — presumably through the agency of Lady Rookwood. She entreats Dick to deliver a sealed package to Sir Luke Rookwood, also a proscribed felon with a price on his head. She does not confide in Dick as to the contents, insisting that it is cursed, and that it must be delivered to Luke once Eleanor Mowbray is in his power. This event seems unlikely, however, as Dick Turpin subsequently learn from Luke that she is under heavy guard at Rookwood, and that she is about to marry Ranulph.

The packet, in fact, contains poisoned locks of Sybil's hair, the Gypsy Queen's diabolical device for murdering Luke, although her motive seems to be vengeance for Sybil's death which Luke precipitated by marrying her instead of Eleanor, thereby bringing down the Rookwood bridal curse on Barbara Lovel's granddaughter. Having studied the Cruikshank illustrations, Sir John Gilbert, must have felt that the earlier narrative-pictorial sequence fails to connect the brilliant narrative digression of Dick Turpin's two-hundred mile ride from just north of London to the suburbs of York in a mere eleven hours with the main, "Gothic" inheritance plot associated with the Rookwood estate and the Gypsies who inhabit the nearby ruined priory.

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 jump immediately to the tragic death of Turpin's mount, as George Cruikshank had, with The Death of Black Bess/span>, Gilbert highlights Dick Turpin's intermission at the Yorkshire gibbet. With philosophical curiosity, the gallant rider pauses to reflect upon the grisly memento mori, and has yet to notice the crone coming out of hiding. The illustration is significant as an intersection of the Rogue and Gothic Novel components uneasily married in the creaking plot of Rookwood, A Romance. Gilbert's fully realised highwayman in topboots and leather coat with a holster by his pummel is a more sympathetic and normative figure than the daring rider of the Cruikshank sequence.

Thus, Gilbert's program of illustration consists of three illustrations associated with the Gothic inheritance plot — The Vault, The Rescue of Lady Rookwood, and The Marriage, — and three associated with Dick Turpin and his swashbuckling two-hundred-mile ride north: Turpin leaping the cart, Hornsey Gate, and The Death of Black Bess, leaving the penultimate wood-engraving, The Gibbet as a combination of Turp[in's ride and Barbara Lovel's revenge on The house of Rookwood. Shortly, in Chapter 11, "The Phantom Steed," in which by sheer coincidence Turpin meets Luke Bradley (Rookwood), the perseverant horseman will deliver Barbara Lovel's mysterious package — and seal Luke's fate. In contrast, George Cruikshank had pursued the Gothic plot by showing Alan Rookwood ushering Lady Rookwood into her tomb in The Death of Lady Rookwood, the only illustration for the final book, "The Oath."

Related Materials

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 illustrations by Sir John Gilbert. London: George Routledge, 1878.

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Rookwood. A Romance. With 12 illustrations by George Cruikshank and 8 illustrations by Sir John Gilbert. London: George Routledge, 1882.

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.

Muir, Percy. "Two Colossi — Thomas Bewick and George Cruikshank." Victorian Illustrated Books. London: B. T. Batsford, 1971. Pp. 25-58.

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.

Victorian
Web

Illus-
tration

John
Gilbert

W. Harrison
Ainsworth

Last modified 26 February 2017