[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> The Tower of London —> W. H. Ainsworth —> Next]
The Fate of Nightgall
George Cruikshank
December 1840
Steel-engraving
13.7 cm high by 9.6 cm wide, framed
Illustration for Book II, Ch. XXXVI, of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Tower of London, facing p. 381.
[Click on image to enlarge it and mouse over text for links.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
Renard now felt secure of him, and uttered a shout of savage delight. The fugitive would have gained the roof, if he had not been intercepted by a party of men, who at the very moment he reached the doorway communicating with the leads presented themselves at it. Hearing the clamour raised by Renard and his followers below, these men commanded Nightgall to surrender. Instead of complying, the miserable fugitive, now at his wits' end, rushed backwards, with the determination of assailing Renard. He met the ambassador at a turn in the stairs a little below, and aimed a desperate blow at him with his dagger. But Renard easily warded it off, and pressing him backwards, drove him into one of the deep embrasures at the side.
Driven to desperation, Nightgall at first thought of springing through the loophole; but the involuntary glance that he cast below, made him recoil. On seeing his terror, Renard was filled with delight, and determined to prolong his enjoyment. In vain, Nightgall endeavoured to escape from the dreadful snare in which he was caught. He was driven remorselessly back. In vain, he implored mercy in the most abject terms. None was shown him. Getting within the embrasure, which was about twelve feet deep, Renard deliberately pricked the wretched man with the point of his sword, and forced him slowly backwards.
Nightgall struggled desperately against the horrible fate that awaited him, striking at Renard with his dagger, clutching convulsively against the wall, and disputing the ground inch by inch. But all was unavailing. Scarcely a foot's space intervened between him and destruction, when Renard sprang forward, and pushed him by main force through the loophole. He uttered a fearful cry, and tried to grasp at the roughened surface of the wall. Renard watched his descent. It was from a height of near ninety feet.
He fell with a terrific smash upon the pavement of the court below. Three or four halberdiers, who were passing at a little distance, hearing the noise, ran towards him, but finding he was not dead, though almost dashed in pieces, and scarcely retaining a vestige of humanity, they brought a shutter, and conveyed him to the lower guard-room, as already related.
“I have no hope of mercy,” gasped the dying man, as his request was complied with, and Cicely, with averted eyes, stood beside him, “and I deserve none. But I will make what atonement I can for my evil deeds. Listen to me, Cicely, (or rather I should say Angela, for that is your rightful name,) you are the daughter of Sir Alberic Mountjoy, and were born while your parents were imprisoned in the Tower. Your mother, the Lady Grace, lost her reason on the day of her husband’s execution, as I have before stated. But she did not expire as I gave out. My motive for setting on foot this story, and for keeping her existence secret, was the hope of making her mine if she recovered her senses, as I had reason to believe would be the case."
"Wretch!" exclaimed Cholmondeley.[Chapter XXXVI. — How Cholmondeley learnt the history of Cicely; how Nightgall attempted to assassinate Renard; and of the terrible fate that befel him," p. 381-82]
Thanks to the virtuous Cholmondeley's timely intervention when Nightgall, bribed by the French ambassador, attempts to assassinate Renard, becomes the subject of poetic justice in the subplot. However, improbably given his ninety-foot fall from a loophole in the wall of the White Tower, Nightgall must remain alive long enough to reveal the secret of Cicely's birth.Since the sadistic jailer's last words almost mitigatehis heinous behaviour, Cruikshank's illustration serves to focus the reader's attention on Nightgall's just punishment at the hands of Providence. The steel-engraving contrasts Nightgall's short poignard, inadequate for his defense, with Renard's rapier. In vain does Nightgall attempt to grip the rough stones and resigns himself to death, as Renard regards him and his falling cap with satisfaction. A typical piece of Cruikshankian visual commentary is the leafless tree on Tower Hill juxtaposed against the falling villain. The somewhat cartoonish face of Renard looking down from the loophole spoils the high drama of the villain's comeuppance.
By the time that Ainsworth and Cruikshank were working on the final, double number that would be published in December 1840, their monthly investigations into every nook and cranny of the vast complex on Tower Hill were coming to an end. Fittingly, Cruikshank and his author return to the White Tower, the central feature of the fortress-prison, as the setting in which Cuthbert Cholmondeley survives the rack and triumphs over the vicious, obsessed Nightgall, imagining that the over-reacher falls out of one of the archer's loopholes in one of the turrets ninety feet from the ground.
"While writing the Tower of London, which first appeared in monthly numbers, I used always to spend a day with the artist at the beginning of each month in the Tower itself; and since every facility was afforded us by the authorities, we left no part of the old fortress unexplored. To these visits I look back with the greatest pleasure, and feel that I could not have had a more agreeable companion than the then genial George Cruikshank. [quoted by Jerrold, Chapter 9, Vol. 1: "Illustrations to Ainsworth's Romances."]
Left: The wood-engraving which shows the staircase by which characters move through the White Tower in this chapter, Staircase in the North-eastern Turret of the White Tower (December 1840). Centre: The old Norman Keep in the March 1840 instalment, The White Tower. Right: The wood-engraving of the Norman chapel in the Keep, Interior of St. John's Chapel in the White Tower (May 1840). [Click on images to enlarge them.]
Above: Cruikshank's realistic steel-engraving of the ambitious Duke's beheading, Execution of The Duke of Northumberland upon Tower Hill [Click on image to enlarge it.]
"Ainsworth, William Harrison." http://biography.com
Ainsworth, William Harrison. The Tower of London. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Richard Bentley, 1840.
Burton, Anthony. "Cruikshank as an Illustrator of Fiction." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Ed. Robert L. Patten. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1974, rev., 1992. Pp. 92-128.
Carver, Stephen. Ainsworth and Friends: Essays on 19th Century Literature & The Gothic. 11 September 2017.
Department of Environment, Great Britain. The Tower of London. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1967, rpt. 1971.
Chesson, Wilfred Hugh. George Cruikshank. The Popular Library of Art. London: Duckworth, 1908.
Golden, Catherine J. "Ainsworth, William Harrison (1805-1882." Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia, ed. Sally Mitchell. New York and London: Garland, 1988. Page 14.
Jerrold, Blanchard. The Life of George Cruikshank. In Two Epochs. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. 2 vols. London: Chatto and Windus, 1882.
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.
McLean, Ruari. George Cruikshank: His Life and Work as a Book Illustrator. English Masters of Black-and-White. London: Art and Technics, 1948.
Pitkin Pictorials. Prisoners in the Tower. Caterham & Crawley: Garrod and Lofthouse International, 1972.
Sutherland, John. "The Tower of London" in The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19893. P. 633.
Steig, Michael. "George Cruikshank and the Grotesque: A Psychodynamic Approach." George Cruikshank: A Revaluation. Ed. Robert L. Patten. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1974, rev., 1992. Pp. 189-212.
Vogler, Richard A. Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. Dover Pictorial Archive Series. New York: Dover, 1979.
Worth, George J. William Harrison Ainsworth. New York: Twayne, 1972.
Vann, J. Don. "The Tower of London, thirteen parts in twelve monthly instalments, January-December 1840." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. Pp. 19-20.
Last modified 1 November 2017