[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustration —> George Cruikshank —> The Miser's Daughter —> Next]

Passage Illustrated: The End of the Jacobite Club

Jacob's efforts to push off were impeded by Sir Bulkeley Price, who clung to the stern of the skiff, earnestly imploring them to take him in. Father Verselyn caught hold of the steps, and apprehensive of some further disaster, crept along the side of the summer-house, and took refuge in a small sewer, in the slime of which it is supposed he perished, for he was never heard of more.

Meanwhile, Cordwell Firebras,​ —​ engaged hand to hand with the officer, who, having vainly summoned him to surrender, attacked him in person,​ —​ had reached the platform. Seeing escape impossible, Firebras, while defending himself against the officer, called to Randulph, whom he descried below, and held out the packet to him. The latter ordered Jacob to keep the skiff steady, and to bring it as near the combatants as possible.

While Jacob obeyed the injunction, a successful thrust from Firebras stretched his adversary upon the platform, but the next moment he received his own death wound from Long Tom, who stepped forward, as his officer fell, and discharged his musket into his breast.

​With a dying effort, Firebras stretched his hand over the rail, and consigning the packet to Randulph, fell backwards into the water.

Possessed of the packet, Randulph turned to the aid of Sir Bulkeley Price, and pulling him into the skiff, Jacob instantly pushed off. Assisted by the stream, which ran very strong, they soon got under the sides of the vessel near the mill, and were sheltered from the fire of the soldiery.

Meanwhile, the conflagration raged fast and furiously, and before the skiff containing the fugitives had got half way to Westminster bridge, a tremendous explosion took place, scattering the blazing fragments of the old mill far and wide into the river.​ [Book III, "Abel Beechcroft," Chapter XVI, "The Summer-House at the Chequers — The Old Mill — Randulph Overhears the Plot — Dispersion of the Jacobite Club, and the Fate of Cordwell Firebras," pp. 293-94]

Commentary: The Sensational End of the Plotters

The illustrator and author connect the plot of the lost inheritance (the Packet) and the Jacobite Club as Cordwell Firebras attempts to extort Randulph Crew's cooperation in exchange for the deed to his estate, which will enable him to marry Hilda Scarve. Thus, in three pictures Cruikshank tells the tale of the Jacobite Club, from its plotting the return of "The King Across the Water" in the upper room of a Westminster public house, to their hair-breadth escape across the roof-tops, to their final nemesis, the twin towers of Westminster Abbey in the background providing visual continuity. This dynamic action scene served as the frontispiece for the third volume in the October 1842 triple-decker published by Cunningham and Mortimer. Cruikshank graphs a complex action at the summer-house on the Thames, showing the manipulative Cordwell Firebras's dropping the secret packet to Randulph as he dies. Grenadiers fire upon Firebras (centre) and the other Jacobites, as Randulph escapes in the skiff below, supporting the wounded Sir Norfolk. The faithful family retainer, Jacob Post (right), is manning the pole, as the remaining conspirators flee the burning water-mill. The ghostly form of Westminster Abbey in the distance creates a sense of aerial perspective. In the Cruikshank watercolour version of this scene (not published until 1903), Firebras, dressed entirely in green, is much larger, and the Abbey's towers seem much closer.

As Richard A. Vogler points out, the “composition is so filled with detailed action that it would hardly seem possible that the author could be following an artist's instructions and drawing, but the letter relating to this and another etching in the novel, titled The Death of the Miser [sic], establishes the contrary” (155). Cruikshank's comments in a letter dated "Monday Evng. Sept. 12th/42" suggest that the illustrator wished to draw certain features of the illustration to Ainsworth's attention before he completed composing the final serial instalment. Some of the phrasing from the note has even crept into Ainsworth's letterpress, although the author has corrected the artist's spelling in several places:

Herewith are the tracings of The Death of Firebras. and The Death of the Miser. Of the first I have merely to say that I suppose Randolf [sic] to be supporting Sir A. Salisbury [sic] — who is wounded (badly) and whom he has assisted into the boat — Randolf at the same time is receiving the packet from Firebras — who has just been shot whilst sopeaking to Randolf by Long Tom — the grenadier — who supposes that Firebras has killed his officer. The wooden rails are broken away in the ferocious struggle. Sir B Price has hold of the stern of the skiff — the priest is clinging to the post & the steps — He might creep into a small sewer — and never be seen or heard of more! In the background the soldiers are on a rude plank bridge connecting the summer house garden with the water wheel & mill — Some of the Jacobites are crying out for quarter — or surrendering themselves to the troops — [Cited in Vogler, p. 155]

Such a vigorous action scene with firearms discharged, the mill afire, and some characters dying certainly would have leant itself to dramatic adaptation. In Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England (1983), Martin Meisel notes that the Edward Stirling sensation drama, which debutéd on 24 October 1842 (scarcely three weeks after the final instalment was published) made extensive use of Cruikshank's action plates:

The most striking of the narrative plates are realized — such as Abel Beechcroft discovering the body of the Miser in the cellar and the Dispersion of the Jacobite Club and death of Cordwell Firebras, which is itself conceived and drawn as if it were the spectacular catastrophe of a sensation melodrama, and is so used in Stirling's play. . . . . The Illustrated London News — which chose to reproduce one of these original tableaux — comments on the transformations from novel to stage, from word to picture to performance. The comment is interesting for what it says about priorities:

The Miser's Daughter, as played at the Adelphi, affords many of Cruikshank's etchings vivified — the creatures of the pencil transformed into flesh and blood. The characters shaped from the author's descriptions into ocular acquaintanceship by the Artist — are again realized — all living, moving, being — upon the stage, by the actor. [12 November 1842, p. 428; cited in Meisel, pp. 281-82]

The Companion Plotting Scenes from Earlier in the Story

Left: Cruikshank's initial description of the disaffected plotters, Randulph refusing to drink the King's health "over the water.". Right: The escape that keeps the plot alive, The Jacobite Club pursued by the guard (April and May instalments in Volume One of Ainsworth's Magazine). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]

Related Materials

• Jacobites
• Jacobites in the 19th century
• James I and the Doctrine of The Divine Right of Kings

References

Ainsworth, William Harrison. The Miser's Daughter: A Tale. With 20 illustrations by George Cruikshank. First published in 3 volumes by Cunningham and Mortimer, London, 1842. London, Glasgow, and New York: George Routledge, 1892.

Grego, Joseph (intro). Cruikshank's Water Colours. [27 Oliver Twist illustrations, including the wrapper and the 13-vignette title-page produced for F. W. Cosens; 20 plates for William Harrison Ainsworth's The Miser's Daughter: A Tale of the Year 1744; 20 plates plus the proofcover the work for W. H. Maxwell's History of the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and Emmett's Insurrection in 1803]. London: A. & C. Black, 1903. Book in the Rare Book Collection of the University of Toronto.

Meisel, Martin. Chapter 13, "Novels in Epitome." Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1983. Pp. 247-282.

Vann, J. Don. "The Miser's Daughter in Ainsworth's Magazine January-October 1842." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1988. Pp. 22-23.

Vogler, Richard A. Graphic Works of George Cruikshank. Dover Pictorial Archive Series. New York: Dover, 1979.

---

Victorian
Web

Illus-
tration

George
Cruikshank

The Miser's Daughter

W. Harrison
Ainsworth

Next

Last modified 3 July 2018