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Mauger sharpening his Axe
George Cruikshank
May 1840
Steel-engraving
12.3 cm high by 10 cm wide, framed
Facing p. 156 in Book II, Ch. VII of William Harrison Ainsworth's The Tower of London.
[Click on image to enlarge it.]
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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As they drew near, they heard the shrill sound produced by the sharpening of some steel instrument. Smiling significantly at Gunnora, Renard instead of opening the door proceeded to a narrow loop-hole, and looked in. He beheld a savage-looking individual seated on a bench near a grindstone. He had an axe in one hand, which he had just been sharpening, and was trying its edge with his thumb. His fierce blood-shot eyes, peering from beneath his bent and bushy brows, were fixed upon the weapon. His dress consisted of a doublet of red serge with tight black sleeves, and hose of the same colour. His brow was lowering and wrinkled — the summit of his head perfectly bald, but the sides were garnished with long black locks, which together with his immense grizzled moustaches, bristling like the whiskers of a cat-a-mountain, and ragged beard, imparted a wild and forbidding look to his physiognomy. Near him rested a square, solid piece of wood, hollowed out on either side to admit the shoulder and head of the person laid upon it. This was the block. Had Renard not known whom he beheld, instinct would have told him it was the headsman. [Chapter VII. — "How the Duke of Northumberland was beheaded on Tower Hill," p. 156-57]
Subjecting the headsman to the visual idioms of caricature, Cruikshank has made a figure who should inspire terror into something of a joke. Readers of the volume edition published in late 1840, and subsequent volume editions, would have recognized the dread executioner from his initial appearance, in the frontispiece, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey at Tower Green, even though the incident depicted in that earlier illustration occurs after this point in the story — in Book the Second, "Mary the Queen," Chapter 42 (final instalment, December 1840). Serial readers in 1840, however, would not have encountered Mauger the headsman in the book's frontispiece (not issued until the last instalment). As befits so menacing a figure, Cruikshank surrounds him with intense darkness, employing chiaroscuro on his forehead, boney hand, and the edge of the enormous axe.
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Last modified 9 October 2017