"The Murder on the Thames," illustration for Ainsworth's "Jack Sheppard" by George Cruikshank (original) (raw)

Passage Illustrated

By the light of a torch borne at the stern of the hostile wherry, he saw that the pursuers had approached within a short distance of the object of their quest. The shot had taken effect upon the waterman who rowed the chase. He had abandoned his oars, and the boat was drifting with the stream towards the enemy. Escape was now impossible. Darrell stood erect in the bark, with his drawn sword in hand, prepared to repel the attack of his assailants, who, in their turn, seemed to await with impatience the moment which should deliver him into their power.

They had not to tarry long. In another instant, the collision took place. The watermen, who manned the larger wherry, immediately shipped their oars, grappled with the drifting skiff, and held it fast. Wood, then, beheld two persons, one of whom he recognised as Rowland, spring on board the chase. A fierce struggle ensued. There was a shrill cry, instantly succeeded by a deep splash.

"Put about, waterman, for God's sake!" cried Wood, whose humanity got the better of every personal consideration; "some one is overboard. Give way, and let us render what assistance we can to the poor wretch."

"It's all over with him by this time, master," replied Ben, turning the head of his boat, and rowing swiftly towards the scene of strife; "but d—n him, he was the chap as hit poor Bill Thomson just now, and I don't much care if he should be food for fishes."

As Ben spoke, they drew near the opposing parties. The contest was now carried on between Rowland and Darrell. The latter had delivered himself from one of his assailants, the attendant, Davies. Hurled over the sides of the skiff, the ruffian speedily found a watery grave. It was a spring-tide at half ebb; and the current, which was running fast and furiously, bore him instantly away. While the strife raged between the principals, the watermen in the larger wherry were occupied in stemming the force of the torrent, and endeavouring to keep the boats, they had lashed together, stationary. Owing to this circumstance, Mr. Wood's boat, impelled alike by oar and tide, shot past the mark at which it aimed; and before it could be again brought about, the struggle had terminated. For a few minutes, Darrell seemed to have the advantage in the conflict. Neither combatant could use his sword; and in strength the fugitive was evidently superior to his antagonist. The boat rocked violently with the struggle. Had it not been lashed to the adjoining wherry, it must have been upset, and have precipitated the opponents into the water. Rowland felt himself sinking beneath the powerful grasp of his enemy. He called to the other attendant, who held the torch. Understanding the appeal, the man snatched his master's sword from his grasp, and passed it through Darrell's body. The next moment, a heavy plunge told that the fugitive had been consigned to the waves.

Darrell, however, rose again instantly; and though mortally wounded, made a desperate effort to regain the boat.

"My child!" he groaned faintly.

"Well reminded," answered Rowland, who had witnessed his struggles with a smile of gratified vengeance; "I had forgotten the accursed imp in this confusion. Take it," he cried, lifting the babe from the bottom of the boat, and flinging it towards its unfortunate father.

The child fell within a short distance of Darrell, who, hearing the splash, struck out in that direction, and caught it before it sank. At this juncture, the sound of oars reached his ears, and he perceived Mr. Wood's boat bearing up towards him.

"Here he is, waterman," exclaimed the benevolent carpenter. "I see him! — row for your life!"

"That's the way to miss him, master," replied Ben coolly. "We must keep still. The tide'll bring him to us fast enough."

Ben judged correctly. Borne along by the current, Darrell was instantly at the boat's side.

"Seize this oar," vociferated the waterman.

"First take the child," cried Darrell, holding up the infant, and clinging to the oar with a dying effort.

"Give it me," returned the carpenter; "all's safe. Now lend me your own hand."

"My strength fails me," gasped the fugitive. "I cannot climb the boat. Take my child to—it is — oh God! — I am sinking—take it — take it!"

"Where?" shouted Wood.

Darrell attempted to reply. But he could only utter an inarticulate exclamation. The next moment his grasp relaxed, and he sank to rise no more.

Rowland, meantime, alarmed by the voices, snatched a torch from his attendant, and holding it over the side of the wherry, witnessed the incident just described. — "Epoch the First, 1703: Jonathan Wild," Chapter VI, "The Storm," Volume One, p. 118-122.

Commentary

Although the figures are credible and the expression on the face of the ferryman, Ben (lower centre) expresses alarm, the reader appreciates Cruikshank's handling of the setting, particularly his masterful realisation of the tempestuous sky, the turbulent waters, and the looming bridge. Despite the ferocity of the approaching storm, Ben the waterman agrees to transport the kindly carpenter, Owen Wood, from The Welsh Trumpeter on the south bank of the Thames to the Arundel Stairs on the north bank. During the rough crossing, the carpenter and his waterman, Ben, witness Wild's silent partner, Sir Rowland Trenchard's attempted murder of a fugitive named Darrell and his infant son. Wood intervenes, rescuing the child but unable to save the drowning father. The rescue establishes Wood's motivation for adopting the infant whose father he was unable save, but whom he providentially snatched from the wrathful Rowland through the accidental falling of some bricks at just the right moment from a chimney collapsing above them as they struggle for the infant. As a result of this strange adventure on the river, Wood names the baby Thames Darrell.

The illustration of the dramatic murder in the midst of a hurricane sweeping up the Thames also serves, through its depiction of Old London Bridge of recent memory (demolished in 1832 after a century of decay), to introduce the seventh chapter, "Old London Bridge," which begins with a detailed description of London's only bridge across the Thames in the eighteenth century. Here, Cruikshank vividly captures the crucial moment at which the senior Darrell succumbs to his injuries and is about to go under as Owen Wood attempts to render further assistance to the fugitive by grabbing at his leg. Darrell seems to lift a hand in farewell. Meanwhile, the waterman (centre) anxiously looks towards the reader, aware that the other wherry presents a menace: Rowland, holding a torch. For the sake of compactness in the composition, Cruikshank has made the latter's wherry the same size as Owen Wood's, rather than larger, as Ainsworth stipulates, and only one man is at the oars. Although Ainsworth indicates that the foregoing incidents have occurred in the eye of the storm ("a dead calm prevailed") the artist sets the conflict in the midst of churning waters and a stiff east wind (as suggested by the torch). The illustration, though perhaps not quite as effective in terms of its figures as Cruikshank's The Evidence Destroyed in Oliver Twist (Part 17, August 1838), brilliantly sets the scene both in terms of the tempest and the backdrop, impelling the reader to turn the page to learn the outcome of the conflict between Sir Rowland Trenchard and Owen Wood — corrupt aristocratic villain versus solid and sympathetic bourgeois. Perhaps a more pertinent comparison to the storm scene in this novel is the death of Sikes in the former as the backdrop, full of tumbled-down houses and gaping faces of the denizens of Jacob's Island, informs the foreground, as if Sikes is on a huge urban stage, performing his last desperate act of defiance, in The Last Chance in Oliver Twist (Part 22, February 1839). The issue in both is is one of life and death, but the outcome is all too obvious here, whereas in the scene from the closing chapters of Oliver Twist Cruikshank does not telegraph the outcome, but leaves the reader in suspense. As is standard in this serialised Victorian potboiler, the villainous Jonathan Wild and the ill-intentioned aristocrat Sir Rowland Trenchard both live to plague the protagonists throughout the episodic story.

Cruikshank's biographer, Blanchard Jerrold, credits Thackeray's admiring remarks on the illustrations to Jack Sheppard (1839) with inspiring the artist's claim to have been more author than illustrator of several of Ainsworth's and one of Dickens' novels [The Life of George Cruikshank, in Two Epochs (London, 1882), 1: 242]. Thackeray had written, "it seems to us that Mr. Cruikshank really created the tale, and that Mr. Ainsworth, as it were, only put words to it" ["George Cruikshank," Westminster Review 34 (June 1840): 53-54]. Thackeray asks, what does the reader remember? "George Cruikshank's pictures — always George Cruikshank's pictures." He mentions especially the pictures of storm and murder on the Thames [in the February 1839 number of Bentley's, where any man "must acknowledge how much more brilliant the artist's description is than the writer's, and what a real genius for the terrible as for the ridiculous the former has." — Martin Meisel, Realizations, 247.

Although the various Newgate or Tyburn melodramas derived from Ainsworth's novel play fast and loose with the text, they are rigorously faithful to the Cruikshank illustrations, as the Keeleys' staging of J. B. Buckstone's at the Adelphi, in which Mary Anne Keeley made Jack Sheppard even more attractive as a breeches part. In the advertising twelve of the original illustrations are offered as an epitome of the production. At the Royal Surrey, Ainsworth supported J. T. Haines' melodramatic adaptation by asserting that "the whole of the Scenery . . . [has] been superintended by Mr. George Cruikshank, . . . a sufficient guarantee to the Public for its excellence and accuracy" [playbill, 28 October 1839] — Martin Meisel, Realizations, 271.

References

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. A Romance. With 28 illustrations by George Cruikshank. In three volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1839.

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Jack Sheppard. Edited by Edward Jacobs and Manuela Mourao. With 31 illustrations. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2007.

Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. London: Bradbury and Evans; Chapman and Hall, 1846.

Meisel, Martin. Chapter 13, "Novels in Epitome." Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Pp. 247-282.

Sutherland, John. "Jack Sheppard" in The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 19893. Pp. 323-324.

Vann, J. Don. "Jack Sheppard in Bentley's Miscellany, January 1839 — February 1840." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: Modern Language Association, 1985. Page 19.

Last modified 22 December 2016