The Modern Man Pursues Drama and Bravery
In modern images the focus is upon the action rather than the process. The audience does not find the plot significant because the gods guided it from deed to scaffold.  The modern audience finds interest in each set of actions-entertainment-adventure-if you will... The allegories and mystic meanings are gone. They are replaced with bravery,  heroism and  unavoidable fate. Fawkes can become, for some, the citizen soldier fighting for human rights for Catholics. We know he will be defeated but it was a good and exciting fight in which he is the doomed foot soldier of larger causes. It seems we can no longer root for God or King!

The engravings, on steel, by George Cruikshank for Ainsworth's novel illustrate the style of the modern image of the plot quite well. Select your favorite scene from the table below. Each image is accompanied by the relevant excerpt from the text.  See also background from Everitt Graham, click here.

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The quarrel with Dickens was followed by a very bitter and very The Feud with Bentley. singular feud between the artist and Bentley. Into the causes of that quarrel we need not enter; suffice it to say that to the misunderstanding we owe some of the very worst etchings which Cruikshank ever designed, the series of illustrations to Harrison Ainsworth’s novel of “Guy Fawkes.” The worst of all is the Vision of Guy Fawkes at Saint Winifred’s Well, and a very singular “vision” it is. The saint has all the appearance, with all the grace, expression, and symmetry of a Dutch doll arrayed in a pocket handkerchief; the sky is “machine ruled;” the pillars and tracery of the ruined chapel are architectural impossibilities; while at the very first snort, the slumbering figure of Guy Fawkes must roll inevitably into the well towards the brink of which he lies in dangerous propinquity. These illustrations provoked the ire of the publisher and the remonstrances of the author, both of which were disregarded with strict impartiality. In 1842, Harrison Ainsworth retired from the conduct of the “Miscellany,” and set up a rival magazine of somewhat similar plan and conception, which he christened after his own surname. This opposition venture appears to have been the result of a misunderstanding between the editor and publisher, the most serious outcome of which was, that when Ainsworth left he carried with him George Cruikshank.

The secession of George caused Mr. Bentley the greatest possible inconvenience. The straits to which he was reduced may be imagined by the fact that A. Hervieu (an artist of considerable ability), and the clever, well-known amateur, Alfred Crowquill (Alfred 195 Henry Forrester), had to be pressed into the service, and contributed leading etchings. Meanwhile, the cover of the “Miscellany” showed that George Cruikshank was nominally retained on the pictorial staff; and before the quality of his illustrations became so villainously bad that the object he had in view—that of forcing Bentley to cancel his engagement—had been attained, a draughtsman of unusual graphic power and versatility had come to the assistance of the magazine. This was a young man who had already executed many comic designs of a somewhat novel and original character, and was already forcing his way to the front: his name—familiar afterwards “in our mouths as household words“—was John Leech.

The “Guy Fawkes” illustrations were the outcome of the first campaign between Bentley and Cruikshank; and as the history of the quarrel between the publisher and his unmanageable artist is a somewhat amusing one, we may be pardoned for describing it at length. The engagement from which he sought to free himself, and which he stigmatized as “a one-sided one,” obliged Cruikshank to supply Mr. Bentley with at least one etching every month; and as Bentley continued to advertise him as the illustrator of the “Miscellany,” George commenced the second campaign by issuing in the opening pages of the opposition venture the following characteristic manifesto:—“Mr. Bentley, the publisher,” says the indignant George, “evidently wishes to create the supposition that I illustrate his ‘Miscellany.’ On the contrary, I wish the public to understand that I do no such thing. It is true that, according to a one-sided agreement (of which more may be heard hereafter), I supply a single etching per month. But I supply only that single etching. And even that can hardly be called my design, since the subject of it is regularly furnished to me by Mr. Bentley, and I have never even read a page of any of the stories thus ‘illustrated.’

“Yet Mr. Bentley not only advertises me as the illustrator of his ’Miscellany,’ but he has lately shaped his advertisement thus, in the papers as well as on the wrapper of his magazine: ‘Illustrated by Geo. Cruikshank, etc.’ Are his other artists worthy only of being merged in an etc.? This is, indeed, paying them but a poor 196 compliment; and one which I should hardly think they would submit to. In certain other announcements I observe mentioned, in addition to my own name, a ‘Cruikshank the Younger.’ Who is he? The only Cruikshank the Younger I ever heard of as a designer, is myself. Would it not be supposed that there must be a third Cruikshank, etching, drawing, and ‘illustrating,’ as his two predecessors have done? Yet there is no such person! There is indeed a nephew of mine, who, as a wood-engraver, and a wood-engraver only, has been employed by Mr. Bentley to engrave ’Crowquill’s designs;’ just as in my ‘Omnibus’ he engraved my own drawings upon wood, and still does engrave them in ’Ainsworth’s Magazine.’ Now, can any one imagine it possible for any respectable publisher, especially ‘Her Majesty’s Publisher in Ordinary,’ to be guilty of so miserable a trick, so wretched an expedient, as that of putting off the engraver of a few of the drawings as the designer himself—as one of the ‘illustrators’ of the ‘Miscellany’? Let Mr. Bentley but produce a single design for the ’Miscellany,’ by ‘Cruikshank the Younger’ (by him so-called), and I will retract this indignant disclaimer and apologise. If Mr. Bentley cannot do this, he stands self-convicted of an attempt to impose upon the public by a mystification, for purposes as apparent as the trick itself.”

What this strange declaration of war proposed to effect is not altogether manifest; if its author imagined it would produce the result of releasing him from his engagement, he was signally mistaken, for Mr. Bentley, as might have been expected, held him all the tighter to the letter of his bond. What the artist thought and what he did are told us in the plainest language by the etchings which followed this singular manifesto. They tell us as plainly as could be expressed in words, that George reasoned after the following fashion:—“It is clear that under the terms of my engagement I am bound to supply ‘Bentley’s Miscellany’ with one etching a month; but our agreement says nothing as to the quality of the etchings, nor am I bound to see that they shall be strictly relevant to the subjects which I am called upon to illustrate.” 197 From that time, so long as he continued to design for the “Miscellany,” George tried to do his worst, and it must be admitted that he succeeded to admiration. Anything more outrageous than these wretched drawings—taking into account the talent, power, and skill of the artist, and the quality of the work which he was at this very time executing for Harrison Ainsworth—can scarcely be conceived.

-Graham,  Everitt, English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times.1893.

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