The Turpin Legend

The name of Dick Turpin is firmly embedded in the British national consciousness, often bracketed together with Robin Hood as heroes who operated outside the law, but who practised a proto-socialist redistributive justice: robbing the rich to give to the poor.

The historian James Sharpe tells the full story in his book, with the self explanatory title Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English Highwayman (London, Profile, 2004). Full credit is given to Ainsworth as creator of the myth, as follows:
'In Rookwood Ainsworth not only created a fictionalised image of Dick Turpin, but also re-created the highwayman as an heroic figure, a gentleman of the road, courageous, brave, an embodiment of English virtues as perceived in the 1830s, an entity whose passing was to be regretted. Our idea of Turpin as a romantic hero, and our broader romantic notions about highwaymen, owe almost everything to Rookwood ... Ainsworth’s greatest literary creation lives on. Dick Turpin, the man whom Ainsworth did so much to reinvent, and whose character he so thoroughly refurbished, remains as familiar and as celebrated as ever. If for nothing else, Ainsworth deserves his place in the cultural history of England for inventing one of those very few historical figures whom all of us recognise. For it is essentially Ainsworth’s Turpin that we remember and celebrate today, not the pock-marked man who swung from the ‘Three-Legged Mare’ at York in 1739.'

Anyone interested in Turpin, highwaymen and/or Ainsworth should grab a copy of this superb book without delay.

A measure of the enduring quality of the Turpin myth is the extent to which it has been absorbed into popular culture. Sharpe covers all this in some detail, including the ‘70s TV series starring Richard O’Sullivan, and unforgettably, Carry on Dick, which featured Sid James (who else?) as the highwayman, who appears in the guise of the Reverend Flasher, in the village of Upper Denture, near York. Barbara Windsor is his sidekick and fellow highwayperson, and Kenneth Williams a Bow Street runner (Captain Desmond Fancy), etc, etc. Great stuff, which illustrates how far the myth can be stretched. Similarly, among the immortal works performed by the great George Formby, can be found two songs, Gallant Dick Turpentine and Dare Devil Dick:

GALLANT DICK TURPENTINE
I'm gallant Dick Turpentine, just swam the Serpentine, now I'm riding to York.
Daring deeds at night I do, holding up coaches, and charabancs too
"Stand and deliver!" I shout and they shiver with faces white as chalk.
I'm such a devil, I scare 'em and then
I rob all the women and kiss all the men.
I'm gallant Dick Turpentine, just swam the Serpentine, now I'm riding to York.
Patter

I'm gallant Dick Turpentine, just swam the Serpentine, now I'm riding to York.
Daring deeds at night I do, holding up coaches, and charabancs too
"Stand and deliver!" I shout and they shiver with faces white as chalk.
I've robbed the mail coach with curses and threats
A couple of bathchairs and two bassinettes.
I'm gallant Dick Turpentine, just swam the Serpentine, now I'm riding to York.

DARE DEVIL DICK
You’ve heard of Dick Turpin and bold Robin Hood, I’m known as one of the click.
A bit of gangster a terror to all, the lads call me Dare Devil Dick.
I’m fond of a fight over fighting I gloat, I’m always the first to hold anyone’s coat.

Dare Devil Dick up to every trick, Dare Devil Dick that’s me
Only last week without saying a word
I travelled first class when my ticket was third.
I’m a demon, I’m devil may care, full of villainy.
Full fare on me ticket they soon made me pay.
But I got me own back the very next day.
I bought two first class tickets and walked all the way.
Dare Devil Dick that’s me.

Dare Devil Dick up to every trick, Dare Devil Dick that’s me
With a girl on a raft I was wrecked on the sea.
I was in a short shirt, and she wore a chemise.
"Hoist a signal" soon she started to shout
"And save us from the sea".
I took off my shirt "They won’t see that" she raved
So I grabbed her chemise, on the mast it soon waved
When she smiled I said "Eee, I don’t want to be saved"
Dare Devil Dick that’s me.

Dare Devil Dick up to every trick, Dare Devil Dick that’s me
For a picnic I went with my sweetie one day
We romped in the fields and we sat in the hay
It was lovely till she cried in alarm.
"Why, there’s a bumble bee".
"Oh be brave and find it", I shouted out "Where?"
She said "Where I’m sitting it’s underneath there"
I got stung on the hand, ah but I didn’t care
Dare Devil Richard that’s me.

Turned out nice again!

Dick Turpin

The most enduring feature of Rookwood is undoubtedly the account of Dick Turpin’s ride to York, which comprises the whole of Book 4 of the 5-book novel. While Turpin (1705-39) was a real character whose life is quite well documented, his ride to York, to provide an alibi is fictitious, and probably based on an incident in 1676, when a highwayman known as ‘Nicks’ (William Nevinson, see James Sharpe, Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English Highwayman, pp.74-5) is said to have made such a ride for the same reason. Turpin’s famous mare Black Bess was certainly a product of Ainsworth’s imagination, and the story of the ride was the result of an extraordinary burst of creative energy.

The author later described the process as follows:
'The Ride to York was completed in one day and one night. This feat – for feat it was, being the composition of a hundred ordinary novel pages in less than twenty-four hours … from the moment I got Turpin on the high road till I landed him at York, I wrote on and on without the slightest sense of effort. I began in the morning, wrote all day, and, as the night wore on, my subject had completely mastered me, and I had no power to leave Turpin on the high road. Well do I remember the fever into which I was thrown during the time of the composition. My pen literally galloped over the pages. So thoroughly did I identify myself with the flying highwayman, that, once started, I found it impossible to halt.'

Ainsworth had found his literary niche, and from that point until the end of his life, a ceaseless flow of novels poured from his pen. He put aside the business of publishing and when Rookwood appeared in 1834, the three volumes were produced by the firm of Richard Bentley. The reading public immediately took the story to its collective heart, and the book was a runaway success in both critical and popular terms. Ainsworth became the toast of literary London, lionised at gatherings attended by aristocratic patrons of the arts and what would nowadays be called the ‘glitterati’. Various evocations of Dick Turpin strode across the London stage in dramatisations of Rookwood, and Ainsworth’s portrait actually appeared on the new omnibuses to publicise the novel; one of the first examples of this kind of advertising.

Literature and Love

In London, Ainsowrth met a man who was to have a profound influence on both the personal and professional aspects of Ainsworth’s life. John Ebers was a publisher, and proprietor of the Opera House in Haymarket, where the two met and struck up a friendship. Ebers first invited the literary tyro to help write and edit a proposed literary miscellany, which, despite initial enthusiasm, ultimately failed to appear. There were a few trifles of verse and prose, as well as a curious (and now extremely rare) pamphlet entitled Considerations on the best means of affording Immediate Relief to the Operating Classes in the Manufacturing Districts.

More of that later, but the most important factor in the friendship with Ebers, which changed Ainsworth’s life, appeared in the shape of the younger of the publisher’s two pretty daughters (see illustration), with whom the young man immediately fell in love. Fortunately, Fanny Ebers concurred with these sentiments, and the two were married in 1826. They were to have three daughters, Fanny (b.1827), Emily (b.1829) and Blanche (b.1830). However, Ainsworth’s literary social life continued unabated, and in 1835, Fanny returned to live with her father. She died three years later, at the tragically early age of 30.

To London - Ainsworth meets Charles Lamb and his Circle

In 1824, Ainsworth left Manchester to pursue his legal training in London. Although he made a sincere attempt to apply himself to his studies, London’s literary scene proved to be a stronger attraction than the intricacies of conveyancing, and he never returned to his native city, except as a visitor. As soon as he arrived in the Capital, Ainsworth contacted Charles Lamb, who immediately took to the young man, and introduced him to his circle of literary friends. His early impressions of London are well documented in the many letters he wrote to Crossley, and this one from 1825 reveals the uneven struggle between literary social life and the law:

'Little Charles Lamb sends me constant invitations. I met Mrs. [Mary] Shelley at his house the other evening. She is very handsome; I am going to the theatre with her some evening….'

Later in the same letter, he turns his attention, with less enthusiasm, to the family business:

'Before I have completed my year I hope to make myself sufficiently useful…I wish I knew more of common law.'

Ainsworth seems to have been quickly accepted by Lamb’s circle and was by all accounts a lively and opinionated conversationalist. Another friend of Lamb’s described him as ‘forward, talking young man’ and went on ‘he will be a pleasant man enough when the obtrusiveness of youth is worn away a little.' He was eventually admitted as an attorney in the King’s Bench, but never returned to Manchester to practise law, and the family firm eventually lost the Ainsworth name, becoming Crossley and Sudlow.

Historical Romance or Gothic Horror?

The all-too-common description of Ainsworth as a writer of 'historical romances' is perhaps a factor which deters many readers today. It might be more interesting to think about our author as a master of the Gothic, following in the tradition of eighteenth-century shockers like Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and 'Monk' Lewis. Indeed, in the preface to Rookwood, the author confesses that 'I resolved to attempt a story in the bygone style of Mrs. Radcliffe (which had always inexpressible charms for me), substituting an old English squire, and old English manorial residence, and an old English highwayman, for the Italian marchese, the castle, and the brigand of the great mistress of Romance'. Many of his novels contain Gothic elements and some would have been worthy of films in the Hammer Horror mould. Given the insatiable public appetite for ghost stories, which has not varied over the centuries, there should be a ready reading public for Ainsworth's work. Here's a brief example from Rookwood, following on from the earlier poetical post about the family legend. Ranulph Rookwood has returned from a continental sojourn to his family home, to attend the funeral of his recently deceased father. He relates the following experience, when he was enjoying the pleasures of a country garden as the evening light began to fade:

"I had been musing for some moments, with my head resting upon my hand,
when, happening to raise my eyes, I beheld a figure immediately before
me. I was astonished at the sight, for I had perceived no one
approach--had heard no footstep advance towards me, and was satisfied
that no one besides myself could be in the garden. The presence of the
figure inspired me with an undefinable awe! and, I can scarce tell why,
but a thrilling presentiment convinced me that it was a supernatural
visitant. Without motion--without life--without substance, it seemed;
yet still the outward character of life was there. I started to my feet.
God! what did I behold? The face was turned to me--my father's face! And
what an aspect, what a look! Time can never efface that terrible
expression; it is graven upon my memory--I cannot describe it. It was
not anger--it was not pain: it was as if an eternity of woe were stamped
upon its features. It was too dreadful to behold, I would fain have
averted my gaze--my eyes were fascinated--fixed--I could not withdraw
them from the ghastly countenance. I shrank from it, yet stirred not--I
could not move a limb. Noiselessly gliding towards me, the apparition
approached. I could not retreat. It stood obstinately beside me. I
became as one half-dead. The phantom shook its head with the deepest
despair; and as the word 'Return!' sounded hollowly in my ears, it
gradually melted from my view. I cannot tell how I recovered from the
swoon into which I fell, but daybreak saw me on my way to England. I am
here. On that night--at that same hour, my father died."

Early literary efforts continued: The Boeotian

In 1824, Ainsworth ventured to publish a weekly magazine of his own, printed by Thomas Sowler , who was at that time a bookseller in St. Ann’s Square, Manchester, a year before he founded the Manchester Courier. This modest journal was called The Bœotian (Bœotia was a district of central Greece with Thebes as its capital, whose inhabitants were thought of as unsophisticated, even stupid). The journal’s motto was the subject of discussion in the Manchester Review in 1945, when the following explanation was offered: ‘The motto chosen - Boeotum crasso jurares aёre natum, which may be freely translated: “You would swear that he had been born in the gross air of the Boeotians” – may be taken as a playful allusion to the atmosphere of the editor’s home town.’ The suggestion implicit in the title seems to be a devotion to plain speaking, and the magazine featured articles and poems from Ainsworth’s own pen, and those of his friends James Crossley and John P. Aston. Some of these were reprinted from other sources, such as Crossley’s piece On Chetham's Library, which had originally appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine three years earlier, in 1821. Only six issues were published, (March 20-April 2), and copies are now extremely rare.

The Christmas Box

I haven't been able to find any Christmas stories in Ainsworth's novels (though perhaps a more assiduous scholar may be able to correct me). However, he did publish a short-lived journal entitled The Christmas Box, an annual, which ran to two editions, in 1828-9. The first was notable in that Ainsworth was able to persuade Walter Scott to contribute a ballad, The Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee, and Charles Lamb provided Verses written in the first leaf of Lucy Barton's Album. Other writers (including Theodore Hook, John Gibson Lockhart and William Maginn) furnished the remainder of the stories, and Ainsworth himself added a new tale: The Fairy and the Peach Tree.

The precocious young publisher insisted on paying Scott twenty guineas for Bonnie Dundee, which the revered author accepted with a smile, and handed over to his little granddaughter, Charlotte Lockhart.

In February, 1828, Ainsworth claimed, in a letter to his friend James Crossley: 'The Christmas Box sells admirably; we have already exceeded 2000.' The next volume, in 1829, was published by John Ebers (Ainsworth's father-in-law) and was the final appearance of this title, copies of which are now very scarce.

For more information on The Christmas Box, see S. M. Ellis, William Harrison Ainsworth and his Friends(London, John Lane, 1911), vol. 1, pp. 168-172.