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.

Guy Fawkes in Manchester

In Guy Fawkes (1841), Ainsworth recounts a well-known historical event, but one not normally associated with the northwest region of England. Undaunted by such details, the author sets the whole of the first book (entitled ‘The Plot’) of this three-book novel in the Manchester region, specifically placing the plotters in Ordsall Hall, just a few miles from the city centre. The hall was once the residence of the wealthy and influential Radcliffe family, and Ainsworth employs Sir William Radcliffe in a minor role, giving him a beautiful daughter Viviana, who later becomes amorously involved with the dashing Guy Fawkes. This is an anachronism, as Sir William died in 1568; Viviana, if she had existed, should have been the daughter of Sir John Radcliffe (1581-1627). Such pedantic details were of no concern to Ainsworth, who went on to introduce two other local characters into the story: Humphrey Chetham, the Manchester merchant and philanthropist (founder of Chetham’s Hospital and Library), and Dr John Dee, at that time the Warden of Manchester who is introduced as ‘divine, mathematician and astrologer, - and if report speaks truly, conjuror.’ Ainsworth’s preferred modus operandi always involved a basis of fact, usually gleaned from authentic documents (supplied by James Crossley and other antiquarians, often members of the Chetham Society). On that foundation would be constructed elaborate sub-plots and characterisations, linked to a strong, linear narrative, which the reading public found instantly accessible and appealing.

Early literary efforts

Ainsworth was educated at Manchester Grammar School, but perhaps more importantly, came under the influence at the age of 12 (1817) of a young articled clerk in his father’s firm, named James Crossley. Five years his senior, with a formidable knowledge of Classical and English literature, Crossley had recently moved to the town from Halifax and was lodging at the Ainsworth family home.

The two soon formed a friendship, based initially on shared literary interests, which was to endure throughout their lives. As S.M. Ellis points out in his 1911 biography of Ainsworth, Crossley was: 'one who, by his wider reading and experience, could render material aid in consummating those fantasies and romantic ideas thronging in the fertile mind of the younger boy.' Although Ellis is describing a youthful relationship, the description remained accurate throughout the adult lives of the two men, with Crossley providing the research and background information to feed Ainsworth's imagination as a successful writer of historical romances.

The young Ainsworth was instrumental in organising amateur theatricals, which became part of life at King Street. A small theatre was set up in the basement of the house, and William and his school friends set about staging ambitious productions of the plays that he was already beginning to turn out with impressive speed. Most of the household became involved in one way or another, whether acting, designing and making scenery and costumes, or swelling the ranks of the audience.

Much of Ainsworth’s early work, in the form of essays, short stories and poems were signed with the name Thomas Hall (who had been a fellow schoolboy at Manchester Grammar School), and many of these were published by journals such as Blackwoods, The London Magazine and Arliss’s Pocket Magazine. The editor of this last journal was the recipient of one of the author’s youthful hoaxes. Under the name of Hall, the sixteen-year-old Ainsworth wrote to announce that he had discovered a seventeenth-century dramatist, named William Aynesworthe, introducing him(self) as follows:

'Of all the dramatic writers, one who has met with the least attention, and perhaps deserved the most, is William Aynesworthe. The chaste simplicity of his style, divested of all the ridiculous bombast which characterizes our modern writers; the elegant and rich fulness of his verse, combine to render him a writer worthy to be ranked among the first of our early dramatists.'

The writer goes on to offer specimens of six plays from the pen of his newly discovered genius, presumably resurrected from the King Street basement. Inevitably the editor spotted some anachronisms in the texts, but Ainsworth continued unabashed, offering the plays of ‘Richard Clitheroe’ to the New Monthly Magazine, with similar results. He was to use the surname Clitheroe in one of his most important novels some 30 years later, as we shall see.

So who was Ainsworth?

The novels of William Harrison Ainsworth are unfamiliar to the majority of readers who enjoy nineteenth century literature today. Yet Ainsworth enjoyed a spectacular success in his own time. The son of a Manchester solicitor, he found the glittering prizes of fame and fortune in the Capital at the age of only thirty. But when fashionable London’s ardour cooled, it was his native city that provided him with the ultimate honour and recognition. But, in the course of the 122 years since his death, his works have fallen almost completely from the favour of the reading public. Up until the 1940s and 50s the better known titles were available in pocket editions, published by Everyman and similar presses, but nowadays, Ainsworth’s novels are difficult to find. A few are printed in limited quantities by local publishers, and others are available as special ‘print on demand’ items obtainable through the Internet, but the majority of the forty titles in the Ainsworth canon are only to be found in remote corners of second hand bookshops. This situation requires some explanation; so, let us take a closer look at the remarkable story of Ainsworth’s life and work, beginning with his family background in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

William’s father, Thomas Ainsworth, was a descendant of the Ainsworths of Tottington, near Bury, about 2 miles from the village of Ainsworth (the original Ainsworths of Ainsworth had died out shortly after the Civil War). He was born in Rostherne, Cheshire, in 1778, but spent his adult life in Manchester, where he was a partner in the successful legal practice of Halstead and Ainsworth in Essex Street. In the course of his professional life, he was involved with many of the public improvements in the city most notably the radical remodelling of the Market Street area. The author’s middle name was provided by Ann Harrison, who was born in Kirkham in the same year as Thomas Ainsworth. Ann was the daughter of the Rev. Ralph Harrison (1748-1810), who had been minister of the Cross Street Chapel since 1771 and became professor of Greek, Latin and ‘polite literature’ at the newly established Manchester Academy in 1786. The academy moved to Oxford in 1889, and was henceforth known as Manchester College, where there is a memorial window by Burne-Jones in memory of the Rev. Harrison. He also found time to take an interest in business matters, particularly concerning the growth of Manchester, and made a small fortune through property speculation. In this he may well have come into contact with Thomas Ainsworth, and it is quite possible that Thomas might have met Harrison’s daughter through this business relationship.

Thomas Ainsworth married Ann Harrison in 1802, and the couple established their home in King Street, at that time a prestigious residential address, in central Manchester(see illustration below). They had two sons: William Harrison Ainsworth (b.1805), and Thomas Gilbert Ainsworth (b.1806), who won a scholarship to Cambridge, but there suffered what was described as ‘brain fever,’ which left him mentally impaired until his death at the age of 70. The Ainsworths also owned a country residence, named Beech Hill, in Smedley Lane, Cheetham Hill (see illustration above), which Thomas purchased in 1811. This location was described as: ‘charmingly situated on high ground, and only a distant glimpse of Manchester was presented across the intervening gardens and fields. From the back of the house a really beautiful view extended over Crumpsall and Heaton Park – a rich well-wooded country of undulating hills.’ Here it was that the family spent many of their summer months when the boys were young. A subsequent occupant was John Edward Taylor, the founder of the Manchester Guardian, who died there in 1844. During the twentieth century, the house became a Church Army Labour Home, and was eventually demolished. There now stands a modern building; a nursing home, which retains the name of Beech Hill, but sadly without the rural aspect.


More to follow soon ...

Ainsworth on TV!

Channel 5 screened a documentary on Tuesday 4th September, entitled The Real Dick Turpin: Revealed, featuring the historian Professor James Sharpe, of York University, who is an expert on Turpin. The programme acknowledged Ainsworth as the principal creator of the Turpin legend, in particular the 'Ride to York', and showed this portrait of the author by R. J. Lane.