3 January: Boreham on Harrison Ainsworth

Fireworks and Fiction
Harrison Ainsworth, the anniversary of whose death we mark today, cut a really striking figure in the social life of the nineteenth century. Charles Mackay refers to him as one of the four most dashing dandies of the period, the other three being Disraeli, Bulwer Lytton, and Dickens. As a novelist, Ainsworth was singularly fortunate in the hour of his appearance. He had no rivals. A clear field awaited him. Hungry men are in no mood to cavil at the fare set before them, and when Harrison Ainsworth burst upon the reading public, men were hungry for just such viands as he seemed eager and able to supply. The older novelists—Fielding, Richardson, Smollett, and the rest—had passed away, leaving, apparently, no successors.

When Harrison Ainsworth startled men with his first novel, there were in England two youths who were just about to attain their majority, neither of whom had as yet formed any conception of the splendour of the destiny awaiting him. These interesting young men were Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. But their names were as yet merely names; it was not until some years later that they became entangled in trailing clouds of glory. The fact that, as a stripling, Ainsworth enjoyed the friendship of Charles Lamb, whilst, in later years, he, as their senior, bestowed an almost patronising intimacy upon Dickens, Thackeray, and Browning, demonstrates the remarkable way in which he stood, like certain welcome flowers, between the seasons. A priceless opportunity presented itself.

Skylighting Rockets And Sensational Romance
Significantly enough, Ainsworth's first ambition was to be a manufacturer of fireworks. As a youngster he thought there could be nothing finer than to splash the blackness of every dark night with cataracts of rainbow-tinted sparks, soaring rockets, Roman candles, catherine wheels, hissing squibs, barking crackers, and pyrotechnic sensations of every kind. Seeing no prospect of realising his dream, or of making his fortune as a creator of dazzling fires, he sadly abandoned the notion in favour of a theatrical career. He constructed a playhouse in the cellar of his home, and fearing lest the pieces produced upon his mimic stage should not be sufficiently hair-raising or affecting, he took the precaution to write the dramas himself. His father, a Manchester solicitor, struggled frantically to chain the boy to a legal career; but, in the fevered brain of his son, trust deeds, mortgage certificates, and property conveyances seemed to be a shockingly tame substitute for spectacular fireworks and thrilling melodramas. To humour his father, Harrison did go through the form of studying law; but, whilst he was bending over dry-as-dust text books and dreary parchments, he was really thinking out blood-curdling plots for the romantic novelettes that he was contributing to the popular periodicals.

It was inevitable that a boy of such a temper and such a time should have a weakness for highwaymen. In the stirring pageant of that picturesque period, the highwayman figured with blinding splendour; he enveloped himself in a kind of golden haze; he became the gleaming knight of a newly established order of chivalry. As a young man, Ainsworth read Mrs. Radcliffe's "Mysteries of Udolpho." It suggested to his restless mind a curious question. Why must the atmosphere of an agitating romance be necessarily foreign? He resolved upon a daring experiment. He would write a story like Mrs. Radcliffe's, substituting for her Italian background the old manor house, the English squire, the leafy groves and the graceful gardens with which he was so familiar. Thus inspired, he set to work, and it must certainly be admitted that his beginning was auspicious.

Place Of The Highwayman In Literature
For he began by creating the virile and electric personality of Dick Turpin. Ainsworth's Dick Turpin is, of course, an utterly impossible highwayman but he is the ideal highwayman, just as the utterly impossible detective that we all love best. There never was, never could be, and certainly never will be, as gallant, as ubiquitous, and as engaging a bandit as the Dick Turpin of "Rookwood"; yet, of all the highwaymen who have figured in English literature, he is easily the favourite and the chief. Harrison Ainsworth wrote the novel in order to give flesh-and-blood reality to the dashing hero of his boyhood's dreams; and the character was so appealing and so convincing that, as soon as the book issued from the press, its author's reputation was made. His initial venture took the world by storm.

Ainsworth dedicated the book to his mother. "When I inscribed it to you, my dear mother," he wrote afterwards, "I was satisfied that, whatever its reception it might meet with elsewhere, at your hands it would be sure of indulgence." And he tells her of his delight that the book with which he had associated "the name of the dearest friend I have in the world" had proved so amazingly successful. Later on, having curbed his youthful craving for gorgeous skyrockets and stage sensations, he became capable of novels as well balanced and as beautiful as "The Miser's Daughter." It is easily his best. Whilst it was in progress, his mother died; and he attributed to the poignancy of his grief in the hour of this desolating bereavement the deeper and tenderer note that characterises this moving romance. It was because it was his own favourite that he dedicated it "to my three dear daughters who are not less—and with better reason—favourites with me." Ainsworth was an agreeable companion. He is described as of goodly stature and well-set limb, with a fine head on his shoulders and a heart to match. Of sympathetic and unselfish disposition, he was both an excellent talker and an excellent listener, and was always the soul of hospitality. He wrote about 40 novels, the majority of which have been relegated to limbo and forgetfulness, but a few of which have taken their places among the most entertaining romances in the English tongue.

F W Boreham

Image: Harrison Ainsworth