RECOLLECTIONS OF GUY FAWKES

“When a man has once been very famous for jests and merry adventures, he is made to adopt all the jests that want a father, and many times such as are unworthy of him.”—Motteux’sLife of Rabelais.

Atmidnight, on the fifth of November, in the year of grace one thousand six hundred and five, Guido Fawkes, “gentleman,” was discovered, “booted and spurred,” in the vicinity of St Stephen’s Chapel, having on his person “three matches, a tinder-box, and a dark lantern”; and purposing by means of gunpowder to blow up, says King James, “the whole nobility, the most part of the knights and gentry, besides the whole judges of the land, withmost of the lawyersand the whole clerks!” For the one indiscretion Guido Fawkes forfeited his gentility, and became a proverb of wickedness. In boyhood we looked upon Guido Fawkes, gentleman, as one little lower than the devil; he had four horns, and a dozen tails. “Years that bring the philosophic mind” have divested him of these excrescences and appendages, and Guido Fawkes now appears to matured charities merely a person of a singularly eccentric disposition.

Some five and twenty years ago it was the patrioticcustom of the authorities of an Isle of Sheppy dockyard to bestow upon their apprentices a few waggon-loads of resinous timber, that a bonfire worthy of the cause it celebrated might be kindled from the public purse—that the effigy of the arch-fiend Guy might be consumed in a fire three times hotter than the fire of a furnace. Such fierce liberality was not lost upon the townspeople; their ardour in the burning business smouldered not; every man subscribed his plank or log; and, from the commissioner in his uniform, to Bobby in his pinafore, the fifth of November glowed, in the calendar of their minds, a pillar of fire. For a month before that day, the coming anniversary busied the thoughts of boyish executioners, resolved to show their patriotism in the appointments of the Guy—in the grotesque iniquity of his face—in the cumbrous state of his huge arm-chair. To beg clothes from door to door was the business of every lover of Church and State. To ask for a coat—a pair of breeches—a shirt (the frill could be made of paper)—hose and hat, was not mendicity, but the fulfilment of a high social duty.

Guy Fawkes would at length be dressed. A philosopher might have found good matter in his eleemosynary suit. In the coat of the bloodthirsty wretch he might have recognised the habit of Scum, the slop-seller, a quiet trader afloat of twenty thousand pounds—in the vest of the villainous ruffian the discarded waistcoat of Smallgrog, the honest landlord of a little house for sailors—in the stockings of the atrocious miscreant the hose of the equitable Weevil, biscuit-contractor to his Majesty’s fleet—whilst for the leather of the fiend-like effigy, Guy Fawkes was to be exhibited, and afterwards burnt in, the broad-toed shoes of that best of men, Trap, the town attorney.

The chair, too, in which Guy Fawkes sat, might it not have some day enshrined a justice of the peace? and the lantern fixed in the hand of the diabolical, lynx-eyedmonster, might it not have been the property of the most amiable and most somnolent of all the Blue Town watchmen? A mask was fixed upon the effigy, or the lump of clay kneaded into human features, and horribly or delicately expressed, according to the benevolent art of the makers!—might not the same visor have been worn by a perfect gentleman, with considerable advantage, at a masquerade?—might not the clay nose and mouth of the loathsome traitor have borne an accidental likeness to the very pink of patriots? Let philosophy ponder well on Guy Fawkes.

We will now attempt our childish recollections of the great Guy. We have waked at midnight, perhaps dreaming of the bonfire about to blaze, and thinking we heard the distant chorus sounding to the advent of the Mighty Terror. No, it was the sea booming across the marsh, the wind rising or falling. There was nothing for it but to go to sleep and dream of unextinguishable squibs and crackers. At length four o’clock arrives; the cocks crow—the boys can’t be long now. There—hark!—how the chant comes up the street, like one voice—the voice of a solitary droning witch! We lie breathless, and shape to ourselves Guy Fawkes in the dark! Our hearts beat quicker and quicker as the chant becomes louder; and we sit up in bed, as the boys approach the door, and, oh! how we wish to be with them! There—there they are in full chorus! Hark:—

“The fifth of November, as I can remember,Is gunpowder treason and plot,I know no reason, why gunpowder treasonShould ever be forgot.”

“The fifth of November, as I can remember,

Is gunpowder treason and plot,

I know no reason, why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.”

We feel an unutterable pang, for loudest among the loud, we hear the shrill voice of Jack Tarleton. “Ha!” we sigh, “hismother letshimout.” The bitterness passes away with the—

“Hallo, boys! Hallo, boys! make a round ring,Hallo, boys! Hallo, boys! God save the king!”

“Hallo, boys! Hallo, boys! make a round ring,

Hallo, boys! Hallo, boys! God save the king!”

“Rejoicing in the captivity of a suit of clothes stuffed with hay”

And now the procession moves on, and the voices die in the distance, and we feel we are left alone; and, in a few minutes, we hear new revellers, rejoicing in the captivity of a suit of clothes stuffed with hay, and called Guy Fawkes. Guy Fawkes! Guy Fawkes! who—whatisGuy Fawkes? We had been told that he had been caught with a lantern, tinder-box and matches, ready to blow up thousands of barrels of gunpowder, and so to destroy the king, bishops, and members of Parliament. It must be shocking—very shocking; still, we could not perfectly envisage the atrocity—we could not make out the full horror. We had the undefined sense of the greatness of a king, though we hardly dared to hope we should ever see one. We had a less remote notion of the nature of a bishop, having been helped somewhat in our speculations by the person of the curate at the garrison church. “Curates may come to be bishops, only bishops are very much greater; and curates have nothing upon their heads, whereas certain bishops might wear mitres.” On learning this we thought that bishops were merely full-grown curates; in the same way that wehad seen Poland hens with their topknots of feathers only the spring before bare-headed little chicks. It was thus, in the irreverence of childhood, we disposed of the whole bench of bishops. But now came we to the difficulty—what, what could be a member of Parliament? Was it a living thing? If so, had it a voice? Could it speak? Could it sit? Could it say yes and no? Could it walk? Could it turn? Or was it merely an image? Was it pulled by wires, like sister Jenny’s doll? We had been told that members of Parliament made laws. Whatwerelaws? Were they the lions and unicorns on the king’s arms? Were they a better sort of cake, too dear for everybody to buy? Little boys ate parliament-cakes—were law-cakes for men? If so, were they gilt or plain?—with comfits or without?

It is no matter, we thought, being unable to satisfy ourselves: it is no matter. Guy Fawkes—that shadowy, terrible mystery—had once lived and tried to kill the king, the full-grown curates, and those undivined riddles—members of Parliament. We again went to our first question. WhowasGuy Fawkes? Did he have a father and mother? Was Guy Fawkes ever a little boy? and did he fly a kite and play at marbles? If so, how could he have ever thought it worth his while to trouble himself with other matters? There was something terrifying in the idea of having played with Guy Fawkes. We fancied him at taw—we saw himknuckle down. No—it could not be; the imagination of the child could not dwell upon such an impossibility. Guy Fawkes a boy!—a baby! now shaking a rattle—now murmuring as he fed, his mother smiling down upon him! No, no—it was impossible; Guy Fawkes was never born—he was from the first a man—he never could have been a baby. He seemed to us a part of the things that had always been, and always would be—a piece of grim eternity; a principle of everlasting wickedness.

Is it in childhood alone—is it only in the dim imaginings of infancy—in the wandering guesses of babyhood, that we manifest this ignorance? When the full-grown thief is hanged, do we not sometimes forget that he was the child of misery and vice—born for the gallows—nursed for the halter? Did we legislate a little more for the cradle, might we not be spared some pains for the hulks?

And then we had been told that Guy Fawkes came from Spain. Where was Spain? Was it a million miles away, and what distance was a million miles? Were there little boys in Spain, or were they all like Guy Fawkes? How strange, and yet how delightful to us did it seem to feel that we were a part of the wonderful things about us! To be at all upon this world—to be one at the greatshowof men and women—to feel that when we grew bigger we should know everything of kings, bishops, members of Parliament, and Guy Fawkes! What a golden glory hung about the undiscovered!

And Guy Fawkes, we had heard, had his head cut off, and his body cut into quarters! Could this be true? Could men do to men what we had seen Fulk the butcher do to sheep? How much, we thought, had little boys to grow out of before they could agree to this! And then, when done, what was the good of it—whatcouldbe the good of it? Was Guy Fawkes eaten—if not,whycut him up?

Had Guy Fawkes a wife, and little boys and girls? Did he love his children, and buy them toys and apples—or, like Sawney Bean, did he devour them? Did Guy Fawkes say his prayers?

Had Guy Fawkes a friend? Did he ever laugh—did he ever tell a droll story? Did Guy Fawkes ever sing a song? Like Frampton, the Blue Town Barber, did Guy Fawkes ever get drunk? At length we put to ourselves the question of questions:—

Was there ever such a man as Guy Fawkes? Did Guy Fawkes ever live?

This query annoyed us with the doubt that we had been tricked into a hate, a fear, a loathing, a wonder—and a mixture of these passions and emotions, for a fib. We felt disappointed when we felt the reality of Guy Fawkes to be doubtful. We had heard of griffins and unicorns, of dragons that had eaten men like apples, and had then been told that there never had been any such thing. If we were not to believe in a dragon, why should we believe in Guy Fawkes? After all, was the whole story but make-game?

The child passively accepts a story of the future, he can bring his mind up to a thing promised, but wants faith in the past. The cause is obvious; he recollects few things gone, but is full of things to come. Hence Guy Fawkes was with us the ogre of a nursery; we could have readily believed, especially after the Story of Beauty and the Beast, that he married Goody Two Shoes, and was the father of Little Red Riding Hood.

But Guy Fawkes grows with us from boyhood to youth. He gets flesh and blood with every November; he is no longer the stuffed plaything of a schoolboy or the grotesque excuse for begging vagabonds, but the veritable Guy Fawkes, “gentleman.” We see him, “Thomas Percy’s alleged man,” at the door of the vault, “booted and spurred”; we behold that “very tall and desperate fellow,” lurking in the deep of night, with looks of deadly resolution, pounced upon by that vigilant gentleman of the privy-chamber, Sir Thomas Knevit! We go with Guido, “the new Mutius Scævola, born in England,” before the council, where “he often smiles in scornful manner, not only avowing the fact, but repenting only, with the said Scævola, his failing in the execution thereof.” We think of him “answering quickly to every man’s objection, scoffing at any idle questions whichwere propounded to him, and jesting with such as he thought had no authority to examine him.” And then we think of the thanksgiving of the great James, who gave praise that, had the intent of the wicked prevailed, he should not have “died ingloriously in an ale-house, a stew, or such vile place,” but with “the best and most honourable company.”[7]

7.See “His Majesty’s Speech concerning the Gunpowder Plot,” etc., in theHarleian Miscellany.

Guy Fawkes is, in our baby thoughts, a mysterious vision, one of the shadows of evil advancing on the path of childhood. We grow older, and the substances of evil come close upon us—we see their dark lantern, and snuff the brimstone.

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