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. Who was Guy 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 him knuckle 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 great show of 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—what could be the good of it? Was Guy Fawkes eaten—if not, why cut 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 which were 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]]