MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
WHEN walking yesterday to the Underground station I was accosted by three little boys. Their faces had been blackened with cork, their lips were pink, the whites of their eyes as dazzling as the snows of Himalaya. "Something for the Guy, sir! " they cried in chorus, extending to me a collecting-tin such as is employed by the ladies who sell roses on Alexandra Day. The eldest of the three, who must have been some ten years of age, wore a brown bowler hat, pushed down upon his curls ; the second, who must have been about eight, had disguised himself with a long mackintosh which trailed upon the pavement and impeded the move- ments of his arms ; and the third little boy—a fellow-traveller of about six—wore a huge cloth cap and that expression of mingled pride and diffidence which is assumed by the very young when accompanying their elders upon an expedition. I pointed out to them that their solicitations, as their travesty, were premature. The Gunpowder Plot, the anniversary of which they were so dutifully celebrating, had been discovered on November 5th, 1605; several days must elapse before the eve of their celebration ; why anticipate the event by this unseemly quest? The boy in the bowler hat was not deterred by my criticisms. He explained that they wished to buy fireworks for Guy Fawkes' Day; and that unless they started early all the squibs in the shops would be sold out. The second boy supported this contention. The third little boy, under his vast cloth cap—not grasping the nature of the controversy—assumed an expres- sion of guilt by which my heart was wrung. I told them that I should slip a large coin into their tin provided they could tell me what or whom they would be celebrating on November 5th. And why it was they should desire fireworks on that occasion rather than sweets. The whites of their eyes became enormous as they stared silently. "It's the Guy, sir, isn't it ? " the elder boy ventured. And after all, why should they not, upon the alley pavement, let off a few little squibs ? The sparkle and bang of these small contrivances rwould give to them as much delight and wonder as any atesh-bazi could have provided for the Great Mogul. So my coin rattled into their empty little tin and their smiles shone white against their blackened cheeks.
* * * *
As a believer in Parliamentary Democracy, I ought, I know, to have pursued the conversation further. I ought, I know, to have told them that if the next morning they would come to my house and give me a lucid account of the Gunpowder Plot and the issues therein involved, I would undertake to put two half-crowns into their tin. I might even have promised, if they washed their faces hard, that I would take them down .to Westminster and show them the little place near the crypt where Guy Fawkes is supposed— entirely without evidence—to have stored his bantls of gunpowder. As I walked on towards the Underground the sound of my coin falling into their empty tin echoed as a reproach in my ears. It was so easy to slip two shillings through a slit ; it was so difficult to explain to the youthful proletariat the real meaning of the conspiracy of 1605. Yet had my civic worth been as great as the time-pressure which overwhelms my days I should have profited by the occasion to spread enlightenment, education and an opportune lecture upon the evils of totalitarianism and religious dissension. As I turned the corner I could hear their shrill voices approaching another victim, "Something for the Guy, madam, something for the Guy!" What a strange immortality to have descended upon Guido, the son of Edward Fawkes or Foulkes or Faux of York!
* * * Yet what, after all, could I have told these little boys about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot ? Fawkes' own confession, signed with a hand still trembling from the agonies of the rack, is not evidence. The official Blue Book on the subject—" The True and Perfect Relation of the whole Proceedings against the late most Barbarous Traitors "—could scarcely be described as a reliable docu- ment. In terms of ordinary human probability the story as we know it simply does not make sense. The prime conspirator doubtless was Robert Catesby of Ashby St. Legers, who was a man of compelling personality, considerable riches and a deep sense of grievance. But how came it that Guy Fawkes was himself involved in this insane endeavour ? He had been born a Protestant ; as a little boy he would regularly attend service with his parents at St. Michael-le-Belfrey at York ; his family had never been persecuted as recusants. It was only when his father died and his mother married Dionis Baynbrigge that he became exposed to Catholic influences. What induced him thereafter to leave England, where he had inherited considerable property, and to enlist in the Spanish army ? What induced him to imagine that the King of Spain would be able by diplomatic or other pressure to persuade James I to abolish the disabilities imposed upon the Catholics ? What circumstances brought him into contact with Sir William Stanley, Thomas Percy and Robert Catesby ? Did they really imagine that once they had blown up the King and the House of Lords a Spanish army would land in England and place Prince Charles as a Catholic monarch upon the throne ? After all, they were not all of them desperate men, and many of them had long experience of public affairs. How can they have supposed that their Mines and powder-barrels could have remained unsuspected and undetected for a whole year ? Why did they not listen to their own priests, who, under the seal of confession, sought to dissuade them from their insane enterprise ? And what folly on their part to warn the Catholic peers not to be present at the opening of Parliament on November 5th.
* * * * The story of the gunpowder plot, as we are told it, does not, as I have said, make sense. The clue to the tangle is, I imagine, to be sought, not in the Public Record Office, but in the archives at Madrid. What passed between Guy Fawkes and Philip III when the former, in the company of Christopher Wright, visited the Spanish court in 1595 or 1596? Some definite plan must have been arranged under which Spanish intervention would follow immediately upon the assassination of James I. What passed exactly at the interview which in 1604 took place, at Bergen, between Fawkes and Velasco, the Constable of C,astille ? Sir William Stanley himself had served with honour in the Spanish armies and was accorded the confidence and the esteem of the King of Spain. The whole story is inexplicable unless we assume that the Spaniards were using Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators as a fifth column in this country. If the plot succeeded, then some advantage might accrue to Spain ; if it failed, then it could readily be disavowed. Under this interpretation, the conspiracy falls into some logical pattern, a pattern rendered familiar to us in our own lifetime by such figures as Quisling and Henlein. It thus becomes a cautionary tale to warn us against what happens to a country in which dogmatic dissension reaches a point where it eliminates all patriotic feeling, all sense of solidarity, and tempts fanatics and converts to accept the often fallacious promises of foreign aid in order to overthrow the institutions of their own country. The gunpowder plot is celebrated today as in some unspecified manner commemorating the triumph of Parliament ; it should be regarded rather as an anniversary recording the extirpation of a fifth column. The Barbarous Traitors were detected and destroyed.
* * * Had I expounded this explanation to the three little cork-smeared boys I should not, I feel, have increased their enlightenment. The whites of their eyes would have grown larger and whiter. What is Velasco to them, or they to Velasco ? So let them black their faces, put on their grandfather's bowler and enjoy their squibs and bonfires on November 5th. And if they are to be told anything about the origins and nature of that celebration, let them be told that so long as Parliament remains supreme, there is no danger of the violence of minorities destroying the will of a nation. Since in these dogmatic days there is some meaning in this annual celebration. Something for the Guy, sir, something for the Guy.
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