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Volume Order of Illustrations Incorrect at this Point

Although the volume edition of the novel places this illustration fourteenth in the sequence, it actually occurs immediately after the eleventh (November 1840) illustration. Guy Fawkes keeping watch upon Tresham and Lord Mounteagle, facing p. 194 in the volume, in the December 1840 number of Bentley's Miscellany appears as the last illustration for the serialised novel in Volume 8, complementing the twelfth instalment, Book the Second, Chapters V and VI.

Passage Illustrated: Tresham's pumping Mounteagle for information

"Is this place, then, the rendezvous of a band of conspirators?" asked Mounteagle, uneasily.

Tresham nodded in the affirmative.

"Who are they?" continued Mounteagle. "There is no need of concealment with me."

As this was said, Tresham raised his eyes, and saw that Guy Fawkes had stepped silently forward, and placed himself behind Mounteagle's chair. His hand grasped his dagger, and his gaze never moved from the object of his suspicion.

"Who are they?" repeated Mounteagle. "Is Guy Fawkes one of them?"

"Assuredly not," replied Tresham. "Why should you name him? I never mentioned him to your lordship."

"I think you did," replied Mounteagle. "But I am certain you spoke of Catesby."

And Tresham's regards involuntarily wandered to the closet, when he beheld the stern glance of the person alluded to fixed upon him.

"You have heard of Viviana Radcliffe's imprisonment, I suppose?" pursued Mounteagle, unconscious of what was passing.

"I have," replied Tresham.

"The Earl of Salisbury expected he would be able to wring all from her, but he has failed," observed Mounteagle.

"I am glad of it," observed Tresham.

"I thought you were disposed to serve him?" remarked Mounteagle.

"So I am," replied Tresham. "But, if secrets are to be revealed, I had rather be the bearer of them than any one else. I am sorry for Viviana."

"I could procure her liberation, if I chose," observed Mounteagle.

"Say you so?" cried Fawkes, clapping him on the shoulder; "then you stir not hence till you have procured it!" [Book the Second, "The Discovery," Chapter VI, "The Cellar," pp. 194-195]

Commentary: Fawkes, the would-be Assassin

As Lord Mounteagle blithely insists that Fawkes is among a group of clandestine operatives planning to assassinate King James the First, the very plotter whom he has just named stands immediately behind his chair, his poniard drawn, ready to strike. The illustrator in describing the scene in the rundown house on the outskirts of Lambeth exploits the situational irony to heighten the suspense of reading the accompanying text. Tresham pretends to be unaware of the plotters listening at the door in order to avoid alarming his ignorant interlocutor. Ainsworth concludes the chapter indeterminately, leaving the reader wondering whether Fawkes will murder Mounteagle — and even the arch-plotter, the self-serving Tresham. On the other hand, that Mounteagle could effect Viviana's release may prove sufficient motive for Fawkes to spare him.

In Guy Fawkes keeping watch upon Tresham and Lord Mounteagle Cruikshank swerves away from the historical plotter towards the traditional image of Guy Fawkes as a boogeyman hiding under the bed — or in the closet, waiting to pounce. The glittering eyes, the steely determination, the taut body language all point to Fawkes the radical, the anarchist. In him Cruikshank represents the atavistic impulse that lies beneath the tranquil surface of two fashionably dressed Jacobean gentleman in casual discussion. However, the illustrator has juxtaposed against their civilised veneer the cloaked, would-be assassin, Fawkes himself, the embodiment of their topic — the clandestine Catholic insurrection that menaces the kingdom's social stability.

The suspenseful scene grossly distorts Mounteagle's foreknowledge of the plot for dramatic effect; historically, the Catholic nobleman and member of the House of Lords received an anonymous letter warning him of the impending disaster, and advising him to absent himself. Thirty-eight-year-old Francis Tresham, a survivor of Essex's failed coup d'etat, joined the plot late in its formulation, in October, at Catesby's instigation, but seems to have been something of a double-agent, as Ainsworth suggests, since Lord Mounteagle was his brother-in-law. Historians have long suspected that Tresham, not deeply invested in the plot, authored the anonymous letter of warning. He had, however, after his release from imprisonment in 1601 undertaken two secret missions to Catholic Spain to seek support for persecuted English Catholics.

References

Ainsworth, William Harrison. Guy Fawkes, or The Gunpowder Treason: An Historical Romance. With 22 illustrations by George Cruikshank. London: Cunningham & Mortimer, 1841 (first edition). Rpt., London: George Routledge & Sons, n. d. [See the text and images of the novel posted in May 2013 at Project Gutenberg Australia's website: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1302021h.html .]

Vann, J. Don. "Guy Fawkes in Bentley's Miscellany, January 1840-Noevember 1841." Victorian Novels in Serial. New York: MLA, 1985. P. 20.

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Last modified 23 August 2018