Until within the last ten or twelve years, the exhibition of guys
in the public thoroughfares every 5th of November, was a privilege
enjoyed exclusively by boys of from 10 to 15 years of age, and the
money arising therefrom was supposed to be invested at night in a small
pyrotechnic display of squibs, crackers, and catherine-wheels.
At schools, and at many young gentlemen’s houses, for at least a week
before the 5th arrived, the bonfires were prepared and guys built up.
At night one might see rockets ascending in the air from many of the
suburbs of London, and the little back-gardens in such places as the
Hampstead-road and Kennington, and, after dusk, suddenly illuminated
with the blaze of the tar-barrel, and one might hear in the streets
even banging of crackers mingled with the laughter and shouts of boys
enjoying the sport.
In those days the street guys were of a very humble character, the
grandest of them generally consisting of old clothes stuffed up with
straw, and carried in state upon a kitchen-chair. The arrival of the
guy before a window was announced by a juvenile chorus of “Please to
remember the 5th of November.” So diminutive, too, were some of these
guys, that I have even seen dolls carried about as the representatives
of the late Mr. Fawkes. In fact, none of these effigies were hardly
ever made of larger proportions than Tom Thumb, or than would admit of
being carried through the garden-gates of any suburban villa.
Of late years, however, the character of Guy Fawkes-day has entirely
changed. It seems now to partake rather of the nature of a London
May-day. The figures have grown to be of gigantic stature, and whilst
clowns, musicians, and dancers have got to accompany them in their
travels through the streets, the traitor Fawkes seems to have been
almost laid aside, and the festive occasion taken advantage of for the
expression of any political feeling, the guy being made to represent
any celebrity of the day who has for the moment offended against the
opinions of the people. The kitchen-chair has been changed to the
costermongers’ donkey-truck, or even vans drawn by pairs of horses. The
bonfires and fireworks are seldom indulged in; the money given to the
exhibitors being shared among the projectors at night, the same as if
the day’s work had been occupied with acrobating or nigger singing.
[Illustration: GUY FAWKES.]
The first guy of any celebrity that made its appearance in the London
streets was about the year 1844, when an enormous figure was paraded
about on horseback. This had a tall extinguisher-hat, with a broad red
brim, and a pointed vandyked collar, that hung down over a smock frock,
which was stuffed out with straw to the dimensions of a water-butt.
The figure was attended by a body of some half-dozen costermongers,
mounting many coloured cockades, and armed with formidable bludgeons.
The novelty of the exhibition ensured its success, and the “coppers”
poured in in such quantities that on the following year gigantic guys
were to be found in every quarter of the metropolis.
But the gigantic movement did not attain its zenith till the “No
Popery” cry was raised, upon the division of England into papal
bishoprics. Then it was no longer Fawkes, but Cardinal Wiseman and the
Pope of Rome who were paraded as guys through the London thoroughfares.
The figures were built up of enormous proportions, the red hat of
the cardinal having a brim as large as a loo-table, and his scarlet
cape being as long as a tent. Guy Fawkes seated upon a barrel marked
“Gunpowder” usually accompanied His Holiness and the Cardinal, but his
diminutive size showed that Guy now played but a secondary part in the
exhibition, although the lantern and the matches were tied as usual
to his radishy and gouty fingers. According to the newspapers, one of
these shows was paraded on the Royal Exchange, the merchants approving
of the exhibition to such an extent that sixpences, shillings, and
half-crowns were showered in to the hats of the lucky costers who had
made the speculation. So excited was the public mind, that at night,
after business was over, processions were formed by tradespeople
and respectable mechanics, who, with bands of music playing, and
banners flying, on which were inscribed anti-papal mottoes and
devices, marched through the streets with flaming torches, and after
parading their monster Popes and Cardinals until about nine o’clock at
night, eventually adjourned to some open space--like Peckham-rye or
Blackheath--where the guy was burned amid the most boisterous applauses.
Cardinal Wiseman and the Pope reappeared for several years in
succession, till at length the Russian war breaking out, the Guy-Fawkes
constructors had a fresh model to work upon. The Emperor of Russia
accordingly “came out” in the streets, in all forms and shapes;
sometimes as the veritable Nicholas, in jack-boots and leather
breeches, with his unmistakable moustache; and often as Old Nick, with
a pair of horns and a lengthy appendage in the form of a tail, with an
arrow-headed termination; and not unfrequently he was represented as a
huge bear crouching beneath some rude symbol of the English and French
alliance.
On the 5th of November (1856) the guys were more of a political than a
religious character. The unfortunate Pope of Rome had in some instances
been changed for Bomba, though the Czar, His Holiness, and his British
representative the Cardinal, were not altogether neglected. The want
of any political agitation was the cause why the guys were of so
uninteresting a character.
I must not, however, forget to mention a singular innovation that was
then made in the recognised fashion of guy building--one of the groups
of figures exhibited being (strange to say) of a complimentary nature.
It consisted of Miss Nightingale, standing between an English Grenadier
and a French foot-soldier, while at her feet lay the guy between two
barrels marked “Gunpowder,” and so equivocally attired that he might be
taken for either the Emperor of Russia or the Pope of Rome.
At Billingsgate, a guy was promenaded round the market as early as
five o’clock in the morning, by a party of charity-boys, who appeared
by their looks to have been sitting up all night. It is well known to
the boys in the neighbourhood of the great fish-market, that the guy
which is first in the field reaps the richest harvest of halfpence from
the salesmen; and indeed, till within the last three or four years,
one fish-factor was in the habit of giving the bearers of the first
effigy he saw a half-crown piece. Hence there were usually two or three
different guy parties in attendance soon after four o’clock, awaiting
his coming into the market.
For manufacturing a cheap guy, such as that seen at Billingsgate, a
pair of old trousers and Wellington boots form the most expensive item.
The shoulders of the guys are generally decorated with a paper cape,
adorned with different coloured rosettes and gilt stars. A fourpenny
mask makes the face, and a proper cocked hat, embellished in the same
style as the cape, surrounds the rag head.
The general characteristics of all guys consists in a limpness and
roundness of limb, which give the form a puddingy appearance. All the
extremities have a kind of paralytic feebleness, so that the head leans
on one side like that of a dead bird, and the feet have an unnatural
propensity for placing themselves in every position but the right
one; sometimes turning their toes in, as if their legs had been put on
the wrong way, or keeping their toes turned out, as if they had been
“struck so” while taking their first dancing-lesson. Their fingers
radiate like a bunch of carrots, and the arms are as shapeless and
bowed as the monster sausage in a cook-shop window. The face is always
composed of a mask painted in the state of the most florid health, and
singularly disagreeing with the frightful debility of the body. Through
the holes for the eyes bits of rag and straw generally protrude, as
though birds had built in the sockets. A pipe is mostly forced into the
mouth, where it remains with the bowl downwards; and in the hands it
is customary to tie a lantern and matches. Whilst the guy is carried
along, you can hear the straw in his interior rustling and crackling,
like moving a workhouse mattrass. As a general rule, it may be added,
that guys have a helpless, drunken look.
When, however, the monster Guy Fawkeses came into fashion, considerably
greater expense was gone to in “getting up” the figures. Then the
feet were always fastened in their proper position, and although the
arrangement of the hands was never perfectly mastered, yet the fingers
were brought a little more closely together, and approached the digital
dexterity of the dummies at the cheap clothes marts.
For carrying the guys about, chairs, wheelbarrows, trucks, carts,
and vans are employed. Chairs and wheelbarrows are patronised by the
juvenile population, but the other vehicles belong to the gigantic
speculations.
On the Surrey side a guy was exhibited in 1856 whose straw body was
encased in a coachman’s old great coat, covered with different colours,
as various as the waistcoat patterns on a tailor’s show-book. He was
wheeled about on a truck by three or four young men, whose hoarse
voices, when shouting “Please to remember the Guy,” showed their
regular occupation to be street-selling, for they had the same husky
sound as the “Eight a-groat fresh herrens,” in the Saturday night
street-markets.
In the neighbourhood of Walworth, men dressed up as guys were
dragged about on trucks. One of them was seated upon a barrel marked
“Gunpowder,” his face being painted green, and ornamented with an
immense false nose of a bright scarlet colour. I could not understand
what this guy was meant to represent, for he wore a sugarloaf hat with
an ostrich feather in it, and had on a soldier’s red coat, decorated
with paper rosettes as big as cabbages. His legs, too, were covered
with his own corduroy trowsers, but adorned with paper streamers and
bows. In front of him marched a couple of men carrying broomsticks, and
musicians playing upon a tambourine and a penny tin whistle.
The most remarkable of the stuffed figures of 1856 was one dressed in a
sheet, intended to represent the Rev. Mr. Spurgeon in a surplice! It
was carried about on a wooden stage by boys, and took very well with
the mob, for no sooner did the lads cry out,--
“Remember, remember,
The fifth of November,
Old Spurgeon’s treason and plot!”
than a shout of laughter burst from the crowd, and the halfpence began
to pour in. Without this alteration in the November rhyme, nobody would
have been able to have traced the slightest resemblance between the guy
and the reverend gentleman whose effigy it was stated to be.
Further, it should be added, that the guy exhibitors have of late
introduced a new system, of composing special rhymes for the occasion,
which are delivered after the well-known “Remember, remember.” Those
with the figures of the Pope, for instance, sing,--
“A penn’orth of cheese to feed the pope,
A twopenny loaf to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a good large fagot to smoke him!”
I heard a party of costermongers, who had the image of His Imperial
Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias wabbling on their truck, sing in
chorus this home-manufactured verse,--
“Poke an ingun in his eye--
A squib shove up his nose, sirs;
Then roast him till he’s done quite brown,
And Nick to old Nick goes, sirs.”
With the larger guys little is usually said or done beyond exhibiting
them. In the crowded thoroughfares, the proprietors mostly occupy
themselves only with collecting the money, and never let the procession
stop for a moment. On coming to the squares, however, a different
course is pursued, for then they stop before every window where a head
is visible and sing the usual “Remember, remember,” winding up with a
vociferous hurrah! as they hold out their hats for the halfpence.
At the West-end, one of the largest guys of 1856 was drawn by a horse
in a cart. This could not have been less than fourteen feet high. Its
face, which was as big as a shield, was so flat and good-humoured
in expression that I at once recognised it as a pantomime mask, or
one used to hang outside some masquerade costumier’s shop door. The
coat was of the Charles the Second’s cut, and composed of a lightish
coloured paper, ornamented with a profusion of Dutch metal. There was
a sash across the right shoulder, and the legs were almost as long as
the funnel to a penny steamer, and ended in brown paper cavalier boots.
As the costermongers led it along, it shook like a load of straw. If it
had not been for the bull’s-eye lantern and lath matches, nobody would
have recognised in the dandy figure the effigy of the wretched Fawkes.
By far the handsomest turn-out of the day, at this time, was a group
of three figures, which promenaded Whitechapel and Bethnal-green.
They stood erect in a van drawn by a blind horse, and accompanied
by a “band” of _one_ performer on the drum and pandean pipes. Four
clowns in full costume made faces while they jumped about among the
spectators, and collected donations. All the guys were about ten
feet high. The centre one, intended for Fawkes himself, was attired
in a flowing cloak of crimson glazed calico, and his black hat was a
broad-brimmed sugarloaf, the pointed crown of which was like a model
of Langham-place church steeple, and it had a profusion of black hair
streaming about the face. The figures on either side of this were
intended for Lords Suffolk and Monteagle, in the act of arresting the
traitor, and accordingly appeared to be gently tapping Mr. Fawkes on
either shoulder. The bodies of their lordships were encased in gold
scale-armour, and their legs in silver ditto, whilst their heads were
covered with three-cornered cocked hats, surmounted by white feathers.
In the front of the van were two white banners, with the following
inscriptions in letters of gold:--
“APPREHENSION OF GUY FAWKES ON THE 5TH OF NOVEMBER, IN THE YEAR 1605.”