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Passage Illustrated: Hoist on their own Petard

Catesby then examined the powder that had been plunged in the water in crossing the Stour, and found it so much wetted as to be nearly useless. A sufficient stock of powder being of the utmost consequence to them, he caused all the contents of the barrel, not dissolved by the immersion, to be poured into a large platter, and proceeded to dry it before a fire which had been kindled in the hall. A bag of powder, which had likewise been slightly wetted, was also placed at what was considered a safe distance from the fire.

"Heaven grant this may prove more destructive to our enemies than the combustibles we placed in the mine beneath the Parliament House!" observed Percy.

"Heaven grant so, indeed!" rejoined Catesby, with a moody smile. "They would call it retribution, where we to perish by the same means which we designed for others."

"Jest not on so serious a matter, Catesby," observed Robert Winter. "For my own part, I dread the sight of powder, and shall walk forth till you have dried this, and put it away."

"You are not going to leave us, like Stephen Littleton?" rejoined Catesby, suspiciously.

"I will go with him," said Christopher Wright; "so you need be under no apprehension."

Accordingly, he quitted the hall with Robert Winter, and they proceeded to the court-yard and were conversing together on the dismal prospects of the party, when a tremendous explosion took place. The roof of the building seemed rent in twain, and amidst a shower of tiles, plaster, bricks, and broken wood falling around, the bag of powder dropped untouched at their feet.

"Mother of mercy!" exclaimed Christopher Wright, picking it up. "Here is a providential occurrence. Had this exploded, we must all have been destroyed." [Book the Third, "The Conspirators," Chapter IV, "Holbeach," p. 293-94]

Commentary

This illustration did not lead off the monthly number but appeared juxtaposed against p. 566 at the close of the eighteenth instalment in the June 1841 number of Bentley's Miscellany. In the volume edition it appears opposite the opening of Book III, Chapter V. After so many static group scenes, Cruikshank must have relished so sensational a subject as an explosion. Elsewhere, he had produced a small number of illustrations involving pyrotechnical effects such as the discharging of weapons, immolations, forrest fires, and conflagrations — his taste for the sensational characterizes in particular such 1831 Robinson Crusoe wood-engravings as Crusoe sees a ship on fire at sea and The destruction of the Tartar idol with tar and gunpowder. However, this scene early in the Third Book of Ainsworth's Guy Fawkes, or The Gunpowder Treason enabled the illustrator to describe the blowing up of a building with gunpowder, implying that the conspirators once again are acting rashly, without regard for the possible consequences. Cruikshank must have been relieved to be given an action scene after several static moments involving Fawkes's interrogation. Perhaps the ghostly visitation of Fawkes to Catesby would have been suitable to the book's spirit of romance, but the explosion has a fresh visual appeal that such an apparition scene, compared to Fawkes's earlier vision of St. Winifred (plate), would not have possessed.

After Fawkes' arrest and Viviana's interrogation, the rest of the conspirators have fled to Holbeche House, built just five years earlier and owned by Stephen Lyttelton, a lesser member of the conspiracy. They have raided Warwick Castle for supplies on 6 November, and Hewell Grange for weapons and gunpowder on 7 November. Catesby has escaped capture at a battle outside Warwick Castle, but has lost twenty-five men in various engagements with loyalist forces. He now prepares to make a last stand at the country house of one of his adherents. After arriving at Jacobean mansion at about 10 P. M., several are maimed when gunpowder left to dry in front of the fire is ignited by a stray coal from the fireplace in the main hall. However, the next day around noon, 8 November 1605, the Sheriff of Worcestershire and his posse attack the conspirators as those responsible for the depredations on Warwick Castle. The sheriff and his men kill a number of the plotters in the ensuing fight, and take the survivors of the battle back to London for prosecution.

In this illustration, conspirators Christopher Wright and Robert Winter, feeling apprehensive about Catesby's attempting to dry some much gunpowder before the fire in Holbeach [i. e., "Holbeche"] House, Staffordshire, have retreated to the safety of the courtyard, from which they watch in shock as the explosion destroys the roof of the house. The conspirators who had remained within the hall (Rookwood, Catesby, Percy, and Grant) have suffered some damage, but miraculously have survived, although Grant has been blinded. Those five figures depicted in Cruikshank's illustration are experiencing the explosion from the courtyard, so that the two principals, centre, must be Wright and Winter, whereas the three others are unnamed followers. Cruikshank demonstrates the force of the explosion by showing that it has propelled a stool from the hall out into the courtyard. Jagged beams at the top indicate that the roof has been blown off, but he hides most of the damage behind the enormous white cloud of gunpowder smoke, so that he does not have to give much background detail as he focusses on the effect of the explosion on the five men in the courtyard. Coming at the curtain of the June instalment, the scene was a logical choice for the illustrator, especially since it subsequently provokes a range of reactions from those involved, from Percy's conviction that the accident is a sign of God's displeasure to Catesby's looking on the brighter side: they are all alive, and will yet succeed.

Although pieces of furniture have been ejected from the interior by the blast, Cruikshank does not exploit the violent potential of the explosion, showing nobody maimed, blackened, or unconscious. However, such a treatment of the text combined with Ainsworth's narration results in the reader's giving little sympathy to the hapless Conspirators. Luck (or, as Victorian readers would have it, Providence) is definitely not advancing their cause. The dynamic picture, combined with the descriptive text, underscores the sheer ineptitude of the remaining plotters who, without the advice of their munitions expert, Guy Fawkes, have been so cavalier with so dangerous a substance as gunpowder. Perhaps, after all, Cruikshank's illustration shows that God has mercy on fools. In fact, the plotters had not wetted the powder stalwartly crossing the Stour, as Ainsworth states; rather, they had permitted the remainder of their gunpowder to get soaking wet in the pouring rain.

A Selection of Cruikshank's Other Pyrotechnical Scenes (1831-43)

Above: Cruikshank's violent steel-engraving of the destruction of the radical evangelical preacher in The Tower of London, The Burning of Edward Underhill on the Tower Green (August 1840). [Click on these images to enlarge them.]

Above: Cruikshank's spectacular escape of Hwrne the Hunter into a forrest fire in Windsor Castle, Herne flying into the burning woods with Mabel (June 1843).

Left: The Cruikshank wood-engraving of the European merchants being attacked by wolves in Russia, Crusoe and his Comrades repelling a massive Wolf attack (1831). Centre: Cruikshank's realisation of Crusoe's destroying the Tartars' idol, The destruction of the Tartar idol with tar and gunpowder (1831). Right: The celebrated realisation of the servants in the Maylie wash-house discharging their firearms at housebreaker Oliver Twist in The Burglary (Part 10, January 1838).

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 30 August 2018