Dear Old Curiosity Shop readers,
We’ve read the first issue of Master Humphrey’s Clock – what do you think? Please do share your reactions as a comment below. Here are my thoughts:
Here are the details of the next weekly instalment:
No.2 (11 April)
There were two items in the second issue of Master Humphrey’s Clock:
– ‘First Night of the Giant Chronicles’
– ‘Correspondence’
If you don’t have a physical copy of the book, you can read them here. (Stop before ‘Master Humphrey, from his Clock-side in the Chimney-corner’.)
At the end of the first issue we were introduced to
the statues of two giants, Gog and Magog, each above fourteen feet in height.
These were – and are – real effigies, stored in the Guildhall in the City of London and brought out annually to parade the streets during the Lord Mayor’s Show. This is a tradition which, apparently, goes back as far as the 16th century.
As Dickens says, the giants have gone through various incarnations. The pair pictured above were created in 2007 by the Worshipful Company of Basketmakers – one of the livery companies of London – and for most of the year they sit behind glass just outside the entrance to the Great Hall in the Guildhall.
Inside the Great Hall, there is another pair of sculptures: nine-foot lime-wood sculptures of Gog and Magog, carved by David Evans in 1953. If you’d like to see them in person, there are monthly guided tours.
These fearsome figures were commissioned because the previous pair – the pair that Dickens knew and which Joe Toddyhigh sees come to life – were destroyed during the Blitz. Joe’s giants were carved from pine in 1708 by Captain Richard Saunders, because the wicker versions before them were eaten by rats and the wooden figures before those were destroyed in the Great Fire of London.
But who are these ancient giants and why does Dickens describe them as ‘the guardian genii’ of London?
Although generally known today as Gog and Magog, they were also known as Gogmagog and Corineus. The Lord Mayor’s Show website retells the legend:
The story goes that Diocletian – the Roman Emperor – had thirty-three wicked daughters. He managed to find thirty-three husbands to curb their unruly ways, but the daughters were not pleased and under the leadership of their eldest sister Alba they plotted to cut the throats of their husbands as they slept.
For this crime they were set adrift in a boat with half a year’s rations, and after a long and dreadful journey they arrived at a great island that came to be named Albion, after the eldest. Here they stayed, and with the assistance of demons they populated the wild, windswept islands with a race of giants.
Some time later Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, fled the fall of Troy and by way of various scrapes arrived at the same islands. He too named them for himself, so we also know them as Britain. With him he brought his most able warrior and champion Corineus, who faced the leader of the giant brood in single combat and eventually hurled him from a high rock to his death. The name of the giant was Gogmagog and the rock from which he was thrown became known as Langnagog or ‘The Giants Leap’.
As a reward Corineus was given the western part of the island, which came to be called Cornwall after him. Brutus travelled to the east and founded the city of New Troy, which we know as London.
This story comes from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, a remarkable 12th-century text that combines Celtic history with Greek myths and Welsh legends. It was hugely influential in the Middle Ages and this myth of the founding of the nation became known as the ‘Matter of Britain’.
There is also another version of the story, which says that
these two giants were the last two survivors of the sons of the thirty-three infamous daughters of Diocletian, who were captured and kept chained to the gates of a palace on the site of Guildhall to act as guardians.
In 1741, in The Gigantick History of the Two Famous Giants, Thomas Boreman provides yet another spin on the legend to account for their significance:
Corineus and Gogmagog were two brave giants who richly valued their honour and exerted their whole strength and force in the defence of their liberty and country; so the City of London, by placing these, their representatives in their Guildhall, emblematically declare, that they will, like mighty giants defend the honour of their country and liberties of this their City; which excels all others, as much as those huge giants exceed in stature the common bulk of mankind.
For Dickens, they represented an opportunity: a pair of supernatural, superhuman narrators who had been observing London for centuries. The title ‘First Night of the Giant Chronicles’ suggests that he envisaged a series of these chronicles, the two giants forming a parallel society to Master Humphrey and his friends, spending their nights regaling each other with stories from times past.
I look forward to hearing what Gog and Magog have to say – and to discussing the second number of Master Humphrey’s Clock next week!
Here are links to our previous Old Curiosity Shop posts:
The Schedule (14 March 2025)
Charles Dickens (28 March)
0. Forster’s Life of Dickens (4 April)
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Although I’ve previously read The Old Curiosity Shop, I knew nothing about Master Humphrey’s Clock. The beginning has me hooked! Interesting that Master Humphrey and the ‘deaf man’, people with disabilities, play a prominent role.
I found this so interesting partly because of Dickens expressing his own planning of the story at the beginning. I also feel that idea of isolated or disadvantaged individuals finding their way to new groups and relationships is such a strong theme in his works.