Five miserable-looking individuals were marshalled into the courtyard, officered by the valiant Bardolph. Whether Master Shallow’s arithmetic had been at fault, and he had calculated erroneously as to the addition of two and three; whether there was a scarcity of men in the neighbourhood; or whether one of the original number had deserted, is doubtful. However, it is certain that of the half-dozen recruits asserted to be in readiness only five made their appearance.
Master Shallow proceeded to call over the muster roll—not appearing to notice the deficiency.
“Ralph Mouldy—let me see. Where is Ralph Mouldy?”
“Here, if it please you.”
Mr. Mouldy’s voice and expression of countenance declared plainly that it didn’t please him.
Mouldy was in all probability a dangerous poacher, so anxious was the worthy magistrate to recommend him for military service.
“What think you, Sir John? A good limbed fellow; young, strong, and of good friends.”
The last recommendation decided Sir John at once. Mouldy would do.
“Is thy name Mouldy?”
“Yea, if it please you.”
“‘Tis the more time thou wert used.”
Master Shallow was in ecstacies. The practical joke of sending a man to the wars against his will had already tickled the excellent justice’s sense of humour. But to make a verbal jest on his calamity to his very face, and on his own name, was irresistible.
“Ha! ha! ha! most excellent i’ faith! Things that are mouldy lack use. Very singular, good. Well said, Sir John. Very well said.”
“Prick him,” said Sir John.
And down went a mark against Mouldy’s name, making him as much the King’s property as though he had been honestly bought by a sergeant’s shilling.
Mouldy grumbled like a malcontent as he was. He thought that he might have been let alone.
“My old dame will be undone now for one to do her husbandry and her drudgery. You need not to have pricked me: there are other men fitter to go than I.”
As if that were a reason for your not going! For shame, Mouldy!
Simon Shadow was the next called.
“Aye, marry, let me have him to sit under,” said Sir John, “he’s like to be a cold soldier.”
Shadow was approved and pricked.
“Thomas Wart!”
“Where’s he?”
“Here, sir!”
“Is thy name Wart.” (Sir John Falstaff was the questioner.)
“Yes, Sir?”
“Thou art a very ragged Wart.”
“Shall I prick him down, Sir John?”
“It were superfluous; for his apparel is built upon his back, and the whole frame stands upon pins. Prick him no more.”
Renewed ecstacies of Mr. Justice Shallow. His worship had always considered a ragged man a most laughable object. But the matter had never been represented to him in such a truly ridiculous light as by his facetious guest.
“Ha! ha! ha! You can do it, Sir, you can do it. I commend you well. Francis Feeble.”
“Here, Sir.”
“What trade art thou, Feeble?” Sir John asked.
“A woman’s tailor, Sir.”
“Shall I prick him. Sir?”
“You may; but if he had been a man’s tailor, he would have pricked you.”
Feeble was approved and pricked. He was the only one who appeared to submit to the operation without wincing. Feeble proved the most valiant ninth part of a recruit on record. He appeared delighted with his prospects. The only drawback to his military ardour and satisfaction was a regret that Wart could not be permitted to accompany him. This makes it difficult to decide whether Wart was his bosom friend or his mortal enemy.
“I would Wart might have gone, Sir,” quoth Feeble.
“I would thou wert a man’s tailor,” replied the Captain, “that thou might’st mend him and make him fit to go. I cannot put him to a private soldier that is the leader of so many thousands. Let that suffice, most forcible Feeble.”
Feeble was satisfied. So, no doubt, was Wart.
“Peter Bullcalf of the Green,” was the next called.
“Trust me, a likely fellow,” said the Knight: “prick me Bullcalf till he roar again.”
“Oh good my lord Captain——” Bullcalf roared without waiting for the operation.
“What, dost thou roar before thou art pricked?”
“Oh! Sir, I am a diseased man.” Bullcalf bellowed, proving that his lungs were at all events not yet affected.
“What disease hast thou?”
“A villainous cold, Sir—a cough, Sir—which I caught with ringing in the King’s affairs on his coronation day, Sir.”
“Come, thou shalt go to the wars in a gown; we will have away thy cold; and I will take such order that thy friends shall ring for thee.”
It was fortunate that with this sally Sir John Falstaff desisted for the present, or he would in all probability have been the death of Master Robert Shallow. That gentleman repeated the words, “And I will take such order that thy friends shall ring for thee,” to himself, many times over, that he might be able to retail the jest to his admiring friends. He circulated it at first as one of the many brilliant things Sir John Falstaff had said on the occasion of his first visit to Shallow Hall. But in the course of time the worthy magistrate appropriated it to his own service, and never missed an opportunity of bringing it forward (with the point carefully omitted) as an original witticism from the inexhaustible repertoire of himself, Master Robert Shallow.
Bullcalf was pricked. The justices and their military friend withdrew to luncheon.
“Good Master Corporate Bardolph,” said Bullcalf when the troops were left alone with that warlike personage, “stand my friend, and here is four Harry ten shillings in French crowns for you.”
Bullcalf urged his plea by further arguments. They were unnecessary. The first was more than sufficient.
“Go to: stand aside,” said Bardolph, pocketing the money.
Mouldy quitted the ranks and motioned his superior to grant him also a private conference.
“And good Master Corporal Captain, for my old dame’s sake, stand my friend: she has nobody to do anything about her, when I am gone: and she is old and cannot help herself. You shall have forty, Sir.”
Chink! Chink!
“Go to: stand aside.”
“Sir, a word with you,” said Bardolph when his Captain reappeared with the two justices. “I have three pound to free Mouldy and Bullcalf.”
It should be observed that four ten shilling pieces added to forty shillings at that period, as now, made a total of four pounds sterling. Bardolph’s education had been neglected—and let us hope that his miscalculation was merely the result of a total ignorance of the rules of compound addition.
A word to the wise is sufficient for them. Sir John Falstaff at once decided that Mouldy should stay at home until past service, and Bullcalf be left to grow till he should be fit for it. Sir John would have none of them.
“Sir John, Sir John,” urged Master Shallow. “Do not yourself wrong: they are your likeliest men, and I would have you served with the best.”
It is not improbable that Bullcalf was a poacher too.
Sir John Falstaff was indignant.
“Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thewes, the stature, bulk and big assemblance of a man? Give me the spirit, Master Shallow. Here’s Wart. You see what a ragged appearance it is. He shall charge you and discharge you with the motion of a pewterer’s hammer: come off and on swifter than he that gibbets on the brewer’s bucket. And this same half-faced fellow Shadow, give me this man—he presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife. And for a retreat—how swiftly will this Feeble, the woman’s tailor, run off?”
Briefly, Feeble, Wart, and Shadow were enrolled among the king’s soldiers serving under Sir John Falstaff. Bullcalf and Mouldy were allowed to go about their business.
It will be seen from the above that the ancient manner of choosing soldiers differed not materially from the modern one. The better class of men were rejected, and the ranks supplied from the dregs of the population. Any charge of venality against Sir John Falstaff and his lieutenant for suffering Mouldy and Bullcalf to buy off their services, I hope I can meet, by calling attention to the fact that there are even now certain favoured persons—whole regiments in fact—ostensibly in her Majesty’s service, who are invariably privileged to stop at home in times of danger. Or I can dispose of the matter more simply by stating that Sir John Falstaff merely gave permission to the two warriors elect, Mouldy and Bullcalf—to return to their homes on urgent private affairs.
It may be objected that Sir John Falstaff observed an unjustifiable tone of levity in transacting a business of such gravity as the forcible abduction of poor men from their homes—to risk their lives in a quarrel, the issue of which could not personally interest them. But Sir John’s jests on the names, wardrobes, and personal appearance of his recruits, were at all events harmless. I have heard of much more practical jokes being passed on the British soldier by the authorities engaging him in my time; such as promising him certain sums of money for his services, and deducting nearly the whole amount for the expenses of his outfit; sending him to fight under a broiling sun, weighted with half a horse load of useless accoutrements; supplying him with firelocks that burst in his hands; shipping him on board crazy old vessels that go to pieces in still water; and a thousand others.
IN ABSTAINING FROM PARTICIPATION IN A DISGRACEFUL ACTION.—EPISODE OF COLEVILE OF THE GRANGE.
IN estimating the characters of great men, it is recognised as a principle that we should give them almost the same credit for the mischief they abstain from doing as for the positive good they effect. Abstention from evil, under circumstances of great temptation to its performance, is unquestionably a virtue of the highest order. In proof of the high esteem habitually awarded by mankind to this rare although negative excellence, I will refer merely to the celebrated letting-alone case of the Roman Scipio, and the well-known parallel to it afforded by the conduct of Sir John Falstaff himself, who (at a later period of his career than the one at present under notice), having occasion, for professional reasons, to break open a gentleman’s lodge, kill the gentleman’s deer, and maltreat the gentleman’s servants, was yet, in the very height and impetuosity of action, enabled to put a sufficient curb on his impulses to resist the temptation of kissing a keeper’s daughter!
The little incident of self-denial just alluded to, though in every way deserving of the highest eulogy, has, as it seems to me, been dwelt on by the commentators with undue stress, rather implying a suspicion that it might have been an exceptional case in the character and conduct of our knight, and remarkable only on that account. So far from this being the truth, I could establish precedents for the occurrence by a thousand proofs of glaring offences which Sir John Falstaff did not commit, while otherwise occupied in the way of his business. I will content myself, however, with a single example, couched in an incident, which here falls naturally into its place, by which it will be seen that the hero of these pages could, on occasion, abstain from taking part in even the greatest acts of rascality of his time; moreover, when the greatest facilities, and even inducements, existed for his participating in such means of glory.
The following passage from Hollinshed will facilitate comprehension of the incident.
Now, I am happy to say, that with all his faults, Sir John Falstaff was guiltless of participation in this infamous transaction. From the Shak-spearian account of the occurrence (which does not materially differ from that of the elder and more prosaic chronicles), it is clear that Falstaff and his troops were not among those who treacherously “increased,” according to orders from the Earl of Westmoreland, while the people of the Archbishop’s side “drew away.”
Sir John did not make his appearance on the shameful field till the heat of action was past and the disgraceful pursuit abandoned.
It is true that the fact is on record, that on our hero’s reaching the skirts of Gaultree Forest, he met with a runaway rebel, by name Colevile of the Dale, whom he immediately challenged, and who, as quickly surrendered himself prisoner, on the mere suspicion that his challenger was no other than the redoubted Sir John Falstaff. This circumstance, whilst adding another to the thousand existing proofs that our knight was a man of acknowledged bravery and martial renown—at the same time, seems a little to weaken my theory, that Sir John is entitled to credit for having withheld his countenance and assistance from the treacherous “subtiltie” of Westmoreland and Lancaster. It looks rather as though he had come a little late for the scramble, and was anxious to make up for lost time in the pursuit and plunder of stragglers. Colevile, however, seems to have fallen in his way most temptingly, and from the alacrity with which he gave himself into custody, he would seem to have been an individual ambitious for the distinction of being led captive at the wheels of Sir John Falstaff’s car of triumph.
The following conversation explains the circumstances of the capture *:—
Sir John Falstaff. What is your name, sir? Of what condition are you; and of what place, I pray?
Colevile. I am a knight, sir, and my name is, Colevile of the Dale.
Falstaff. Well then, Colevile, is your name; a knight, is your degree; and your place, the dale. Colevile, shall still be your name; a traitor, your degree; and the dungeon, your place—a place deep enough. So shall you be still Colevile of the Dale.
Colevile. Are you not Sir John Falstaff?
Falstaff. As good a man as he, sir, whoe’er I am.
Colevile. I think you are Sir John Falstaff, and I yield me.
This capture of Colevile (which, considering Colevile’s alacrity to be caught, I don’t well see how Sir John could have avoided), is, I am happy to say, the only evidence on record, of our knight’s having been in the slightest degree mixed up with this most rascally transaction in the most rascally age of English history: perpetrated in the name, and by the son and officers, of a distinguished rascal, who, by his own vast demerits, had raised himself to the exalted position of the King of all the Rascals in England. Sir John’s remarkable abnegation of self in this affair, almost induces me to reconsider my by no means hastily formed estimate of his entire character. I begin to doubt seriously that Sir John Falstaff was one bit of a courtier after all. Had he been a person of that description, he would certainly have toadied King Henry the Fourth much better than he did, by aping (as is the fashion with people of a courtly turn) the most salient points of that lugubrious, and especially infamous, monarch’s character and conduct. This is a new light on the mystery of our knight’s repeated failures in the attempt to rise in court favour. He was not half a rogue—that is the long and short of the matter. And King Henry the Fourth, of unblessed memory, who had murdered his first cousin, who had stolen his first cousin’s wife’s jewels and embroidered petticoats,—who was capable of every crime, from pitch and toss with loaded farthings to manslaughter with arsenicated preparations,—felt for him much of that contempt which a six-bottle squire of the old school cannot but feel for a modern milksop, detected in the effeminate act of putting water in his tumbler of sherry.
WHETHER or not it is that I have been taking an overdose of that familiarity which is said to produce contempt, I will not pretend to say, but one thing is very certain—namely, that I by no means feel that exalted respect for the late William Shakspeare as an historical authority, which on my setting forth on the present biographical pilgrimage formed so prominent an ingredient in my wallet of provisions for the journey. Candidly, Shakspeare turns out to be, by no means, the man I had taken him for. An able dramatist, undoubtedly—endowed with considerable power of insight into the secret springs of human emotion, with an aptness for a rugged forcible kind of versification, and an unquestionable turn for humour—he must, nevertheless, be pronounced lamentably deficient in those higher attributes of the historical writer, by which it is the laudable ambition of the present scribe (for instance), to know himself distinguished—and of which the most scrupulous correctness as to dates and localities, is by no means the least essential. And, indeed, as I reflect on the subject and turn over a variety of precedents in my mind, I am reluctantly brought much nearer than I ever expected to come to the by no means uncommon opinion that Shakspeare is an overrated personage in literature.
I am led to this admission—most distasteful to my feelings and predilections—by the irresistible fact that nearly all of his commentators and critics, for the most part persons of vast erudition and acumen, by whose exalted standard the present humble recruit in the army of letters would shrink from offering himself for measurement; who, commencing (like their unpretending junior) with the most enthusiastic faith in, not to say idolatrous admiration for, the subject of their investigations, will seldom be found to have proceeded to any depth in their labours ere they agree in making out Shakspeare a most ridiculous, not to say contemptible personage. The late Mr. Thomas Campbell, who, notwithstanding the unavoidable accident of his birthplace, may be considered a tolerably competent and impartial judge of English literature, being employed by certain publishers to prepare an edition of the works of the Immortal Bard, as he is termed (I am not fond of this slavish kind of nomenclature myself, considering that, as a rule, one man is nearly as good as another), and plunging into his task with great ardour and alacrity, and in the most reverential spirit imaginable, nevertheless speedily got sick of the service of adulation—I would say “puffery,” were the epithet consistent with the dignity of history—on which he had been engaged, and even complained, in a letter to a friend, of the kind of stuff he was compelled, by the necessities of his position and the terms of his contract, to “write about Old Shakey.” Now from such high-flown designations as the Immortal Bard, the Sweet Swan, &c.,—to which Mr. Campbell, at the outset of his editorial career, had been addicted, like other people,—“Old Shakey” (in the forcible words of a modern art-critic) is “not fall”—it is catastrophe and, depend upon it, the learned gentleman had found out some weak points in the poet’s character to justify the familiarity. I may be answered, I am aware, with the stale proverb that no man is a hero in the eyes of his own valet, the abstract wisdom of which, as well as its partial application to the case in point, I cheerfully admit. An editor or commentator of a great man’s writings unquestionably occupies, to the great man, the position of a valet or groom of the chambers, having to perform for him the most menial offices, such as looking out his new readings for him, polishing his sentences, trimming his periods, and throwing away his slipslop. These irksome and even degrading duties may excite in the bosom of the overworked official a feeling of disgust for his situation, which no liberality or punctuality in the matter of wages and perquisites can altogether annihilate; and the constant absorption of his attention by such ignoble matters of external detail, can scarcely fail to blind him to the inner greatnesses of the demi-god whose wig and whiskers, so to speak, he is eternally occupied in brushing and oiling. I would, therefore, guard against too hastily accepting the opinion of such persons upon the great men whom they are employed, as it were, to render presentable to society, just as I would hesitate to base my estimate of the soldierly and statesmanlike qualities of the first Cæsar on the representations of the ingenious artist in laurel who was engaged to conceal the baldness of the great Roman by the “gentleman’s real wreath of glory” of the period; or, were I a sculptor (which it may be a fortunate thing for the British metropolis I am not, seeing that I have influential friends who would undoubtedly employ me in adding to the public monuments), as I should decline modelling a statue of England’s last, greatest, and most symmetrical George upon the one-sided views of the tailor who measured him for his last padded and frogged surtout, or of the hosier who was in the secret of the royal calves, during the decadence of the first—whatever you like to call him—of Europe. Nevertheless, there is no withstanding overwhelming masses of evidence, let them emanate from sources never so obscure or prejudiced. And when we find that the commentators upon Shakspeare, almost without exception, when they have taken hold of what are vulgarly considered the finest passages in that author’s writings,—when they have carefully held up those passages against every possible kind of light, turned them inside out, pulled and tugged at them, this way and that, ripped open their seams, scratched off their nap or surfaces, and, in fact, submitted them to every conceivable test,—when, I say, we find that the commentators, having made these searching experiments, almost invariably decide that what to the superficial observer has appeared something of exquisite goodness and beauty must be accepted as nothing more or less than the rankest nonsense—why, then, the dispassionate judge is bound to shake his head in common deprecation with the scrutineers, and admit that very possibly the Sweet Swan, &c., may be nothing more than “Old Shakey” after all. Nay, some of the most laborious and indefatigable of the class alluded to have so carefully sifted the matter, and so thoroughly have convinced themselves of the utter flimsiness and impalpability of the supposed Mr. Shakspeare’s claims to literary distinction, as to have been irresistibly led to the conviction that no such person ever could have existed; but that the rather ingenious and plausible-looking phantasms in the forms of plays and poems, bearing his name, must be considered as mere spontaneous exhalations or fungi produced from a kind of intellectual chaos—much as primroses, oak-trees, horses, beautiful women, poets, and philosophers are held to have sprung into existence, by the tenets of certain kindred thinkers on subjects connected with theology.
The last is a culminating phase of Shakspearian free-thinking, to which, I confess, I have not yet been able to bring myself. I am still young, and possibly hampered by nursery traditions on the subject. But I hope it will be admitted that I am gradually emancipating myself from the unpopular trammels of Shakspearian superstition, when I venture so far as to affirm that the Swan of Avon (I must be understood now to make use of the designation in an ironical sense) was, in some respects, a———Yes! I have lashed myself up to the necessary pitch of defiant resolution—a humbug! I fearlessly assert that there is a prevalent looseness in his chronology, for which I defy his most slavish admirers to prove that the correctness of his grammar is at all of a quality to compensate. Why, he actually leads us to infer that within a few weeks, at the outside, of the treacherously won field of Gualtree, Sir John Falstaff, being then on his second visit to the domain of Mr. Justice Shallow, in Gloucestershire (having just returned from the inglorious campaign), did receive, through the officious instrumentality of Ancient Pistol, tidings of the death of King Henry the Fourth. Now I hope I have, by this time, proved, to the satisfaction of the most captious, that the battle of Gualtree must have been fought (bought, or stolen, whichever the reader pleases) in the summer of 1410. The lamented death of Henry the Fourth—lamentable because it did not take place some forty-seven years earlier—occurred on Saint Cutlibert’s Day, otherwise the 19th of March, 1413. Assuming then, as we are led to, from the representations of the Shakspearian chronicle, that Sir John Falstaff, on the disbanding of the Royalist army under Prince John of Lancaster and the Earl of Westmoreland, betook himself, at once, to the hospitable mansion of Mr. Robert Shallow, and there remained until the Sovereign’s demise, this would give to our knight’s visit a duration of something like two years and three-quarters. Now, though I freely admit that we find nothing in the antecedents of Sir John to make it improbable that he should have extended a gratuitous residence in comfortable quarters to that, or even a longer period, in the event of impunity having been granted to him to do so, it is in the wildest degree incredible that even a greater fool than Mr. Robert Shallow—did history present us with such a personage—would tamely have submitted to the infliction of guests so expensive as our knight and his retainers, for even one-twentieth part of that term. No country gentleman’s revenues could have stood it. The unaided exertions of the insatiable Bardolph alone would have exhausted the family cellar and exchequer in a fortnight.
It is therefore undeniable that in this particular instance, if in no other, Shakspeare has not only violated historical truth—either wilfully or through negligence—but has also shown an imperfect appreciation of the probabilities. That Falstaff and his retinue could not possibly have lived on the Shallow estate for the space of two years and three quarters, is as self-evident as that an able-bodied man could not subsist for the same period on a single leg of mutton. The supposition that Master Shallow would have continued glad to see them, up to the end of a residence so protracted, is too insanely preposterous to be entertained for a single moment.
Having carefully balanced the matter, I am inclined to decide that the second visit of Sir John Falstaff to Master Shallow’s, as described in the Shakspearian chronicle—the account of which offers strong internal evidence of a basis on authentic information—took place precisely as exhibited by the dramatist, who chose, however, for his own convenience of composition, and with the reckless indifference to the higher canons of criticism by which many really able writers of that period were unfortunately characterised, to anticipate the course of events to the culpable extent I have alluded to. It could not be otherwise. It has been made clear, from documentary evidence recently laid before the reader *, that the Falstaff expedition to Yorkshire deviated into Gloucestershire in the month of June, 1410. The unqualified statement that Henry Plantagenet, surnamed Bolingbroke, and fourth English king of his baptismal appellation, breathed his last on the 19th of March (in the old style), otherwise the festival day of St. Cuthbert **, in the year 1413, was by no means incautiously hazarded. The writer will stake his reputation on its accuracy, which, if called into question for a moment, he is prepared to corroborate by the undeniable evidence of Hollinshed, Hardyng, Stowe, Speed, White Kennet, Mangnall, Pinnock, and other writers of antiquity. You see there is no getting over facts. They are things of such matchless stubbornness that none but a donkey would venture to cope with them in the exhibition of that valuable attribute.
We must consider, then, that there is a period of two years and probably seven or eight months in the life of Sir John Falstaff unaccounted for in the Shakspeare Chronicles. In what manner were those years and odd months employed by the hero of these pages? For once in a way, the biographer is driven to supply an extensive gap in his narrative by mere conjecture. It is reasonable to suppose that the time was passed by Sir John in his native country, as I find no evidence, in the records of continental nations, of the influence of a master spirit of our knight’s calibre on the dynastic, social, or religious struggles of the period. It is also to be feared that Sir John continued to live in comparative obscurity, and certainly in exclusion from court favour. The latter hypothesis is, indeed, based on something more than conjecture, and may be considered proved by certain important omissions in the chronicles of the time. On the 23rd of January, 1411, Sir John Falstaff would have completed his fifty-ninth year. A moment’s reflective calculation will convince the most inconsiderate that on the same date in the following year our knight would have attained the reverend age of threescore. Extend this line of inductive reasoning to another twelve months, and a result of sixty-one is obtained. Now, it would be reasonable to suppose that had Sir John Falstaff, at these times, been in the enjoyment of that royal esteem to which his merits and services undoubtedly entitled him, any one of the three anniversaries indicated would have been made the occasion of court festivities. I defy the most laborious investigation to produce the slightest authentic evidence, from the writings of the time, of any such recognition of our knight’s importance and public services having been made at any of the royal residences. It will be found, it is true, by consulting Hollinshed, the Cotton MSS., Stowe and other authorities, that London, in the commencement of 1413, was the scene of great military and naval pageantry; that numbers of the king’s forces were mustered in the metropolis, and that there was such a display of ships and galleys on the river Thames as had not been seen since the magnificent days of Edward the Third. From the same and contemporary writings, it will be found that towards the close of the Christmas holidays—which King Henry the Fourth, in consequence of the mortal illness wherewith he was already smitten, had kept in strict seclusion with his Queen Joanna, at the Palace of Eltham—His Majesty, in spite of grievous bodily suffering, made shift to return to London, in order to be present at certain rejoicings ordained to be held at his chief palace of Westminster, at a time closely coincident with the anniversary of our hero’s birth. I am inclined to think, however, that it will prove, on careful investigation, that the mustering of troops and display of naval armaments had been commanded, not, as would superficially appear, to celebrate the day of Falstaff’s nativity by tournaments, sham fights, water quintains, and the like, but with the more serious design of carrying out a project, long entertained by the king, of proceeding with a powerful army to Palestine, there to assist in the attempt to recover the holy sepulchre from the hands of the Paynim followers of Mahomet *—a kind of moral Insolvent or Bankruptcy Court of the period, to which very great rascals indeed were accustomed to apply for protection against the prosecutions of conscience, and by which (if enabled to do things on a liberal scale as to expenses in other people’s lives and property), they were supposed to whitewash themselves of all liabilities in this world and the next. The rejoicings at Westminster may be partially explained by the fact that King Henry’s birthday happened to fall within a few days of that of Sir John Falstaff. And, keeping in view the habitual and ineradicable selfishness of Henry’s character, it is more than probable that His Majesty had decreed the festivities in question on his own account, and not on that of our more meritorious hero. As a proof that, in spite of the numerous embarrassments of the royal family, the glaring and systematic manner in which the priceless services of Falstaff were ignored by the court could not have been attributable to any absolute scarcity of means, it may be mentioned that about this time Queen Joanna presented one Thomas Chaucer, an individual whose only claims to personal distinction lay in the fact that he was, as it were, the halfbrother of English Poetry—being the son of its reputed father—with the manors of Wotten and Stantesfield for life: the hospitalities of which, there can be no question or doubt, would have been dispensed with much greater dignity and liberality by Sir John Falstaff. As a further proof that the favours heaped upon this mere Son of a Somebody were only conferred with a view to the humiliation and discomfiture of Sir John Falstaff, it may be mentioned that Mr. Thomas Chaucer—a man of the slenderest physical and mental dimensions—was shortly afterwards appointed to fill the Speaker’s Chair of the House of Commons—a seat which, had the appointment of the Right Man to the Right Place been a recognised principle in those days any more than it is at the present time, Sir John Falstaff was, most obviously, the man to fill. But, as has been repeatedly urged, our knight had powerful enemies. I name no names, as a rule, and have an abhorrence of malicious insinuations. I will content myself with the statement that the dignity of Lord Chief Justice of England, with all its influence for good and evil, continued to be represented by a distinguished personage, with whom we are already acquainted in that capacity, until some years after the demise of Sir John Falstaff.
Sir John lived in London—there can be no doubt of that. Had his name been John Dory instead of John Falstaff, the sea could not have been a more indispensable element to his existence than was the metropolitan atmosphere to him, surnamed and organised as he actually was. Where else could there have been found a Boar’s Head, with its accommodating hostess, its inexhaustible cellars, and still more (if the adjective can be said to admit of a comparative degree) inexhaustible credit? What other English city, district, or province, has ever, at any time of the world’s history, produced a hero-worshipping class so willing to pay liberal terms for the honour of even an ex-great man’s society. Where else in England have there ever been known such good dinners, such boon companions, and such accommodating tradespeople?
Talking of tradespeople (a subject to which I am by no means greatly addicted, suggesting, as it does, such painful memories and still more disagreeable possibilities) there is a document extant, the faithful transcript of an earlier document, no longer in existence, which will serve to throw some light on the position of Sir John Falstaff during this most obscure, and consequently most interesting, portion of his biography. It is a letter from Master Richard Whittington, mercer, some time Lord Mayor of London, addressed to Sir John Falstaff, in answer to a communication from that great man, which has unfortunately not been preserved. The epistle, as will be seen, is not dated; but the unmistakable allusion contained in it to King Henry the Fourth’s intended expedition to the Holy Land leaves no doubt that it must have been written in the winter of 1412-13. The shrewd, sarcastic tone of the letter (the orthography whereof in the following transcript has been modified for the convenience of the modern reader, in obedience to the rule invariably observed throughout this work) will, it is hoped, be found sufficiently characteristic of its distinguished writer, to dispense with any necessity for the production, as evidence, of the original manuscript, which was unfortunately destroyed in the ever-lamentable burning of the famous Whittington library, in Arundel Street, Strand, some two or three years since.
“TO MINE EXCELLENT FRIEND SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, KNIGHT, BE THESE DELIVERED.
“Right worshipful Sir John,
“Methinks, in future, I shall call you my cat. For as there be those who insist that I owe my standing as a good citizen and man of wealth to a certain cat which I took with me to Barbarie (where, Heaven be praised! I never was), who did there earn for me large sums in money, slaves, and jewels, by freeing the king’s chamber of mice and rats; so will you have it that I have risen to be alderman and mayor, to buy lands and endow churches, alone through having ridden on your crupper from Blackheath to the Southwark side of London Bridge, in the year of grace, 1364, when we were both lads, little wotting we should live to know each the other as old men. Now I call my patron to witness that I had never a cat that did aught for me beyond skimming the milk in my kitchen. I took with me to Flanders, and thence through France and Germany to the ignorant estates of the East, a certain Thrift or Judgment, which the witless have fabled into a cat, whereby I was enabled to point out to many foolish peoples the way to clear themselves of grievous pests and torments in government and common life, which might well be likened to rats and mice, for the which good services I was so well rewarded by the thankful rulers of those countries as to return to mine own with the means for large and honourable trading. But the vulgar will have it that it was not I myself, but the cat, effected all this. So would you have it, Sir John, that because I came to London a barefoot, ragged, herring-bodied scarecrow, and am now a man of substance (not in the flesh, Sir John; there you have still the best of me), I owe my advancement to you, who brought me half a dozen miles on the way. It was a pleasant ride,—I mind it well,—and a timely, for I was heartsore and footsore when you took me up. But I am a trader, Sir John, and keep books. And when I look over our account, I cannot but think that I have long ago paid for that ride at a rate of posting far beyond what my travels to Germany and the Asiatic countries (which the blockheads will have Barbarie) cost me altogether. Let us cast the sum. There was two shillings (out of the first four of my earning), soon after our coming to London, to replace your torn doublet, which you declared you dared not write to your lady mother about. * There was five marks on your coming of age, when you had bidden certain young noblemen of the court to meet you at the tavern, which I was fain to lend you, as you had lost the money set aside for their entertainment, the night before, at play. You wept so bitterly, and so feared me with threatening self-destruction, that I must needs do this though it forced me to put off my first slender venture with the Flemings. Then, when they knighted you, there was forty other marks, that you might present yourself becomingly at court. Ten marks on my being made mayor, that it might not be said I forgot an old friend who had helped me to my rise in life. Since then, at divers times, in silks, velvets, and moneys lent, eight hundred and forty-three pounds nine and elevenpence. Now, all this I have been told, time after time, I have owed you for bringing me to London, and putting me in the way of fortune. It hath been a dear ride to me, Sir John. Blackheath to London is, let us say, six-miles. A hundred and forty-one pounds eight shillings seven pence and a fraction is costly posting for times like these, Sir John. Methinks it is time I should hold myself quit of your debt, or that if any be still due you should forgive me the remainder. A truce to jesting, old friend Jack. I will lend thee no more money, and that is the plain truth of the matter. It is of no more use to thee than pearls to a pig. Thou art no more going to the Holy Land with King Henry than I am going thither behind thee on thy crupper (which Heaven forefend, considering the costliness of that mode of travel). Come thou hither to dine, sup, and sleep as often as may list thee, and thou art welcome to the best my roof can afford. But I am a trader, Sir Jack, and a keen one,—I give naught for naught. Sell us thy company, good-fellowship, merry jests and gentleness, and I will pay thee in kind (saving the jests and merry tales, wherein I am the bankrupt and thou the niggard miser). Show us thy jolly face and we will reflect it in endless bowls of as many wines as thou mayest name, like to a face in a chamber lined with tinted mirrors, till thou seest thyself million-fold, and of all colours. Mine honest wife and thy little playfellows, whom thou hast deserted, have been trained in my school. They join the outer world in calling thee foul names, since thou withholdest from them that familiarity which is their due. Dame Alice calls thee downright rogue,—that thou wilt not pay her the long arrears of society and converse thou owest her,—and for which she says she has a mind to pursue thee up and down every law court in Christendom. The little Jews have long arrears of caresses against thee, and are prone to insist on their bargain to the letter. Pay these debts, thou hardened prodigal, and we will see what can be effected for the future. As for money, thou shalt none of it, for it only serves to keep thee from us, wasting that of thy company which is our lawful right, as thine oldest friends, on thankless tavern roysterers who love thee not. I am now too old a merchant to repeat that kind of unprofitable venture.