Chapter X: Part II (4)

These tapestries must have been as marvellous as those exquisite rose-grey hangings which still adorn the upper gallery of the Musée Cluny. The smaller curtains were stretched over screens of wicker, or served to drape the great roofed and cushioned settle near the fire, while cloths of gold and silver curtained the throne-like faldestuil reserved for the master of the house. Mats of plaited rushes, not unlike our India matting, were laid in winter on the floors under the delicate rugs of wool, imitated from the industry of the East; but in summer a strew of fresh rushes, mint, and gladiolus (that flower so dear to mediæval eyes), covered the pavement with a cool fragrance, while a bough of some green tree or flowering bush filled the hearth.[55] Great soft cushions, “carreaux” or “couettes,” were placed, sometimes on the chairs and benches, sometimes on the floor itself, according to their size. They served, like the tabourets of Saint Simon, for people of lesser dignity, seated on occasions of ceremony, in presence of their lord. There were also _bankers_, or stuffed backless benches (divans, as we should say), placed against the wall; _dossiers_, a sort of short sofa with a back and cushions; and armchairs provided with _pavilions_, or tester and curtains to keep off the draughts. There were always carpets in rich halls or chambers; long, narrow ones in front of the bankers and the settle, and larger thicker “tapis velus” in the middle of the room. Rugs of embroidered Hungarian leather, and skins of leopard or tiger were sometimes laid upon the hearth.[56]

IV

All these cushions, curtains, carpets, did not suffice to keep the cold from the great deep halls of our forerunners. A shiver runs through the literature of the age.

“Telz froid y fait en yver que c’est raige!”

says Eustache Deschamps in his 805th Ballad, describing the Castle of Compiègne. Even in the house one must arm one’s self with good furry hose, furred pourpoints, warm fur-lined cloaks and hoods. In winter, men and women alike wore a long tunic of fur, quilted between two pieces of stuff, underneath their outer garments. But to be slender was the ideal, the supreme elegance of the later Middle Ages. In vain the Knight of La Tour warns his daughters of the fate of sundry very comely maidens, who, wishing to appear in their true slimness before their lovers, discarded their furred tunics despite the blast of winter, and turned the young men’s hearts against them by the chicken-flesh of their cheeks and the blueness of their noses! In vain he draws a salutary picture of lovers, at last united, dying of cold in the arms of one another, victims to the too chilly elegance of their figures! The furred tunic was all very well for gouty Master Eustace and the elderly knight: young beauties and trim gallants often preferred the risk of mortal illness, and let them grumble.

“Sy est cy bon exemple comment l’en ne se doit mie si lingement ne sy joliettement vestir, pour soy greslir et faire le beau corps en temps d’yver, que l’on en perde sa manière et sa couleur.”[57]

“Do not be shaved,” interrupts Master Eustace, who must decidedly have been an ill-dressed, slovenly old poet, “neither have your hair cut, nor take a bath this bitter weather.” The young people might reply that the _Roman de la Rose_ prescribes the hot bath as a sovereign remedy against winter. The bath-room, with its warm pipes, its great wooden tubs, with the carved gilt garlands round them, its lounges for cooling, its little tables spread with a dainty supper, still preserved a _souvenir_ of Roman luxury. People used to bathe in company, sometimes men and women together (as we still do at the sea-side), their heads beautifully dressed and adorned with flowers, their bodies hidden up to the neck in their great cask-like baths, where the water was often thickened with scented bran or strewn with a dust of salutary herbs.

“Quand viendroit la froide saison,”

sings Maistre Jehan de Meung--

“Quand l’air verroient forcenez
Et jeter pierres et tempestes
Que tuassent ès champs les bestes
Et grands fleuves prendre et glacer....

“On feroient chaudes estuves
S’y pourroient tuit nuz demourer
Se baignant entr’eus ès cuves.”

In a German poem, _Der nakte Bote_ quoted by Herr Alwin Schulz, a messenger arrives at a distant castle, and proceeds, as was the custom, to strip and take a bath after his dusty journey before presenting himself before the lord of the castle. What was his surprise on opening the door of the bath-room to behold my lord, my lady, and all their olive-branches disporting themselves in steaming tubs! It was, they explained, the only way they could keep themselves from freezing.

Master Eustace prefers a warm chamber, “nattée sus et jus,” with all the windows shut, a fur-lined dressing-gown, a bowl of old Beaune:

“Le chaud civet et bonne espicerie.”

Contest of youth and age! But which, Master Eustace, would be better for your gout?

V

The hearth none the less was deep and ample. Sometimes several fireplaces, grouped together on a raised daïs, occupied all the upper end of the hall with their blazing hearths and shadowy overmantels. A magnificent example still exists at Bourges. In houses of less pretension the hall could boast but one chimney, but that at least was vast. A whole tree could be laid across the gigantic fire-dogs, whence the great blaze radiated warmth and light into the church-like frigidity of the hall. Those who know the Salle de Garde at Langeais, will remember its beautiful chimney-piece representing the Castle’s own crenelated _chemin-de-ronde_, carved with mimic soldiers and stooping watchers, who lean over the battlements to look at the blaze below; few objects are more stately than the monumental fourteenth-century fireplace. If the heat did not penetrate very far, if the humbler fry in the lower hall were grateful for their furs--at least, under the huge overmantel, where the curtained settles stood, there was a cosy ingle-nook for the master of the house, his wife, his children, his guests, his chief retainers.

In such noble houses as could not boast a resident physician, or a master of requests, or a staff of notaries and secretaries, there was, at least, invariably, a chaplain. Immediately below that reverend clerk came the seneschal who was constable, governor, or simple steward, according to the standing of the castle. When no separate dispenser was employed, the seneschal was dispenser, master of the household, and governor of the pages. Next to him came the butler; then, the chamberlain, to whom were entrusted the jewels, art treasures, and furniture of the castle; the marshal, or master of the horse, and the head falconer. All these were persons of importance, to be treated with a certain ceremony; they were frequently of noble blood; they accompanied their master on many of his journeys, and were rather his ministers than his servants. Next to them in order of rank stood the housekeeper or governess, often a beguine or Tertiary nun, who supervised the ordering of the house, engaged and controlled the servants, and governed the young girls of noble family serving in the castle as maids of honour. Under her came a swarm of chambermaids and housemaids, cooks and tailors, page-boys and varlets. Let us not forget from the list of our retainers that person of consideration, the fool: the ancestor of the modern diner-out. Fools and dwarfs were not to be found under every noble roof. The smaller country-houses were sometimes condemned to a distressing sanity, and depended for their amusement on wandering minstrels and the acrobats of the fair.

We have not counted in our list the knights and squires of the keep, nor yet the garrison with its captain, nor the artisans and labourers on the estate. For the moment we are occupied merely with the interior of the castle. And the chief thing that strikes us in it is the abundance of young people--the troops of boys and girls.

VI

Every castle was, in fact, a school--a seminary of polite education. From the king to the pettiest baron, every noble received at his court the children of his principal vassals; and thus every noble child was educated to the standard of the sphere immediately above his own. In their homes, from the age of seven, boys and girls alike had learned to spell, to ride, to know that they were Christians. At the age of ten or twelve they were generally sent to court. Here they learned, above all, the duties and behaviour of gentlepeople.

Great care was taken that they should be well-bred, chivalrous, courteous, neatly clad, and clean. Along with this, the boys learned to fence, shoot, fight with sword and shield, joust, play quintaine, tennis, palm-play, chess, draughts, and tric-trac. They were taught to ride, climb, leap, swim, and to perform all these feats in heavy armour and handicapped by difficult conditions. In a word, they were trained to amuse themselves, to exert themselves, and to endure. The _Livre des Faiz de Jean Bouciquaut_ shows the great stress laid upon physical education; but it also shows that physical education was not all. Boys who would grow into knights, and pass through many courts and countries, had to learn several languages. French, of a sort, was taught in all European countries--often, no doubt, it was of the kind of Stratford-atte-Bowe--for French then, as now, was the language of diplomacy and courts. And some lads then, as now, acquired a little Greek and Latin; but so much learning was rarely encouraged save in the future Churchman. All noble children, boys and girls, learned to read and write, though frequently in after-life the warrior’s remembrance of these arts was no more precise than the knowledge possessed by our average country squire of the _Iliad_ he used to parse at school. The women kept up their accomplishments: most noble women in England and Italy, as in France, could read, play some musical instrument, embroider, speak a little French, bind a wound and tend a fever, if comparatively few could wield the pen.

At twelve years old the page was sent to court. Here he was to finish his education, to win, if possible, his suzerain’s favour, and to lay the beginnings of his fortune. But at first he saw little of his lord. He was entirely under the control of the seneschal, the chamberlain, and the first equerry, for, as the name denotes, the young squire’s quarters were situate in the _écuries_. After a few years’ apprenticeship his opportunity might come. A chance might make him a page-messenger, and so he might earn the confidence of his Seigneur. He might, by his good manners and courtesy, awaken the attention of some noble dame. He might even accompany his suzerain to some superior court, attract the notice of the over-lord, and be adopted to that higher sphere. Thus the little Jehan de Saintré, a young lad in the household of his father’s suzerain in Touraine, was taken by that gallant knight to Paris, where the king took a fancy to the child--“tellement que il le voulut avoir en sa cour à estre son paige, pour après lui chevaucher, et au sourplus servir en salle, comme ses aultres paiges et enffans d’honneur.” But the natural course of things was for the lad to remain a page among his fellow-pages till the age of fifteen or sixteen, when he was ripe for the office of messenger or carver at the lord’s table. These offices entailed squireship. In this condition he remained until about the age of twenty, when, generally on the occasion of some princely wedding, some outbreak of war, some tournament or other great occasion, he was dubbed knight, and set forth on his adventures.

While all these lads from twelve to twenty were fencing, riding, or playing palm-play in the court, their sisters were employed in my lady’s company. They seldom came together with the men of the castle, save on holidays and feast-days. At other times they spent their time in my lady’s chamber or tiring-room, or walked with her in the country, for it was held unseemly that ladies of noble birth should be met walking alone. They were, in fact, much in the position of “girls still in the schoolroom” in a modern country-house. They learned their lessons with their governess, practised their lute, went to church every morning, embroidered chasubles and altar-cloths, and worked wonderful hangings for the cold stone walls. And there were from seventy to a hundred yards of needlework in a set of hangings! They could also spin fine silk and linen, and ornament with needlework their feast-day veils and dresses. (The less interesting forms of sewing were left to the army of tire-women and waiting-women who attended on the noble maidens and their lady.) They all knew how to ride and how to fly a hawk, to make wreaths and posies, to sing, to play, to beguile the long hours with chess, tric-trac, draughts; and the youngest of them began to deal and shuffle the new-invented “naypes,” or “naibi”--the first playing-cards. They could pluck or brew virtuous simples, bind a broken limb, or nurse a fever. They could amuse the convalescent with endless tales of the Round Table, with the legends of Charlemagne, and with lives of the saints no less interesting and romantic. Most of them could read aloud some novel: _Cléomadès_ or _Mélusine_. They must, I think, have been blithe, charming, capable companions in the long winter of a lonely country-house. On the whole, with its constant undercurrent of chivalry and religion, theirs was an education which left its women delightful, tender of heart, and generous, if, perhaps, with little moral strength to resist the illusions of the heart.

VII

From December till the end of March, life in the castle was perforce an idle one. War was rarely made in winter; there were no tourneys in the bitter weather, too cold for combatant or spectator; and in heavy snow time there was perforce a truce to hunting of the more vigorous kind. It would have been extravagant to rise before candlelight, so that it was after seven when knights and ladies left their curtained beds, washed their hands and face in rose-water, heard the Mass, and took their morning broth. Dinner, which in the summer was sometimes as early as nine, was sometimes in winter put as late as noon. And after dinner there was the siesta--the apparently inevitable siesta, sensible enough in summer heats after a morning already seven or eight hours old, but inexplicable during the best part of a winter’s day. Still, in all the novels and chronicles of the fourteenth century, I am bound to admit that, at all seasons of the year, after the principal meal, both men and women retire to sleep for at least a couple of hours. It is true the meal was long and heavy, and highly spiced. Still, in our visions of mediæval heroes we cannot imagine Charlemagne nodding after dinner every day, despite the assurance of Philippe Mouskes “that he always undressed himself and slept for two hours after the midday meal, holding the practice for a very wholesome one.”[58] We do not evoke Knight Percival and his companions as sleeping half the afternoon away. Yet--

“après le disner
Se couchièrent ... à dormir
Jusqu’al vespre sans nul espir.

* * * * *

Endroit vespre sont reveillé
Le souper ont appareillié.”[59]

Joinville mentions, as the most natural thing in the world, that St. Louis went to bed every day after the midday dinner until vespers; while the child Jehan de Saintré, Damp Abbez, the Dame des Belles Cousines, Pero Niño, the Dame de Sérifontaines, the Lady of Fayel, the Chastelain de Coucy, all the brood of fourteenth-century heroes and heroines, follow, in this respect, the example of their elders.

Towards three o’clock, our dames and knights aroused themselves, took a slender meal of bread dipped in wine or hypocras, and preserved fruits, and then set out to vespers. We still are faithful to the afternoon-tea, but we have dropped the daily church service. After vespers the winter evening had closed in--the fourteenth-century evening ill-lit by flaring torches. It was fortunate if pedlar or pilgrim, minstrel or acrobat, knocked at the castle gate and demanded hospitality. Otherwise, despite the well-worn _facetiæ_ of Master Hausselicoq, the fool, the evening was apt to prove a trifle long.

The accounts of fourteenth-century barons abound in mention of minstrels, acrobats, “joueurs d’espertise,” “joueurs de la corde,” “chanteurs et chanteresses,” and all the motley crew.[60] Every castle was glad to extend its hospitality to wayfarers of every kind, for they brought news and amusement, and renewed the worn-out stock of gossip. Two little pictures of people of this sort occur to me as I am writing. One is a sketch of the Welsh or Breton harper, from the poem of Renart. When Renart, disguised as a jongleur, offered to sing to Isengrin his lays of the Round Table, he put on a strange jargon, and proceeded to tell his story in almost unintelligible French--

“‘Je fot saver bon lai Breton
Et di Merlin et di Foucon
Del Roi Artus, et de Tristan
Del Chievrefoil, et Saint Brandan.’ ...
‘Et sais-tu le Lai Dan Iset?’....
‘Ya-ia!’ dit il. ‘Godistouët!’” (God is to wit?)

Wrapped in their weather-beaten mantle, shaggy, ridiculous, singing much as sings Hans Breitmann to-day, it is thus (according to M. Joseph Bédier[61]) that we must picture the minstrels who sang of Tristan and Yseult. Probably they used their strange, absurd prose merely as a medium to explain the story to their hearers in much such a _chante-fable_ as “Aucassin et Nicolette,” while they sang their lyrics in their Celtic tongue to the music of their harps. And if the voice is sweet, after all, the language is of little consequence.

Our other tiny idyl is drawn from the arrival of the pedlar at the castle of the Lady of Fayel. That hapless and guilty lady, desirous at all risks to meet her noble lover, bids the Chastelain de Coucy don the pedlar’s garb in order to approach her. He puts on rough laced boots and a coat of coarse cloth, on his head a torn and battered hat, a stick in his hand, a pack upon his back. He comes to the castle and undoes his wares:

“car mercier
Porte en tous lieus son panier
Et en salles et en maisons
S’ebate en toutes saisons.”

The lady and her maidens stand round and pick and choose, praise this, bargain for that, choose and discard in true feminine fashion.

“Ont maintes choses barguigné
Et li aucuns ont acheté
Ce que leur vint à volonté.”

But when the pack is strapped again, the pedlar murmurs that it is late. “And it rains!” cries the Dame de Fayel. So the packman stays all night at the castle, and my lady finds means to get speech with her lover.

In the summer, when there were tourneys and weddings and other festivities in the countryside, not only packmen passed and minstrels, but acrobats, conjurers who swallowed knives and lighted candles, keepers of learned pigs and clever dogs, owners of puppet-shows, dancers and jongleurs in plenty. They travelled from place to place, lodging in the castle or the village inn, always welcome guests in the monotony of country life. But all these visitors were rarer birds in winter. Then the long days were passed in chess-playing and tric-trac; heavy bets were laid and taken, and in the cumber of their idleness many a knight was ruined out of sheer _ennui_.

Gambling was the curse of the noble, as it has always been the curse of every class trained to win and to desire, but with scant outlets for its energies. The knights in winter gambled pretty nearly all day long. We remember how the Servitor of Milun, entering a castle in the morning, finds in the great hall two knights playing chess, so absorbed that they do not see him.... “When Easter comes,” say the knights to Milun, “we will recommence our tournaments,” but until Easter there is no rival to their games of chance, except the eternal game of love. Chess was the baccarat, the bridge of the Middle Ages. In vain the king forbade it in 1369, in 1393, and both before and after, with every other game of hazard. But who was to enter the snowed-up country castle, to tell tales of knights and ladies playing the forbidden game? The women were almost as bad as the men. “Never play chess, save for love,” says the Knight de la Tour to his daughters: “ne soyez jamais grant jouaresses de tables.” And he proceeds to tell them melancholy tales of land, of money, and of women’s honour spent over the too enticing board. But, alas, good knight, the days are ill to pass in winter time!

VIII

So there was great joy when the trees began to redden:

“Betweene Mersh and Averil
When spray beginth to spring.”

The poets of the Middle Ages, all intoxicate with May-dew, did but express the hearts of their whole generation. The long dull months, shut in cold and ill-lit draughty houses, with, for nourishment, the same eternal salt meat and shipboard food, were now delightfully over-past. The voice of the stock-dove was heard in the land, and the almond-boughs began to blossom in the orchard. Spring meant a free life out of doors in the sunlight; spring meant the hunt, delicious days spent in the fresh green wood in healthy sport that made the pulses beat. Spring meant the game-bag full; a varied table spread in bower or garden. Spring meant a hundred little intimate festivities waking to mirth the numerous young people of every fourteenth-century castle. Sometimes the whole company go out to hunt for several days in the forest, knights and ladies, pages, maidens, carrying with them tents, provisions. The girls wash their hands and faces in the dew of flowers to get a good complexion, as they still used to do in Warwickshire when I was a little child. Every hunter has a horn to sound if he gets lost in the forest. How they laugh over all the little hardships and adventures of the picnic! In one old poem--old even in the days of Valentine Visconti--the knights have forgotten their towels and have to dry their faces on the ladies’ skirts.[62]

Generally these great hunts were made with hounds, and the game was deer or bear, wild boar, hare, or otter. But the most fashionable sport was hawking. Every castle had its knight-falconer, who was a great person with onerous duties. The royal falconer was paid as much as twenty-four sols a day--three times the daily due of the physician; and even a varlet falconer was given three sols _per diem_--a very respectable salary.[63] But he was not paid for doing nothing; the hawk was hard to catch, and when caught difficult to train. Night and day the falconer, with the bird, hooded and fasting, on his hand, must pace up and down, up and down, like a mother with her teething child. When at last the bird was fit for use, perched lightly on his lady’s wrist, or soaring after swan, pheasant, or wild duck through the upper air, he was one of the most precious and beautiful possessions of a noble. The best esteemed was the Irish or Norwegian ger-falcon. What pet name was more endearing than that of “Gay Goshawk”? His clear eye, a pure grey, neither greenish nor bluish, is the inevitable standard to which the mediæval lover compares his lady’s glance--falcon-keen, falcon-swift, falcon-bright, and grey as the hawk’s eye. In the evening, invigorated rather than fatigued by the long day in the forest, knights and ladies would fall to dancing. The country neighbours would come for miles; even the burghers of the richest sort were now and then invited. “Il est accoustumé en esté de veiller à dances jusqu’au jour,” writes the Knight of La Tour, but he condemns the practice, being past his youth, and asserts that strange things happen when some band of practical jokers contrives to extinguish all the lights. Let us hope that such accidents did not frequently occur, and that the knight’s three daughters were not kept at home too often “pour le péril de mauvaises langues.”

IX

It would be pleasant to spend a day or two in some fourteenth-century country-house during the early summer. Let us attach ourselves to the suite of a certain Spanish hidalgo, Don Pero Niño, a noble adventurer, who, landing at Harfleur in 1405, went to visit Renaud de Trie, Admiral of France, at his country seat of Sérifontaines. Don Pero Niño, fresh as we to France, sets forth, by means of his gifted secretary and chronicler, all the details of that memorable visit. We remember no page in Froissart at once so bright and so precise.

The Admiral de Trie was an aged knight, ill in health. In his day he had been a famous fighter, but in 1405, broken down by many battles, he lived retired on his estate in Normandy.[64]

“There dwelt he in great comfort in a castle, strong, although situate in a plain, and furnished as well as it had been in Paris. He had about him young gentlemen in pageship, and all kind of servitors, as befits so great a lord.

“In his house there was a great chapel, where Mass was said every morning to the sound of trumpets and divers instruments, played by his minstrels in a way that was a marvel. Before the house a river flowed; orchards and gracious gardens bordered it. On the other side of the castle was a pond for fish, enclosed by walls, and guarded by gates well-locked; whence, every day, the steward might furnish food for three hundred persons.... There was a pack of fifty hounds; twenty horses were kept for the service of the lord of the castle. There were plenty of falcons-gentle. There was all that heart can wish for in the way of hunting--the otter, the roe, the wild boar, small game, or waterfowl.”

The old knight had a young wife, “the fairest lady that was at that time in France.” She was a woman of great sense and order, and, as was in those days the custom, she was almost entirely responsible for the management of her husband’s estates.

“All things were arranged or decided by my lady. She alone governed everything both within and without. My lord the Admiral was a rich man, lord of many lands; but he had to take thought for none of these things, my lady being sufficient unto all.”

“My lady had her noble lodging apart from the mansion of her lord. They dwelt within the self-same moat, but divided the one from the other by a drawbridge. It would be long to set forth the number and the magnificence of the furniture that there was in this lodging. Here lived my lady, surrounded by ten maids of honour, very richly clad and accoutred all of them, who had nought to do save keep their lady company, for beneath them there were many waiting-women.

“Now will I tell you the rule and order of my lady’s life. Of a morning, so soon as she was dressed, forth she went with her damsels to a spring hard by, where each one told her rosary, and read her book of _Hours_ in silent prayer, sitting a little apart from her fellows. Next, plucking flowers and violets upon their way, they hied them home to the palace, and gathered in the chapel, where they heard a low Mass. As they came out of church their servants handed them a silver tray, furnished with larks, chickens, and other roast fowl, of which they took or left what they would, and drank a little wine. My lady ate but rarely of a morning, or trifled with some morsel to humour those about her. Their fast broken, lady and damsels mounted their noble hackneys, and then, met in company with such knights and squires as were of their party, they went riding through the lanes and open country for some while, weaving garlands of flowers as they went. Then might you hear such singing, by voices well-tuned and timed together, of virelays, lays, rondeaux, songs, complaints, ballads, and other verses, such as the French know featly how to finish, that, I declare you, could it last for ever, you would have thought yourself in Paradise.”

With this company rode the Captain Pero Niño, the occasion of all this festival. With them at dinner-time he rode home to the castle, dismounted, and strode into the hall, where the portable trestle-tables had been already spread. The Admiral could no longer ride afield, but he welcomed home his guests with a marvellous good grace. My lady and Pero Niño were placed at the Admiral’s table, while the seneschal presided over the other, and saw that every damsel sat between a squire and a knight. There were meats of all manner in great number and marvellous well cooked. During the meal whosoever knew how to speak with courtesy and measure of arms and love was sure to find a hearing and an answer. Meanwhile the jongleurs made low music on divers instruments. Dinner over, grace was said, the tables removed, and then the minstrels came; my lady danced with Pero Niño, and every damsel with her squire. This dance lasted an hour; when it was over, my lady gave the kiss of peace to Pero Niño, and every lady to her cavalier. Then wine and spices were handed round, and all alike dispersed to their siesta. Pero Niño, happy knight, had his lodging in my lady’s tower.

Later in the afternoon the horses were brought round, and the pages stood ready bearing falcons: a huntsman had already tracked the heron’s course:

“Then would you have seen a noble sport and fair amusement, with swimming of hounds, beating of drums, whirring and wheeling of falcons, with knights and ladies riding along the river-bank as many as you can imagine them. That sport ended, my lady and her company would seat themselves to rest in some green meadow, while the pages unpacked cold fowl and game, and divers fruit. All eat and drank, twining garlands. Then, singing glees and songs, they returned to the castle.”

Supper came at nightfall if it were winter-time. In summer the meal was earlier, and afterwards my lady would set off on foot to wander up and down the countryside till dark, while some would accompany her, and some would stay to play at bowls. Then the torches flared in the great hall, the minstrels gathered in, and there was dancing until far into the night. And this is the order which was followed every day, according to the seasons and the quality of the guests, whenever there was holiday at Sérifontaines. But now, ’tis late. Hand round the wine and spices, and to bed!

X

During these long days, when my lady danced, sang, and rode with Pero Niño, she and he discovered that the Admiral was old. “En tout honneur,” they fell in love with one another. Like the woman of order that she was, instead of keeping Pero Niño as her lover, Madame de Trie sent him to her father to see if he would do for her second husband, while she stayed at Sérifontaines and nursed the Admiral. The father apparently consented, for we hear that they “se tinrent pour amoureux.” Meanwhile the Admiral died. My lady and Don Pero exchanged keepsakes, and he promised to return to France and marry her at the expiry of her mourning. But having met in Spain a certain Doña Beátriz, he married her instead; and perhaps in later years Madame de Trie thought more kindly of the good old Admiral.

Neither the knights nor the ladies of these old chronicles surprise us by the delicacy of their heart. With the _Roman de la Rose_, the still unpurified passions of those ages held that--

“Nous sommes faiz, beau filz, sans doutes,
Toutes pour tous et tous pour toutes.”

Adultery is as common in their chronicles as it has always been in fiction--and perhaps in fact. And when the lovers are tired of each other, it is difficult to veil the case less kindly than the Dame des Belles-Cousines, in her behaviour to Jehan de Saintré, or the Chastelain de Coucy when he punishes the Lady of Vermandois. Moreover, the very first beginnings of love were contaminated by a thought of utility, of “subsidy,” as one of our authors does not fear to state. Even in that pure and charming chronicle, the _Livre des Faiz de Jehan Bouciquaut_, we read that on account of her influence and her prestige, “it is much better to love a lady of a station superior to one’s own.” Listen to the counsels which a lady of great position, the Dame des Belles-Cousines, gives to Jehan de Saintré! The lad, a child of thirteen, has refused to tell her the name of his sweetheart:

“The tears came into the lad’s eyes, for never in his days had he given thought to such a thing as love or lady-loves. His heart fell, his face turned pale.... He sat a long while in silence, twirling the loose end of his girdle round his thumbs.... At last he cried out in his despair, for all the maids of honour fell to questioning him together and at once: ‘What can I tell her? I have no lady-love! If I had one, I would tell you soon enough!’

“‘Well, whom do you love the best of all in the world?’ asked the maidens.

“‘My mother,’ said little Saintré, ‘and after her my sister Jacqueline.’

“Then said my lady:

“‘But of them that are nothing to ye, which love ye the best?’

“‘I love none of them,’ said Saintré.

“‘What! none of them?’ quoth my lady. ‘Ha! false gentleman! You love none of them? Then by that token I prophesy that you will come to nothing. Faint heart that ye are! whence sprang all noble enterprises, all great achievements and valorous deeds of Launcelot, of Gawain, of Tristan, of the courteous Giron, and the other knights of the Round Table? Also of Ponthus,[65] and innumerable other heroes? What else but love-service? What else but the desire to keep the favour of their much-desired dame? And I myself have known many men who, through their love affairs, have reached the highest possible honours, of whom, but for these, no more talk had been made than of so many simple soldiers.’”

Little Saintré left the lady’s presence shamefaced, and when the door was shut, “he ran down the gallery as fast as if he had fifty wolves behind him.” But one day, as he waited at table on the maids of honour, these ladies made him vow to give the promised answer that afternoon. Therefore, when the king and queen retired for their noonday siesta, my lady sought young Saintré in the gallery, and took him to her chamber with her; and there, surrounded by her ladies, she seated him at the foot of her couch and summoned him for a reply.

“At last the poor lad bethought him of one of the noble maidens sent to court, who was ten years of age.

“‘My lady,’ quoth he, ’tis Matheline de Courcy!’

“‘Ah, coward!’ cried my lady, ‘to choose a child like Matheline. Not that she be not a very fair maiden, and of an excellent house, better than thine. But what good, what profit, what honour, what comfort, what advantage, _what subsidy_, what aid and counsel can you find in the love of Matheline? She is but a lassie yet. Nay, you should choose a lady of high and noble birth, wise, and _with the wherewithal to help your fortunes_, and set you above necessity; and her should you love with perfect service, loyally and well, and in all honour. Be sure that in the end she will have mercy upon you, “et par ainsy deviendrez homme de bien.”’”[66]

When we think that this harangue (and especially all that follows it) was penned by an ecclesiastic for the education of a prince, we perceive that our code of morals has changed. Young Saintré received large sums of money from his mistress, with no loss of honour, and the lady herself enters on her mission as on a sacred calling. “Although so young, she had, in her virtue, formed a Roman resolution never to remarry; but often she wished that her work in the world might be to train some young knight or squire and make him a pattern of chivalry.” It is with this high intention that she becomes the mistress of young Saintré; that she bestows her wealth upon him, and keeps him in due splendour of steed and apparel; that she preaches to him, with a sublime lack of logic, “how to flee the seven mortal sins”; that she finds him books to read, and stuffs him with quotation from Thales of Miletus, Chilon of Lacedemonia, Avicenna, Valerius Maximus, and Pittacus of Mitylene. To this end she persuades herself to a cruel separation, and sends him on his travels as knight-errant. She is, in fact, his mundane Beatrice. Her love for him is in truth a liberal education, and one that seems delightful and legitimate to her contemporaries. But our eyes see in her an ugly likeness to Madame de Warens, and we should say, in downright English, that she corrupts the lad.

XI

Virtuous or frail, the ladies of the Trecento, as of the two preceding centuries, were all alike as sisters in their loveliness. Or rather, we may say that only one type of beauty was recognized as such, all mediæval heroines were required to conform to that absolute standard.

In our eyes the dark-eyed beauties of Murillo, the warm blondes of Titian and Palma, the slender angels of Perugino, the powdered _espiègle_ ladies of Gainsborough and Reynolds; the majestic form of the Venus of Milo, and the somewhat mannered elegance of Tanagra, are all, in their kind, types of accomplished beauty. Many different ideals have enlarged and exercised our taste. But, of all the candidates on our list, the Middle Ages would have admitted only the Perugino angel and the Tanagra statuette.

This lessens, at any rate, the difficulty of description. The mediæval beauty was _always_ golden-haired, either naturally or by the aid of art. Her hair was very fine, rippling in long curves above a fair broad forehead. One of her distinctive charms was the large space between the brows, the “plaisant entr’euil” so often sung of early poets; very few things seemed more hideous to our forefathers than shaggy eyebrows meeting in the middle. It was also a great disadvantage for the eyebrows to be fair. They should be several shades darker than the hair, narrow, pencilled, delicately arched; Burns’--

“Eyebrows of a darker hue
Bewitchingly o’erarching.”

Eyes, not blue, but “grey as glass,” “plus vairs que cristal,” not over-large, somewhat deeply set, and always bright, keen, and shining as a falcon’s.

Below these brilliant eyes, a small straight nose, rather long than short, but above all “traitis”--that is to say, neat and straight--divided two oval cheeks, with dimples that appear at the bidding of a smile. A fresh, faint pink-and-white colour, like the first apple-blossom, must flourish in these little cheeks. The lips are much redder, slightly pursed over the tiny pearly teeth; “la bouche petite et grossette,” says the prosaic _Roman de la Rose_; but Ulrich von Lichtenstein expressed his meaning better in his “kleinvelhitzerôter munt,” his “little, very fire-red mouth;” or the author of _Guillaume le Faucon_, who likens his heroine’s lips to a scarlet poppy-bud:

“Tant estoit vermeille et close.”

Sometimes the small mouth was only half shut, as if about to speak:

“Les lèvres jointes en itel guise
C’un poi i lessa ouverture
Selonc réson et par mesure,”

says the author of _Narcisse_.[67]

The cleft chin and the ears must be small and round and white, above a long neck, with a full white throat. The fairness of this throat, its delicacy and transparence, was the _sine quâ non_ of feminine loveliness. “When she drank red wine, one saw the rosy fluid through her throat,” say the poets.

The beauty of the Middle Ages was invariably slender, slim, and round as a willow-wand. The shoulders are small, the whole figure “greslette et alignie”; long-drawn out in slenderness, with slim, round, long limbs, and slim, round, long fingers, that show no joints, and terminate in trim, shining nails, cut very close. The bust is high, with neat, round, well-divided breasts, and a slim, round waist. When Eustache Deschamps, in his 960th Ballad, sings the charms of a lady quite correctly like this portrait, he ends with saying:

“Mais sur toutes portez bien vos habiz
Plus que nulle dame ne damoiselle
Qui soit vivante en terre n’en paÿs.”[68]

Poets in every century have laid great store by that

“something i’ the gait
Gars ony dress look weel.”

The _Roman de la Rose_, that manual of the fourteenth century, devotes a score or so of verses to this doctrine of deportment.

“‘Marche joliettement,’ walk prettily, mincingly, showing your pretty little shoes, so well made they fit without a wrinkle.... And if your dress trail behind on the pavement, yet take thought to lift it a little towards the front, as if the wind had caught it, so that every one who passes you may notice the dainty well-shod slimness of your feet.

“And if you have a long mantle--one of those long, full cloaks that almost entirely hide your charming figure--with your two hands and your two arms manage to open it wide in front, whether the day be fair or foul, even as a peacock spreads his tail.”

XII

Let us not think that the fourteenth-century castle was entirely peopled by men and women in the bloom of idle youth. There were charitable widows whose conversation was in heaven; there were knights strong and resolute in their absolute religion. In spite of all its mediocrity, alongside of its frivolity, its often criminal looseness of the marriage tie, the fourteenth century was an age of piety and honour. Every gentleman had two religions, for either of which he would have died; and the briefest record of life in the castle must find a place for the observances of the Church and the duties of chivalry. We cannot lay too great a stress upon the austerity, upon the charity, inherent in the ideal woman of a period whose great ladies were so often purely worldly and emotional. We should leave our readers under a false conception if we let them suppose that the women of a fourteenth-century castle were invariably after the pattern of the sprightly Dame des Belles-Cousines, or of the sweeter Lady of Fayel. “Even in a palace life can be lived well.” No saint in her cloister was purer than Madame Olive de Belleville, “la plus courtoise dame et la plus humble;” stern to herself, fasting daily, wearing the hair-shirt on her tender flesh, but to all others most pitiful and gentle, visiting the sick, helping poor women in childbirth, praying on the graves of poor or aged people who had few to mourn them. And, by a rare virtue, she was charitable not only to the unhappy; she knew no less how to welcome and honour the well-to-do, the honourable, the unpathetic; she knew how to deck with fair, white raiment the smiling daughters of ruined gentle-folk, who else would have gone to their bridegrooms without a jewel or a wedding garment. She was hospitable, and even lavish, to the careless minstrel folk, so that they made a “Ballad of Regret” when at last she left them. Above all, she would never hear ill of anybody. And when the ugly story went round in whispers, and the worldly and the sceptical smiled half-content, this good woman, who denied herself the simplest pleasures, would hasten to excuse the sinner, to doubt if the tale were true; or, were it proven, then she would say that God would amend it, and that His judgments and His mercy alike were marvellous, and would one day astound us all. So that in her neighbourhood none went undefended in the hour of slander, unsaluted in prosperity, unvisited in sickness or sorrow, unholpen in poverty, or unprayed for in the hour of death. Few sweeter eulogies could be given to any woman. “In truth,” says the Knight of La Tour, “though I was only nine years old when I knew her, I still remember many a wise thing she said and did, that I would set down here had I the time and space.”

Madame Olive de Belleville was as frequent a type as the Lady des Belles-Cousines and her kind. More frequent than either, and between the two extremes of saint and sinner, is the wise and prudent Lady of La Tour, the careful mother of growing daughters, “très gentille et preude femme,” who, beautiful still, and often subject to temptation, is skilful as Portia or Beatrice in the witty answer, the brilliant, inviolable smile, which serves to turn aside the insinuation of evil. Nor let us forget that noble wife of a nobler husband, Madame Antoinette de Turenne, “who scarce lived in her husband’s absence, with so great love did they love each other,” who had refused the hand of a Royal prince in order to marry Sir John Bouciquaut. There were then, as now, in every class, countless women of purest honour, of staunchest virtue, wise in counsel, true of heart. And, in the highest rank, if the absence of daily cares produced many frail and thoughtless beauties, the same cause added to the souls of its saints a singular aloofness, a dazzling lustre of unworldliness, and a penetrating grace of meditation. The long empty hours of the mediæval donjon, if they fostered the loves of a Tristan and an Yseult, also brought forth many a radiant spiritual flower.

XIII

In the castles of the fourteenth century, the men no less than the women were religious. The middle class, and especially the respectable bourgeois man of letters, affected a certain freedom of thought: he was already the father of Voltaire and the grandfather of the speech-making Jacobins of the French Revolution. But all that was changed among the nobility. There it was essential (even as it is among the nobles of France to-day), however light of life, to be grave of thought. The education of every knight made him instinctively religious. Even the scapegrace Louis of Orleans would pass weeks together in the Convent of the Celestines, praying, fasting with the monks before the altar. And a perfect knight was habitually not only pious, but austere.

The _Livre des Faiz de Messire Jehan Bouciquaut_ gives us an admirable picture of a pattern of chivalry. The great Governor of Genoa (whom the documents of the Florentine archives reveal to us as an insupportable martinet, dogmatic, obstinate, and tyrannical, despite his virtues) appears in these pages in the inner splendour of a noble soul. Every morning he rose at dawn, “that the first-fruits of his day might be consecrate to God,” and we learn with some surprise that this poet of courtly ballads, this soldier, this statesman, gave every morning of his life three consecutive hours to his “œuvre d’oraison,” as infallibly renewed at night. At table, while his household were served in gold and silver, he ate and drank from pewter, glass, or wood; however rich the banquet, he partook but of one dish, the first served, with one glass of wine and water.

“He loves to read the fair books of God, the lives of the saints, the deeds of the Romans, and ancient history; but he talks little and will listen to no slander.... Marvellously hateth he liars and flatterers, and driveth them from him.... Marvellously hateth he also all games of chance and fortune, and never consenteth to them.... Those virtues which be contrary to lubricity are steadfast in him.... He is stern and to the point in justice, yet faileth he not in mercy and compassion.... He is very piteous to the ancient men-at-arms who can no longer help themselves, who have been good blades in their time, but have laid by nothing, and so are sore distressed in their old age.... And with all his heart loveth he those who are of good life, fearing and serving our Lord Jesus Christ.... He oweth no debts.... He never lies; and all that he promiseth, so much doth he perform.”

We are content to end our studies with the portrait of so true a knight.

THE END

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Flour de Brousso,” par Arsène Vermenouze. [Imprimerie Moderne. Aurillac. 1896.]

[2] _Pages Libres_, No. 103.

[3] See the _Comptes des Frères Bonis_, merchants at Montauban during the second half of the fourteenth century, published (1890) by M. Ed. Forestier. Bonis himself possessed in the vicinity of Montauban lands and houses to the value of sixty or seventy thousand pounds sterling, modern value;--which did not prevent his selling his goods with his own hands, down to the smallest detail.

[4] See _Bonis_, ccviii. Among Bonis’ servants the swineherd, Jean Chaussenoire, bought a vineyard; the neatherd, Salona, two houses in town; another neatherd, a house on the banks of the Aveyron. In 1366, under the English, a shepherdess comes to Bonis and entrusts him with her savings: three and thirty pounds! Bonis’s valet, a man at wages of five pounds a year, possessed enough land to take 430 litres (two septiers) of wheat at the sowing: from six to eight acres of land.

[5] Léopold Delisle, _L’Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age_. See pp. 8-17, an account of the position of the _hospites_, who, often burghers in the town, were little better than serfs in the country.

[6] For example, the Marmosets of Charles V.; but this king also knighted numerous burghers of Paris.

[7] For the full description of the origin and class of vavassours, we refer our reader to L. Delisle, _L’Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age_.

[8] Bonis.

[9] Thorold Rogers, i. 16.

[10] _History of Prices_, _loc. cit._, and p. 66.

[11] See especially the treatise on gardening in the _Menagier de Paris_. There is also a valuable chapter on the kitchen-garden in M. L. Delisle’s _L’Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age_. Most of the plants quoted were already grown in the gardens of Charlemagne.

[12] Delisle, p. 221.

[13] Delisle, p. 616.

[14] Thorold Rogers, i. 54.

[15] Delisle, p. 583.

[16] _Régistres du Châtelet_, i. p. 3; and ii. pp. 100, 351, 370, 460, and 461.

[17] Bonis, cxcvii.

[18] _Régistres du Châtelet_: varlet thatcher, one sol and his keep (i. 393). Joubert, _Vie privée en Anjou_: hedgers paid per day, one sol and their food (p. 98). Thorold Rogers: for mowing an acre, 8½_d._; harvesters for carting corn, one sol two deniers, and their food (i. 255).

[19] _Régistres du Châtelet_, i. 427, 448, 558, _et passim_; and ii. 497.

[20] Bonis, p. cxciii.

[21] See the farm inventory in Joubert’s _Vie Privée en Anjou au XVme. siêcle_.

[22] Joubert.

[23] _Comptes des Frères Bonis, Marchands de Montauban_, publié par M. Edouard M. Forestier, 1890, p. ccx.

[24] _Châtelet_, ii. 509: “They took the bed, pulled the straw out of it, threw it in the chimney, and set fire to it.”

[25] Thorold Rogers, _History_, i. 13.

[26] See Vaissière, _Gentilshommes Campagnards de l’Ancienne France_; see also Thorold Rogers, _History of Prices_, i. 13. See _ibid._, inventory of John Senekworth’s effects, for the furniture of a Cambridgeshire manor in 1314. We notice six sheets, a mattress, a coverlet, a counterpane, a “banker” or stuffed cushion for a bench, three cushions, three table-cloths and two napkins, two drinking glasses, four silver spoons, basin and ewer, two silver seals, and _three books of romance_!

[27] Douët d’Arcq, ii. 139. 6.

[28] Joubert, _La Vie Privée en Anjou_.

[29] Léopold Delisle, _L’Agriculture Normande_, p. 189.

[30] _Régistres du Châtelet_ for 1392, i. 174.

[31] _Ibid._, 427.

[32] _Ibid._, 526.

[33] Delisle, _L’Agriculture Normande_, 189.

[34] _L’Agriculture Normande._

[35] _Ibid._, 190.

[36] _L’Agriculture Normande_, 190.

[37] Joubert, _Vie Privée en Anjou_, p. 94.

[38] Joubert, _Vie Privée en Anjou_, p. 60.

[39] Bonis, cxxi.

[40] All these remedies are taken from the _Accounts of Bonis_, _loc. cit._, _et seq._

[41] Henri de Parville, “Revue des Sciences,” in the _Journal des Débats_, 23rd January, 1890.

[42] Thorold Rogers, i. 399.

[43] Bonis.

[44] Joubert, p. 60. But see especially for this subject the masterly passage of M. Léopold Delisle, _L’Agriculture Normande au Moyen Age_, p. 175, _et seq._

[45] It will be remembered that in the Third Order of St. Francis special provision is made for laymen who can read, evidently a considerable class.

[46] _Registres du Châtelet_, ii. 103.

[47] See D. Bessin, _Concilia_, part i., p. 78, quoted by Delisle, p. 116.

[48] Eustache Deschamps, _Ballades_, édition du Marquis de Queux de St. Hilaire. Ballade 835.

[49] In the disastrous years immediately preceding the accession of Charles V., the price of corn doubled.

[50] Eustache Deschamps, ii.

[51] _Voyage du Seigneur de Caumont_, quoted by Viollet-le-Duc, _op. cit._, v. p. 83.

[52] See, for instance, Douët d’Arcq, _Comptes de l’Hotel des Rois de France_.

[53] Labarte, _Mobilier de Charles V._