Chapter VIII: Book THE FOURTH: , 1410--1413 (1)

I. OF THE SIGNAL VICTORY GAINED BY SIR JOHN FALSTAFF

OVER THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND.

There is reason to believe that Sir John Falstaff remained for some months in the north-west of England, doubtless employed in pursuit of the scattered remnants of the rebel forces. Some considerable time must have elapsed from the date of the battle of Shrewsbury to that of his next appearance in London of which we have any positive record. Sir John was most favourably received on his return to the metropolis, where he was more than compensated for the ingratitude of the court by the hospitable treatment of the citizens, at whose expense he and his retainers feasted in great profusion for many weeks, solely on the strength of the glowing accounts received (never mind from what source) of our knight’s achievements in Shropshire.

But a warrior like Sir John may not long rest on his laurels. A new enemy had to be faced, arising in an unexpected quarter.

One of the most eminent men of the reign of Henry the Fourth (after Sir John Falstaff) was William Gascoigne, Knight and Chief Justice of England. The biography of this wise and excellent judge will be found in Master Fuller’s work upon English Worthies; a book which would be irreproachable but for the culpable and glaring omission of a personage so eminently entitled to prominence in such a collection as the hero of these pages. The anecdote of Sir William’s courageous committal of the Prince of Wales for contempt of court--in the celebrated criminal action of the King _versus_ Bardolph--is too well known to need recapitulation here. It is true that, bearing as it does on two of the most conspicuous characters in this narrative, some slight discussion might be opportunely employed on the occurrence; for instance, as to the nature of the offence which originally got our rubicund friend “into trouble,” and what was the real extent of the magnanimity displayed by the Prince, on the one hand, and the Lord Chief Justice, on the other. It would be valuable to the cause of historic truth to make quite certain whether the whole affair was, or was not, what, in the parlance of modern criminal jurisprudence, is called a “put up concern” between the two distinguished actors, having for its object a harvest of mutual popularity. The fact that Bardolph _was at liberty_ in an incredibly short space of time after the event, lends a slight colour of such suspicion as I have hinted at to the transaction; but the rights of the matter are involved in such hopeless obscurity as to render all investigation on the subject worse than idle.

Though in the enjoyment of much and well-merited court favour, and public approbation, and being a man of modest integrity, it is still not unnatural or inexcusable that Sir William Gascoigne should feel some little jealousy of the more brilliant attainments and more enviable renown of a warrior, statesman, wit, and scholar like Sir John Falstaff.

The weakness of envy is perhaps the most difficult of all Adam’s legacy for the best of us to rid ourselves of. History, ancient and modern, abounds in illustrations of the tenacity of this vice, even in the noblest natures. Dionysius the elder, and the great Cardinal Richelieu, though the one an absolute monarch of the fairest island in Greek colonised Europe, and the other the virtual master of the most warlike and polished realm of the seventeenth century, were both jealous of the pettiest scribblers of their respective days. The author of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and “The Citizen of the World,” could not see a mountebank throw a summerset but he must risk the scattering of his valuable brains in an attempt to do the same thing better. To seek an illustration nearer our own time, have we not the celebrated little boy of the United States of America, who, though he had carried away the prizes for writing and arithmetic, committed suicide because an inferior mathematician of his own class defeated him in the correct spelling of “phthisic!”?

Is it then a great wonder that the Lord Chief Justice of England (an office which, after all, was then of little more importance than that of a police magistrate of the present day) should have felt envious of a man so vastly his superior in every way (except in the trifling matters of solvency and conventional honesty), as Sir John Falstaff, and should have sought to annoy his brilliant rival by every means in his power; of which, considering the official position of the one man, and the habits of the other, there could have been no scarcity?

Amongst other illustrations of what must be called _petty persecution_--(for, in a work of this serious description, things should receive their right names without respect to persons)--on the part of Sir William Gascoigne towards Sir John Falstaff, it may be mentioned that the former chose to consider the Gadshill expedition as a grave offence, punishable by the defective criminal code of the period. He summoned Sir John to appear before him to answer the charge. Sir John treated the invitation with the contempt it deserved, and went off to kill Percy--stay, that is a slip of the pen--I should say, to distinguish himself in the glorious field of Shrewsbury.

It will hardly be supposed that the tidings of Sir John Falstaff’s safe return from action under a perfect forest of fresh-grown laurels were particularly agreeable to Sir William Gascoigne. Gall and wormwood, on the contrary, may be assumed to have been the flavour imparted by them to the chief judicial mind. At any rate, it is indisputable that his lordship had not many days heard of our hero’s safe arrival and honoured treatment in London when he took a walk, attended only by a single follower, for the express purpose of taking Sir John Falstaff into custody. There is but one consideration which makes such a proceeding _wholly inexcusable_--namely, that the Justice should have nursed his vindictiveness for a period of so many months. This, it must be admitted, argues a relentless and unforgiving nature.

The Chief Justice was an artful man, as will be believed from his having risen to high rank in the legal profession. He thought it prudent to veil his malignant design even from his attendant.

“What’s he that goes there?” He enquired, breaking off a general conversation to point towards a stout gentleman whom he saw walking leisurely down the street followed by a diminutive page.

“Falstaff, an’t please your Lordship.”

His Lordship affected absence of mind.

“He that was in question for the robbery?”

_The_ robbery! You observe, reader? There was but one robbery present to his Lordship’s mind, and that one committed possibly more than a twelvemonth back.

“He, my Lord: but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury; and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.”

“What, to York?”

The countenance of his worship fell considerably. These tidings were baffling to his hopes of vengeance. Sir John Falstaff was once more in the king’s commission, and consequently not liable to arrest. Still Sir William was loth to let his prey slip wholly away from him.

“Call him back,” he said to his servant.

There was some difficulty in getting the knight to arrest his course.

In the first place, he was afflicted with a sudden deafness. This temporary obstacle overcome, he showed an obtuseness of understanding as to what was said to him that was really surprising in a man of his intellectual antecedents. At length the Justice attacked him personally, with--

“Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.”

The Chief Justice had his wish--rather more than his wish, in fact. Sir John Falstaffs manner of gratifying it shall be given in the exact words of the chronicler *:--

* “Henry IV” (Part II.) Act I. Sc. 2.

Sir John Falstaff.--My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad; I heard say your lordship was sick: I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health.

Chief Justice.--Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.

Sik John Falstaff.--An’t please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.

Chief Justice.--I talk not of his majesty:--You would not come when I sent for you.

Sir John Falstaff__And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same villainous apoplexy.

Chief Justice.--Well, heaven mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.

Sib John Falstaff.--This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an’t please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a rascally tingling.

Chief Justice.--What tell you me of it? be it as it is.

Sir John Falstaff.--It hath its original from much grief; from study, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen: it is a kind of deafness.

Chief Justice.--I think you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you.

Sir John Falstaff.--Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an’t please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

Chief Justice.--To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your physician.

Sir John Falstaff.--I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient; your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or, indeed, a scruple itself.

Chief Justice.--I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.

Sir John Falstaff.--As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.

Chief Justice.--Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.

Sir John Falstaff.--He that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less.

Chief Justice.---Your means are very slender, and your waste great.

Sir John Falstaff.--I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.

Chief Justice.--You have misled the youthful prince.

Sir John Falstaff.--The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.

Chief Justice.--Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound: your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gads hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting that action.

Sir John Falstaff.--My lord?--

Chief Justice.’--But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.

Sir John Falstaff.--To wake a wolf is as bad as to smell a fox.

Chief Justice.--What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.

Sir John Falstaff.--A wassel candle, my lord: all tallow: if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.

Chief Justice.--There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity.

Sir John Falstaff.--His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.

Chief Justice__You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.

Sir John Falstaff.--Not so, my lord; your ill angel is light; but, I hope, he that looks upon me will take me without weighing: and yet, in some respects, I grant, I cannot go, I cannot tell. Virtue is of so little regard in these coster-monger times, that true valour is turned bearherd. Pregnancy is made a tapster, and hath his quick wit wasted in giving reckonings: all the other gifts appertinent to man, as the malice of this age shapes them, are not worth a gooseberry. You, that are old, consider not the capacities of us that are young: you measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls; and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too.

Chief Justice.--Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!

Sir John Falstaff.--My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head, and something a round belly. For my voice,--I have lost it with hollaing, and singing of anthems. To approve my youth farther, I will not: the truth is, I am only old in judgment and understanding; and he that will caper with me for a thousand marks, let him lend me the money, and have at him. For the box o’ the ear that the Prince gave you, he gave it like a rude prince, and you took it like a sensible lord. I have checked him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk, and old sack.

Chief Justice.--Well, God send the Prince a better companion!

Sir John Falstaff.--God send the companion a better prince! I cannot rid my hands of him.

Chief Justice.--Well, the King hath severed you and Prince Harry. I hear you are going with Lord John of Lancaster against the Archbishop and the Earl of Northumberland.

Sir John Falstaff.--Yea; I thank your pretty sweet wit for it. But look you pray, all you that kiss my lady peace at home, that our armies join not in a hot day; for, by the Lord, I take but two shirts out with me, and I mean not to sweat extraordinarily: if it be a hot day, an I brandish any thing but my bottle, I would I might never spit white again. There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust upon it: well, I cannot last ever. [But it was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common. If you will needs say I am an old man, you should give me rest. I would to God, my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is: I were better to be eaten to death with rust, than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion. ]

Chief Justice.--Well, be honest, be honest; and God bless your expedition!

Sir John Falstaff.--Will your lordship lend me a thousand pound to furnish me forth?

Chief Justice.--Not a penny, not a penny: you are too impatient to bear crosses. Fare you well: commend me to my cousin Westmoreland.

I consider this utter defeat of my Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne one of the most brilliant triumphs of Sir John Falstaff’s victorious life.

“If I do, fillip me with a three-man beetle,” said Jack, looking after the retreating form of his defeated adversary with ineffable contempt. “Boy!”

“Sir?” said the small page.

“What money is in my purse?”

“Seven groats and twopence.”

“I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. Go, bear this letter to my Lord of Lancaster; this to the Prince; this to the Earl of Westmoreland; and this to old Mistress Ursula, whom I have weekly sworn to marry since I perceived the first white hair on my chin. About it; you know where to find me.”

And pray, who was old Mistress Ursula? We may chance to hear of her by and bye.

II. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED:

DEFENCE OF THE CHARACTER OF THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE GASCOIGNE: CHARITABLE CONSTRUCTION OF HIS CONDUCT IN THE CELEBRATED ACTION OF QUICKLY

I would that full justice to the greatness, wisdom, and magnanimity of my much calumniated hero could be accomplished without the painful task of censuring and exposing the conduct of those enemies to whose machinations he owed penury, neglect, and persecution in his lifetime--obloquy and misrepresentation after death. To censure at any time is a disagreeable task; more especially when the object of your strictures is a personage whose memory successive generations have held in reverential esteem. It is a thankless office to be the first to call attention to a stain on a reputation hitherto deemed spotless--as it is to be the first to tell your sleeping neighbour that his roof is burning. The raven is an honest bird and croaks the approach of bad weather with unerring truthfulness; but the raven is universally hated. I am aware that there are certain writers who have a taste for this kind of discovery, whose minds’ eyes may be compared to a solar telescope, finding out an unsightly mass of blots, blurs, and creases, when the world at large can see nothing but uniform, cheering light. These gentlemen--who, supposing the mind to have a nose as well as an eye, may be called the carrion crows of literary judgment--so keen is their scent for a decomposing reputation, and so intense their enjoyment of dead excellence that has turned bad--are not desirable models for imitation. Neither are their antipodes--the _couleur de rose_ critics, who deaden their mental nostrils to any “fly-blown” indications in a character they are compelled to digest; preferring to swallow the whole with hopeful self-persuasion that all has been good, wholesome, and nutritious. The conscientious and impartial writer will endeavour to observe a medium course between these two. But that course, how difficult to discover and observe! The soundest human judgment, like the strongest eyesight, is fallible. What we think are spots on the sun may but be the dazzling effect of more pure light than our imperfect optic nerves can sustain. We may think we are about to strip a masquerading daw, and at our first rude grip a heartrending cry will tell us that we have ruined the jewelled train of a majestic peacock!

The above I admit to be a specimen of that logical process known as “beating about the bush,” a proof that I am staggering, like the pencil-leg of a knock-kneed compass, round a point which I have much hesitation in coming to. The case of the obscure youth who acquired immortality by burning Diana’s temple, is a stale illustration, but I am fain to use it for want of better. It might be thought that I am aspiring to a renown like that of Erostratus, if the arguments of this chapter should result--as I hope and trust they will not--in a balance of probability to the effect that the venerated name of Sir William Gascoigne was really that of one of the most contemptible scoundrels that ever occupied his wrong place in a court of justice. I repeat that I hope my patient pursuit of truth in this very trying matter will not bring me to a standstill at so awkward a point. Nay, so terrified am I at the bare possibility of doing irreparable injustice to a great man’s memory, that I will lose no time in admitting that very probably Sir William Gascoigne was a ten times greater, wiser, and more immaculate being than even his eulogists have represented him, and that, in a still greater likelihood, I myself am an obtuse purblind personage, with no soul to appreciate the more exalted virtues, and with a deplorable squint in my critical vision. Having admitted this as a possibility--without asserting it as a fact--of myself, I may be surely allowed the same speculative margin quoad the hypothesis of the Lord Chief Justice now under discussion, not having been, to use the mildest expression, the man he has been taken for. At the same time the reader will understand that I do not wish him to attach to my opinion (should I succeed in forming one on this most trying subject) more weight than is due to the honest expression of a private individual’s most impartial judgment, the result of patient, untiring investigation of the most copious and incontrovertible facts, aided by a paramount thirst for truth and an intellect habituated to moral analysis.

I trust that it will now be felt I am prepared to do Sir William Gascoigne the amplest justice; and will lose no more time in enumerating the moral enormities whereof I am so anxious to prove he could not possibly have been guilty. The decision I have already been reluctantly brought to--explained in the last chapter--that his Lordship’s character was not free from a strong taint of envy, which only induces me to be the more careful. Let us shun prejudice above all things. Envy, as we all know, if not kept in check by the worthier attributes of our nature, will lead to the commission of every earthly crime, especially of offences such as those which I think--yes, I think--I am about to show you Sir William Gascoigne was incapable of meditating, or, at any rate, of putting into execution.

And now I have worked myself up into a perfectly sanguine condition. I am sure I shall be able to clear the Justice’s reputation from the last lingering blemish of suspicion. If I do not succeed I shall be very much disappointed.

In the first place it is improbable that any close degree of intimacy should have existed between a man of Sir William’s exalted position and an obscure person like Mistress Helen Quickly, widow and licensed victualler, proprietress of the Old Boar’s Head Tavern, Eastcheap.

It is true that the great legal functionaries of that period--as of many much later--were usually men of obscure birth, raised, in most cases (unquestionably in that of Gascoigne), to power and distinction by the exercise of their own talents and virtues; allowing for this, it is not unlikely that Sir William, in early life, may have been acquainted with, and even befriended by, Mrs. Quickly. There is even reason to believe that they were blood relations. A statement from Sir John Falstaff that the lady was in the habit of going about London asserting--with pardonable arrogance--that her eldest son bore a striking physical resemblance to the Chief Justice would lend some probability to this theory. A suspicion on Sir John’s part that this boast might have originated in mental hallucination may, or may not, be considered to weaken the evidence. We will pass this over, and confine ourselves to the supposition that Sir William Gascoigne, when a struggling law-student, was possibly greatly indebted to the maternal or sisterly hospitality of Mrs. Quickly. There would be no harm in his accepting gratuitous board--nay, even in his borrowing money--at her hands. Well! as a just man and a grateful, he would, of course, not forget his old benefactress in the days of his prosperity. Duty to his high position would not enable him to avow the acquaintance publicly (more especially if the by no means disproved relationship really existed). Still, it is not unreasonable to suppose that Sir William may have occasionally looked in at the Boar’s Head, for a quiet flagon and a confidential chat with his friend the hostess, to whom as a lone woman and a confiding innkeeper, his sage counsels--more especially on questions connected with the debtor and creditor laws of the period--would be in the highest degree serviceable. The fact of an illustrious legal dignitary having a marked predilection for tap-rooms and bar-parlours is by no means without parallel in English history. The great Judge Jeffries was given to that species of amusement. So was a celebrated Speaker of the House of Commons, in the reign of George the Second, whose name I read the other day in a penny morning newspaper, but which I am quite sure I have now forgotten.

Mind, I am very far from asserting that Sir William Gascoigne ever saw the inside of a tavern. The only positive record of a personal meeting between him and Mrs. Quickly represents them as utter strangers to each other. But to assume this attitude--supposing the idle suggestions I have propounded (with a view to their ultimate refutation) to have the slightest foundation in probability--would be their most obvious policy. Let that pass: I merely think it remarkable that on _the very day after the conversation recorded in the last chapter_, good, kind-hearted Mrs. Quickly, who had known Sir John Falstaff twenty-nine years come peascod time, who, as we have seen, was one of our knight’s most devoted admirers, and to whose nature an act of voluntary severity was a moral impossibility, should, at the moment when Sir John was husbanding all his resources for his second campaign against the northern rebels (a position indicated in the conversation just alluded to), from which he might never come back alive, suddenly belie the purport of her whole existence by arresting her ever-honoured guest for a pitiful sum of a hundred marks. Mrs. Quickly did this; and the act would be incomprehensible, but for a light thrown on its motives by the unerring luminary of Sir John Falstaff’s intellect. He explained it in eight syllables:

“I know thou wast set on to this.”

I do not state that Mrs. Quickly was “set on” by Sir William Gascoigne. But I should very much like to know who else could possibly have been her instigator in the transaction? I do not suppose Mrs. Quickly would have known where to find Messrs. Fang and Snare--representatives of the Sheriff of London--without some legal advice on the subject. And allow me to ask, without prejudice, _What was Sir William Gascoigne doing, hanging about the neighbourhood woth a strong posse of retainers at the moment of Sir John Falstaff’s attempted arrest, unless to promote, and exult in, the discomfiture of his victor of the preceding day?_ Perhaps the learned judge’s personal biographers can clear up this matter on honourable grounds. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction. But, till something of the kind be really done, the thing certainly wears an unfavourable aspect.

Leaving the motives of the case an open question, and wishing to give them the most charitable construction, I will confine myself to the facts. Sir John Falstaff, returning from the city, where he had been making purchases for the coming campaign, was waylaid by Messrs. Fang and Snare aforesaid, who attempted to arrest him at the suit of Quickly, that lady being present in person. The terror of Sir John’s name had been almost enough to keep the myrmidons of an oppressive law from entering upon their dangerous mission. That of the knight’s presence spread a panic amongst their craven forces. Sir John Falstaff was not alone. He was accompanied by the formidable Bardolph--more than a match for any bailiff, as countless well-contested actions had proved--and the less terrible personality of little Robin, the page, before whom Master Fang’s boy quailed abjectly. After a brief engagement, the troops of the Sheriff were routed. Victory, as usual, declared herself on the side of Sir John Falstaff--when, also as usual, invidious destiny interfered to deprive him of the fruits of conquest in the shape of the Lord Chief Justice, who suddenly made his appearance, “attended,” (observe the precaution) from round the corner--quite by accident, of course!

The Lord Chief Justice, after a brief show of wishing to keep the peace (I wonder if Lord Chief Justices then, any more than now, were in the habit of doing duty as _common policemen_, unless for some private purpose), enquired the grounds of dispute. He certainly said or did nothing to prove that lie had any previous knowledge of them; but he fell to abusing Sir John Falstaff, for being then detained in London instead of being on his way to York with his troops, with something like indelicate precipitancy--displaying a predisposition to quarrel unpleasantly suggestive to the modern reader of the fable of the wolf and the lamb.

It may have been a fault of the defective judicial science of the period, and no proof of personal bias, that Sir William conducted himself throughout the hearing of this case more as an advocate than as a judge. At any rate he sided with Mrs. Quickly from the outset, and “summed up” dead against Sir John Falstaff before he had heard a word of the evidence.

Mrs. Quickly stated her complaint in a rambling, disconnected speech, in which I do not say she was absolutely prompted by her learned friend (there is no offence in the designation; if Gascoigne were really what he pretended to be, to call him the friend of the poor, the widowed and the oppressed, is surely a compliment), but which--from the looseness of the speaker’s diction--was clearly a got-by-rote affair, and in no instance an expression of the heart’s feelings. The first count in the verbal indictment was a matter of money lent, and debt incurred for board and lodging. The second was one of breach of promise of marriage.

Falstaff appealed to the _Justice_, in words, the purport of which I have already quoted.

“My lord, this is a poor mad soul: and she says up and down the town that her eldest son is like you: she hath been in good case, and the truth is poverty hath distracted her.”

I have said that I decline giving an opinion as to the foundation of this report. I will only say, now, that the Lord Chief Justice had no better reply to make to it than a quibble. _He did not contradict it. Moreover, he suddenly became civil to Sir John Falstaff, and recommended a friendly compromise_. Curious, was it not?

Sir John Falstaff took Mrs. Quickly aside. The result of their _tête-à-tête_ was an almost momentary reconciliation, proving the shallowness of the artificial soil on which the exotic plant of the hostess’s animosity had been forced by the subtle devices of her legal adviser, _whoever that may have been_. Scarcely fifty seconds had elapsed, and ere the same number of words could have passed between them, the following colloquial fragment was audible:--

Sin John Falstaff.--As I am a gentleman.

Mistress Helen Quickly.--Nay, you said so before--

Sir John Falstaff.--As I am a gentleman; come, no more words of it.

Mistress Helen Quickly.--By this heavenly ground I tread on, I must be fain to pawn both my plate and the tapestry of my dining chambers.

The Knight---Glasses, glasses is the only drinking; and for thy walls,--a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the Prodigal, or the German hunting in water-work is worth a thousand of those bed-hangings and those fly-bitten tapestries. _Let it be ten pound if thou canst_. Come, an it were not fur thy humours, there is not a better wench in England. Go, wash thy face, and draw thy action. Come, thou must not be in this humour with me; dost not know me? Come, come, I know thou wast set on to this.

The Lady.--Pray thee, Sir John, let it be but twenty nobles; i’ faith I am loath to pawn my plate in good earnest, la!

The Brave.--Let it alone; I’ll make other shift; you’ll be a fool still.

The Fair.--Well, you shall have it, though I pawn my gown. I hope you’ll come to supper. You’ll pay me altogether?

The Invincible.--Will I live?

And what was the upshot of this colloquy? Simply that Mrs. Quickly returned placidly to her home, under the friendly convoy of Bardolph and Robin, the former commissioned by his master to look well after the poor lady, and to see that no designing persons should a second time wean her from obeying the dictates of her better nature. It is worthy of remark that Mrs. Quickly did not say so much as “good morning” to the Lord Chief Justice. I suppose there was some motive for this, as for every other impulse of human action. For my part, I will maintain that course of dispassionate reserve I have so scrupulously adhered to throughout this trying inquiry, and offer no opinion whatever on the subject.

Mind, there is one thing I cannot, and will not, and do not intend to, allow anybody else to believe. I will not have it supposed, for a moment even, that Sir William Gascoigne could have been interested in the issue of this action on any grounds so contemptible as pecuniary commission in the event of recovery. Emphatically--No! If personal feeling _had_ anything to do with his interference, it must have been a feeling far nobler than that of mere avarice--to wit, revenge! He had been baffled, discomfited, eclipsed by Falstaff, and he was human. That he may have wished to blight the prospects of Falstaff, is, alas! for our fallen nature, but too possible! But I cannot believe that he would even have accepted so much as a clerk’s fee from Mrs. Quickly,--in spite of the notorious corruptibility of judges in the Middle Ages, and the absence of any proof of such greatness of character in the subject of these remarks as should have placed him above the besetting weaknesses of his race and order.

And now I trust I have performed the difficult task I proposed to myself of doing the fullest justice to Sir William Gascoigne’s character. More; I flatter myself that when mere barren justice has failed to reestablish the memory of that great man in a sufficiently favourable light, I have at times even soared into chivalry. As his champion defender I have fearlessly grappled with all the accusations that could be brought against him in connection with this critical portion of his career. If I have failed in refuting them, the fault is mine.

It may be asked why I have taken all these pains in clearing up the character of a man who forms but a passing accessory to my main subject? In the first place, reader, let justice be done though the heavens fall. In the second place, if I had not satisfactorily proved--(for I have proved it, have I not?)--Sir William Gascoigne’s innocence of those charges, of which he might otherwise have been believed guilty, there are certain matters connected with the close of my hero’s public career which it would have been impossible for me to explain away, except on grounds which I will here say nothing about, and which I hope it will not be my painful duty to allude to on a future occasion.

III. SIR JOHN FALSTAFF AN AUTHOR.

FRAGMENTS OF HIS CORRESPONDENCE.--EPISODE OF THE FAIR DOROTHEA AND ANCIENT PISTOL.

Let us turn awhile from the sickening horrors of war, and the scarcely less revolting machinations of statecraft, faction, and personal rivalry, to contemplate Sir John Falstaff under the soothing influences of the arts and the affections.

With the valour and generalship of Hundwulf Falstaff, the necessities of Roger, the thirst of Hengist, the humour and, alas! the ill-luck of Uffa,--our hero inherited the literary tastes of his celebrated ancestor, Peter. A deficiency in that poet’s praiseworthy attribute of industry may have been one reason for his not having enriched the literature of his country by any legacy of first-class importance. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the principle of encouraging authors to composition by adequate pecuniary rewards--defectively understood even in the present day--was, at that time, not even recognised; and the bare idea of aimless labour to a logical intellect like that of Sir John Falstaff would be naturally revolting.

Nevertheless, high rank may be claimed for Sir John as a British author--not so much from his actual achievements in the field of letters, as from the fact of his having been one of the earliest pioneers in the cause. Viewed by this light, he is entitled to classification in the same category with Chaucer, Lydgate, and others. He lacks the learning and polish of the first-mentioned writer, and is deficient in the patient observation of the second; while both surpass him in fecundity. On the other hand, he is vastly superior to the Monk of Bury in richness of imagination and daring boldness of invention; while the charges of gross plagiarism and corruption of the English language by the adoption of foreign idiom, from which the fondest partiality has been unable to clear the memory of the author of the _Canterbury Pilgrimage_, have never been brought against Sir John Falstaff, that I am aware of.

The Falstaff papers--such fragments of the author’s composition as have been saved from the wreck of ages (of which a perfect Spanish Armada has gone down, under the heavy fire of Rear-Admiral Time, since Sir John Falstaff trod the deck of earthly existence)--are not voluminous. Cause has been already shown to suppose that they could never, in any case, have attained to any considerable bulk. But on this head we have no accurate means of deciding. It has already been seen that _Sir John Falstaff had powerful enemies_. It would be to the interest of such people to destroy, or cause to be destroyed, any relics of our knight’s greatness that might lead to the perpetuation of his glories and their own infamy. But I am getting upon dangerous ground again.

The favourite form of composition adopted by Sir John Falstaff was the epistolary; and he may be confidently set forth as the first English writer who brought that delightful branch of literature to anything like perfection. I would not have it supposed that Sir John was a mere idle gossip, like Horace Walpole, Cowper, and such latter-day _dilettanti_. He was essentially a practical man--literature was with him a means, not an end. His pen to him was like his sword--a weapon only to be used upon pressing occasion; but which, once assumed, was seldom laid aside till it had done good service. When he wrote, it was with the view to remedy some glaring want of the age he lived in. Being essentially the man of his age, he always knew, from the unerring test of his own necessities, what the age wanted, and wrote for it accordingly. There were no journals or magazines in those days. When our knight felt that any crying hardship or calamity inflicted upon suffering humanity--typified in the personality of Sir John Falstaff--might be removed by the exercise of a little eloquence, persuasion, or even casuistry, he had no alternative but to address his arguments, prayers, or remonstrances, to private individuals. And trust me, Sir John Falstaff was not the man to write letters for nothing.

The earliest specimen of Sir John Falstaff’s correspondence extant (and of any such, I can fearlessly assert, there exists not one in a single antiquarian collection in Europe which the diligent researches of myself and emissaries have failed to discover) is a little schoolboy letter written in a villanous, sprawling attempt at the Gothic character, scarcely legible, owing to the ravages of time and the defective education of a lad of fourteen, at a period when English had barely begun to be a written language. How boys learnt to write at all under a caligraphic _régime_ which made it almost as difficult to pen a syllable as to design a cathedral, is to me a marvel, only explained by the unwelcome theory that our ancestors were much cleverer and more persevering fellows than ourselves. However, that young Jack Falstaff, soon after he found himself put in the way of making his fortune, as a reward for stealing poor Sir Simon Ballard’s venison (mythical foreshadow of its owner’s doom, whom we have seen so cruelly hung and roasted!), was able to build up his groined “m’s,” “v’s,” and “n’s,” to erect the transepts on his “t’s,” and ornament the façades of his capitals generally, so as to leave them intelligible at this distance of centuries, is to me a proof that that good, kind, blue-eyed Lady Alice Falstaff,--of whom I regret to have so long lost sight,--was., amongst her other social recommendations, an excellent schoolmistress. For Jack’s sake, I am inclined to regret that he did not stop at home to finish his education. But in that case, what would have become of this instructive biography--not to mention one or two amusing works on the same subject by a previous writer encouragingly alluded to in these pages? Here is the letter--at least, such fragments of it as can be interpreted into modern English with any degree of certainty:--

“My good sweet mother, I am very well; London is a rare place, nothing but houses. I have seen King Edward, he is an old man, ill-favoured, and ever groaning. He laughs pleasant though, and tweaked me by the ear, giving me a gold florence, saying it was to keep me from hurting his deer. I live in a fine rare house, but there are finer houses-here, and Sir Thomas not near so fine as the princes are. You never told me there was a Queen. She is the same name as you, and very fair. The princes call her Mistress Perrers--why, I know not, except it be for sport. I saw the Princess of Wales that we call the fair maid of Kent. She is not so fair as the queen. She passed by the queen tossing her head quite disdainful. I asked why that was, and the queen said she had unruly sons who set their wives against her--whereat the king laughed, and the princes. The queen is not so old as you, and Prince John looks nearly as old as my good father. The queen is a merry lady, kissed me, and said I should be Mercury in her next pageant. She gave me a gold florence too, but my good father had it of me, Thursday last, saying,

* * * *

“Master Jehan says he will give me as many skins to write on as I will, so it be to write to you. Which he says good for me. He calls you that sweet, noble gentlewoman, my mother, and ever lifts his cap at your name. He makes sport for the princes with his sayings. I find no mirth in him, save his bad way of speaking English. He is sad enough with me. He lays his hand on my brow, looks at me, and sighs. I would fain please him, for, with all his tristeness, he is kind to me.” [Here three lines are carefully effaced; the words “saved” and “whipping” being alone decipherable.] “When I ply him with questions, he says ever, ‘write to my mother, boy, and love her.’ Why, see, now I do write, and ***** says he is struck by the falling sickness,--and truly he fell thrice up the pan tier’s stairs, coming to see me secretly, for Sir Thomas will not have him about the house * * * his chamber so sorry it would make you weep. The sanctuary is hard by the abbey. I found him much restored, and had got him canary with the gold florence I sent him--for medicine, he said; but other distressed gentlemen were drinking it with him that seemed not much in need of medicine. He is nigh ragged, and takes it to heart that I should go in brocaded satin. I pray you send me the six shillings--for I would not have Sir Thomas know of the torn doublet. he comes home Wednesday. The Prince of Wales is yet sick in Gascony. My good father would have me borrow him a suit of Sir Thomas’s--for one day--that he might visit a nobleman, owes him money, as he says. I was taking it from the house, no one seeing me but Master Jehan, who is ever prying. I was fain to tell him what I was carrying, and where. To see the rage he flew into, shedding tears, and chattering French, and yet not angry with me, for he said French for poor boy, poor child, many times. He bade me take the things back, and said he would go speak to my good father in sanctuary. I learn that he did so, and said bitter words to my good father--who hath not since named dress to me or bringing him aught of Sir Thomas’s. Master Jehan is going again into

Hainault, in Flanders, and in truth I grieve not much. **** My lady, Sir Thomas’s mother, gave me a shilling, saying I did well to defend our badge against the Ferrers’s--their’s is the ‘Six Horse-shoes,’--but this will not pay the doublet. I said not, I beat him for that he said my good father ran from Creçy; and taunted me with my uncle keeping the sign of the ‘Fleece,’ in Watling Street. I warrant you I shall hear no more of it. Master Pollen, the pantler, tells me it is true my father had the tablecloth cut cross-ways in front of him, in sign of disgrace to his knighthood, which is a sore shame to us. I would thou and he were friends, that I might not hear him say such bitter things of thee--which I know thou dost not merit. I pray thee forget not the six shillings (easterling). Master Pollen knows a skilful tailor, his brother, will repair it for that money, and Sir Thomas never know. I am bound to an archery play on the moor--whereat Prince John says there is none to match me. I would Wat Smith knew of this. I would fain see him and Hob, and you and Mistress Adlyn and Peter. I pray you send me the six shillings.

“Your loving dutiful Son,

“John Falstaff”

The above letter * is not dated; but was obviously written towards the autumn of 1365. From this date--to that of our hero’s ripest maturity--there is a deplorable gap in the Falstaff correspondence. Indeed, with the exception of the above specimen, the earliest relic or mention of any manuscript in Sir John’s handwriting may be traced to the conversation recorded in the first chapter of the present book.

* Preserved in the Strongate collection, to which valuable
depository of antiquarian lore (and the facilities afforded
by its enlightened owner for its inspection) the writer
cannot sufficiently express his obligations. He has much
pleasure in being the first to announce that it is the
intention of the fortunate possessor, Mr. Roderick Bolton,
F. S. A., of Kemys-Commander, Monmouthshire, to bequeath
this priceless collection to the British Museum at his
decease. Long may the melancholy event be delayed which
shall establish the nation in possession of so inestimable a
legacy!

Of the four letters entrusted by Falstaff to his page for delivery--the contents of two only can be known with any degree of certainty. The missing epistles are those addressed respectively to Prince John of Lancaster, and Ralph Nevil, Earl of Westmoreland--nominal leaders of the second Royalist expedition which Sir John Falstaff had pledged himself to conduct (it will be seen how the pledge was redeemed) against the northern rebels. The loss of these letters is scarcely to be regretted. Being written on the eve of the setting forth of the expedition, they were doubtless mere official despatches--containing reasons for the writer’s not having taken the field as early as he was expected to--or some other device in warlike stratagem, and therefore of no interest to any but the student of military science. The two remaining epistles--which have been fortunately handed down to us--are of far higher importance, as throwing light upon the author’s condition in mind, body, and finances, at this critical period of his career; when, as has been shown, he was about to raise his mailed heel, a second time, to crush the serpent of Rebellion--which reptile had most unaccountably managed to wriggle away from him alive on the field of Shrewsbury.

The first of these documents is a brief, playful note addressed to the Prince of Wales--on the return of that Royal Leader from the successful assertion of his claims to the Principality by the destruction of the bulk of its inhabitants. The manuscript has not been preserved; but the loss is immaterial. It existed as late as the time of Shakspeare, by whose care a verbatim copy of it has been transmitted to us. It is worded as follows:--

“Sir John Falstaff, Knight, to the son of the King nearest his father, greeting.

“I will imitate the honorable Romans in brevity. I commend me to thee; I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins, for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou may’st, and so farewell!

“Thine by yea and no (which is as much as to say as thou noest him); _Jack Falstaff_ with my familiars; John with my brothers and sisters; and SIR JOHN with all Europe.”

This epistle (meant as a mere reminder to the Prince, that his old companion is in London and anxious to see him) is conceived and written in a spirit of the purest pleasantry. This is evidenced in the mock stateliness of the exordium and signature, as well as in the allusion to imaginary brothers and sisters (Sir John, as the family annals and this history satisfactorily prove, being an only son). The caution against Poins is, of course, a joke; but, as will ever happen in the most playful badinage of a true satirist, founded on a subtle perception of the truth. It is more than probable that Mr. Poins--not having wit to perceive the drift of the Prince’s assumed easiness of disposition--may have contemplated the advancement of his family by some such device as the matrimonial device alluded to. At any rate, one thing is certain, _Mr. Poins did not relish the joke._

However, this trifle serves to display Sir John Falstaff, on the eve of a vast military undertaking, light of heart and dauntless of spirit. The second letter is of a very different character and satisfactorily disproves the shortsighted, shallow theory, that our knight was incapable, on fitting occasions, of the loftiest sentiments as well as the most serious reflection. This letter exists in manuscript, carefully preserved in the collection to which I have so frequently expressed my obligations. I have been favoured with a photographic copy--which I hasten to transcribe with the idiomatic and orthographic modifications I have thought fit to observe in all such cases, for the greater ease of the general reader. Here and there a _hiatus_ in the text occurs, due to the ravages of time. These I might easily have supplied from imagination; but have rigorously abstained from yielding to any such temptation: knowing well that the most imperfect ruin is more valuable to the antiquarian student than the most elaborate restoration.

TO DAME URSULA SWINSTEAD, AT THE TRENCHER, COOK’S HOUSE, BY THAMES STREET. *

* The “Cooks’ Quarter,” or assemblage of public eating-
houses by the River Thames, existed in flourishing vigour as
early as the reign of Henry the Second, and is
affectionately described by Fitzstephen. A good idea of the
barbarity of the times, and the utter ignorance of the first
principles of commercial reciprocity, may be gleaned from a
fact mentioned by that old writer, namely, that “the public
cooks sold no wine, while the taverners dressed no meat.”
This unnatural state of things existed for more than three
centuries, during which time it was impossible to obtain a
glass of ale with your ham sandwich, or a chop with your
pint of claret. It was not till the reign of Richard the
Second that a reform was effected. Then, the great discovery
was made, that it was possible to supply all the component
parts of a meal, solid as well as fluid, in one
establishment. In the simple words of Stowe, “since then the
cooks have sold wine, and the taverners dressed meat.”
Surely this triumph over the habits and prejudices of ages
must have originated in a master mind. Who so likely to feel
the evil, so powerful to remedy it, as Sir John Falstaff?
Assuming him to have been the Man of the Hour (that is, the
dinner hour), in addition to his other claims to
immortality, the hero of these pages must be ever revered as
the inventor of the noble Art and custom of Dining in the
City ‘.--_Vide Fitzstephen and Stowe; Annals and Survey._

“Madam,--You doubtless never thought to hear of me again. Myself never thought to trouble you more with knowledge of my existence. I speak not of paltry money debts. You will do me the kindness (I may not say justice) to believe that I have not injured only to affront you.

“I am an old man, madam--fifty-three in birthdays, and I may not say how much in suffering and wickedness. Nay, I must put wickedness first. You, madam,--I am in no mood for flattery,--are not young. You were a widow with three prattling children--Robin, Davy, and Maudlin (they have ne’er a thought for old Uncle Jack now, I warrant me)--when I first knew you eighteen years ago. Would for your sake that time had never been! No matter! I would say you have approached that calm, sober lifetime--and there is so little left to love or sorrow for in me--that you may hear what I have to say without heartrending.