Now did the chaste Diana despatch Mercury with a message to her brother
Phoebus, requesting the latter to pull up his horses for an hour or two,
so that Sir John Falstaff might not be incommoded by the light of his
solar gig-lamps; promising the messenger that, if he would make haste
back, she would show him a little sport in his own Une. It is not
positively on record that, on the morning of the battle of Gadshill, the
sun rose two hours later than his regular appointment with society. But,
on the other hand, historic fairness compels me to state that there is
no proof whatever to the contrary.
Then did Diana throw her hooped petticoat of clouds over her head, so
as to conceal the silver light of her countenance--merely reserving a
peep-hole large enough to enable her to wink at the doings of her chosen
minions.
She could not resist the temptation of showing her full face just once,
to bestow an Endymion kiss upon a solitary pedestrian who emerged from
the wood of Gadshill into the chalk-white Rochester Road. The Moon
embraced him coquettishly--and hid herself immediately. He was a fine
looking man, and portly--albeit advanced in years. There was certainly
every excuse for the Moon. However, as she has quite enough scandals to
answer for, let us hope that nobody saw her.
The stout person was of martial aspect, and clad in the terrible panoply
of war. I will not say he was armed _cap-à-pie_. A full suit of armour
to his measure would have had a terrible effect, not merely upon the
wearer, but on the iron market of the period. But he bore weapons,
offensive and defensive, sufficient to indicate the most desperate
intentions. To add to the terror his presence was calculated to
inspire, the warrior was under the influence of a passion which, though
ridiculous in its influence on ordinary mortals, becomes sublime and
awful when in possession of an heroic nature. I allude to Anger. Sir
John Falstaff was in a towering rage. It is no stretch of poetical
license to say that the earth shook beneath his angry tread (there had
been a little rain in the night, and the soil was tremulous). Streams of
perspiration poured from his massive brow. His breathing was short
and thick. Several times he essayed to speak, but rage impeded his
utterance. At length he cried, in a voice of thunder--
“Poins!”
It must be understood that the thunder of Sir John’s voice was rather
of a muffled and distant character. Thunder, to be heard distinctly,
requires a favourable wind--an advantage not enjoyed by Sir John
Falstaff at this period of his existence.
Mr. Poins, against whom the culverin of Sir John’s wrath, primed and
loaded to the muzzle, was especially directed, had withdrawn himself
prudently from the range of that fearful ordnance, and returned no
answer.
It was about four o’clock in the morning. The enemy, that is to say, the
travellers, were momentarily expected to make their appearance. At this
critical juncture, Mr. Poins had removed the knight’s horse, and tied
the animal its owner knew not where. What is the knight at any
time without his charger--especially when he labours under physical
disadvantages which make “eight yards of uneven ground” a journey as
terrible as “threescore and ten miles afoot?” This was the case with Sir
John Falstaff. Here he was, burning with martial ardour; Victory, as
it were, about to rush down hill into his arms; and the treachery of
an inferior had placed him utterly _hors de combat!_ There is only one
point of view from which the conduct of Poins appears at all excusable:
it was an act of real humanity to the horse.
“Poins! and be hanged; Poins!” the knight repeated.
“Peace, you fat-kidneyed rascal!” said the Prince of Wales, from a
neighbouring hedge. “What a brawling dost thou keep!”
“Where’s Poins, Hal?”
“He is walked up to the top of the hill: I’ll go seek him.”
And the Prince walked up the hill in an airy and unconcerned manner,
_pretending to seek Poins_. Herein is exemplified the habitual duplicity
and dissimulation of this young prince’s character. He knew as well that
Poins was close behind him, grinning in a hollow tree, as that in their
own hearts (much hollower than the tree, by the way, only not nearly so
big) they were gloating over a scheme of malice and treachery, of which
their unsuspecting senior was to be the victim. “A plague on’t,” as
that moralist himself observed, a few seconds afterwards, “when thieves
cannot be true to one another!”
Sir John himself was the soul of honour among----men of his own order.
“If I travel but four foot by the square further afoot,
“said the knight, sitting on a fallen tree and chafing
“like a caged lion--still more like a stranded whale,
“I shall break my wind. Well, I doubt not but to die a
“fair death for all this, if I ‘scape hanging for killing that rogue. I have
“forsworn his company, hourly, any time these two-and-twenty years; *
“and yet I am bewitched with the rogue’s company. If the rascal have not
“given me medicines to make me love him, I’ll be hanged! it could not
“be else. I have drunk medicines. Poins! Hal! a plague upon you both!
“Bardolph! Peto! I’ll starve ere I’ll rob a foot further.”
* Either this is an illustration of the hereditary Falstaff
looseness as to dates and figures, or a proof of our hero’s
marvellous insight into human character. Accepting the
latter hypothesis, Sir John must have discovered Mr. Poins
to have been a dangerous acquaintance in embryo, before that
young gentleman had emerged from his cradle.
Sir John felt sick of rogues. In his wrath he even meditated
the terrible vengeance of turning honest, and thus depriving his
false-hearted comrades of the advantages of his counsels and alliance.
But it had needed a more implacable nature than our hero’s to carry
animosity to such a deadly pitch. Moreover, Sir John, for one, would not
set the base example in the camp of sacrificing duty to private feeling.
Besides, there was another weighty consideration--he was in want of
money.
These and other reflections calmed our hero; so much so, that by the
time Gadshill, their scout (evidently from his surname a native of Kent,
son, perhaps grandson, of one of Jack’s deerstalking comrades in the
days of yore; who knows?), arrived with tidings that there was money of
the King’s coming down the hill and going to the King’s Exchequer, Sir
John was himself again; forgetting fatigue, danger, and resentment,
everything but that there was money of the King’s going to the King’s
Exchequer.
“You lie, you rogue!” he said, “‘tis going to the King’s Tavern.”
“There’s enough to make us all,” said Gadshill.
“Be hanged,” put in Jack, in the highest spirits imaginable.
“Sirs,” said the Prince, “you four shall front them in a narrow lane.
_Ned Poins and I will walk lower. If they ‘scape from your encounter,
then they light on us_.”
And will any one make me believe that this man won the battle of
Agincourt?--unless, indeed, by some parallel stratagem. There, as at
Gadshill, I doubt not but he had his Falstaffs, Bardolphs *, and Petos
to bear the first brunt of the battle, while he and his congenial
fellows walked lower--reserving themselves to enjoy the fruits of
victory. Never tell me what historians have said! I am an historian
myself; and I know that there are some people of that profession who
will write anything--provided they are properly paid for it.
* This unpremeditated association of the names of Bardolph
and Agincourt causes the historian to drop a tear on his
proof sheet, in anticipation of a painful event that
inexorable duty will compel him to chronicle by and by.
“How many be there of them?” General Falstaff inquired, previous to
arranging his plan of battle.
“Some eight or ten.”
A prospective difficulty, such as could not have been foreseen by any
but a comprehensive mind capable of embracing all emergencies, presented
itself to our hero, who exclaimed--
“Zounds! will they not rob us?”
“What, a coward, Sir John Paunch!” asked the Prince, mockingly.
“Indeed, I am not John of Gaunt, your grandfather” (a favourite play on
words with our hero); “but yet no coward, Hal.”
“Well, we leave that to the proof.”
“Sirrah Jack!” said Poins, as he sneaked away to ‘walk lower’ with the
Prince of Wales; “thy horse stands behind the hedge: when thou need’st
him there thou shalt find him. Farewell, and stand fast.”
“Now cannot I strike him if I should be hanged!” exclaimed the
magnanimous John.
Footsteps sounded, lanterns glimmered on the summit of the hill.
“Now my masters,” said Jack, grasping his broadsword. “Happy man be his
dole, say I; every man to his business.”
They withdrew into “the narrow lane.” This was a short cut, down which
the travellers would probably walk, leaving their horses to be led round
by the high road. Such proved to be the case. The travellers, four in
number, were plebeians of the vulgarest description; shopmen, farmers,
carriers, and the like,--people with large hands and coarse minds, such
as in all cases have been reserved by destiny as the legitimate prey of
the superior classes: the only observable variation of their treatment
being in the manner of levying taxation.
Four terrible figures rushed out of the darkness, and four terrible
voices cried:--
“Stand!”
The unfortunate travellers would have been most happy to do so, only
they were too frightened. They fell on their knees instead, and roared.
As you may suppose, this was not the way to get rid of the assailants.
The four terrible figures attacked the four terrified ones. The leader
of the former, a man of colossal stature and intrepid behaviour, let
fall in his fury some remarkable words--
“Strike! down with them, cut the villains’ throats! * * * Bacon-faced
knaves! _they hate us youth_.”
Sir John Falstaff was the speaker. Who shall presume to count a great
man’s life by years? Sir John, in the heat of action, was a mere boy
again. Nay, in proof that his weight of flesh even sat no heavier on him
than his weight of years, he exclaimed almost in the same breath:
“Hang ye, gorbellied knaves, are ye undone? No, ye _fat chuffs!_ I would
your store were here. On, bacons, on! What, ye knaves; young men must
live”
[Illustration: 095]
Why prolong the scene? Surely the mere statement that a man like Sir
John Falstaff _fell upon four travellers_, is fully equivalent to saying
that the latter were completely crushed.
The enemy retreated, leaving their stores in possession of the victors.
The glorious field of Gadshill was unstained by a drop of blood. Nor was
there a single prisoner taken. In fact the victory was undisputed, which
appears to me the most desirable kind of victory. A man who will not let
you get the better of him without a great deal of trouble, is obviously
almost as good a man as yourself. And pray what is the object of a
battle, except the establishment of decisive superiority?
Flushed with victory, and laden with spoils, Falstaff and his companions
sat down on the grass to divide the latter. No signs were visible of
the Prince or of Poins. Public opinion went strongly against those
defaulters, who were treated as mere amateurs, with no real soul or
aptitude for business. Of course, it was decided unanimously that
neither of them should derive any benefit from the proceeds of an action
wherein they had taken no part.
“There is no more valour in that Poins than in a wild duck,” said our
hero with trenchant scorn.
Had the selection of good Master Cruikshank’s subjects rested with me,
I would have pointed out, as the theme for one picture, Jack Falstaff,
sitting on the ground, with a bag of silver between his thighs, stirring
it round unctuously with his hand from right to left, sniffing its
odour, as it were, and smacking his lips over it as over the ingredients
of a choice pudding, whereof he knew the flavour and nutritive qualities
by anticipation. To this, though, honest Master George might well object
that Falstaff remained not long enough in that attitude to sit for a
picture. Time rarely favours the world with a sublime moment, scarcely
ever with many of them in succession.
“Your money!” cried a strange voice.
“Villains!” cried another.
And two men in buckram suits, with masked faces, rushed out of the wood
and attacked the freebooters.
I will state the issue of this second and most unforeseen engagement,
briefly, and then comment upon it. Falstaff and the rest, after a blow
or two, _ran away, leaving their booty behind them_.
Now perhaps you have fallen into the vulgar error of imagining Sir John
Falstaff a coward? Allow me to help you out of it.
The reflections and decisions of genius are instantaneous and almost
simultaneous. The instinctive conclusions of Sir John Falstaff, on
being thus unexpectedly attacked, may be summed up and classified as
follows:--
1. That men, who can afford buckram suits (defensive armour of the
period, of considerable costliness), are not common men.
2. That men out of the common seldom venture upon a dangerous
undertaking without plenty of satellites in reserve.
3. That no sensible man will attack superior numbers unless supported by
the reasonable certainty of some advantages.
4. That a man who watches a thief rob an honest man, and then takes upon
himself to rob the thief, is decidedly a sensible man.
5. That a purse of silver is more easily replaced than a forfeited
existence.
6. That the men in buckram hit rather hard; and that the sensation of
being thrashed was decidedly unpleasant.