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.”
[Illustration: 162]
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.