Whether or not it is that I have been taking an overdose of that
familiarity which is said to produce contempt, I will not pretend to
say, but one thing is very certain--namely, that I by no means feel
that exalted respect for the late William Shakspeare as an historical
authority, which on my setting forth on the present biographical
pilgrimage formed so prominent an ingredient in my wallet of provisions
for the journey. Candidly, Shakspeare turns out to be, by no means, the
man I had taken him for. An able dramatist, undoubtedly--endowed with
considerable power of insight into the secret springs of human emotion,
with an aptness for a rugged forcible kind of versification, and an
unquestionable turn for humour--he must, nevertheless, be pronounced
lamentably deficient in those higher attributes of the historical
writer, by which it is the laudable ambition of the present scribe
(for instance), to know himself distinguished--and of which the most
scrupulous correctness as to dates and localities, is by no means the
least essential. And, indeed, as I reflect on the subject and turn over
a variety of precedents in my mind, I am reluctantly brought much nearer
than I ever expected to come to the by no means uncommon opinion that
Shakspeare is an overrated personage in literature.
I am led to this admission--most distasteful to my feelings and
predilections--by the irresistible fact that nearly all of his
commentators and critics, for the most part persons of vast erudition
and acumen, by whose exalted standard the present humble recruit in the
army of letters would shrink from offering himself for measurement; who,
commencing (like their unpretending junior) with the most enthusiastic
faith in, not to say idolatrous admiration for, the subject of their
investigations, will seldom be found to have proceeded to any depth in
their labours ere they agree in making out Shakspeare a most ridiculous,
not to say contemptible personage. The late Mr. Thomas Campbell, who,
notwithstanding the unavoidable accident of his birthplace, may
be considered a tolerably competent and impartial judge of English
literature, being employed by certain publishers to prepare an edition
of the works of the Immortal Bard, as he is termed (I am not fond of
this slavish kind of nomenclature myself, considering that, as a rule,
one man is nearly as good as another), and plunging into his task
with great ardour and alacrity, and in the most reverential spirit
imaginable, nevertheless speedily got sick of the service of
adulation--I would say “puffery,” were the epithet consistent with the
dignity of history--on which he had been engaged, and even complained,
in a letter to a friend, of the kind of stuff he was compelled, by the
necessities of his position and the terms of his contract, to “write
about Old Shakey.” Now from such high-flown designations as the Immortal
Bard, the Sweet Swan, &c.,--to which Mr. Campbell, at the outset of his
editorial career, had been addicted, like other people,--“Old Shakey”
(in the forcible words of a modern art-critic) is “not fall”--it is
catastrophe and, depend upon it, the learned gentleman had found out
some weak points in the poet’s character to justify the familiarity.
I may be answered, I am aware, with the stale proverb that no man is a
hero in the eyes of his own valet, the abstract wisdom of which, as well
as its partial application to the case in point, I cheerfully admit. An
editor or commentator of a great man’s writings unquestionably occupies,
to the great man, the position of a valet or groom of the chambers,
having to perform for him the most menial offices, such as looking out
his new readings for him, polishing his sentences, trimming his periods,
and throwing away his slipslop. These irksome and even degrading duties
may excite in the bosom of the overworked official a feeling of disgust
for his situation, which no liberality or punctuality in the matter
of wages and perquisites can altogether annihilate; and the constant
absorption of his attention by such ignoble matters of external detail,
can scarcely fail to blind him to the inner greatnesses of the demi-god
whose wig and whiskers, so to speak, he is eternally occupied in
brushing and oiling. I would, therefore, guard against too hastily
accepting the opinion of such persons upon the great men whom they are
employed, as it were, to render presentable to society, just as I
would hesitate to base my estimate of the soldierly and statesmanlike
qualities of the first Cæsar on the representations of the ingenious
artist in laurel who was engaged to conceal the baldness of the great
Roman by the “gentleman’s real wreath of glory” of the period; or,
were I a sculptor (which it may be a fortunate thing for the British
metropolis I am not, seeing that I have influential friends who would
undoubtedly employ me in adding to the public monuments), as I should
decline modelling a statue of England’s last, greatest, and most
symmetrical George upon the one-sided views of the tailor who measured
him for his last padded and frogged surtout, or of the hosier who was
in the secret of the royal calves, during the decadence of the
first--whatever you like to call him--of Europe. Nevertheless, there is
no withstanding overwhelming masses of evidence, let them emanate
from sources never so obscure or prejudiced. And when we find that the
commentators upon Shakspeare, almost without exception, when they have
taken hold of what are vulgarly considered the finest passages in that
author’s writings,--when they have carefully held up those passages
against every possible kind of light, turned them inside out, pulled and
tugged at them, this way and that, ripped open their seams, scratched
off their nap or surfaces, and, in fact, submitted them to every
conceivable test,--when, I say, we find that the commentators, having
made these searching experiments, almost invariably decide that what to
the superficial observer has appeared something of exquisite goodness
and beauty must be accepted as nothing more or less than the rankest
nonsense--why, then, the dispassionate judge is bound to shake his head
in common deprecation with the scrutineers, and admit that very possibly
the Sweet Swan, &c., may be nothing more than “Old Shakey” after all.
Nay, some of the most laborious and indefatigable of the class alluded
to have so carefully sifted the matter, and so thoroughly have convinced
themselves of the utter flimsiness and impalpability of the supposed
Mr. Shakspeare’s claims to literary distinction, as to have been
irresistibly led to the conviction that no such person ever could have
existed; but that the rather ingenious and plausible-looking phantasms
in the forms of plays and poems, bearing his name, must be considered
as mere spontaneous exhalations or _fungi_ produced from a kind of
intellectual chaos--much as primroses, oak-trees, horses, beautiful
women, poets, and philosophers are held to have sprung into existence,
by the tenets of certain kindred thinkers on subjects connected with
theology.
The last is a culminating phase of Shakspearian free-thinking, to which,
I confess, I have not yet been able to bring myself. I am still young,
and possibly hampered by nursery traditions on the subject. But I hope
it will be admitted that I am gradually emancipating myself from the
unpopular trammels of Shakspearian superstition, when I venture so far
as to affirm that the Swan of Avon (I must be understood now to make
use of the designation in an ironical sense) was, in some respects,
a------Yes! I have lashed myself up to the necessary pitch of defiant
resolution--a humbug! I fearlessly assert that there is a prevalent
looseness in his chronology, for which I defy his most slavish admirers
to prove that the correctness of his grammar is at all of a quality to
compensate. Why, he actually leads us to infer that within a few weeks,
at the outside, of the treacherously won field of Gualtree, Sir John
Falstaff, being then on his second visit to the domain of Mr. Justice
Shallow, in Gloucestershire (having just returned from the inglorious
campaign), did receive, through the officious instrumentality of Ancient
Pistol, tidings of the death of King Henry the Fourth. Now I hope I
have, by this time, proved, to the satisfaction of the most captious,
that the battle of Gualtree must have been fought (bought, or stolen,
whichever the reader pleases) in the summer of 1410. The lamented death
of Henry the Fourth--lamentable because it did not take place some
forty-seven years earlier--occurred on Saint Cutlibert’s Day, otherwise
the 19th of March, 1413. Assuming then, as we are led to, from the
representations of the Shakspearian chronicle, that Sir John Falstaff,
on the disbanding of the Royalist army under Prince John of Lancaster
and the Earl of Westmoreland, betook himself, at once, to the hospitable
mansion of Mr. Robert Shallow, and there remained until the Sovereign’s
demise, this would give to our knight’s visit a duration of something
like two years and three-quarters. Now, though I freely admit that we
find nothing in the antecedents of Sir John to make it improbable that
he should have extended a gratuitous residence in comfortable quarters
to that, or even a longer period, in the event of impunity having been
granted to him to do so, it is in the wildest degree incredible that
even a greater fool than Mr. Robert Shallow--did history present us
with such a personage--would tamely have submitted to the infliction
of guests so expensive as our knight and his retainers, for even
one-twentieth part of that term. No country gentleman’s revenues could
have stood it. The unaided exertions of the insatiable Bardolph alone
would have exhausted the family cellar and exchequer in a fortnight.
It is therefore undeniable that in this particular instance, if in
no other, Shakspeare has not only violated historical truth--either
wilfully or through negligence--but has also shown an imperfect
appreciation of the probabilities. That Falstaff and his retinue could
not possibly have lived on the Shallow estate for the space of two years
and three quarters, is as self-evident as that an able-bodied man
could not subsist for the same period on a single leg of mutton. The
supposition that Master Shallow would have continued glad to see them,
up to the end of a residence so protracted, is too insanely preposterous
to be entertained for a single moment.
Having carefully balanced the matter, I am inclined to decide that the
second visit of Sir John Falstaff to Master Shallow’s, as described in
the Shakspearian chronicle--the account of which offers strong internal
evidence of a basis on authentic information--took place precisely as
exhibited by the dramatist, who chose, however, for his own convenience
of composition, and with the reckless indifference to the higher canons
of criticism by which many really able writers of _that_ period were
unfortunately characterised, to anticipate the course of events to the
culpable extent I have alluded to. It could not be otherwise. It has
been made clear, from documentary evidence recently laid before the
reader *, that the Falstaff expedition to Yorkshire deviated into
Gloucestershire in the month of June, 1410. The unqualified statement
that Henry Plantagenet, surnamed Bolingbroke, and fourth English king
of his baptismal appellation, breathed his last on the 19th of March (in
the old style), otherwise the festival day of St. Cuthbert **, in the
year 1413, was by no means incautiously hazarded. The writer will stake
his reputation on its accuracy, which, if called into question for a
moment, he is prepared to corroborate by the undeniable evidence of
Hollinshed, Hardyng, Stowe, Speed, White Kennet, Mangnall, Pinnock, and
other writers of antiquity. You see there is no getting over facts. They
are things of such matchless stubbornness that none but a donkey would
venture to cope with them in the exhibition of that valuable attribute.
* Vide Epistle from Sir John Falstaff, Knight, to Master
Robert Shallow, Cust. Rot., &c., in the Strongate
Collection; or (for greater convenience of reference) in pp.
134, 135, of the present biography.
** Vide Romish Calendar.
We must consider, then, that there is a period of two years and probably
seven or eight months in the life of Sir John Falstaff unaccounted for
in the Shakspeare Chronicles. In what manner were those years and odd
months employed by the hero of these pages? For once in a way, the
biographer is driven to supply an extensive gap in his narrative by mere
conjecture. It is reasonable to suppose that the time was passed by Sir
John in his native country, as I find no evidence, in the records of
continental nations, of the influence of a master spirit of our knight’s
calibre on the dynastic, social, or religious struggles of the period.
It is also to be feared that Sir John continued to live in comparative
obscurity, and certainly in exclusion from court favour. The latter
hypothesis is, indeed, based on something more than conjecture, and may
be considered proved by certain important omissions in the chronicles
of the time. On the 23rd of January, 1411, Sir John Falstaff would have
completed his fifty-ninth year. A moment’s reflective calculation will
convince the most inconsiderate that on the same date in the following
year our knight would have attained the reverend age of threescore.
Extend this line of inductive reasoning to another twelve months, and a
result of sixty-one is obtained. Now, it would be reasonable to suppose
that had Sir John Falstaff, at these times, been in the enjoyment of
that royal esteem to which his merits and services undoubtedly entitled
him, any one of the three anniversaries indicated would have been
made the occasion of court festivities. I defy the most laborious
investigation to produce the slightest authentic evidence, from the
writings of the time, of any such recognition of our knight’s importance
and public services having been made at any of the royal residences. It
will be found, it is true, by consulting Hollinshed, the Cotton MSS.,
Stowe and other authorities, that London, in the commencement of 1413,
was the scene of great military and naval pageantry; that numbers of the
king’s forces were mustered in the metropolis, and that there was such
a display of ships and galleys on the river Thames as had not been
seen since the magnificent days of Edward the Third. From the same and
contemporary writings, it will be found that towards the close of the
Christmas holidays--which King Henry the Fourth, in consequence of the
mortal illness wherewith he was already smitten, had kept in strict
seclusion with his Queen Joanna, at the Palace of Eltham--His Majesty,
in spite of grievous bodily suffering, made shift to return to London,
in order to be present at certain rejoicings ordained to be held at
his chief palace of Westminster, at a time closely coincident with the
anniversary of our hero’s birth. I am inclined to think, however, that
it will prove, on careful investigation, that the mustering of troops
and display of naval armaments had been commanded, not, as would
superficially appear, to celebrate the day of Falstaff’s nativity by
tournaments, sham fights, water quintains, and the like, but with the
more serious design of carrying out a project, long entertained by the
king, of proceeding with a powerful army to Palestine, there to assist
in the attempt to recover the holy sepulchre from the hands of the
Paynim followers of Mahomet *--a kind of moral Insolvent or Bankruptcy
Court of the period, to which very great rascals indeed were accustomed
to apply for protection against the prosecutions of conscience, and
by which (if enabled to do things on a liberal scale as to expenses
in other people’s lives and property), they were supposed to whitewash
themselves of all liabilities in this world and the next. The rejoicings
at Westminster may be partially explained by the fact that King
Henry’s birthday happened to fall within a few days of that of Sir John
Falstaff. And, keeping in view the habitual and ineradicable selfishness
of Henry’s character, it is more than probable that His Majesty had
decreed the festivities in question on his own account, and not on that
of our more meritorious hero. As a proof that, in spite of the numerous
embarrassments of the royal family, the glaring and systematic manner in
which the priceless services of Falstaff were ignored by the court could
not have been attributable to any absolute scarcity of means, it may
be mentioned that about this time Queen Joanna presented one Thomas
Chaucer, an individual whose only claims to personal distinction lay
in the fact that he was, as it were, the halfbrother of English
Poetry--being the son of its reputed father--with the manors of Wotten
and Stantesfield for life: the hospitalities of which, there can be no
question or doubt, would have been dispensed with much greater dignity
and liberality by Sir John Falstaff. As a further proof that the favours
heaped upon this mere Son of a Somebody were only conferred with a view
to the humiliation and discomfiture of Sir John Falstaff, it may be
mentioned that Mr. Thomas Chaucer--a man of the slenderest physical
and mental dimensions--was shortly afterwards appointed to fill
the Speaker’s Chair of the House of Commons--a seat which, had the
appointment of the Right Man to the Right Place been a recognised
principle in those days any more than it is at the present time, Sir
John Falstaff was, most obviously, the man to fill. But, as has been
repeatedly urged, our knight had powerful enemies. I name no names, as
a rule, and have an abhorrence of malicious insinuations. I will content
myself with the statement that the dignity of Lord Chief Justice of
England, _with all its influence for good and evil_, continued to be
represented by a distinguished personage, with whom we are already
acquainted in that capacity, until some years after the demise of Sir
John Falstaff.
* Vide the writings of Froissart, Gr. P. R. James, and
others. The Italian poet Torquato Tasso has an able work not
wholly disconnected with the interesting subject of the
Crusades as these expeditions were termed.
Sir John lived in London--there can be no doubt of that. Had his name
been John Dory instead of John Falstaff, the sea could not have been a
more indispensable element to his existence than was the metropolitan
atmosphere to him, surnamed and organised as he actually was. Where
else could there have been found a Boar’s Head, with its accommodating
hostess, its inexhaustible cellars, and still more (if the adjective
can be said to admit of a comparative degree) inexhaustible credit? What
other English city, district, or province, has ever, at any time of the
world’s history, produced a hero-worshipping class so willing to pay
liberal terms for the honour of even an ex-great man’s society. Where
else in England have there ever been known such good dinners, such boon
companions, and such accommodating tradespeople?
Talking of tradespeople (a subject to which I am by no means greatly
addicted, suggesting, as it does, such painful memories and still more
disagreeable possibilities) there is a document extant, the faithful
transcript of an earlier document, no longer in existence, which will
serve to throw some light on the position of Sir John Falstaff during
this most obscure, and consequently most interesting, portion of his
biography. It is a letter from Master Richard Whittington, mercer, some
time Lord Mayor of London, addressed to Sir John Falstaff, in answer to
a communication from that great man, which has unfortunately not
been preserved. The epistle, as will be seen, is not dated; but the
unmistakable allusion contained in it to King Henry the Fourth’s
intended expedition to the Holy Land leaves no doubt that it must have
been written in the winter of 1412-13. The shrewd, sarcastic tone of
the letter (the orthography whereof in the following transcript has been
modified for the convenience of the modern reader, in obedience to the
rule invariably observed throughout this work) will, it is hoped,
be found sufficiently characteristic of its distinguished writer, to
dispense with any necessity for the production, as evidence, of
the original manuscript, which was unfortunately destroyed in the
ever-lamentable burning of the famous Whittington library, in Arundel
Street, Strand, some two or three years since.
“TO MINE EXCELLENT FRIEND SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, KNIGHT, BE THESE
DELIVERED.
“Right worshipful Sir John,
“Methinks, in future, I shall call you my cat. For as there be those who
insist that I owe my standing as a good citizen and man of wealth to a
certain cat which I took with me to Barbarie (where, Heaven be praised!
I never was), who did there earn for me large sums in money, slaves, and
jewels, by freeing the king’s chamber of mice and rats; so will you have
it that I have risen to be alderman and mayor, to buy lands and endow
churches, alone through having ridden on your crupper from Blackheath to
the Southwark side of London Bridge, in the year of grace, 1364, when we
were both lads, little wotting we should live to know each the other as
old men. Now I call my patron to witness that I had never a cat that did
aught for me beyond skimming the milk in my kitchen. I took with me to
Flanders, and thence through France and Germany to the ignorant estates
of the East, a certain Thrift or Judgment, which the witless have fabled
into a cat, whereby I was enabled to point out to many foolish peoples
the way to clear themselves of grievous pests and torments in government
and common life, which might well be likened to rats and mice, for the
which good services I was so well rewarded by the thankful rulers of
those countries as to return to mine own with the means for large
and honourable trading. But the vulgar will have it that it was not I
myself, but the cat, effected all this. So would you have it, Sir
John, that because I came to London a barefoot, ragged, herring-bodied
scarecrow, and am now a man of substance (not in the flesh, Sir John;
there you have still the best of me), I owe my advancement to you, who
brought me half a dozen miles on the way. It was a pleasant ride,--I
mind it well,--and a timely, for I was heartsore and footsore when you
took me up. But I am a trader, Sir John, and keep books. And when I look
over our account, I cannot but think that I have long ago paid for that
ride at a rate of posting far beyond what my travels to Germany and
the Asiatic countries (which the blockheads will have Barbarie) cost
me altogether. Let us cast the sum. There was two shillings (out of the
first four of my earning), soon after our coming to London, to replace
your torn doublet, which you declared you dared not write to your lady
mother about. * There was five marks on your coming of age, when you had
bidden certain young noblemen of the court to meet you at the tavern,
which I was fain to lend you, as you had lost the money set aside for
their entertainment, the night before, at play. You wept so bitterly,
and so feared me with threatening self-destruction, that I must needs
do this though it forced me to put off my first slender venture with
the Flemings. Then, when they knighted you, there was forty other marks,
that you might present yourself becomingly at court. Ten marks on my
being made mayor, that it might not be said I forgot an old friend who
had helped me to my rise in life. Since then, at divers times, in silks,
velvets, and moneys lent, eight hundred and forty-three pounds nine and
elevenpence. Now, all this I have been told, time after time, I have
owed you for bringing me to London, and putting me in the way of
fortune. It hath been a dear ride to me, Sir John. Blackheath to
London is, let us say, six-miles. A hundred and forty-one pounds eight
shillings seven pence and a fraction is costly posting for times like
these, Sir John. Methinks it is time I should hold myself quit of your
debt, or that if any be still due you should forgive me the remainder.
A truce to jesting, old friend Jack. I will lend thee no more money, and
that is the plain truth of the matter. It is of no more use to thee than
pearls to a pig. Thou art no more going to the Holy Land with King
Henry than I am going thither behind thee on thy crupper (which Heaven
forefend, considering the costliness of that mode of travel). Come thou
hither to dine, sup, and sleep as often as may list thee, and thou art
welcome to the best my roof can afford. But I am a trader, Sir Jack,
and a keen one,--I give naught for naught. Sell us thy company,
good-fellowship, merry jests and gentleness, and I will pay thee in kind
(saving the jests and merry tales, wherein I am the bankrupt and thou
the niggard miser). Show us thy jolly face and we will reflect it in
endless bowls of as many wines as thou mayest name, like to a face in a
chamber lined with tinted mirrors, till thou seest thyself million-fold,
and of all colours. Mine honest wife and thy little playfellows, whom
thou hast deserted, have been trained in my school. They join the outer
world in calling thee foul names, since thou withholdest from them
that familiarity which is their due. Dame Alice calls thee downright
rogue,--that thou wilt not pay her the long arrears of society and
converse thou owest her,--and for which she says she has a mind to
pursue thee up and down every law court in Christendom. The little Jews
have long arrears of caresses against thee, and are prone to insist on
their bargain to the letter. Pay these debts, thou hardened prodigal,
and we will see what can be effected for the future. As for money, thou
shalt none of it, for it only serves to keep thee from us, wasting that
of thy company which is our lawful right, as thine oldest friends,
on thankless tavern roysterers who love thee not. I am now too old a
merchant to repeat that kind of unprofitable venture.
* See ante, p. 108.
“I have again fallen into jesting, mine old friend, which methinks
between aged men who love each other, on grave matters, should not be.
If thou art in serious strait I will help thee as heretofore and while
I live, and no man save ourselves the wiser; but the spirit of a weakly
man, born to poverty and grown up in the need of turning all around him
to his selfish advantage, will assert itself within me; and I cannot
bear to serve thee that I may lose thee. When thou lackest naught (it
is the shopman who states his debt) thou dost never think of the poor
shambling youth of Blackheath, whom thou didst lift, not only into
horseback, but out of despair and heart-sickness by the contagion of thy
health, courage, and kindliness; and to whom at the turning point of his
fortunes (for despair was then setting in) thou didst give a ride worth
far more than many hundreds of pounds a mile. Whereas, ‘when thy purse
is empty, thou art ever prompt to remember Master Richard Whittington,
some time lord mayor of London and always a rich merchant and
housekeeper. This is the only charge thou wilt ever hear me bring
against thee; for it is the only thing in which thou hast ever wronged
me--and I meddle not with other men’s debts or claims; but when one
justly owes me that which I deem he can pay, I will ever urge it, though
he were my brother.
“Dear, beloved, and, whatever the world may of thee (for I have the
conceit that I look deeper into men’s natures than the thoughtless
commonalty), honoured Sir John Falstaff, if money could win thee to be
near me and mine--who love thee deservedly, and to whom thou hast never
been aught but what is just and pure--thou shouldst have it from my
well-stored coffers poured untold into thy pockets. But I have ever
found it act as a spell that parts us. Remedy this if thou canst. Come
and dwell with us--with all thine extravagancies and all thy retinue
if thou wilt. Our cellars may perchance even hold out a year’s siege
against the redoubtable Master Bardolph. All I stipulate is that thou
shalt give me thy stalwart Jackanapes, Robin, to save from perdition, by
placing him in the new school I am building; this for his own sake and
more for that of two sober little kitchen-maidens of Mistress Alice’s,
whom I should be loath to grow familiar with the kind of conversation I
fear he must have picked up ere this in thine erratic progress.
“Briefly, Jack, I will not send thee the money thou demandest. Come and
ask for it, and Dame Alice and I (with the bantlings to hold on by thy
skirts) will do our best to keep thee from going away till thou gettest
it.
“Thy friend,
“Richard Whittington.”
It is scarcely probable that Sir John Falstaff being in, even for him,
unusually embarrassed circumstances, could have withstood the temptation
of indefinite hospitality, at the expense of a wealthy and sympathetic
friend. It may, therefore, be taken for granted that the winter of
1413-14 was passed by our knight and his retainers under the genial roof
of the renowned citizen, mercer, traveller and philanthropist, Master
Richard Whittington. I use the term “Master,” being inclined to think
that the distinguished Londoner in question had not yet attained to
the dignity of knighthood. My memory fails me on the subject, and the
question is not one of sufficient importance to demand reference to
authorities. Certain indications in the above letter lead me to believe
that it was written by a plain undubbed citizen: for though Whittington
himself, as a cosmopolitan philosopher, may have held all titular
distinctions in contempt, and considered himself no better man after
knighthood than before it, yet it would be in the highest degree
unreasonable to suppose that the wife of his bosom could have
participated in his apathy on the question. The above letter was, most
obviously, written under the immediate supervision of the excellent Dame
Alice Whittington--obviously from the terms of reverential decorum
in which that lady is spoken of in it. _Is_ it likely, that a city
gentlewoman of the period, whose husband had successfully aspired to
chivalric honours, would allow that husband to speak of her in a letter
to another knight of real noble birth, as mere “Mistress Alice,” or that
the writer would have been permitted by her to sign his epistle without
the affix of “eques”? Certainly not. This, however, is irrelevant. The
present work purports to be the history of Sir John Falstaff. That of
Richard Whittington has been already written, and published in a
neat and commodious form, profusely illustrated, and to be had of all
booksellers.
A.D. 1413. Assuming that Sir John Falstaff actually spent his Christmas
with the Whittington family, surrounded by the, to him, unwonted
luxuries of a refined, pure-minded matron (who, if, as I have supposed,
she had been inclined to look over her husband’s letters and insist on
his asserting, on his and her behalf, any dignities which his honourable
exertions might have earned for the pair of them, need be none the worse
for that); the innocent prattling of an honest man’s young children;
and, above all, the enduring friendship and protection of the honest
man himself--an old warrior with the world, who had passed through many
fires, and who could be lenient to the failures of combatants in more
trying, if less honourable fields, only thanking his stars that he
himself was alive, sitting by his fireside, and with all his scars in
front!--a thoughtful friend who could perceive good, where the world
only saw bad; who could remember the beauteous promise of spring in the
very depths of winter!--why should Sir John Falstaff have torn himself
away from such a peaceful haven--old creaky hulk as he was, with every
timber starting, and not sea-worthy for a two years’ voyage--to be again
buffeted about on the turbulent waters of uncertainty and dissipation?
Alas! alas! Why does the poisoned cup kill? Why does the broken leg
limp? Why does the bent bough grow downwards, and trail its meagre fruit
among the worms and mud? Why does the old maimed hound hunt in dreams?
Why do the ruined gamesters in the German demon stories, gamble away,
first their doublets, then their vests, then their hose, then their
shirts, and ultimately, their souls?
I can fancy Sir John Falstaff for a few days leading a life of
marvellous peace, and even happiness, in the orderly household of sage
Master Whittington, who loved our friend for the strong latent good
that was in him, and to whom the doubly errant knight’s vices and
irregularities were mere hateful excrescences, to be abhorred, as we
abhor the consumption that kills our favourite sister, but which makes
us love herself the more in our indignation at its rapacious cruelty. I
can fancy a few pleasant evenings by the big fireside, Sir John telling
innumerable pleasant stories from the vast resources of his sixty years’
experience, tempering them, with that sagacity of his which no excess or
reverses could blind, to the innocence and capacity of his hearers. Dame
Alice embroidering, or sitting sedately with her hands crossed upon
her straight-cut mediæval skirt, as we see the ladies in the old
illuminations; Master Richard, in an arm-chair like a young cathedral,
playing with a big gold chain, of bulk and substance to suggest the idea
of a watch-guard with which a fine-grown Titan, particularly anxious to
be up to the time of day, might have carried Big Ben in his waistcoat
pocket; and the little people, crawling lovingly over the knight’s round
knees, and looking up into his bloated, purple, damaged, handsome face,
with a by no means misplaced confidence in, and admiration for, their
amusing instructor. For--come!--where do you find a single instance
on record of Sir John Falstaff having by word or deed--expressed,
performed, or omitted--contributed to the corruption of a single
innocent creature? You may tell me of little Robin the page, whom Sir
John dragged mercilessly after him through the various moral sloughs
and slums he himself was destined to wade through. To this I can only
answer, that Robin was corrupt as St. Giles’s when Sir John found him;
and that I do not pretend to set up my poor scapegrace old knight as a
social reformer. He was merely a reprehensible, cynical, _laisser aller_
philosopher. He took things as he found them, and could no more mend
them than he could mend himself. He could no more have made a good
boy of Robin than he could have forced Bardolph to sign the temperance
pledge, or than he could have spared sufficient money from his own daily
expenses to found a Magdalen hospital for the especial reformation of
Mistress Dorothea Tearsheet--assuming the prevalent aspersions on that
lady’s reputation to have been based on anything but the most malicious
calumny.
But those pleasant evenings in the Whittington household could not have
lasted. The first flush of pleasure derived from comfortable quarters,
abundant and luxurious provisions, and the security from legal
interference being over, the very respectability of the thing would
become irksome. Let Whittington try never so hard to place his guest on
a footing of equality with himself, the unconscious patronage of the man
who had fought and won, over the man who had merely skirmished and lost,
would, in the long run, become intolerable. And then there is the great
force of habit. There is undoubted fascination in “the desolate freedom
of the wild ass.” Unlimited sand, with an occasional root of cactus or
prickly pear, would, I presume, be far more acceptable to a quadruped
of that species than a daily branmash, turnips, and warm straw bedding,
where there would be harness and padlocks withal. I can fancy Falstaff
beginning to find the early hours and decorous regulations of the
Whittington establishment considerably too much for him. Respectable
members of the Mercers’ Company would doubtless look in, and gaze upon
him as a curious monster. He would yearn for the naughtinesses of
the Boar’s Head, with its limed sack, sanded floor, and obsequious
retainers. And then there would be the ever-present and dreadful
consciousness of Master Whittington himself, to whom no weak point in
the character of Sir John Falstaff was a mystery; who would help Sir
John liberally to sack, knowing it was not good for him; who would lend
Sir John money, knowing he would bestow it in bad uses; who would let
Sir John talk himself breathless, and smilingly count all Sir John’s
lies on his fingers! Depend upon it, there is nothing so intolerable to
a sensible man who has made a fool of himself through life as the silent
criticism of another sensible man, who is aware of the fact, and who
himself has done nothing of the kind.
Therefore I am inclined to think that Sir John Falstaff and his old
friend Richard Whittington must have come to a one-sided quarrel within
a month, at the utmost, of Sir John’s more than probable residence in
the Whitting-ionian household. It may have been a question of stopping
out late, or of introducing an unbecoming companion (let us say Ancient
Pistol, whom Sir John, in a moment of vinous aberration, may have been
so inconsiderate as to present to Dame Alice Whittington as a model
member of mass-going society). At any rate, it is very certain that,
in the month of March, 1413, Sir John Falstaff was no longer, if he had
recently been, a guest of Master Richard Whittington, or even a resident
in the British metropolis.
Sir John Falstaff, on the 21st of March, 1413, was again the honoured
visitor of Master Robert Shallow, in the Commission of the Peace for the
county of Gloucester.