“The king has killed his heart, good husband, come home presently.”
The speaker was Mrs. Pistol, late Quickly. Her husband was disputing
about nothing particular with Corporal Nym. The heart that had been
killed by the king (dear Mrs. Quickly! she always spoke truly upon vital
questions) was that of Sir John Falstaff. He had presented himself, clad
in all the panoply of war, at the palace of Westminster, just as the
galleys for the French invasion were getting under weigh. The king
had refused him an audience. The Lord Chief Justice Gascoigne, acting
ostensibly under the directions of the Dowager Queen Regent Joanna, had
threatened him with constables. Sir John came home to his old quarters,
the Old Boar’s Head in Eastcheap--to die!
And Sir John Falstaff died on the 5th of August, 1415, at the Old Boar’s
Head Tavern, Eastcheap. His eyes were closed by poor Dame Quickly, and
the only mourners round his death bed were the blackguards whom he had
fed, and who were humanised and softened by his death. Pistol and Nym
forgot their quarrel about nothing, sheathed their unmeaning swords and
glared blood-shot condolence one at the other. Bardolph had come up from
Windsor, resigning his tapstership to attend on the master whom he
had loved and served consistently--long ere he knew how to speak.
Our rubicund friend never acquired the art of speech to anything like
perfection; but when he learnt that Falstaff was dead he somehow managed
to give utterance to a poem.
“Would I were with him, wheresom’er he is, either in heaven, or in
hell!”
I cannot describe Sir John Falstaff’s death half as well as it has been
described by Mrs. Quickly. Take her words:--
“He’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom. ‘A made a
finer end, and went away, an it had been any christom child; ‘a parted
even just between twelve and one, e’en at turning of the tide: for after
I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with the flowers, and smile
upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was
as sharp as a pen, and ‘a babbled of green fields. How now, Sir John?
quoth I: what, man! be of good cheer. So ‘a cried out, God, God, God!
three or four times: now I, to comfort him, bid him, ‘a should not think
of God; I hoped, there was no need to trouble himself with any such
thoughts yet: so ‘a bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand
into the bed, and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I
felt to his knees, and so upward, and upward, and all was as cold as any
stone.”
I will not comment upon this. I bow my head as one at a dear friend’s
funeral and hold my tongue--loving and thanking those whom I hear
weeping and sobbing around me.
Sir John Falstaff was buried in the church of St. Michael Paternoster
in the Royal, at the expense of Sir Richard Whittington, founder of
that edifice, and Sir John’s faithful friend throughout his eventful
life--more than ever towards its close. It is recorded that Sir Richard
wept bitterly the loss of his ever dear but often estranged friend,
and was given to chide severely those who spoke slightingly of Sir John
Falstaff’s memory--saying that none knew Sir John Falstaff but himself;
and that the waste of such a heart and brain as Sir John’s to humanity
was a loss deplorable. All who had been kind or faithful to Sir John in
his lifetime were well cared for by Sir Richard. He subsidised Bardolph,
Nym, and Pistol. But it was destined they should not prosper. They
were bound for the French wars. They wasted Sir Richard’s bounty before
starting. Nym and Bardolph were hanged for the pettiest larceny on the
field of Agincourt. Heaven knows what became of Pistol, and Earth does
not care.
Sir Richard erected a simple tomb over the remains of Sir John Falstaff
in the crypt of St. Michael Paternoster. King Henry the Fifth, on his
return from France, in a remorseful fit, took his fair bride to see his
old friend’s last resting-place. It is whispered that he left the church
with reddened eyes. It is certain that he caused to be inlaid, at his
own expense, on the marble tomb, the following inscription in brass:--
“WE COULD HAVE BETTER SPARED A BETTER MAN.”
This might have been seen up to the year 1666, when the church of St.
Michael Paternoster was burnt to the ground--and the last material
traces of Sir John Falstaff’s existence faded from the memory of man,
even as fades the recollection of having read a foolish book.