distress our mothers and aunts, in their younger days, became herself
affected by the terrors which she only paints to explain away natural
circumstances. What then must have been the end of Richard Johnson?
His scene of the enchantments of the Black Castle is quite enough to
have killed the author with bewilderment. There is a flooring in the
old palace of the Prince of Orange in Brussels, which is so inlaid with
small pieces of wood, of a thousand varieties of patterns, as to be a
triumph of its kind. I was not at all surprised, when standing on that
floor, to hear that when the artist had completed his inconceivable
labor, he gave one wild gaze over the _parquet_ of the palace, and
dropped dead of a fit of giddiness. I am sure that Richard Johnson
must have met with some such calamity after revising this portion
of his history. It is a portion in which it is impossible for the
Champions or for the readers to go to sleep. The noise is terrific,
the incidents fall like thunderbolts, the changes roll over each other
in a succession made with electric rapidity, and when the end comes we
are all the more rejoiced, because we have comprehended nothing; but
we are especially glad to find that the knight of the Black Castle,
who is the cause of all the mischief, is overcome, flies in a state of
destitution to a neighboring wood, and being irretrievably “hard up,”
stabs himself with the first thing at hand, as ruthlessly as the lover
of the “Ratcatcher’s Daughter.”
Time, place, propriety, and a respect for contemporary history, are
amusingly violated throughout the veracious details. Nothing can equal
the confusion, nothing can be more absurd than the errors. But great
men have committed errors as grave. Shakespeare opened a seaport
in Bohemia, and Mr. Macaulay wrote of one Penn what was only to be
attributed to another. And now, have the dramatists treated St. George
better than the romancers?
The national saint was, doubtless, often introduced in the Mysteries;
but the first occasion of which I have any knowledge of his having
been introduced on the stage, was by an author named John Kirke. John
was so satisfied with his attempt that he never wrote a second play.
He allowed his fame to rest on the one in question, which is thus
described on his title-page: “The Seven Champions of Christendome.
Acted at the _Cocke Pit_, and at the _Red Bull_ in St. John’s Streete,
with a general liking, And never printed till this _yeare_ 1638.
Written by J. K.--London, printed by J. Okes, and are (_sic_) to be
sold by James Becket, at his Shop in the Inner Temple Gate, 1638.”
John Kirke treats his subject melodramatically. In the first scene,
Calib the Witch, in a speech prefacing her declarations of a love for
foul weather and deeds, tells the audience by way of prologue, how she
had stolen the young St. George from his now defunct parent, with the
intention of making a bath for her old bones out of his young warm
blood. Love, however, had touched her, and she had brought up “the
red-lipped boy,” with some indefinite idea of making something of him
when a man.
With this disposition the old lady has some fears as to the possible
approaching term of her life; but, as she is assured by “Tarfax the
Devill” that she can not die unless she love blindly, the witch, like
a mere mortal, accounting that she loves wisely, reckons herself a
daughter of immortality, and rejoices hugely. The colloquy of this
couple is interrupted by their son Suckabud, who, out of a head just
broken by St. George, makes complaint with that comic lack of fun,
which was wont to make roar the entire inside of the Red Bull. The
young clown retires with his sire, and then enters the great St.
George, a lusty lad, with a world of inquiries touching his parentage.
Calib explains that his lady mother was anything but an honest woman,
and that his sire was just the partner to match. “Base or noble, pray?”
asks St. George. To which the witch replies:--
“Base and noble too;
Both base by thee, but noble by descent;
And thou born base, yet mayst thou write true gent:”
and it may be said, parenthetically, that many a “true gent” is by
birth equal to St. George himself.
Overcome by her affection, the witch makes a present to St. George
of the half-dozen champions of England whom she holds in chains
within her dwelling. One of them is described as “the lively, brisk,
cross-cap’ring Frenchman, Denis.” With these for slaves, Calib yields
her wand of power, and the giver is no sooner out of sight when George
invokes the shades of his parents, who not only appear and furnish him
with a corrected edition of his biography, but inform him that he is
legitimate Earl of Coventry, with all the appurtenances that a young
earl can desire.
Thereupon ensues a hubbub that must have shaken all the lamps in the
cockpit. George turns the Witch’s power against herself, and she
descends to the infernal regions, where she is punningly declared to
have gained the title of Duchess of Helvetia. The six champions are
released, and the illustrious seven companions go forth in search of
adventures, with Suckabus for a “Squire.” The father of the latter
gives him some counsel at parting, which is a parody on the advice of
Polonius to Laertes. “Lie,” says Torpax:--
“Lie to great profit, borrow, pay no debts,
Cheat and purloin, they are gaming dicers’ bets.”
“If Cottington outdo me,” says the son, “he be-whipt.” And so, after
the election of St. George as the seventh champion of Christendom, ends
one of the longest acts that Bull or Cockpit was ever asked to witness
and applaud.
The next act is briefer but far more bustling. We are in that
convenient empire of Trebizond, where everything happened which never
took place, according to the romances. The whole city is in a state of
consternation at the devastations of a detestable dragon, and a lion,
his friend and co-partner. The nobles bewail the fact in hexameters,
or at least in lines meant to do duty for them; and the common people
bewail the fact epigrammatically, and describe the deaths of all who
have attempted to slay the monsters, with a broadness of effect that
doubtless was acknowledged by roars of laughter. Things grow worse
daily, the fiends look down, and general gloom is settling thick upon
the empire, when Andrew of Scotland and Anthony of Italy arrive, send
in their cards, and announce their determination to slay both these
monsters.
Such visitors are received with more than ordinary welcome. The emperor
is regardless of expense in his liberality, and his daughter Violetta
whispers to her maid Carinthia that she is already in love with one
of them, but will not say which; a remark which is answered by the
pert maid, that she is in love with both, and would willingly take
either. All goes on joyously until in the course of conversation, and
it is by no means remarkable for brilliancy, the two knights let fall
that they are Christians. Now, you must know, that the established
Church at Trebizond at this time, which is at any period, was heathen.
The court appeared to principally affect Apollo and Diana, while the
poorer people put up with Pan, and abused him for denouncing may-poles!
Well, the Christians had never been emancipated; nay, they had never
been tolerated in Trebizond, and it was contrary to law that the
country should be saved, even in its dire extremity, by Christian
help. The knights are doomed to die, unless they will turn heathens.
This, of course, they decline with a dignified scorn; whereupon, in
consideration of their nobility, they are permitted to choose their
own executioners. They make choice of the ladies, but Violetta and
Carinthia protest that they can not think of such a thing. Their
high-church sire is disgusted with their want of orthodoxy, and he
finally yields to the knights their swords, that they may do justice on
themselves as the law requires. But Andrew and Anthony are no sooner
armed again than they clear their way to liberty, and the drop scene
falls upon the rout of the whole empire of Trebizond.
The third act is of gigantic length, and deals with giants. There is
mourning in Tartary. David has killed the king’s son in a tournament,
and the king remarks, like a retired apothecary, that “Time’s plaster
must draw the sore before he can feel peace again.” To punish David, he
is compelled to undertake the destruction of the enchanter Ormandine,
who lived in a cavern fortress with “some selected friends.” The prize
of success is the reversion of the kingdom of Tartary to the Welsh
knight. The latter goes upon his mission, but he is so long about it
that our old friend Chorus enters, to explain what he affirms they
have not time to act--namely, the great deeds of St. George, who, as
we learn, had slain the never-to-be-forgotten dragon, rescued Sabrina,
been cheated of his reward, and held in prison seven years upon bread
and water. His squire, Suckabus, alludes to giants whom he and his
master had previously slain, and whose graves were as large as Tothill
Fields. He also notices “Ploydon’s law,” and other matters, that could
hardly have been contemporaneous with the palmy days of the kingdom of
Tartary. Meanwhile, David boldly assaults Ormandine, but the enchanter
surrounds him with some delicious-looking nymphs, all thinly clad and
excessively seductive; and we are sorry to say that the Welsh champion,
not being cavalierly mounted on proper principles, yields to seduction,
and after various falls under various temptations, is carried to bed by
the rollicking nymph Drunkenness.
But never did good, though fallen, men want for a friend at a pinch.
St. George is in the neighborhood; and seedy as he is after seven
years in the dark, with nothing more substantial by way of food than
bread, and nothing more exhilarating for beverage than _aqua pura_, the
champion of England does David’s work, and with more generosity than
justice, makes him a present of the enchanter’s head. David presents
the same to the King of Tartary, that, according to promise pledged in
case of such a present being made, he may be proclaimed heir-apparent
to the Tartarian throne. With this bit of cheating, the long third act
comes to an end.
The fourth act is taken up with an only partially successful attack by
James, David, and Patrick, on a cruel enchanter, Argalio, who at least
is put to flight, and _that_, at all events, as the knights remark, is
something to be thankful for. The fifth and grand act reveals to us
the powerful magician, Brandron, in his castle. He holds in thrall the
King of Macedon--a little circumstance not noted in history; and he has
in his possession the seven daughters of his majesty transformed into
swans. The swans contrive to make captives of six of the knights as
they were taking a “gentle walk” upon his ramparts. They are impounded
as trespassers, and Brandron, who has some low comedy business with
Suckubus, will not release them but upon condition that they fight
honestly in his defence against St. George. The six duels take place,
and of course the champion of England overcomes all his friendly
antagonists; whereupon Brandron, with his club, beats out his own
brains, in presence of the audience.
At this crisis, the King of Macedon appears, restored to power, and
inquires after his daughters. St. George and the rest, with a use of
the double negatives that would have shocked Lindley Murray, declare
“We never knew, nor saw no ladies here.”
The swans, however, soon take their pristine form, and the three
daughters appear fresh from their plumes and their long bath upon the
lake. Upon this follows the smart dialogue which we extract as a sample
of how sharply the King of Macedon looked to his family interests, and
how these champion knights were “taken in” before they well knew how
the fact was accomplished.
_Mac._ Reverend knights, may we desire to know which of you are
unmarried?
_Ant., Den., and Pat._ We are.
_Geo._ Then here’s these ladies, take ’em to your beds.
_Mac._ George highly honors aged Macedon.
_The three Knights._ But can the ladies’ love accord with us?
_The three Ladies._ Most willingly!
_The three Knights._ We thus then seal our contract.
_Geo._ Which thus we ratifie.
Sit with the brides, most noble Macedon;
And since kind fortune sent such happy chance,
We’ll grace your nuptials with a soldier’s dance.
And, fore George, as our fathers used to say, they make a night of it.
The piece ends with a double military reel, and the audiences at the
Bull and the Cockpit probably whistled the tune as they wended their
way homeward to crab-apple ale and spiced gingerbread.
Next to the Champions of Christendom, the King’s Knight Champion of
England is perhaps the most important personage--in the point of view
of chivalry. I think it is some French author who has said, that
revolutions resemble the game of chess, where the pawns or pieces (_les
pions_) may cause the ruin of the king, save him, or take his place.
Now the _champ pion_, as this French remark reminds me, is nothing more
than the field _pion_, pawn, or piece, put forward to fight in the
king’s quarrel.
The family of the Champion of England bears, it may be observed,
exactly the name which suits a calling so derived. The appellation
“Dymoke” is derived from _De Umbrosâ Quercu_; I should rather say it
is the translation of it; and Harry De Umbrosâ Quercu is only Harry of
the Shady or Dim Oak, a very apt dwelling-place and name for one whose
chief profession was that of field-pawn to the king.
This derivation or adaptation of names from original Latin surnames is
common enough, and some amusing pages might be written on the matter,
in addition to what has been so cleverly put together by Mr. Mark
Anthony Lower, in his volume devoted especially to an elucidation of
English surnames.
The royal champions came in with the Conquest. The Norman dukes had
theirs in the family of Marmion--ancestors of that Marmion of Sir
Walter Scott’s, who commits forgery, like a common knave of more
degenerate times. The Conqueror conferred sundry broad lands in
England on his champions; among others, the lands adjacent to, as
well as the castle of Tamworth. Near this place was the first nunnery
established in this country. The occupants were the nuns of St. Edith,
at Polesworth. Robert de Marmion used the ladies very “cavalierly,”
ejected them from their house, and deprived them of their property. But
such victims had a wonderfully clever way of recovering their own.
My readers may possibly remember how a certain Eastern potentate
injured the church, disgusted the Christians generally, and irritated
especially that Simeon Stylites who sat on the summit of a pillar,
night and day, and never moved from his abiding-place. The offender
had a vision, in which he not only saw the indignant Simeon, but was
cudgelled almost into pulp by the _simulacre_ of that saint. I very
much doubt if Simeon himself was in his airy dwelling-place at that
particular hour of the night. I was reminded of this by what happened
to the duke’s champion, Robert de Marmion. He was roused from a
deep sleep by the vision of a stout lady, who announced herself as
the wronged St. Edith, and who proceeded to show her opinion of De
Marmion’s conduct toward her nuns, by pommelling his ribs with her
crosier, until she had covered his side with bruises, and himself with
repentance. What strong-armed young monk played St. Edith that night,
it is impossible to say; but that he enacted the part successfully, is
seen from the fact that Robert brought back the ladies to Polesworth,
and made ample restitution of all of which they had been deprived. The
nuns, in return, engaged with alacrity to inter all defunct Marmions
within the chapter-house of their abbey, for nothing.
With the manor of Tamworth in Warwickshire, Marmion held that of
Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire. The latter was held of the King by
grand sergeantry, “to perform the office of champion at the King’s
coronation.” At his death he was succeeded by a son of the same
Christian name, who served the monks of Chester precisely as his sire
had treated the nuns at Polesworth. This second Robert fortified his
ill-acquired prize--the priory; but happening to fall into one of the
newly-made ditches, when inspecting the fortifications, a soldier of
the Earl of Chester killed him, without difficulty, as he lay with
broken hip and thigh, at the bottom of the fosse. The next successor,
a third Robert, was something of a judge, with a dash of the warrior,
too, and he divided his estates between two sons, both Roberts, by
different mothers. The eldest son and chief possessor, after a bustling
and emphatically “battling” life, was succeeded by his son Philip, who
fell into some trouble in the reign of Henry III. for presuming to act
as a judge or justice of the peace, without being duly commissioned.
This Philip was, nevertheless, one of the most faithful servants to
a king who found so many faithless; and if honors were heaped upon
him in consequence, he fairly merited them all. He was happy, too,
in marriage, for he espoused a lady sole heiress to a large estate,
and who brought him four daughters, co-heiresses to the paternal and
maternal lands of the Marmions and the Kilpecs.
This, however, is wandering. Let us once more return to orderly
illustration. In St. George I have shown how pure romance deals with
a hero. In the next chapter I will endeavor to show in what spirit
the lives and actions of real English heroes have been treated by
native historians. In so doing, I will recount the story of Sir Guy of
Warwick, after their fashion, with original illustrations and “modern
instances.”
SIR GUY OF WARWICK,
AND WHAT BEFELL HIM.
“His desires
Are higher than his state, and his deserts
Not much short of the most he can desire.”
_Chapman’s Byron’s Conspiracy._
The Christian name of Guy was once an exceedingly popular name in the
county of York. I have never heard a reason assigned for this, but I
think it may have originated in admiration of the deeds and the man
whose appellation and reputation have survived to our times. I do not
allude to Guy Faux; _that_ young gentleman was the Father of Perverts,
but by no means the first of the Guys.
The “Master Guy” of whom I am treating here, or, rather, about to
treat, was a youth whose family originally came from Northumberland.
That family was, in one sense, more noble than the imperial family of
Muscovy, for its members boasted not only of good principles, but of
sound teeth.
The teeth and principles of the Romanoffs are known to be in a
distressing state of dilapidation.
Well; these Northumbrian Guys having lived extremely fast, and being
compelled to compound with their creditors, by plundering the latter,
and paying them zero in the pound, migrated southward, and finally
settled in Warwickshire. Now, the head of the house had a considerable
share of common sense about him, and after much suffering in a state of
shabby gentility, he not only sent his daughters out to earn their own
livelihood, but, to the intense disgust of his spouse, hired himself
as steward to that noble gentleman the Earl of Warwick. “My blood is
as good as ever it was,” said he to the fine lady his wife. “It is the
blood of an upper servant,” cried she, “and my father’s daughter is
the spouse of a flunkey.”
The husband was not discouraged; and he not only opened his office in
his patron’s castle but he took his only son with him, and made him
his first clerk. This son’s name was Guy; and he was rather given to
bird-catching, hare-snaring, and “gentism” generally. He had been a
precocious youth from some months previous to his birth, and had given
his lady-mother such horrid annoyance, that she was always dreaming of
battles, fiery-cars, strong-smelling dragons, and the wrathful Mars.
“Well,” she used to remark to her female friends, while the gentlemen
were over their wine, “I expect that this boy” (she had made up her
mind to that) “will make a noise in the world, draw bills upon his
father, and be the terror of maid-servants. Why, do you know----” and
here she became confidential, and I do not feel authorized to repeat
what she then communicated.
But Master Guy, the “little stranger” alluded to, proved better than
was expected. He might have been considerably worse, and yet would not
have been so bad as maternal prophecy had depicted him. At eight years
... but I hear you say, “When did all this occur?” Well, it was in a
November’s “Morning Post,” that announcement was made of the birth; and
as to the year, Master Guy has given it himself in the old metrical
romance,
“Two hundred and twenty years and odd,
After our Savior Christ his birth,
When King Athelstan wore the crown,
I livéd here upon the earth.”
At eight years old, I was about to remark, young Guy was the most
insufferable puppy of his district. He won all the prizes for athletic
sports; and by the time he was sixteen there was not a man in all
England who dared accept his challenge to wrestle with both arms,
against _him_ using only one.
It was at this time that he kept his father’s books and a leash of
hounds, with the latter of which he performed such extraordinary feats,
that the Earl of Warwick invited him from the steward’s room to his own
table; where Guy’s father changed his plate, and Master Guy twitched
him by the beard as he did it.
At the head of the earl’s table sat his daughter “Phillis the Fair,”
a lady who, like her namesake in the song, was “sometimes forward,
sometimes coy,” and altogether so sweetly smiling and so beguiling,
that when the earl asked Guy if he would not come and hunt (the dinner
was at 10 A. M.), Guy answered, as the Frenchman did who could not bear
the sport, with a _Merci, j’ai été!_ and affecting an iliac seizure,
hinted at the necessity of staying at home.
The youth forthwith was carried to bed. Phillis sent him a posset, the
earl sent him his own physician; and this learned gentleman, after much
perplexity veiled beneath the most affable and confident humbug, wrote
a prescription which, if it could do the patient no good would do him
no harm. He was a most skilful man, and his patients almost invariably
recovered under this treatment. He occasionally sacrificed one or two
when a consultation was held, and he was called upon to prescribe
_secundum artem_; but he compensated for this professional slaying by,
in other cases, leaving matters to Nature, who was the active partner
in his firm, and of whose success he was not in the least degree
jealous. So, when he had written the prescription, Master Guy fell a
discoursing of the passion of love, and _that_ with a completeness and
a variety of illustration as though he were the author of the chapter
on that subject in Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.” The doctor heard
him to the end, gently rubbing one side of his nose the while with the
index-finger of his right hand; and when his patient had concluded, the
medical gentleman smiled, hummed “Phillis is my only joy,” and left the
room with his head nodding like a Chinese Mandarin’s.
By this time the four o’clock sun was making green and gold pillars
of the trees in the neighboring wood, and Guy got up, looked at the
falling leaves, and thought of the autumn of his hopes. He whistled
“Down, derry, down,” with a marked emphasis on the _down_; but suddenly
his hopes again sprang up, as he beheld Phillis among her flower-beds,
engaged in the healthful occupation which a sublime poet has given to
the heroine whom he names, and whose action he describes, when he tells
us that
“Miss Dinah was a-walking in her garding one day.”
Guy trussed his points, pulled up his hose, set his bonnet smartly on
his head, clapped a bodkin on his thigh, and then walked into the
garden with the air of the once young D’Egville in a ballet, looking
after a nymph--which indeed was a pursuit he was much given to when he
was _old_ D’Egville, and could no longer bound through his ballets,
because he was stiff in the joints.
Guy, of course, went down on one knee, and at once plunged into the
most fiery style of declaration, but Phillis had not read the Mrs.
Chapone of that day for nothing. She brought him back to prose and
propriety, and then the two started afresh, and they _did_ talk!
Guy felt a little “streaked” at first, but he soon recovered his
self-possession, and it would have been edifying for the young mind
to have heard how these two pretty things spoke to, and answered each
other in moral maxims stolen from the top pages of their copy-books.
They poured them out by the score, and the proverbial philosophy they
enunciated was really the origin of the book so named by Martin Tupper.
He took it all from Phillis and Guy, whose descendants, of the last
name, were so famous for their school-books. This I expect Mr. Tupper
will (not) mention in his next edition.
After much profitable interchange of this sort of article, the lady
gently hinted that Master Guy was not indifferent to her, but that he
was of inferior birth, yet of qualities that made him equal with her;
adding, that hitherto he had done little but kill other people’s game,
whereas there were nobler deeds to be accomplished. And then she bade
him go in search of perilous adventures, winding up with the toast and
sentiment, “Master Guy, eagles do not care to catch flies.”