tear the hair of his theatrical wig in a fit of amorous despair,
you may have some idea as to the intensity with which Master Guy
illustrated his own desperation. He stamped the ground with such
energy that all the hitherto quiet aspens fell a-shaking, and their
descendants have ever since maintained the same fashion. Phillis fell
a-crying at this demonstration, and softened considerably. After a
lapse of five minutes, she had blushingly directed Master Guy to “speak
to papa.”
Now, of all horrible interviews, this perhaps is the most horrible.
Nelson used to say that there was only one thing on earth which he
dreaded, and that was dining with a mayor and corporation. Doubtless
it is dreadful, but _what_ is it compared with looking a grave man in
the face, who has no sentiment into him, and whose first remark is sure
to be, “Well, sir, be good enough to tell me--what can you settle on my
daughter? What can you do to secure her happiness?”
“Well,” said Guy, in reply to this stereotyped remark, “I can kill the
Dun cow on the heath. _She_ has killed many herself who’ve tried the
trick on her; and last night she devoured crops of clover, and twice as
many fields of barley on your lordship’s estate.”
“First kill the cow, and then----,” said the earl with a smile; and
Shakespeare had the echo of this speech in his ear, when he began the
fifth act of his Othello. Now Guy was not easily daunted. If I cared
to make a pun, I might easily have said “cowed,” but in a grave and
edifying narrative this loose method of writing would be extremely
improper. Guy, then, was not a coward--nay, nothing is hidden under the
epithet. He tossed a little in bed that night as he thought the matter
over, and the next morning made sheets of paper as crumpled as the
cow’s horns, as he rejected the plans of assault he had designed upon
them, and sat uncertain as to what he should do in behoof of his own
fortune. He at length determined to go and visit the terrible animal
“incognito.” It is the very word used by one of the biographers of Guy,
an anonymous Northumbrian, who published the life on a broad sheet,
with a picture of Master Guy which might have frightened the cow, and
which is infinitely more ugly. Neither the black-letter poem, the old
play, nor the pamphlets or ballads, use the term _incognito_, but all
declare that Guy proceeded with much caution, and a steel cuirass
over his jerkin. I mention these things, because without correctness
my narrative would be worthless. I am not imaginative, and would not
embroider a plain suit of fact upon any account.
Guy’s carefulness is to be proved. Here was a cow that had been more
destructive than ever Red Riding Hood’s Wolf was--that Count Wolf, who
used to snap up young maidens, and lived as careless of respectability
as was to be expected of a man once attached to a “marching regiment,”
and who turned monk. The cow was twelve feet high, from the hoof to
the shoulder, and eighteen feet long, from the neck to the root of
the tail. All the dragons ever heard of had never been guilty of such
devastation to life and property as this terrible cow. Guy looked at
her and did not like her. The cow detected him and rushed at her prey.
Guy was active, attacked her in front and rear, as the allies did the
forts of Bomarsund; very considerably confused her by burying his
battle-axe in her skull; hung on by her tail as she attempted to fly;
and finally gave her the _coup de grace_ by passing his rapier rapidly
and repeatedly through her especially vulnerable point behind the ear.
In proof of the fact, the scene of the conflict still bears the name of
Dunsmore Heath, and that is a wider basis of proof than many “facts”
stand upon, to which we are required by plodding teachers to give
assent.
Besides, there is a rib of this very cow exhibited at Bristol. To
be sure it is not a rib now of a cow, but out of reverence to the
antiquity of the assertion which allegedly makes it so, I think we are
bound to believe what is thus advanced. Not that I do myself, but that
is of no consequence. I have a strong idea that the cow was not a cow,
but a countess (not a Countess Cowper), who made war in her own right,
lived a disreputable life, was as destructive to wealthy young lords as
a _Lorette_, and won whole estates by cheating at _écarté_. Guy took a
hand, and beat her.
Poor Master Guy, he was as hardly used as ever Jacob was, and much he
meditated thereupon in the fields at eventide. The stern earl would
by no means give his consent to the marriage of his daughter with the
young champion, until the latter had performed some doughtier deeds
than this. The boy (he was still in his teens) took heart of grace,
divided a crooked sixpence with Phillis, and straightway sailed for
Normandy, where he arrived, after meeting as many thieves by the way
as if he had walked about for a month in the streets of Dover. But
Master Guy killed all _he_ met; there is a foolish judicial, not to say
social, prejudice against our doing the same with the bandits of Dover.
I can not conjecture why; perhaps they have a privilege under some of
the city companies, whereby they are constituted the legal skinners of
all sojourners among them, carrying filthy lucre.
Guy met in Normandy with the last person he could have expected to
fall in with--no other than the Emperor of Almayne, a marvellously
ubiquitous person to be met with in legends, and frequently encountered
in the seaports of inland towns. The historians are here a little at
issue. One says that Master Guy having found a certain Dorinda tied to
the stake, and awaiting a champion who would stake his own life for
her rescue, inquired the “antecedents” of the position. Dorinda, it
appears, had been as rudely used as young lady possibly could be, “by
the Duke of Blois, his son,” and the duke was so enraged at Dorinda’s
charge against his favorite Otto, that he condemned her to be burned
alive, unless a champion appeared in time to rescue her by defeating
the aforesaid Otto in single combat. Guy, of course, transacted the
little business successfully; spoiled Otto’s beauty by slashing his
nose; and so enchanted Dorinda, that she never accused her champion of
doing aught displeasing to her.
Anxious as I am touching the veracity of this narrative, I have
recorded what biographers state, though not in their own words. But I
must add, that in some of the histories this episode about Dorinda is
altogether omitted, and we only hear of Master Guy appearing in panoply
at a tournament given by the Emperor of Allemagne, in Normandy--which
is much the same, gentle reader, as if I were, at your cost, to give
a concert and ball, with a supper from Farrance’s, and all, not in
my house, but in yours. Nevertheless, in Normandy the tournament was
held, and the paternal Emperor of Allemagne, having then a daughter,
Blanche, of whom he wished to get rid, he set her up as the prize of
the conquering knight in the tournament.
I think I hear you remark something as to the heathenness of the
custom. But it is a custom sacred to these times; and our neighbors
(for of course neither you nor I could condescend to such manners)
get up evening tournaments of whist, quadrilles, and a variety of
singing--of every variety but the good and intelligible, and at these
modern tournaments given for the express purpose which that respectable
old gentleman, the Emperor of Allemagne, had in view when he opened his
lists; the “girls” are the prizes of the carpet-knights. So gentlemen,
_faites votre jeu_, as the philosopher who presided at Frescati’s used
to say--_faites votre jeu, Messieurs_; and go in and win. Perhaps if
you read Cowper, you may be the better armed against loss in such a
conflict.
I need not say that Master Guy’s good sword, which gleamed like
lightning in the arena, and rained blows faster than ever Mr. Blanchard
rained them, in terrific Coburg combats, upon the vulnerable crest of
Mr. Bradley--won for him the peerless prize--to say nothing of a dog
and a falcon thrown in. Master Guy rather ungallantly declined having
the lady, though her father would have given him _carte blanche_; he
looked at her, muttered her name, and then murmured, “Blanche, as
thou art, yet art thou black-a-moor, compared with my Phillis;”--and
with this unchivalric avowal, for it was a part of chivalry to say a
thing and think another, he returned to England, carrying with him the
“Spaniel King’s Charls,” as French authors write it, and the falcon,
with a ring and a perch, like a huge parroquet.
Master Guy entered Warwick in a “brougham,” as we now might say, and
sorely was he put to it with the uneasy bird. At every lurch of the
vehicle, out flapped the wings, elongated was the neck, and Master Guy
had to play at “dodge” with the falcon, who was intent upon darting
his terrific beak into the cavalier’s nose. At length, however, the
castle was safely reached; the presents were deposited at the feet of
Phillis the Fair, and Guy hoped, like the Peri, and also like that
gentle spirit to be disappointed, that the gates of paradise were about
to open. But not so, Phillis warmly praised his little regard for that
pert minx, Blanche, or _Blanc d’Espagne_, as she wickedly added; and
she patted the spaniel, and offered sugar to the falcon; and, after the
dinner to which Guy _was_ invited, she intimated in whispers, that they
were both “too young as yet” (not that she believed so), and that more
deeds must be done by Guy, ere the lawyers would be summoned by her
papa to achieve some of their own.
The youthful Guy went forth “reluctant but resolved,” and he _would_
have sung as he went along,
“Elle a quinze ans, moi j’en ai seize,”
of Sedaine and Grétry, only neither poet nor composer, nor the opera
of _Richard Cœur de Lion_, had yet appeared to gladden heart and ear.
But the sentiment was there, and perhaps Sedaine knew of it when he
penned the words. However this may be, Master Guy, though soft of
heart, was not so of arm, for on this present cause of errantry he
enacted such deeds that their very enumeration makes one breathless.
His single sword cleared whole forests of hordes of brigands, through
whose sides his trenchant blade passed as easily as the sabre, when
held by Corporal Sutton, through a dead sheep. Our hero was by no means
particular as to what he did, provided he was doing something; nor what
cause he fought for, provided there were a cause and a fight. Thus we
find him aiding the Duke of Louvain against his old friend the Emperor
of Allemagne. He led the Duke’s forces, slew thousands upon thousands
of the enemy, and, as though he had the luck of a modern Muscovite
army, did not lose more than “one man,” with slight damage to the
helmet of a second.
Master Guy, not yet twenty, surpassed the man whom Mr. Thiers calls
“_ce pur Anglais_,” Mr. Pitt, for he became a prime minister ere he
had attained his majority. In that capacity he negotiated a peace for
the Duke with the Emperor. The two potentates were so satisfied with
the negotiator, that out of compliment they offered him the command
of their united fleet against the Pagan Soldan of Byzantium. They
did not at all expect that he would accept it; but then they were
not aware that Master Guy had much of the spirit which Sidney Smith,
in after-years, discerned in Lord John Russell--and the enterprising
Guy accepted the command of the entire fleet, with quite an entire
confidence.
He did therewith, if chroniclers are to be credited, more than we
might reasonably expect from Lord John Russell, were that statesman
to be in command of a Channel squadron. Having swept the sea, he
rather prematurely, if dates are to be respected, nearly annihilated
Mohammedanism--and he was as invincible and victorious against every
kind of Pagan. It was in the East that he overthrew in single combat,
the giants Colbron and his brother Mongadora. He was resting after this
contest, and leaning like the well-breathed Hotspur, upon his sword,
at the entrance to his tent, when the Turkish governor Esdalante,
approaching him, politely begged that he might take his head, as he
had promised the same to an Osmanlee lady, who was in a condition of
health which might be imperilled by refusal. Master Guy as politely
bade him take it if he could, and therewith, they went at it “like
French falconers,” and Guy took off the head of his opponent instead
of losing his own. This little matter being settled, Guy challenged
the infidel Soldan himself, putting Christianity against Islamism, on
the issue, and thus professing to decide questions of faith as Galerius
did when he left Olympus and Calvary to depend upon a vote of the Roman
senate. Master Guy, being thrice armed by the justness of his quarrel,
subdued the infidel Soldan, but the latter, to show, as we are told,
his insuperable hatred for Christianity, took handfuls of his own
blood, and cast it in the face of his conqueror--and no doubt here,
the victor had in his mind the true story of Julian insulting “the
Galilæan.” We thus see how history is made to contribute to legend.
And now the appetite of the errant lover grew by what it fed upon.
He mixed himself up in every quarrel, and could not see a lion and a
dragon quietly settling their disputes in a wood, by dint of claws,
without striking in for the lion, slaying his foe, and receiving with
complacency the acknowledgments of the nobler beast.
He achieved something more useful when he met Lord Terry in a wood,
looking for his wife who had been carried off by a score of ravishers.
While the noble lord sat down on a mossy bank, like a gentleman in
a melodrama, Guy rescued his wife in his presence, and slew all the
ravishers, “in funeral order,” the youngest first. He subsequently
stood godfather to his friend Terry’s child, and as I am fond of
historical parallels, I may notice that Sir Walter Scott performed the
same office for a Terry, who if he was not a lord, often represented
them, to say nothing of monarchs and other characters.
Master Guy’s return to England was a little retarded by another
characteristic adventure. As he was passing through Louvain, he found
Duke Otto besieging his father in his own castle--“governor” of the
castle and the Duke. Now nothing shocked Master Guy so much as filial
ingratitude, and despite all that Otto could urge about niggardly
allowance, losses at play, debts of honor, and the parsimony of the
“governor,” our champion made common cause with the “indignant parent,”
and not only mortally wounded Otto, but, before the latter died, Guy
brought him to a “sense of his situation,” and Otto died in a happy
frame of mind, leaving all his debts to his father. The legacy was by
way of a “souvenir,” and certainly the governor never forgot it. As
for Guy, he killed the famous boar of Louvain, before he departed for
England, and as he drew his sword from the animal’s flank, he remarked,
there lies a greater boar, and not a less beast than Otto himself.
However, he took the head and hams with him, for Phillis was fond of
both; and as she was wont to say, if there was anything that could
seduce her, it was brawn!
When Master Guy stepped ashore at Harwich, where that amphibious town
now lies soaking, deputations from all quarters were awaiting him,
to ask his succor against some terrible dragon in the north that was
laying waste all the land, and laying hold of all the waists which the
men there wished to enclose. King Athelstan was then at York hoping to
terrify the indomitable beast by power of an army, which in combat with
the noxious creature made as long a tail, in retreat, as the dragon
itself.
Now whatever this nuisance was which so terribly plagued the good
folks in the North, whether a dragon with a tongue thirty feet long,
or anything else equally hard to imagine, it is matter of fact that
our Master Guy assuredly got the better of it. On his return he met
an ovation in York; Athelstan entertained him at a banquet, covered
him with honor, endowed him with a good round sum, and _thus_ all the
newborn male children in the county became Guys. At least two thirds of
them received the popular name, and for many centuries it remained in
favor, until disgrace was brought upon it by the York proctor’s son,
whose effigy still glides through our streets on each recurring 5th of
November.
I will not pause on this matter. I will only add that the Earl of
Warwick, finding Guy a man whom the King delighted to honor, accepted
him for a son-in-law; and then, ever wise, and civil, and proper, he
discreetly died. The King made Guy Earl of Warwick, in his place, and
our hero being now a married man, he of course ceased to be _Master_
Guy.
And here I might end my legend, but that it has a moral in it Guy
did a foolish but a common thing, he launched out into extravagant
expenses, and, suddenly, he found himself sick, sad, and insolvent.
Whether, therewith, his wife was soured, creditors troublesome, and
bailiffs presuming, it is hard to say. One thing, however, is certain,
that to save himself from all three, Earl Guy did what nobles often do
now, in the same predicament, “went abroad.” Guy, however, travelled
in primitive style. He went on foot, and made his inn o’nights in
church-yards, where he colloquized with the skulls after the fashion of
Hamlet with the skull of “poor Yorick.” He had given out that he was
going to Jerusalem, but hearing that the Danes were besieging Athelstan
at Winchester, he went thither, and, in modest disguise, routed them
with his own unaided hand. Among his opponents, he met with the giant
Colbron whom he had previously slain in Orient lands, and the two
fought their battles o’er again, and with such exactly similar results
as to remind one of the peculiar philosophy of Mr. Boatswain Cheeks.
This appearance of Colbron in two places is a fine illustration of the
“myth,” and I mention it expressly for the benefit of the next edition
of the Right Reverend Doctor Whateley’s “Historical Fallacies.” But to
resume.
Guy, imparting a confidential statement of his identity and intentions
to the King, left him, to take up his abode in a cave, in a cliff, near
his residence; and at the gates of his own castle he received, in the
guise of a mendicant, alms of money and bread, from the hands of his
wife. I strongly suspect that the foundation of this section of our
legend rests upon the probable fact that Phillis was of that quality
which is said to belong to gray mares; and that she led Guy a life
which made him a miserable Guy indeed; and that the poor henpecked man
took to bad company abroad, and met with small allowance of everything
but reproach at home And _so_ he “died.”
A dramatic author of Charles I.’s reign, has, however, resuscitated him
in “A Tragical History of Guy, Earl of Warwick,” enacted several times
in presence of that monarch, and professedly written by a certain “B.
J.,” whom I do not at all suspect of being Ben Jonson. The low comedy
portion of this tragic drama is of the filthiest sort, dealing in
phrases and figures which I can hardly conceive would now be tolerated
in the lowest den of St. Giles’s, certainly not out of it. If Charles
heard this given more than once, as the titlepage intimates, “more
shame for him.” If his Queen was present, she haply may not have
understood the _verba ad summam caveam spectantia_, and if a daughter
could have been at the royal entertainment, why then the very idea
revolts one, and pity is almost lost in indignation. That the author
himself thought well of the piece, which he printed in 1661, is proved
by the defiant epigraph which says:--
“Carpere vel noli nostra vel ede tua.”
I must not devote much space to a retrospective review of this piece,
particularly as the action begins after Guy has ceased to be “Master,”
and when, on his announcement of going to Jerusalem (perhaps to the
Jews to do a little business in bills), Phillis makes some matronly
remarks in a prospective sense, and a liberty of illustration which
would horrify a monthly nurse.
However, Guy goes forth and meets with a giant so huge, that his squire
Sparrow says it required four-and-twenty men to throw mustard in his
mouth when he dined. From such giants, Heaven protects the errant Guy,
and with a troop of fairies, wafts him to Jerusalem. Here he finds
Shamurath of Babylon assaulting the city, but Guy heaps miracle on
miracle of valor, and produces such astounding results that Shamurath,
who is a spectator of the deeds and the doer; inquires, with a
suspicion of Connaught in the accent of the inquiry, “What divil or man
is this?”
The infidel is more astonished than ever when Guy, after defeating
him, takes him into controversy, and laying hold of him as Dr. Gumming
does of Romanism, so buffets his belief that, the soldier, fairly out
of breath and argument, gives in, and declares himself a Christian, on
conviction.
During one-and-twenty years, Guy has a restless life through the five
acts of this edifying tragedy, and when he is seen again in England,
overcoming the Danes, he intimates to Athelstan that he has six years
more to pass in disguise, ere a vow, of which we have before heard
nothing, will be fulfilled. Athelstan receives all that is said, in
confidence; and promises affably, “upon my word,” not to betray the
secret. Guy is glad to hear that Phillis is “pretty well;” and then he
takes up his residence as I have before told, according to the legend.
He and an Angel occasionally have a little abstruse disquisition; but
the most telling scene is doubtless where the bread is distributed to
the beggars, by Phillis. Guy is here disguised as a palmer, and Phillis
inquires if he knew the great Earl, to which Guy answers, with a wink
of the eye, that he and the Earl had often drank at the same crystal
spring. But Phillis is too dull, or too melancholy to trace her way
through so sorry a joke.
And now, just as the hour of completion of the vowed time of his
disguise, Guy takes to dying, and in that state he is found by
Rainhorn, the son who knows him not. He sends a token by the young
fellow to Phillis, who begins to suspect that the palmer who used to
be so particular in asking for “brown bread” at her gate, must be
the “Master Guy” of the days of sunny youth, short kirtles, and long
love-making. Mother and son haste to the spot, but the vital spark has
fled. Phillis exclaims, with much composed thought, not unnatural in a
woman whose husband has been seven-and-twenty years away from home, and
whose memory is good: “If it be he, he has a mould-wart underneath his
ear” to which the son as composedly remarks, “View him, good mother,
satisfy your mind.” Thereupon the proper identification of the “party”
is established; and the widow is preparing to administer, without will
annexed, when Rainhorn bids her banish sorrow, as the King is coming.
The son evidently thinks the honor of a living king should drown sorrow
for a deceased parent; just as a Roman family that can boast of a Pope
in it, does not put on mourning even when that Pope dies; the _having
had him_, being considered a joy that no grief should diminish.
Athelstan is evidently a King of Cockayne, for he affably expresses
surprise at the old traveller’s death, seeing, says his Majesty, that
“I had appointed _for_ to meet Sir Guy” to which the son, who has now
succeeded to the estate, replies, in the spirit of an heir who has been
waiting long for an inheritance:--“that the death has happened, and can
not now be helped.”
But the most remarkable matter in this tragedy is that uttered by Time,
who plays prologue, epilogue, and interlude between the acts. Whatever
Charles may have thought of the piece, he was doubtless well-pleased
with Time, who addresses the audience in verse, giving a political
turn to the lesson on the stage. I dare say the following lines were
loudly applauded, if not by the king, by the gallants, courtiers, and
cavaliers generally:--
“In Holy Land abroad Guy’s spirits roam,
And not in deans and chapters’ lands at home.
His sacred fury menaceth that nation,
Which held Judea under sequestration.
_He_ doth not strike at surplices and tippets,
To bring an olio in of sects and sippets;
But deals his warlike and death-doing blows
Against his Saviour’s and his sov’reign’s foes.”