CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICARD.
After Italy, England,--who has ever trod in her footsteps, and at length
outstript her in the race of intellect,--was the next to produce a great
and prevailing genius in poetry, a master-spirit, whom no change of
customs, manners, or language, can render wholly obsolete; and who was
destined, like the rest of his tribe, to bow before the influence of
woman, to toil in her praise, and soar by her inspiration.
Seven years after the death of Dante, Chaucer was born, and he was
twenty-four years younger than Petrarch, whom he met at Padua in 1373;
this meeting between the two great poets was memorable in itself, and
yet more interesting for having first introduced into the English
language that beautiful monument to the virtue of women,--the story of
Griselda.
Boccaccio had lately sent to his friend the MS. of the Decamerone, of
which it is the concluding tale: the tender fancy of Petrarch, refined
by a forty years' attachment to a gentle and elegant female, passed over
what was vicious and blameable, or only recommended by the wit and the
style, and fixed with delight on the tale of Griselda; so beautiful in
itself, and so honourable to the sex whom he had poetically deified in
the person of one lovely woman. He amused his leisure hours in
translating it into Latin, and having finished his version, he placed it
in the hands of a citizen of Padua, and desired him to read it aloud.
His friend accordingly began; but as he proceeded, the overpowering
pathos of the story so affected him, that he was obliged to stop; he
began again, but was unable to proceed; the gathering tears blinded
him, and choked his voice, and he threw down the manuscript. This
incident, which Petrarch himself relates in a letter to Boccaccio,
occurred about the period when Chaucer passed from Genoa to Padua to
visit the poet and lover of Laura--
Quel grande, alla cui fama angusto e il mondo.
Petrarch must have regarded the English poet with that wondering,
enthusiastic admiration with which we should now hail a Milton or a
Shakspeare sprung from Otaheite or Nova Zembla; and his heart and soul
being naturally occupied by his latest work, he repeated the experiment
he had before tried on his Paduan friend. The impression which the
Griselda produced upon the vivid, susceptible imagination of Chaucer,
may be judged from his own beautiful version of it in the Canterbury
Tales; where the barbarity and improbability of the incidents are so
redeemed by the pervading truth and purity and tenderness of the
sentiment, that I suppose it never was perused for the first time
without tears. Chaucer, as if proud of his interview with Petrarch, and
anxious to publish it, is careful to tell us that he did not derive the
story from Boccaccio, but that it was
Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk,
As proved by his wordes and his work;
Francis Petrark, the Laureat Poete;
which is also proved by internal evidence.
Chaucer so far resembled Petrarch, that, like him, he was at once poet,
scholar, courtier, statesman, philosopher, and man of the world; but
considered merely as poets, they were the very antipodes of each other.
The genius of Dante has been compared to a Gothic cathedral, vast and
lofty, and dark and irregular. In the same spirit, Petrarch may be
likened to a classical and elegant Greek temple, rising aloft in its
fair and faultless proportions, and compacted of the purest Parian
marble; while Chaucer is like the far-spreading and picturesque palace
of the Alhambra, with its hundred chambers, all variously decorated,
and rich with barbaric pomp and gold: he is famed rather as the animated
painter of character, and manners, and external nature, than the poet of
love and sentiment; and yet no writer, Shakspeare always excepted, (and
perhaps Spenser) contains so many beautiful and tender passages relating
to, or inspired by, women. He lived, it is true, in rude times, times
strangely deficient in good taste and decorum; but when all the
institutions of chivalry, under the most chivalrous of our kings and
princes,[45] were at their height in England. As a poet, Chaucer was
enlisted into the service of three of the most illustrious, most
beautiful, and most accomplished women of that age--Philippa, the
high-hearted and generous Queen of Edward the Third; the Lady Blanche of
Lancaster, first wife of John of Gaunt; and the lovely Anne of Bohemia,
the Queen of Richard the Second;[46] for whom, and at whose command, he
wrote his "Legende of Gode Women," as some amends for the scandal he had
spoken of us in other places. The Countess of Essex, the Countess of
Pembroke, and that beautiful Lady Salisbury, the ancestress of the
Montagu family, whose famous mischance gave rise to the Order of the
Garter, were also among Chaucer's patronesses. But the most
distinguished of all, and the favourite subject of his poetry, was the
Duchess Blanche. The manner in which he has contrived to celebrate his
own loves and individual feelings with those of Blanche and her royal
suitor, has given additional interest to both, and has enabled his
commentators to fix with tolerable certainty the name and rank of the
object of his love, as well as the date and circumstances of his
attachment.
In the earliest of Chaucer's poems, "The COURT OF LOVE," he describes
himself as enamoured of a fair mistress, whom in the style of the time,
he calls Rosial, and himself Philogenet: the lady is described as
"sprung of noble race and high," with "angel visage," "golden hair," and
eyes orient and bright, with figure "sharply slender,"
So that from the head unto the foot all is sweet womanhead,
and arrayed in a vest of green, with her tresses braided with silk and
gold. She treats him at first with disdain, and the Poet swoons away at
her feet: satisfied by this convincing proof of his sincerity, she is
induced to accept his homage, and becomes his "liege ladye," and the
sovereign of his thoughts. In this poem, which is extremely wild, and
has come down to us in an imperfect state, Chaucer quaintly admonishes
all lovers, that an absolute faith in the perfection of their
mistresses, and obedience to her slightest caprice, are among the first
of duties; that they must in all cases believe their ladye faultless;
that,
In every thing she doth but as she should.
Construe the best, believe no tales new,
For many a lie is told that seem'th full true;
But think that she, so bounteous and so fair,
Could not be false; imagine this alway.
....*....*....*....*
And tho' thou seest a fault right at thine eye,
Excuse it quick, and glose it prettily.[47]
Nor are they to presume on their own worthiness, nor to imagine it
possible they can earn
By right, her mercie, nor of equity,
But of her grace and womanly pitye.[47]
There is, however, no authority for supposing that at the time this poem
was written, Chaucer really aspired to the hand of any lady of superior
birth, or was very seriously in love; he was then about nineteen, and
had probably selected some fair one, according to the custom of his age,
to be his "fancy's queen," and in the same spirit of poetical
gallantry, he writes to do her honour; he says himself,
My intent and all my busie care
Is for to write this treatise as I can,
Unto my ladye, stable, true, and sure;
Faithful and kind sith firste that she began
Me to accept in service as her man;
To her be all the pleasures of this book,
That, when her like, she may it rede and look.[48]
Mixed up with all this gallantry and refinement are some passages
inconceivably absurd and gross; but such were those times,--at once rude
and magnificent--an odd mixture of cloth of frieze and cloth of gold!
The "Parliament of Birds," entitled in many editions, the "_Assembly of
Fowls_," celebrates allegorically the courtship of John of Gaunt and
Blanche of Lancaster.
Blanche, as the greatest heiress of England, with a duchy for her
portion, could not fail to be surrounded by pretenders to her hand; but,
after a year of probation, she decided in favour of John of Gaunt, who
thus became Duke of Lancaster in right of his bride. This youthful and
princely pair were then about nineteen.
The "Parliament of Birds" being written in 1358, when Blanche had
postponed her choice for a year, has fixed the date of Chaucer's
attachment to the lady he afterwards married; for, here he describes
himself as one who had not yet felt the full power of love--
For albeit that I know not love indeed,
Ne wot how that he quitteth folks their hire,
Yet happeth me full oft in books to read
Of his miracles.----
But the time was come when the poet, now in his thirty-second year, was
destined to feel, that a strong attachment for a deserving object--for
one who will not be obtained unsought, "was no sport," as he expresses
it, but
Smart and sorrow, and great heavinesse.
During the period of trial which Lady Blanche had inflicted on her
lover, it was Chaucer's fate to fall in love in sad earnest.--The object
of this passion, too beautifully and unaffectedly described not to be
genuine, was Philippa Picard de Rouet, the daughter of a knight of
Hainault, and a favourite attendant of Queen Philippa. Her elder sister
Catherine, was at the same time maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche.
Both these sisters were distinguished at Court for their beauty and
accomplishments, and were the friends and companions of the Princesses
they served: and both are singularly interesting from their connection,
political and poetical, with English history and literature.
Philippa Picard is one of the principal personages in the poem entitled
"Chaucer's Dream," which is a kind of epithalamium celebrating the
marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche, which took place at
Reading, May 19, 1359. It is a wild, fanciful vision of fairy-land and
enchantments, of which I cannot attempt to give an analysis. In the
opening lines, written about twelve months after the "Parliament of
Birds," we find Chaucer in deep love according to all its forms. He is
lying awake,
About such hour as lovers weep
And cry after their lady's grace,
thinking on his mistress--all her goodness and all her sweetness, and
marvelling how heaven had formed her so exceeding fair,
And in so litel space
Made such a body and such a face;
So great beauty, and such features,
More than be in other creatures!
He falls into a dream as usual, and in the conclusion fancies himself
present at the splendid festivities which took place at the marriage of
his patron. The ladye of his affection is described as the beloved
friend and companion of the bride. She is sent to grace the marriage
ceremony with her presence; and Chaucer seizes the occasion to plead his
suit for love and mercy. Then the Prince, the Queen, and all the rest of
the Court, unite in conjuring the lady to have pity on his pain, and
recompence his truth; she smiles, and with a pretty hesitation at last
consents.
Sith his will and yours are one,
Contrary in me shall be none.
They are married: the ladies and the knights wish them
----Heart's pleasance,
In joy and health continuance!
The minstrels strike up,--the multitude send forth a shout; and in the
midst of these joyous and triumphant sounds, and in the troubled
exultation of his own heart, the sleeper bounds from his couch,--
Wening to have been at the feast,
and wakes to find it all a dream. He looks around for the gorgeous
marriage-feast, and instead of the throng of knights and ladies gay, he
sees nothing but the figures staring at him from the tapestry.
On the walls old portraiture
Of horsemen, of hawks and hounds,
And hurt deer all full of wounds;
Some like torn, some hurt with shot;
And as my dream was, _that_ was not![49]
He is plunged in grief to find himself thus reft of all his visionary
joys, and prays to sleep again, and dream thus for aye, or at least "a
thousand years and ten."
Lo, here my bliss!--lo, here my pain!
Which to my ladye I complain,
And grace and mercy of her requere,
To end my woe and all my fear;
And me accept for her service--
That of my dream, the substance
Might turnen, once, to cognisance.[50]
And the whole concludes with a very tender "envoi," expressly addressed
to Philippa, although the poem was written in honour of his patrons, the
Duke and Duchess. It has been well observed, that nothing can be more
delicate and ingenious than the manner in which Chaucer has complimented
his mistress, and ventured to shadow forth his own hopes and desires;
confessing, at the same time, that they were built on air and ended in a
dream: it may be added, that nothing can be more picturesque and
beautiful, and vigorous, than some of the descriptive parts of this
poem.
There is no reason to suppose that Philippa was absolutely deaf to the
suit, or insensible to the fame and talents of her poet-lover. The delay
which took place was from a cause honourable to her character and her
heart; it arose from the declining health of her royal mistress, to whom
she was most strongly and gratefully attached, and whose noble qualities
deserved all her affection. It appears, from a comparison of dates, that
Chaucer endured a suspense of more than nine years, during which he was
a constant and fervent suitor for his ladye's grace. In this interval he
translated the Romaunt of the Rose, the most famous poetical work of the
middle ages. He addressed it to his mistress; and it is remarkable that
a very elaborate and cynical satire on women, which occurs in the
original French, is entirely omitted by Chaucer in his version; perhaps
because it would have been a profanation to her who then ruled his
heart: on other occasions he showed no such forbearance.
In the year 1369, Chaucer lost his amiable patroness, the Duchess
Blanche; she died in her thirtieth year; he lamented her death in a long
poem, entitled the "Booke of the Duchesse." The truth of the story, the
virtues, the charms, and the youth of the Princess, the grief of her
husband, and the simplicity and beauty of many passages, render this one
of the most interesting and striking of all Chaucer's works.
The description of Blanche, in the "Booke of the Duchesse," shows how
trifling is the difference between a perfect female character in the
thirteenth century, and what would now be considered as such. It is a
very lively and animated picture. Her golden hair and laughing eyes; her
skill in dancing, and her sweet carolling; her "goodly and friendly
speech;" her debonair looks; her gaiety, that was still "so womanly;"
her indifference to general admiration; her countenance, "that was so
simple and so benigne," contrasted with her high-spirited modesty and
consciousness of lofty birth,
No living wight might do her shame,
_She loved so well her own name_;
her disdain of that coquetterie which holds men "in balance,"
By half-word or by countenance;
her wit, "without malice, and ever set upon gladnesse;" and her
goodness, which the Poet, with a nice discrimination of female virtue,
distinguishes from mere ignorance of evil--for though in all her actions
was perfect innocence, he adds,
I say not that she had no knowing
What harm was; for, else, she
Had known no good--so thinketh me;
are all beautifully and happily set forth, and are charms so appropriate
to woman, as _woman_, that no change of fashion or lapse of ages can
alter their effect. Time
"Can draw no lines there with his antique pen."
But afterwards follows a trait peculiarly characteristic of the women of
that chivalrous period. She was not, says Chaucer, one of those ladies
who send their lovers off
To Walachie,
To Prussia, and to Tartary,
To Alexandria, ne Turkie;
and on other bootless errands, by way of displaying their power.
She used no such _knacks small_.
That is, she was superior to such frivolous tricks.
John of Gaunt, who is the principal speaker and chief mourner in the
poem, gives a history of his courtship, and tells with what mixture of
fear and awe, he then "right young," approached the lovely heiress of
Lancaster: but bethinking him that Heaven could never have formed in any
creature so great beauty and bounty "withouten mercie,"--in that hope he
makes his confession of love; and he goes on to tell us, with exquisite
_naivete_,--
I wot not well how I began,
Full evil rehearse it, I can:
....*....*....*....*
For many a word I overskipt
In telling my tale--for pure fear,
Lest that my words misconstrued were.
Softly, and quaking for pure dred,
And shame,--
Full oft I wax'd both pale and red;
I durst not once look her on,
For wit, manner, and all was gone;
I said, "Mercie, sweet!"--and no more.
Then his anguish at her first rejection, and his rapture when, at last,
he wins from his ladye
The noble gift of her mercie;
his domestic happiness--his loss, and his regrets, are all told with the
same truth, simplicity, and profound feeling. For such passages and such
pictures as these, Chaucer will still be read, triumphant as the poet of
nature, over the rust and dust of ages, and all the difficulties of
antique style and obsolete spelling; which last, however, though
repulsive, is only a difficulty to the eye, and easily overcome.
To return to Chaucer's own love.--In the opening lines of the "Booke of
the Duchesse," he describes himself as wasted with his "eight years'
sicknesse," alluding to his long courtship of the coy Philippa:
I have great wonder, by this light,
How that I live!--for day nor night
I may not sleepen well-nigh nought:
I have so many an idle thought
Purely for the default of sleep;
That, by my troth, I take no keep
Of nothing--how it com'th or go'th,
To me is nothing liefe or lothe;[51]
All is equal good to me,
Joy or sorrow--whereso it be;
For I have feeling in no thing,
But am, as 'twere, a mazed[52] thing,
All day in point to fall adown
For sorrowful imagination, &c.
In the same year with the Duchess died the good Queen of Edward the
Third; and Philippa Picard being thus sadly released from her attendance
on her mistress, a few months afterwards married Chaucer, then in his
forty-second year.
In consequence of her good service, Philippa had a pension for her life;
and I regret that little more is known concerning her: but it should
seem that she was a good and tender wife, and that long years of wedded
life did not weaken her husband's attachment for her; for she
accompanied Chaucer when he was exiled, about fifteen years after his
marriage, though every motive of prudence and selfishness, on both
sides, would then have induced a separation.[53] Neither was the poet
likely to be easily satisfied on the score of conjugal obedience; he was
rather _exigeant_ and despotic, if we may trust his own description of a
perfect wife. The chivalrous and poetical lover was the slave of his
mistress; but once married, it is all _vice versa_.
She saith not once _nay_, when he saith _yea_
"Do this," saith he, "all ready, Sir," saith she!
The precise date of Philippa's death is not known, but it took place
some years before that of her husband. Their residence at the time of
their marriage, was a small stone building, near the entrance of
Woodstock Park; it had been given to Chaucer by Edward the Third;
afterwards they resided principally at Donnington Castle, that fine and
striking ruin, which must be remembered by all who have travelled the
Newberry road. In the domain attached to this castle were three oaks of
remarkable size and beauty, to which Chaucer gave the names of the
Queen's oak, the King's oak, and Chaucer's oak; these venerable trees
were felled in Evelyn's time, and are commemorated in his Sylva, as
among the noblest of their species.
Philippa's eldest son, Thomas Chaucer, had a daughter, Alice, who became
the wife of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, the famous favourite of
Margaret of Anjou. The grandson of Alice Chaucer, by the Duke of
Suffolk, John Earl of Lincoln, was declared heir to the crown by Richard
the Third;[54] and had the issue of the battle of Bosworth been
different, would undoubtedly have ascended the throne of England;--as it
was, the lineage of Chaucer was extinguished on a scaffold.
The fate of Catherine Picard de Rouet, the sister of Chaucer's wife, was
still more remarkable,--she was destined to be the mother of a line of
kings.
She had been _domicella_, or maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche,
after whose death, the infant children of the Princess were committed to
her care.[55] In this situation she won the heart of their father, the
Duke of Lancaster, who on the death of his second wife, Constance of
Castile, married Catherine, and his children by her were solemnly
legitimatized. The conduct of Catherine, except in one instance, had
been irreproachable: her humility, her prudence, and her various
accomplishments, not only reconciled the royal family and the people to
her marriage, but added lustre to her rank: and when Richard the Second
married Isabella of France, the young Queen, then only nine years old,
was placed under the especial care and tuition of the Duchess of
Lancaster.
One of the grand-daughters of Catherine, Lady Jane Beaufort, had the
singular fortune of becoming at once the inspiration and the love of a
great poet, the queen of an accomplished monarch, and the common
ancestress of all the sovereigns of England since the days of
Elizabeth.[56]
Never, perhaps, was the influence of woman on a poetic temperament more
beautifully illustrated, than in the story of James the First of
Scotland, and Lady Jane Beaufort. It has been so elegantly told by
Washington Irving in the Sketch-Book, that it is only necessary to refer
to it.--James, while a prisoner, was confined in Windsor Castle, and
immediately under his window there was a fair garden, in which the Lady
Jane was accustomed to walk with her attendants, distinguished above
them all by her beauty and dignity, even more than by her state and the
richness of her attire. The young monarch beheld her accidentally, his
imagination was fired, his heart captivated, and from that moment his
prison was no longer a dungeon, but a palace of light and love. As he
was the best poet and musician of his time, he composed songs in her
praise, set them to music, and sang them to his lute. He also wrote the
history of his love, with all its circumstances, in a long poem[57]
still extant; and though the language be now obsolete, it is described,
by those who have studied it, as not only full of beauties both of
sentiment and expression, but unpolluted by a single thought or allusion
which the most refined age, or the most fastidious delicacy, could
reject;--a singular distinction, when we consider that James's only
models must have been Gower and Chaucer, to whom no such praise is due:
we must rather suppose that he was no imitator, but that he owed his
inspiration to modest and queenly beauty, and to the genuine tenderness
of his own heart. His description of the fair apparition who came to
bless his solitary hours, is so minute and peculiar, that it must have
been drawn from the life:--the net of pearls, in which her light tresses
were gathered up; the chain of fine-wrought gold about her neck; the
heart-shaped ruby suspended from it, which glowed on her snowy bosom
like a spark of fire; her white vest looped up to facilitate her
movements; her graceful damsels who followed at a respectful distance;
and her little dog gambolling round her with its collar of silver
bells,--these, and other picturesque circumstances, were all noted in
the lover's memory, and have been recorded by the poet's verse. And he
sums up her perfections thus:
In her was youth, beauty, and numble port,
Bountee, richesse, and womanly feature.
God better knows than my pen can report,
Wisdom, largesse,[58] estate,[59] and cunning[60] sure:
In every point so guided her measure,
In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,
That nature could no more her child advance.
The account of his own feelings as she disappears from his charmed
gaze,--his lingering at the window of his tower, till Phoebus
Had bid farewell to every leaf and flower,--
then resting his head pensively on the cold stone, and the vision which
steals upon his half-waking, half-dreaming fancy, and shadows forth the
happy issue of his love,--are all conceived in the most lively manner.
It is judged from internal evidence, that this poem must have been
finished after his marriage, since he intimates that he is blessed in
the possession of her he loved, and that the fair vision of his solitary
dungeon is realised.
When the King of Scots was released, he wooed and won openly, and as a
monarch, the woman he had adored in secret. The marriage was solemnized
in 1423, and he carried Lady Jane to Scotland where she was crowned soon
after his bride and queen.
How well she merited, and how deeply she repaid the love of her devoted
and all-accomplished husband, is told in history. When James was
surprised and murdered by some of his factious barons, his queen threw
herself between him and the daggers of the assassins, received many of
the wounds aimed at his heart, nor could they complete their purpose
till they had dragged her by force from his arms. She deserved to be a
poet's queen and love! These are the souls, the deeds which inspire
poetry,--or rather which are themselves poetry, its principle and its
essence. It was on this occasion that Catherine Douglas, one of the
queen's attendants, thrust her arm into the stanchion of the door to
serve the purpose of a bolt, and held it there till the savage
assailants forced their way by shattering the frail defence. What times
were those!--alas! the love of women, and the barbarity of men!
FOOTNOTES:
[45] Edward III. and the Black Prince.
[46] She was popularly distinguished as the "_good_ Queen Anne," and as
dear to her husband as to her people. Richard, who with many and fatal
faults, really possessed sensibility and strong domestic affections with
which Shakspeare has so finely pourtrayed him, was passionately devoted
to his amiable wife. She died young, at the Palace of Sheen; and when
Richard afterwards visited the scene of his loss, he solemnly cursed it
in his anguish, and commanded it to be razed to the ground, which was
done. One of our kings afterwards rebuilt it. I think Henry the VIIth.
[47] Court of Love, v. 369-412.
[48] Court of Love, v. 36-42.
[49] _i. e._ the tapestry, like my dream, was a representation, not a
reality.
[50] Chaucer's Dreame, v. 2185. "Here also is showed Chaucer's match
with a certain gentlewoman, who was so well liked and loved of the Lady
Blanche and her Lord (as Chaucer himself also was), that gladly they
concluded a marriage between them."--_Arguments to Chaucer's Works.
Edit._ 1597.
[51] To me there is nothing dear or hateful, every thing is indifferent.
[52] _Mazed_,--distracted.
[53] Godwin's Life of Chaucer, v. iii. p. 5.
[54] In right of his mother, Elizabeth Plantagenet, eldest sister of
Edward IV.
[55] These were Henry of Lancaster, afterwards Henry IV. Philippa, Queen
of Portugal, and Elizabeth, Duchess of Exeter.
[56] Catherine, Duchess of Lancaster, had three sons: the second was the
famous Cardinal Beaufort; the eldest (created Earl of Somerset,) was
grandfather to Henry the Seventh, and consequently ancestor to the whole
race of Tudor: thus from the sister of Chaucer's wife are descended all
the English sovereigns, from the fifteenth century; and likewise the
present family of Somerset, Dukes of Beaufort.
[57] "The King's Quhair," (i.e. _cahier_ or book.)
[58] Liberality.
[59] Dignity.
[60] Knowledge and discretion.