ALDGATE TOWER
"For though the love of books, in a cleric, be honourable in the very
nature of the case, yet it hath sorely exposed us to the adverse
judgment of many folk, to whom we became an object of wonder, and were
blamed at one time for greediness in that matter, or again for seeming
vanity, or again, for intemperate delight in letters; yet we cared no
more for their revilings than for the barking of curs, contented with
His testimony alone to Whom it pertaineth to try the hearts and
reins.... Yet perchance they would have praised and been kindly
affected towards us if we had spent our time in hunting wild beasts,
in playing at dice, or in courting ladies' favours."--The
"Philobiblon" of Bp. R. de Bury (1287-1345).
Even in the 14th century a man's house was more truly his castle in
England than in any country of equal population; and Chaucer was
particularly fortunate in having secured a city castle for his house. The
records show that such leases were commonly granted by the authorities to
men of influence and good position in the City; in 1367 the Black Prince
specially begged the Mayor that Thomas de Kent might have Cripplegate; and
we have curious evidence of the keen competition for Aldgate. The Mayor
and Aldermen granted to Chaucer in 1374 "the whole dwelling-house above
Aldgate Gate, with the chambers thereon built and a certain cellar beneath
the said gate, on the eastern side thereof, together with all its
appurtenances, for the lifetime of the said Geoffrey." There was no rent,
though of course Chaucer had to keep it in repair; in an earlier lease of
1354, the tenant had paid 13_s._ 4_d._ a year besides repairs. The City
promised to keep no prisoners in the tower during Chaucer's tenancy,[109]
but naturally stipulated that they might take possession of their gate
when necessary for the defence of the City. In 1386, as we have already
seen and shall see more fully hereafter, there was a scare of invasion so
serious that the authorities can scarcely have failed to take the gates
into their own hands for a while. Though this need not necessarily have
ended Chaucer's tenancy altogether, yet he must in fact have given it up
then, if not earlier; and a Common Council meeting held on October 4
resolved to grant no such leases in future "by reason of divers damages
that have befallen the said city, through grants made to many persons, as
well of the Gates and the dwelling-houses above them, as of the gardens
and vacant places adjoining the walls, gates, and fosses of the said city,
whereby great and divers mischiefs may readily hereafter ensue." Yet _on
the very next day_ (and this is our first notice of the end of Chaucer's
tenancy) a fresh lease of Aldgate tower and house was granted to Chaucer's
friend Richard Forster by another friend of the poet's, Nicholas Brembre,
who was then Mayor. This may very likely have been a pre-arranged job
among the three friends; but the flagrant violation of the law may well
seem startling even to those who have realized the frequent contrasts
between medieval theory and medieval practice; and after this we are quite
prepared for Riley's footnote, "Within a very short period after this
enactment was made, it came to be utterly disregarded."[110] The whole
transaction, however, shows clearly that the Aldgate lodging was
considered a prize in its way.
That Chaucer loved it, we know from one of the too rare autobiographical
passages in his poems, describing his shy seclusion even more plainly
than the Host hints at it in the "Canterbury Tales." The "House of Fame"
is a serio-comic poem modelled vaguely on Dante's "Comedia," in which a
golden eagle carries Chaucer up to heaven, and, like Beatrice, plays the
part of Mentor all the while. The poet, who was at first somewhat startled
by the sudden rush through the air, and feared lest he might have been
chosen as an unworthy successor to Enoch and Elias, is presently quieted
by the Eagle's assurance that this temporary apotheosis is his reward as
the Clerk of Love--
Love holdeth it great humbleness,
And virtue eke, that thou wilt make
A-night full oft thy head to ache,
In thy study so thou writest
And ever more of Love enditest.
The Ruler of the Gods, therefore, has taken pity on the poet's lonely
life--
That is, that thou hast no tidings
Of Love's folk, if they be glad,
Nor of nothing elles that God made:
And not only from far countree,
Whence no tiding cometh to thee,
But of thy very neighebores
That dwellen almost at thy doors,
Thou hearest neither that nor this;
For, when thy labour done all is,
And hast y-made thy reckonings,
Instead of rest and newe things
Thou go'st home to thy house anon,
And, all so dumb as any stone,
Thou sittest at another book
Till fully dazed is thy look,
And livest thus as an heremite,
Although thy abstinence is lite.[111] [little
Here we have the central figure of the Aldgate Chamber, but what was the
background? Was his room, as some will have it, such as that to which his
eyes opened in the "Book of the Duchess"?
And sooth to say my chamber was
Full well depainted, and with glass
Were all the windows well y-glazed
Full clear, and not one hole y-crazed, [cracked
That to behold it was great joy;
For wholly all the story of Troy
Was in the glazing y-wrought thus ...
And all the walls with colours fine
Were painted, bothe text and glose, [commentary
And all the Romance of the Rose.
My windows weren shut each one
And through the glass the sunne shone
Upon my bed with brighte beams....
Those lines were written before the Aldgate days; and the hints which can
be gathered from surviving inventories and similar sources make it very
improbable that the poet was lodged with anything like such outward
magnificence. The storied glass and the frescoed wall were far more
probably a reminiscence from Windsor, or from Chaucer's life with one of
the royal dukes; and the furniture of the Aldgate dwelling-house is likely
to have resembled in quantity that which we have seen recorded of Hugh le
Benere, and in quality the similar but more valuable stock of Richard de
Blountesham. (Riley, p. 123.) Richard possessed bedding for three beds to
the total value of fifty shillings and eightpence; his brass pot weighed
sixty-seven pounds; and, over and above his pewter plates, dishes, and
salt-cellars, he possessed "three silver cups, ten shillings in weight."
Three better cups than these, at least, stood in the Chaucer cupboard; for
on New Year's Day, 1380, 1381, and 1382, the accounts of the Duchy of
Lancaster record presents from John of Gaunt to Philippa Chaucer of
silver-gilt cups with covers. The first of these weighed thirty-one
shillings, and cost nearly three pounds; the second and third were
apparently rather more valuable. We must suppose, therefore, that the
Aldgate rooms were handsomely furnished, as a London citizen's rooms went;
but we must beware here of such exaggerations as the genius of William
Morris has popularized. The assumption that the poet knew familiarly
every book from which he quotes has long been exploded; and it is quite as
unsafe to suppose that the artistic glories which he so often describes
formed part of his home life. There were tapestries and stained glass in
churches for every man to see, and in palaces and castles for the
enjoyment of the few; but they become fairly frequent in citizens' houses
only in the century after Chaucer's death; and it was very easy to spend
an income such as his without the aid of artistic extravagance. Froissart,
whose circumstances were so nearly the same, and who, though a priest, was
just as little given to abstinence, confesses to having spent 2000 livres
(or some L8000 modern English money) in twenty-five years, over and above
his fat living of Lestinnes. "And yet I hoard no grain in my barns, I
build no churches, or clocks, or ships, or galleys, or manor-houses. I
spend not my money on furnishing fine rooms.... My chronicles indeed have
cost me a good seven hundred livres, at the least, and the taverners of
Lestinnes have had a good five hundred more."[112] Froissart's confession
introduces a witty poetical plea for fresh contributions; and if Chaucer
had added a couple of similar stanzas to the "Complaint to his Empty
Purse," it is probable that their tenor would have been much the same:
"Books, and the Taverner; and I've had my money's worth from both!"
[Illustration: 1. GROUND PLAN AND SECTION OF THE CLERGY-HOUSE AT
ALFRISTON--A TYPICAL TIMBER HOUSE OF THE 14TH CENTURY. (For the Hall, see
Chaucer's "Miller's Tale")
2. PLAN OF ALDGATE TOWER AS IT WAS IN CHAUCER'S TIME]
Professor Lounsbury ("Studies in Chaucer," chap. v.) has discoursed
exhaustively, and very judicially, on Chaucer's learning; he shows clearly
what books the poet knew only as nodding acquaintances, and how many
others he must at one time have possessed, or at least have had at hand
for serious study; and it would be impertinent to go back here over the
same ground. But Professor Lounsbury is less clear on the subject which
most concerns us here--the average price of books; for the three volumes
which he instances from the King's library were no doubt illuminated, and
he follows Devon in the obvious slip of describing the French Bible as
"written in the _Gaelic_ language." (II., 196; the reference to Devon
should be p. 213, not 218.) But, at the lowest possible estimate, books
were certainly an item which would have swelled any budget seriously in
the 14th century. This was indeed grossly overstated by Robertson and
other writers of a century ago; but Maitland's "Dark Ages," while
correcting their exaggerations, is itself calculated to mislead in the
other direction. A small Bible was cheap at forty shillings, _i.e._ the
equivalent of L30 in modern money; so that the twenty volumes of Aristotle
which Chaucer's Clerk of Oxford had at his bed's head could scarcely have
failed to cost him the value of three average citizens' houses in a great
town.[113] Among all the church dignitaries whose wills are recorded in
Bishop Stafford's Register at Exeter (1395-1419) the largest library
mentioned is only of fourteen volumes. The sixty testators include a Dean,
two Archdeacons, twenty Canons or Prebendaries, thirteen Rectors, six
Vicars, and eighteen layfolk, mostly rich people. The whole sixty
apparently possessed only two Bibles between them, and only one hundred
and thirty-eight books altogether; or, omitting church service-books, only
sixty; _i.e._ exactly one each on an average. Thirteen of the beneficed
clergy were altogether bookless, though several of them possessed the
_baselard_ or dagger which church councils had forbidden in vain for
centuries past; four more had only their Breviary. Of the laity fifteen
were bookless, while three had service-books, one of these being a knight,
who simply bequeathed them as part of the furniture of his private chapel.
Any similar collection of wills and inventories would (I believe) give the
same results, which fully agree with the independent evidence of
contemporary writers. Bishop Richard de Bury (or possibly the
distinguished theologian, Holcot, writing in his name) speaks bitterly of
the neglect of books in the 14th century. Not only (he says) is the ardent
collector ridiculed, but even education is despised, and money rules the
world. Laymen, who do not even care whether books lie straight or upside
down, are utterly unworthy of all communion with them; the secular clergy
neglect them; the monastic clergy (with honourable exceptions among the
friars) pamper their bodies and leave their books amid the dust and
rubbish, till they become "corrupt and abominable, breeding-grounds for
mice, riddled with worm-holes." Even when in use, they have a score of
deadly enemies--dirty and careless readers (whose various peculiarities
the good Bishop describes in language of Biblical directness)--children
who cry for and slobber over the illuminated capitals--and careless or
slovenly servants. But the deadliest of all such enemies is the priest's
concubine, who finds the neglected volume half-hidden under cobwebs, and
barters it for female finery. There is an obvious element of exaggeration
in the good Bishop's satire; but the Oxford Chancellor, Gascoigne, a
century later, speaks equally strongly of the neglect of writing and the
destruction of literature in the monasteries of his time; and there is
abundant official evidence to prove that our ancestors did not atone for
natural disadvantages by any excessive zeal in the multiplication, use, or
preservation of books.[114]
Chaucer was scarcely born when the "Philobiblon" was written; and already
in his day there was a growing number of leisured laymen who did know the
top end of a book from the bottom, and who cared to read and write
something beyond money accounts. Gower, who probably made money as a
London merchant before he became a country squire, was also a well-read
man; but systematic readers were still very rare outside the Universities,
and Mrs. Green writes, even of a later generation of English citizens, "So
far as we know, no trader or burgher possessed a library."[115]
Twenty-nine years after Chaucer's death, the celebrated Whittington did
indeed found a library; yet this was placed not at the Guildhall, to
which he was a considerable benefactor, but in the Greyfriars' convent.
The poet's bookishness would therefore inevitably have made him something
of a recluse, and we have no reason to tax his own description with
exaggeration.
[Illustration: ALDGATE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS AS RECONSTITUTED IN W.
NEWTON'S "LONDON IN THE OLDEN TIME"
12. ST. MICHAEL'S, ALDGATE; 25. BLANCH APPLETON; 26. ST. CATHERINE,
COLEMAN STREET; 27. NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE; 28. PRIOR OF HORNCHURCH'S
LODGING; 29. SARACEN'S HEAD]
London has never been a silent city, but Chaucer enjoyed at least one of
the quietest spots in it. If (as we have every reason to suppose) the
Ordinance of 1345 was far from putting an end to the nuisances which it
indicates, then Chaucer must have heaved a sigh of relief when he had seen
the Custom-House locked up, and turned his back on Spurrier Lane. The
Spurriers were addicted to working after dark for nefarious ends of their
own; "and further, many of the said trade are wandering about all day,
without working at all at their trade; and then, when they have become
drunk and frantic, they take to their work, to the annoyance of the sick
and of all their neighbourhood, as well as by reason of the broils that
arise between them and the strange folks who are dwelling among them. And
then they blow up their fires so vigorously, that their forges begin all
at once to blaze, to the great peril of themselves and of all the
neighbourhood around. And then too, all the neighbours are much in dread
of the sparks, which so vigorously issue forth in all directions from the
mouths of the chimneys in their forges."[116] We may trust that no such
offensive handiwork was carried on round Aldgate, whither the poet would
arrive about five o'clock in the evening, and sit down forthwith to
supper, as the sun began to slant over the open fields. We may hope, at
least, that he was wont to sup at home rather than at those alluring
cook-shops which alternated with wine-taverns along the river bank; and
that, as he "defyed the roast" with his Gascon wine, Philippa sat and
sipped with him from one of time-honoured Lancaster's silver-gilt cups.
Even if we accept the most pessimistic theories of Chaucer's married
life, we need scarcely doubt that the pair sat often together at their
open window in the twilight--
Both of one mind, as married people use,
Quietly, quietly the evening through.
The sun goes down, a common greyness silvers everything; Epping Forest and
the Hampstead heights stand dim against the afterglow. From beneath their
very windows the long road stretches far into the fading landscape; men
and cattle begin to straggle citywards, first slowly, and then with such
haste as their weariness will permit, for the curfew begins to ring out
from Bow steeple.[117] Chaucer himself has painted this twilight scene in
"Troilus and Criseyde," written during this very Aldgate time. The hero
watches all day long, with his friend Pandarus, at one of the gates of
Troy, for had not Criseyde pledged her word to come back on that day at
latest? Every creature crawling along the distant roads gives the lover
fresh hopes and fresh heart-sickness; but it is sorest of all when the
evening shadows leave most to the imagination--
The day go'th fast, and after that com'th eve
And yet came not to Troilus Criseyde.
He looketh forth by hedge, by tree, by greve, [grove
And far his head over the wall he laid ...
"Have here my truth, I see her! Yond she is!
Have up thine eyen, man! May'st thou not see?"
Pandarus answered, "Nay, so mote I the!
All wrong, by God! What say'st thou, man? Where art?
That I see yond is but a fare-cart."
The warden of the gates gan to call
The folk which that without the gates were,
And bade them driven in their beastes all,
Or all the night they musten bleven there; [remain
And far within the night, with many a tear,
This Troilus gan homeward for to ride,
For well he seeth it helpeth nought t' abide.
And far within the night, while the "uncunning porters" sing over their
liquor or snore on their pallets, Chaucer turns and returns the leaves of
Virgil or Ovid, of Dante or the "Romance of the Rose." Does he not also,
to poor Philippa's disgust, "laugh full fast" to himself sometimes over
that witty and ungallant book of satires which contains "of wicked wives
... more legendes and lives than be of goode wives in the Bible"? It is
difficult to escape from this conviction. His "Wife of Bath" cites the
treatises in question too fully and too well to make it probable that
Chaucer wrote from mere memory. Remembering this probability, and the
practical certainty that, like his contemporaries, Chaucer needed to read
aloud for the full comprehension of what he had under his eyes, we shall
then find nothing unexpected in his pretty plain allusions to reprisals.
Sweet as honey in the mouth, his books proved sometimes bitter in the
belly, like that of the Apocalypse. "Late to bed" suits ill with "early to
rise," and the poet hints pretty plainly that an imperious and somewhat
unsympathetic "Awake, Geoffrey!" was often the first word he heard in the
morning. When the Golden Eagle caught the sleeping poet up to heaven--
At the last to me he spake
In mannes voice, and said "Awake!
And be not so aghast, for shame!"
And called me then by my name
And, for I should the better abraid [rouse
Me dreamed, "Awake!" to me he said
Right in the same voice and steven [tone
That useth one I coulde neven; [name
And with that voice, sooth for to say'n
My minde came to me again;
For it was goodly said to me,
So it was never wont to be.
"House of Fame," ii., 47.