that, with his place and privileges properly marked in a household,
he was not known in Europe till the period of the Lower Empire. It is
certain that the stern Attila brought professional jesters, as well as
irresistible warriors, with him across the Roman frontiers. When the
ambassadors of Theodosius the Younger were entertained at a banquet by
the Hun, the pomp, gravity, and tremendous drinking were accompanied by
an immoderate amount of foolery. “A Moorish and a Scythian buffoon,”
says Gibbon, “successively excited the mirth of the rude spectators,
by their deformed figure, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd
speeches, and the strange unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the
Gothic, and the Hunnic languages; and the hall resounded with loud and
licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of this intemperate riot,
Attila alone, without a change of countenance, maintained his stern
and inflexible gravity.” We hear, too, of the presence of a Harlequin
at the state ceremonies of the great barbarian and dignified chief. It
is, however, indisputable that the professional, though perhaps not
exactly the court fool, was known in Rome nearly two hundred years
before the period of Attila. To do honour to the accession of Gallienus
(when Valerian was alive, but a captive in Persia), numbers of Persian
prisoners were paraded at the festival in Rome. At this festival,
certain buffoons, we are told, committed an act of audacity for which
the common crowd of spectators had not courage. They crossed over among
the prisoners, and curiously and deliberately scanned the features of
every man there. “Gallienus,” as I have noticed in ‘Monarchs Retired
from Business,’ “expected some mirth, but seeing nothing come of it,
and that the buffoons were retiring with a disconsolate look, he
asked the meaning of the episode. ‘Well,’ said they, with a little
hesitation, ‘we went over to these Persians to see if we might discover
among them the great Valerian, your gracious divinity’s father.’
Gallienus thought this a very sorry joke indeed. He ordered the
buffoons to be bound together, and to be burnt alive in one batch. It
was a very serious matter to joke with, and it was a mortal matter to
joke against, this Emperor of Rome.”
We come to a later illustration in the Baron de Reiffenburg’s book
(‘Le Lundi,’ p. 251), where it is stated that Theophilus, Emperor of
Constantinople, found pleasure in witnessing the follies of a jester,
Danderi, whose spirit of curiosity led him to the discovery that the
Empress Theodora had little images in her oratory to which she prayed.
The fool was not cunning in betraying the secret to the Iconoclast
husband of Theodora. The Empress, more crafty, persuaded Theophilus
that the images were only dolls, for the amusement of their children.
So, at least, says the legend, which does discredit to the most
accomplished of Eastern Emperors, though he had a hatred for trade, and
a love for gaudy toys and jewellery.
Before leaving this part of my subject, let me notice another
Court appendage from which ancient monarchs drew incentives to
mirth,--namely, the Dwarfs. These sometimes rank among the _Moriones_,
and as they formed a portion of the Court household, parents often made
dwarfs of their children, by stunting their growth, in order to obtain
profit by them. The most clever exhibited their little prowess, in
full armour, in mimic fights which sometimes terminated seriously to
the combatants, in wounds of certain gravity. Augustus did not disdain
either to converse, or gossip rather, and play at various games with
them;--or to listen to them chattering and see them playing with each
other. By some writers, this taste of Augustus is denied, but it may
be believed, since of one dwarf, Lucius, he had a statue sculptured,
the eyes of which were of precious stones. That these little personages
sometimes exercised great influence may be seen in a passage of the
sixty-first chapter of the Tiberius (in Suetonius’s “Lives”), wherein
it is said:--“A person of Consular dignity, in his Annals, has this
passage, that at a great feast, where he himself was also present, the
question was put suddenly and loudly to Tiberius by a dwarf, who was
standing in waiting near the table among the dirty buffoons (‘_inter
copreas_’), ‘Why Paconius, who had been condemned for treason, was
still living?’” Suetonius adds indeed that the dwarf was sent to
prison for being impertinent, but also that Tiberius, thus reminded
of the existence of an enemy, sent orders to the Senate, that speedy
care might be taken for his execution. Domitian was the Emperor who
especially delighted in putting arms into the hands of his dwarfs, and
setting them to pink out each other’s little lives. From the Court the
fashion reached wealthy people generally, and Dio, in his ‘History of
Rome,’ tells us of these small personages being kept by Roman ladies,
in whose rooms they ran about all day long, and perfectly naked. The
fashion did not cease till after the accession of Alexander Severus,
who drove from his Court the whole tribe of dwarfs, male and female,
and indeed other equally unseemly appendages to the household of a
grave and dignified prince. They became matters of attraction to the
mob, and being vulgar, are no more heard of in the palaces of kings and
the mansions of nobles, till a later period and in highly civilized
Christian courts. Let us do with them as Alexander Severus did, and
consider now the condition of the more modern Court Fool, though in
doing so we may have to look occasionally to a more remote antiquity
than that at which I close this Chapter. It will perhaps be found that
kings and their fools must, for a time, have had a rather pleasant time
of it. “He,” so ran an old proverb quoted by Seneca, “he who thinks to
achieve every object that enters his head, must either be a born king
or a born fool.” Herein, it is supposed, is intimated the proximity in
degrees of happiness of the respective individuals, who could neither
be called to account for things done nor for words uttered.
THE FOOL BY RIGHT OF OFFICE.
When Erasmus praised Folly, it was only by making Folly advocate her
own cause. After all, her pleading neither recommends her cause, nor
says much for the wit of the pleader. Folly, in the abstract, has
been denounced alike by Scripture and ancient heathen sages. “All
men are fools,” was once a received text. Over the text, some have
laughed, some have cried, and upon it, or its equivalent, divines
have preached sermons now mirthful now melancholy. “If I wish to
look at a fool,” says Seneca modestly, “I have not far to go. I have
only to look in a mirror.” A sharper saying still was once uttered
by Rhodius, a physician of Marburg, who had adorned the front of his
house with full-length portraits of all the lawyers and doctors in the
city, himself in the centre, and all in the dress of the professional
buffoon. “You have a large number of thorough fools painted on your
walls,” once remarked a passer-by. “Ay, ay,” rejoined Rhodius, “but
there are still more who pass this way and look at them.” He was
something of the opinion of Schuppius of Hamburg, who used to remark
that in this world, the fools outnumbered the men; and the Emperor
Maximilian II. delicately expressed a similar sentiment when he
observed that every young fellow must be pulled by fools’ strings,
for seven years, and that if, during that time, he forgot himself
for an instant, he had to re-commence his seven years’ service. This
potentate distinguished the dullest of his counsellors by the title of
the King of Fools. On once addressing a prosy adviser by this title,
the gentleman neatly enough replied, “I wish, with all my heart, I
_were_ King of Fools; I should have a glorious kingdom of it, and your
Imperial Majesty would be among my subjects.”
The “Fool” was not the exclusive possession of a Sovereign King. In
course of time, wealthy individuals prided themselves in their own
jesters, as ladies of the last century did in their black foot-boys
and monkeys. Counts, Cardinals, Barons, and even Bishops had their
professional makers of mirth. In France the _Fou du Roi_ was an
official title, and Champagne is thought by some to have enjoyed the
monopoly of furnishing his Gallic Majesty with a new _Fou du Roi en
titre d’office_, when the old one died. The profession, in most Courts,
survived the name; and the office has been exercised by many gentlemen
who, perhaps, little thought of the duty they were performing. The
office has not seldom been filled, as I have before remarked, by the
Court poet; and the well-known epigram on Cibber, the above fact being
considered, has a happy application.
The term itself however has often been mis-applied. Thus Charles the
_Simple_ was no fool, but a man of extraordinary simplicity of mind
and feeling. So Homer, when he called Telemachus, Νἡπιος, a _fool_, or
“silly,” did not employ it as a term of reproach, but one of endearment.
The term “fool,” “fol,” “fou,” is said to be of Northern origin. Every
language, however, or nearly so, has an original word expressive of the
office.
Some French writers deduce the term Fool,--that is their own word _Fol_
or _Fou_,--from the Game of Chess. In the French game, the pieces which
we call _Bishops_, are called “Fous;” and in anciently carved sets are
represented in the fool’s dress;--hence the saying of Regnier in his
14th Satire:--
“Les Fous sont aux échecs les plus proches des Rois.”
Thomas Hyde, in his ‘De Ludis Orientalibus,’ lib. i. 4, does away with
this derivation by remarking that the chess term _Fou_ or _Fol_ is
derived from the eastern word _Phil_, an “Elephant;”--he adds that two
figures of this animal were always to be seen on the old boards; and
that they had the oblique move of our “bishops.” This is no doubt true.
The line of Regnier, however, indicates the place of the “Fou,” not
only at chess, but at Court--namely, always near the King. The dignity
of the latter, however, was preserved by a simple arrangement, namely,
the ranking as “fool” or of deranged wit, every one who ventured to
utter to his superior a disagreeable truth. As for a closer connection
between kings and fools, it is marked by Rabelais, who observes that
wearers of crown and sceptre are born under the same constellation as
the wearers of cap and bells.
And this office, it is to be observed, was partly in fashion as being
a good sanitary system; “Laugh and grow fat” is a popular saying, with
much philosophy therein. “Laughter,” says the Prussian Professor,
Hufeland, “is one of the most important helps to digestion with which
we are acquainted; and the custom in vogue among our ancestors, of
exciting it by jesters and buffoons, was founded on true medical
principles. Cheerful and joyous companions are invaluable at meals;
obtain such, if possible, for the nourishment received amid mirth and
jollity, is productive of light and healthy blood.”
Walter Scott, when discussing, in a note to ‘Ivanhoe,’ the question
whether Negroes were known in England at the period of that romantic
story, cites an instance, whereby he not only establishes an
affirmative, but proves that the professional jesters were of value
to their patrons in other ways besides exciting their laughter and
improving their digestion. “John of Rampayne,” he tells us, “an
excellent juggler and minstrel” (words implying the professional
jester), “undertook to effect the escape of one Andulf de Bracy by
presenting himself in disguise at the Court of the King where he was
confined.” For this purpose “he stained his hair and his whole body
entirely as black as jet, so that nothing was white but his teeth.
And succeeded in imposing himself on the King, as some Ethiopian
minstrel. He effected by stratagem the escape of the prisoner. Negroes
therefore must have been known in England in the dark ages.” When the
joyous brotherhood could perform services of this nature we need not be
surprised that prelates as well as princes entertained them, and that
the Council of Paris, in 1212, in vain denounced churchmen who were
worldly enough to maintain fools in their households.
The idea that fools were instituted in order to supply the wants of
a free society is, perhaps, not so strictly true as that they were
gradually allowed to go out of fashion because their licensed freedom
of expression was calculated to lead to social liberty. At first, a
sarcasm from an equal may have only been considered as an insult;
“yet conversation,” says Southey, “wanted its pepper and vinegar and
mustard,” and so Fools were allowed to make the seasoning. When freedom
of speech became vulgar (that is, popular or general), the Fool, as
such, began to disappear. The term is sometimes applied in a singular
sense. Thus “Fools’ Pence” was the name given to a tax once levied
on the astrologers of Alexandria, because of the gain of their own
ingenious folly derived from fools.
It is to be observed too that people themselves have been as sovereigns
who possessed their witty fools to teach them lessons of wisdom. Such
servants of the public are to be recognised in Menenius Agrippa, when
he taught the rebellious commons the respective duties of governors
and governed, by repeating to them the apt allegory of “The Belly and
the Members;” and in Themistocles, when, to the over-taxed citizens
who wished to introduce a new element into the government, he wittily
told, how once a fox entangled in a bog, was soon covered by flies
who sucked nearly half the blood out of his body. A hedgehog who came
near, politely offered to drive the flies away. “No, no,” said the
sly yet suffering fox, “if these be driven away who are well-nigh
glutted, there will come a new, hungry set, ten times more greedy
and devouring.” Another sample we have in the case of Sertorius, who
showed how much wit was better than strength, by citing the case of
two men who were set to see who could get off the tail of a horse in
the shortest time. One pulled at the whole tail, and pulled in vain.
The other easily conquered by taking the tail of _his_ horse and
plucking out the hairs, one at a time. There was very much of this
sort of instruction imparted by “fools” to princes, and by enlightened
men to people, when prince and people equally objected to have their
prejudices bruised by the bitter balsam of advice.
In the courts of princes and the houses of wealthy men were to be
found fools of various sorts, according to the taste of the lord.
Some were coarse, rude, licentious fellows. Others were refined of
speech, acute of observation, quick at repartee, of much learning, and
of great memory. Others again were monstrous deformities, or beasts
of stupendous appetite, to contemplate whom was very good mirth to
melancholy lords of evil digestions and twisted minds.
Some princes chose not to be in the fashion at all, and to keep no
retained fool at their Court. Charles Louis, Electoral Prince of the
Rhine, was one of these. “How is it,” asked a friend, “that your serene
greatness does not keep a court fool?” “Well, it’s easily accounted
for,” answered the Prince; “when I am inclined to laugh, I send for a
couple of professors from college, set them at an argument, and laugh
at their folly.”
More than one German prince either feared or despised the “learned
fool.” Flögel tells us of one, near whose castle lived a reverend
pastor who, because he knew a little of the Hebrew grammar, of which
no one in the vicinity knew Aleph from Gimmel, thought himself a
prodigy, and all the rest of the world, asses. He never preached a
sermon without impressing on the bumpkins the advantages of being
acquainted with the Hebrew grammar; and half the lords in the country
went to hear him as fool-general of the district. It happened that, on
one occasion, the chief lord went to the church, to stand godfather to
the schoolmaster’s child; and as the noble gentleman was a bachelor,
it became the duty of the pastor, according to custom, to examine him
as to his religious principles. We have all heard of the too-polite
English vicar, who, churching a countess, said, “Lord, save this
_lady_, thy servant;” and of his equally civil clerk, who, not to be
outdone in politeness, responded, “Who putteth her ladyship’s trust in
thee!” It was some such courtesy that was paid by the pastor to his
lord. He would not, as with common peasants, try him in the Catechism,
but inquired, with a sort of dignified familiarity, “Young Sir, may I
ask you, what you are?”
“Certainly,” said the noble godfather; “I am a fool!”
“Oh fie!” whispered the pastor; adding aloud, “I mean, what is your
belief?”
“Well, my belief is that you are as great a fool as I am.”
“Oh, nonsense!” exclaimed the pastor, who remembered his knowledge of
the Hebrew grammar; “that cannot be.”
“Ay, but it is so,” said the noble catechumen. “The biggest fools are
always the last to acknowledge the fact.”
And thereat, all the grand and the common people present burst into
a loud laugh; and the courteous godfather shook them again by the
observation, that no fool at Court was ever half so pleasant a fool, as
a fool in a cassock!
The Court, however, would seem to have had the advantage, for there, it
was popularly said, were always to be found two fools,--of whom, the
Prince treated one just as he pleased; and the other treated the Prince
just as it pleased him.
Some writer, since Epictetus, who was among the first to call man
the solitary laughing animal, has remarked that “brutes never make
themselves ridiculous; that is the peculiar prerogative of man. The
former, in their strangest vagaries, act according to nature; while
the latter, in trying to go beyond her, render themselves contemptible
in the eyes of others, just in proportion as they excel in their own.”
Notwithstanding this, the practice of Wit and Jesting was once no
unprofitable profession. The profession changed, and the practice was
modified. Professor Miller, in his ‘Historical View of the English
Government,’ comes to the conclusion that jesters and the ludicrous
pastimes of former ages were exploded “by the higher advances of
civilization and refinement,” which contributed also, he thinks, “to
weaken the propensity to every species of humorous exhibition.” But, he
adds, “though the circumstances and manners of a polished nation are
_adverse_ to the cultivation of humour, they are peculiarly calculated
to promote the circulation and improvement of wit.” The full passage
may be found quoted in Sydney Smith’s ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy,’
in one of which he combats the Professor’s assertion, by maintaining
that as civilization improves the mind, true humour is better
appreciated under a high than under a low degree of civilization. Idle
and illiterate nobles under the latter, could enjoy the coarse jokes
and tumbles of the professional jester, but idle people who are also
intellectual people “must either be amused or expire with gaping.” The
humour that will be acceptable to these civilized yawners must be,
we are told, “of a different complexion from what would pass current
in more barbarous times; it must be the humour of the mind, not the
humour of the body. It must be devoid of every shade of buffoonery
and grimace, and managed with a great degree of delicacy and skill.
Civilization improves the humour, but I can hardly allow that it
diminishes it. I am strongly inclined to think there will be more
humour, more agreeable raillery, and more facetious remark displayed
between seven and ten o’clock this evening, in the innumerable dinners
which are to be eaten by civilized people in this vast city, than
ten months could have produced in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth or
Henry VII.” This is very high authority, and even to express a doubt
of it may seem justly to expose him who entertains the doubt, to a
charge of presumption. Let the great men of the respective periods
be reckoned, and it could hardly be proved that the “Table Talk” of
the age of Elizabeth was not as brilliant as that of her cherished
successor, Victoria. Take, for instance, the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
when “Fools” had not yet disappeared from Court, and I think it will
be conceded that at the Cabinet or general dinners of such Prime
Ministers as Bacon, Burleigh, or Sackville, the company was likely to
be as good, the wit as genial, and the humour as genuine, as at any of
the banquets,--Cabinet, general, or “fish dinner” at Greenwich,--which
have been presided over by the Victoria Premiers, Melbourne, Peel, or
Russell, Derby, Aberdeen, or Palmerston. Then, as for the better taste
of our higher civilization, it is not favourably illustrated in the
national love for Christmas pantomimes, the Fool’s portion of which
has neither wit nor decency, but is dull, dreary, and disgusting; but
which seems, nevertheless, to be as generally venerated by this highly
polished nation, as the horrid Bel and the hideous Dragon were by the
elegant Babylonians.
About the middle of the sixteenth century, the favour which official
jesters enjoyed at Court and in noble houses,--far beyond that granted
to more worthy men,--excited the disapprobation of many observant
commentators. There was then no better way of amusing an aristocratic
company on a dull evening, in a dreary castle, than by having the fool
into the hall, and allowing him full license to attack old and young,
married and single, lovers and enemies. Sir Cockscomb delighted in
scandal, and he sometimes, nay very often, told stories which made the
matrons look down at the keys hanging from their girdles, the maidens
hide their faces as best they could, and the noble gentlemen laugh
loudly and fling commendations at the jester.
Some of this gentry, on whom their uncultivated betters depended
for amusement, appear to have been a species of mountebanks, often
performing tricks which are only now accomplished by parti-coloured
“artists” in equestrian circles. The fool who could most wonderfully
distort his body, squint most horribly, turn his face to his back, and
bend himself as if he were made of nothing but one wonderful series of
joints,--such a fool was accounted next in merit to his witty cousin.
And, if the fool pleased everybody,--on the other hand, it was
necessary that everybody should please the fool, at least if he had
business that he wished should prosper with the fool’s master. Access
to the latter was chiefly to be had through Sir Knave, a word from whom
was often most effective in bringing about conclusions. The fool often
sat near his patron at table when philosophers stood humbly in the
background, and courtiers laughed servilely at the jokes, good or bad,
made by “Cap-and-bells” at their expense.
At Courts where several fools were retained, the master of his company
felt as much above his followers as an old Drury tragedian above a
Dunstable actor. He strutted like a peacock, and thought himself an
elephant, when he was only an ass. There was great diversity, however,
among them. Ordinarily, a clever lord preferred a clever fool, and
the dull lord, who could neither read nor write, found the same sort
of retainer a necessity. Thus the fool of merit, according to his
profession, was the ablest man at Court; and his superiors in rank were
his inferiors in intellect. As Swift remarks, “In Comedy, the best
actor plays the part of the droll, while some second rogue is made the
hero or fine gentleman. So, in this farce of life, wise men pass their
time in mirth, while fools only are serious.”
Greatly respected as was the privilege of the fool to speak the truth
on all occasions, whoever might wince under it, the unrestrained use of
such a privilege often brought the merry speaker in danger of cudgel
or dagger. There is a story of a fool at a continental Court, in early
days, who stirred up all the wrath that could be contained in the
heart of the Lord Chamberlain, by so exact an imitation of his voice,
and so sarcastic a description of his character, as to excite roars
of laughter in every soul in the banqueting room, from the sovereign
beneath the daïs to the scullion at the door, waiting for the dirty
plates. The angry Chamberlain encountered Sir Fool an hour afterwards,
when he communicated to the latter his intention, at fitting
opportunity, to see if a few inches of his poniard could not stop the
loquacious folly of the other for ever. The merry-andrew flew to his
princely master, and sought protection for his life.
“Be of good heart, merry cock!” said the prince; “if the Chamberlain
dares run his dagger into your throat, _his_ throat shall be in a
halter the day after. I will hang him as high as Haman.”
“Ah, father!” cried the jester, “_the day after_ has but promise of
sorry consolation in it. He may thrust his knife between my ribs
tomorrow;--and couldn’t you hang him the day before?”[B]