an arch-jester. I may notice one, whose very grave is likely soon to
be forgotten. In the old cemetery (belonging to St. Clement’s Danes),
in Portugal-street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, in a grave, the head-stone
of which was during many summers, until recently, regularly embowered
and concealed by sun-flowers, lie the remains of the witty jester,
Joe Miller. There they have been since 1738. The year following,
John Mottley, the author of ‘Peter the Great,’ published a collection
of jests as honest Joe’s, but they were really a collection of
witty things which in his time he had either heard or read, and to
which Mottley appended Miller’s name. The latter died at the age of
fifty-four, the exact age at which departed so recently from among us,
he who held the “consulship of wit,” in England,--Douglas Jerrold. That
Miller was “facetious,” we learn from the inscription above his grave;
that he was witty also, his jest not merely turning on a pun, but on
a chain of ideas, the following will testify. He was once sitting in
the parlour of the Sun Tavern, in Clare-street, or the Black Jack, in
Portsmouth-street, his favourite houses, when a fishwoman passed by,
crying “Buy my soles! buy my maids!”--“Ah, you wicked old creature!”
said Joe to her, “are you not contented to sell your own soul, but you
must sell your maid’s too?”
In the reigns of George II. and his successor, among the men who seem
to have united with other offices, something like the vocation of court
fool, was the son of a Carlisle apothecary, named Bubb, who succeeded
to the estates and adopted the name of his uncle, Doddington; and
who is better known by their conjoined names, than by his subsequent
title of Lord Melcombe. A disappointment in obtaining a peerage, took
him from the ranks of Sir Robert Walpole and George II., to those of
Frederick, Prince of Wales. In the household of the Prince, Bubb,
who lacked neither good qualities nor ability, descended to play the
fool. Horace Walpole tells us that “he submitted to the Prince’s
childish horse-play, being once rolled up in a blanket and trundled
down stairs.” He changed sides more than once; lent and lost money to
the Prince; was laughed at, to his very face, by the King; slept in a
bed canopied with peacocks’ feathers; and kept fools, “a tame booby or
two,” of his own. These were Wyndham, his heir; Sir William Bruton,
keeper of George II.’s privy purse; and Dr. Thompson--“a misanthrope,
a courtier, and a quack,” as Cumberland names them. Thompson appears
to have been the most ignoble of the “monks” who sojourned at “La
Trappe,”--so Doddington called his company and mansion at Hammersmith.
Thompson was ostensibly his medical adviser; but he practised his
profession like a fool, and was treated by his patron as patrons
were wont to treat fools of more audacity than wit. On one occasion,
the Doctor observed Doddington, at breakfast, about to help himself
to muffins. He denounced them as indigestible, and loudly bade the
servant, “Take away those muffins!” “No, no!” said Doddington, pointing
to the Doctor, “take away that ragamuffin!” In this way were “tame
boobies” treated by their patrons, who, themselves, were princes’ fools.
At an earlier period, that, namely, of Louis XIV., we find instances
of noble persons assembling in their houses people of a very inferior
rank, for the purpose of drawing from them something more than
amusement. The Duchess de la Ferté was one of these. This exalted
personage was in the habit of inviting all her tradespeople to her
house. She entertained herself with their peculiarities at table, and
then set them down to play with her at lansquenet, or some similar
game. Madame de Staël, who tells the story in her Memoirs, adds, “The
Duchess would sometimes whisper to me, ‘I am cheating the fellows, but
Lord! serve them right! Don’t I know how they rob me daily?’” So that
the Duchess made her fools pay their expenses, and her own.
In the reign of George III., although the fool did not exist as a
professional man, we have an instance of a professional man enacting
the fool, with good intent and profitable purpose. The person alluded
to is the learned and laughter-loving Dr. William Battie, who was a
well-reputed London physician in portions of the reigns of George II.
and his successor. He was celebrated for his treatment of the insane;
and is thus described in the ‘_Battiad_,’ a poem of which he was the
hero.
“First Battas came, deep read in worldly art,
Whose tongue ne’er knew the secrets of his heart.
In mischief mighty, though but mean of size,
And, like the Tempter, ever in disguise.
See him with aspect grave and gentle tread,
By slow degrees approach the sickly bed;
Then, at his club, behold him alter’d soon,
The solemn doctor turns a low buffoon.”
But Battie could play the fool, even to better purpose by the sick
bed, than the buffoon at his club. It is told of him that he had a
young male patient whom obstinate quinsy threatened with almost instant
suffocation. Battie had tried every remedy but his foolery, and at last
he had recourse to _that_. Setting his wig wrong side before, twisting
his face into a compound comic expression, and darting his head
suddenly within the curtains, he cut such antics, poured forth such
delicious folly, and was altogether so irresistible, that his patient,
after gazing at him for a moment in stupefaction, burst into a fit of
laughter which broke the imposthume, and rescued the sufferer from
impending death.
The above, however, is only a sample of how a professional man could
apply folly to a wise end. We have something more resembling the
professional fool or dwarf, in the case of a retainer of the Duke of
Ancaster who died in 1779. Walpole mentions him in a letter to Lady
Ossory. “I hear the Duke of Ancaster has left a legacy to a very small
man that was always his companion, and whom, when he was drunk, he used
to fling at the heads of the company, as others fling a bottle.”
Although, professionally, the vocation had gone, it is still worth
observing, that other patent places which had originated in feudal
times, had not gone with that of the jester. “If my memory does not
deceive me,” says Burke in his speech on the royal household, in
1780, “a person of no slight consideration held the office of patent
hereditary cook to an Earl of Warwick.” The orator rightly conjectured
that the Earl’s soups “were not the better for the dignity of his
kitchen;” and he adds his belief that “an Earl of Gloucester officiated
as steward of the household to the Archbishops of Canterbury.” The
orator found a curious relic of those old times when these practices
were common, in the household of George III. He did not meet with any
witty fellow there patented as fool, but he discovered something akin
to it; namely, that the turnspit in the King’s kitchen was a Member of
Parliament!
The annals of succeeding reigns bear the names of several courtiers
whose office it was to amuse and gratify their Royal patron. How
George III. himself could play the court jester with effect, I will
tell in a chapter devoted to sovereigns who occasionally were their
own fools. How Colonel Haager and others of more recent periods have
played first cousins to the more ancient jokers, it is unnecessary here
to enumerate. I will rather conclude my long, and I fear imperfect,
chapter, by showing also the conclusion of the actual line of hired
fools in noble English households. It is not so very long since the
last of this class died and left no successor. Mr. Douce, in his
pleasant Essay on clowns and fools, gives the names of the last of
them who practised professionally in this country. The household
fool survived the court fool; and after Muckle John closed the line
of the latter, there was still bread to be earned by the profession
of the former. According to Mr. Douce, the favourite Lord Chancellor
of George I., the eminent Lord Talbot, kept a fool, probably at his
country-house, if at all. Mr. Douce tells us that his name was Rees
Pengelding, and that he was a shrewd fellow who rented a farm under his
patron. It happened that Rees was a little backward with his rent, and
he was harshly menaced by the steward, who wound up his objurgations
by exclaiming, “I’ll fit you! I’ll fit you!” Now it happened that the
steward, in his earlier days, had been a tailor, the remembrance of
which caused Rees to call out in return, “Fit me! will you? Well, it
will be the first time in your life you ever did such a thing!”
I feel bound to add, that Lord Campbell, in his life of Chancellor
Talbot, makes no mention of this fool, Pengelding. May not the latter
have been simply favoured, because of the sharpness of his wit? It is
difficult to conceive that the profound scholar in Roman civil law;
the friend and equal of Philip Yorke, the enlightened statesman; the
only Chancellor who had ever sat on the Woolsack without making an
accuser, a detractor, or an enemy; a man, in short, in whom was “joined
the utmost freedom of dispute with the highest good breeding, and the
vivacity of mirth with primitive simplicity of manners,”--it would be
difficult to conceive that such a man, the friend of Butler the divine,
and patron of Thompson, could take delight in a mere household fool,
were we not reminded that even more intellectual Chancellors than he,
in earlier, but not in less refined days, could find relaxation in
listening to the professional joker. In connection with my subject, I
shall be excused if I notice that when Talbot was appointed Chancellor,
a grand “Revel” was given in his honour by the Inner Temple (1734), and
that this was the last festivity of the sort at which royalty attended
at an Inn of Court. There has been a royal entertainment in our own
days, at Lincoln’s Inn, but Talbot’s “Revel” was the last of its class.
Mr. Douce also names a certain Robin Rush as being fool, in the last
century, to Lord Bussy Mansel; and Mr. Douce adds, that in 1807 there
were people living who remembered him. Sir Edward Stradling, of St.
Dorret’s Castle, Glamorganshire, was another of the lords of land who
kept a fool in his house at the same period;--a fool of sharp and
ready wit. We have still more satisfactory proof of the existence of
a household fool in the last century, in the person of Dicky Pearce,
“fool to Lord Suffolk,” for which fool, being dead, Dean Swift did
what Ronsard failed to do for a more witty jester at the court of
France,--namely, write his epitaph. Dicky Pearce lies in Berkeley
churchyard, Gloucestershire, and these are the lines the Dean has
placed above his grave:--
“Here lies the Earl of Suffolk’s fool,
Men called him Dicky Pearce;
His folly served to make folks laugh.
When wit and mirth were scarce.
“Poor Dick, alas! is dead and gone;
What signifies to cry?
Dickeys enough are still behind
To laugh at by and by.”
The last recorded instance of a domestic fool being kept in an English
family, is that of the jester retained at Hilton Castle, Durham, by
John Hilton, the descendant of the old barons of that name, who died
1746. Surtees, in his ‘History of Durham,’ notices this fact, and adds
one touch of the wit of this anonymous fool, who seems to have borrowed
a traditionary joke of his great predecessor, Archie Armstrong. His
master, we are told, on one occasion of his returning to his northern
seat from London, left his carriage at the ferry near the castle, and
proceeded towards that building over a foot-bridge, at the end of
which the fool was awaiting his patron. The latter was attired in a
gaily gold-embroidered dress, according to the fashion of the times,
and made in the south, by a fashionable tailor. The fool gazed on
his master with mingled astonishment and vexation, and, in place of
greeting his return with a welcome, boldly looked him in the face, and
inquired, “Who’s the fool now?” This is the last recorded joke of the
last recorded jester; and the long line could not have gone out with
a milder, though it might have done so with a less impertinent, jest.
Hilton’s fool may, I think, fairly rank as the _ultimus stultorum_ (he
was remembered by aged Cumberland people, as late as 1812), though in
point of fact the honour may be disputed by the nameless individual who
figured, though it was only for the nonce, at the Eglinton tournament,
in 1839, where knights tilted in spectacles, and the spectators looked
on at the solemn fun, under rain and from beneath umbrellas.
Thus the fool went out in a rather gorgeous fashion. There was a grand
tableau as the curtain descended which had been up in England for so
many centuries. I am bound to add that the Eglinton fool may find a
rival as to the honour of closing the merry line, in Shemus Anderson,
the fool of Murthley Castle, Perthshire, who died in the year 1833. He
had grown tolerably rich in his vocation; had suffered losses, like
Dogberry; but left behind him some comfortable hundreds of pounds to
his heirs. Shemus, however, never wore the cap and bells, or nursed
the bauble, or whirled the bladder and peas, or shook the clappers, or
carried motley. He was a fool in undress; but in respect of fulness of
character and costume, of circus jokes, and all the accessories of the
part, excepting its indecencies, the Eglinton fool was the last of the
race. He flickered up for a moment, as did the padded knights and the
Queen of Beauty, to afford some idea to the times present of the aspect
of the times past, as far as the latter could be exhibited in one of
its gorgeous follies. The blaze of splendour was great, and the fool’s
fire of conundrums burnt bravely, but the rain extinguished it all; the
umbrellas gave an air of ridicule to the scene; the thing was felt to
be, after all, only a splendid sham; and accordingly the fool and the
pseudo-feudal lords and ladies disappeared for ever. All that remains
of the old reality are rags and shreds and fragments in the mansions of
our nobles and gentles. At Glamis Castle a motley jacket still hangs,
or did recently hang, on a peg in the wall, and at Stourhead is still
preserved a jester’s baldric, which may be devoutly kissed as a relic
by the worshippers of Folly.
Some resemblance may be certainly traced between the conditions of the
English court fool and the ancient parasite, and between the English
household fool and the old Roman slave. With all, there was laughter
excited by liberty of speech, which must have occasionally fallen like
refreshing dew upon the ear of despot or noble, unaccustomed to listen
to aught from others save his own exceeding glorification. The despot
still retained the power of punishing the fool; and in this particular,
the household jester, who was often a menial servant, the drudge of the
family, very closely resembled the Roman slave, with whom his master
would graciously exchange jokes one day, and whom he would scourge
the next. The two, capricious master and servile yet audacious wit,
agreed very well with despotism, and coarse times and manners; but with
liberty and refinement, both expired, or underwent such modifications,
or took such new forms, as to be no longer recognizable. The fool was
for a season, but eccentricity of character, which was his great merit,
naturally survived him.
It has been objected to many of the ancient traits of court jesters,
that they were inventions of writers of fiction, and that they only
illustrated a rude state of society. Thus, the incident of Scogan
chalking the path to be taken by his wife to church, has been
pronounced too farcical to be true. But the degree of humour which
moved King Edward’s jester to this act, has influenced many persons of
later and more refined times than those in which Scogan uttered very
questionable jokes for the amusement of his royal and princely patrons.
We all know how Lord Hardwicke, when he was an attorney’s clerk, and
was ordered by his mistress to purchase a cauliflower, executed this
commission, but sent the vegetable home in a sedan-chair at the lady’s
cost. An instance more striking and closer to the point, is given us
in the person of the wealthy Margaret Wharton, whom Foote introduced
in one of his pieces, as “Peg Pennyworth,” a name which the lady
had acquired when a visitor at Scarborough, by sending every night
for a pennyworth of strawberries and cream, for her supper. In this
dramatic piece, Mrs. Wharton afforded mirth to princes, courtiers,
and citizens, with whom the farce was a great favourite. Ord, in his
‘History of Cleveland,’ narrates several anecdotes of her humour, of
which I select one that may contrast with that of Scogan. “In one of
her visits to Scarborough,” we are told, “she, with her usual economy,
had a family pie for dinner, which she directed the footman to convey
to the bakehouse. This he declined, as not belonging to his place, or
rather derogatory to his consequence. She then moved the question to
the coachman, but found a still stronger objection. To save the pride
of both, she resolved to take it herself, and ordered one to harness,
and bring out the carriage, and the other to mount behind, and they
took the pie, with all honour and ceremony, to the bakehouse. When
baked, coachee was ordered to put to a second time, and the footman to
mount behind; and the pie returned in the same dignified state. ‘Now,’
says she to the coachman, ‘you have kept your place, which is to drive;
and yours,’ to the footman, ‘which is to wait; and I mine, which was
to have my pie for dinner.’” It was just this sort of eccentricity of
character which gave value to the old counterfeit fools, as we shall
see further in subsequent pages.
Meanwhile I take leave of the English portion of my subject with the
comment of Stillingfleet, who says:--
“Leave to low buffoons by custom bred,
And form’d by nature to be kicked and fed,
The vulgar and unenvied task to hit
All persons, right or wrong, with random wit.
Our wise forefathers, born in sober days,
Resigned to fools the tart and witty phrase;
The motley coat gave warning for the jest,
Excused the wound and sanctified the pest.
But we from high to low all strive to sneer,
Will all be wits, and not the livery wear.”
If my readers have but patience to go forward, they will soon find
themselves in company with the _Fous du Roi_, at the Court of France,
where, for a long period, it was not possible for a fool to appear
_without_ his livery; but to which now the following lines are not less
applicable than they are to other localities:--
“Why, pray, of late do Europe’s kings
No jester in their courts admit?
They’ve grown such stately solemn things;
To bear a joke, they think not fit.
But though each court a jester lacks,
To laugh at monarchs to their face,
All mankind do behind their backs,
Supply the honest jester’s place.”
THE COURT FOOLS OF FRANCE.
Under the word _Ministrelli_, a term said to belong to “Monk’s Latin,”
were anciently comprehended in France, not merely Minstrels, but
Buffoons, Mimes, and Jesters generally. They are called in common
parlance, says Du Fresne, in his Glossary, “Menestreux or Menestriers,”
because they belong to the lower order of officers at court--“quod
minoribus aulæ ministris accenserentur.” The same author shows the
early identity of the minstrel with the jester, by quoting an ordinance
regulating the arrangement of a fishermen’s religious festival held
in early times at Toulouse; and which is to this effect. “Also, the
fishermen shall be assembled, who ought to be present in the procession
on that day with the _ministri_ or _joculatores_; because the aforesaid
fishermen are bound to have, on this special occasion, _ministri_ or
_joculatores_, in honour of the cross.... And they should lead the
procession, with the _ministri_ or _joculatores_ beating the drum,
as far as the church of St. Stephen.” From _joculator_, the French
obtain their word _jongleur_, and through the latter we have our own
term _juggler_. The monks made little distinction between different
orders of minstrels, who were usually described by them as minstrels,
or jesters; signifying that the officials designated under those
names were one and the same. There is little doubt, at all events,
of the French jester having ultimately sprung from the profession of
the minstrel, when the latter was in its decline. It is perplexing,
however, to find that although the minstrel or joculator is continually
represented as being something of a musician, yet that Du Fresne,
who frequently so describes him, also quotes a law of 1381, wherein
we read that this worthy was altogether forbidden from playing on
either a stringed or wind instrument: “Nullus ministreys seu jogulator
audeat pinsare vel sonare instrumentum cujuscunque generis.” The law
was evidently not of universal application, as may be gathered from
Aimonius, who, when treating of the miracles of St. Benedict, shows us
a buffoon, both singing and playing, in his vocation of bard. His words
are: “Tanta vero illis securitas, ut scurram se præcedere facerent, qui
musico instrumento res fortiter gestas et priorum bella præcineret,
quatenus his acrius incitarentur.”
Enough, however, has been previously said on this subject; I will
therefore turn from it, to that of the costume of the French “fou.”
Most of the French writers on the subject of court jesters, maintain
that the colours of the native fool were, almost invariably, yellow and
green, striped. Many scores of pages have been written to show that
these colours were selected, because they were in little estimation
by modish people; yellow being generally worn by executioners, or
by criminals, and green signifying jealousy and various other bad
qualities. All this may be ingenious, but it is purely imaginary; for
we find French court buffoons glittering in scarlet and gold, as well
as green and yellow, and sometimes dressed in suits in which were to be
counted the seven hues of Iris herself.
One especial circumstance is remarkable in our neighbours’ fools;
namely, their consumption or waste of shoe-leather. In 1404, I meet,
in the _Collection de la Chambre des Comptes_, with an entry of
forty-seven pairs of shoes to Hancelin Coc, fool of Charles VI., and
of seven pairs for the fool’s “varlet,” showing that Sir Witless was
sometimes thought sufficiently noble or gentle to be worthy of a man to
attend upon him; and yet Hancelin was dressed in a suit of _iraigne_,
a material of which I can find no explanation in any French author, but
which is described as of a reddish brown, and which was also used “pour
garnir la chaière nécessaire pour servir au retrait du dit seigneur, le
roy Charles VI.”
Thus the French fools were not always attired in green and yellow, and
an additional proof is to be found in the fact, that on the occasion
of the marriage, at Abbeville, of Louis XII., with Mary, the sister of
Henry VIII. (subsequently wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk),
among the personages, allegorical or otherwise, that were made to
take part in the rejoicings, was to be seen the figure of Triboulet,
the King’s fool, in a serge dress of red and yellow stripes. In a
succeeding page referring to this jester, another proof will be found
that green and yellow were not the exclusively official colours worn by
the jesters at the court of France.
It is not easy,--I should rather say, it is impossible, to define with
any certainty the period at which the “Plaisans,” as our merry friends
are sometimes called, first held official rank, and were entitled
to assume the appellation of _Fou_ by right of legal appointment to
the office. Flögel simply states, “the custom was so general, that
historians expressed some surprise when they had to speak of a French
court without an official fool in it.” Two such examples we have in
Philip Augustus and Charles VII., neither of whom had any relish for
the antics and humour of the green-and-yellow-striped mirth makers.
The earliest example of a French court fool, given by Dr. Rigollet, is
in the reign of Hugh Capet; but Flögel goes back a full century, and
about the year 894 finds one, named Jean, at the court of Charles the
Simple. This good fellow’s influence was so great, that Charles once
remarked to him, he thought they had better change places. As Jean did
not look well pleased at the proposal, Charles asked him if he were
not content at the idea of being a king. “Oh, content enough,” was the
reply; “but I should be exceedingly ashamed at having such a fool.”
It was this fool who once tried his master’s nerves, by rushing into
his room one morning, with the exclamation, “Oh, Sire, such news! four
thousand men have risen in the city.” “What!” cried the startled King;
“with what intention have they risen?” “Well,” said Jean, placing his
finger on his nose, “probably with the intention of lying down again at
bedtime.”