VI
Every castle was, in fact, a school—a seminary of polite education. From the king to the pettiest baron, every noble received at his court the children of his principal vassals; and thus every noble child was educated to the standard of the sphere immediately above his own. In their homes, from the age of seven, boys and girls alike had learned to spell, to ride, to know that they were Christians. At the age of ten or twelve they were generally sent to court. Here they learned, above all, the duties and behaviour of gentlepeople.
Great care was taken that they should be well-bred, chivalrous, courteous, neatly clad, and clean. Along with this, the boys learned to fence, shoot, fight with sword and shield, joust, play quintaine, tennis, palm-play, chess, draughts, and tric-trac. They were taught to ride, climb, leap, swim, and to perform all these feats in heavy armour and handicapped by difficult conditions. In a word, they were trained to amuse themselves, to exert themselves, and to endure. The Livre des Faiz de Jean Bouciquaut shows the great stress laid upon physical education; but it also shows that physical education was not all. Boys who would grow into knights, and pass through many courts and countries, had to learn several languages. French, of a sort, was taught in all European countries—often, no doubt, it was of the kind of Stratford-atte-Bowe—for French then, as now, was the language of diplomacy and courts. And some lads then, as now, acquired a little Greek and Latin; but so much learning was rarely encouraged save in the future Churchman. All noble children, boys and girls, learned to read and write, though frequently in after-life the warrior’s remembrance of these arts was no more precise than the knowledge possessed by our average country squire of the Iliad he used to parse at school. The women kept up their accomplishments: most noble women in England and Italy, as in France, could read, play some musical instrument, embroider, speak a little French, bind a wound and tend a fever, if comparatively few could wield the pen.
At twelve years old the page was sent to court. Here he was to finish his education, to win, if possible, his suzerain’s favour, and to lay the beginnings of his fortune. But at first he saw little of his lord. He was entirely under the control of the seneschal, the chamberlain, and the first equerry, for, as the name denotes, the young squire’s quarters were situate in the écuries. After a few years’ apprenticeship his opportunity might come. A chance might make him a page-messenger, and so he might earn the confidence of his Seigneur. He might, by his good manners and courtesy, awaken the attention of some noble dame. He might even accompany his suzerain to some superior court, attract the notice of the over-lord, and be adopted to that higher sphere. Thus the little Jehan de Saintré, a young lad in the household of his father’s suzerain in Touraine, was taken by that gallant knight to Paris, where the king took a fancy to the child—“tellement que il le voulut avoir en sa cour à estre son paige, pour après lui chevaucher, et au sourplus servir en salle, comme ses aultres paiges et enffans d’honneur.” But the natural course of things was for the lad to remain a page among his fellow-pages till the age of fifteen or sixteen, when he was ripe for the office of messenger or carver at the lord’s table. These offices entailed squireship. In this condition he remained until about the age of twenty, when, generally on the occasion of some princely wedding, some outbreak of war, some tournament or other great occasion, he was dubbed knight, and set forth on his adventures.
While all these lads from twelve to twenty were fencing, riding, or playing palm-play in the court, their sisters were employed in my lady’s company. They seldom came together with the men of the castle, save on holidays and feast-days. At other times they spent their time in my lady’s chamber or tiring-room, or walked with her in the country, for it was held unseemly that ladies of noble birth should be met walking alone. They were, in fact, much in the position of “girls still in the schoolroom” in a modern country-house. They learned their lessons with their governess, practised their lute, went to church every morning, embroidered chasubles and altar-cloths, and worked wonderful hangings for the cold stone walls. And there were from seventy to a hundred yards of needlework in a set of hangings! They could also spin fine silk and linen, and ornament with needlework their feast-day veils and dresses. (The less interesting forms of sewing were left to the army of tire-women and waiting-women who attended on the noble maidens and their lady.) They all knew how to ride and how to fly a hawk, to make wreaths and posies, to sing, to play, to beguile the long hours with chess, tric-trac, draughts; and the youngest of them began to deal and shuffle the new-invented “naypes,” or “naibi”—the first playing-cards. They could pluck or brew virtuous simples, bind a broken limb, or nurse a fever. They could amuse the convalescent with endless tales of the Round Table, with the legends of Charlemagne, and with lives of the saints no less interesting and romantic. Most of them could read aloud some novel: Cléomadès or Mélusine. They must, I think, have been blithe, charming, capable companions in the long winter of a lonely country-house. On the whole, with its constant undercurrent of chivalry and religion, theirs was an education which left its women delightful, tender of heart, and generous, if, perhaps, with little moral strength to resist the illusions of the heart.