She was not more ready of tongue than she was quick of eye. An instance of the latter may be found in an incident before Jargeau. She was reconnoitring the place at a considerable distance. The period was more than a century and a half before Hans Lippershey, the Middleburg spectacle-maker, had invented, and still more before Galileo had improved, the telescope. The Duke d’Alençon was with Jeanne, and she bade him step aside, as the enemy were pointing a gun at him. The Duke obeyed, for he knew her acuteness of vision; the gun was fired, and De Lude, a gentleman of Anjou, standing in a line with the spot which had been occupied by the Duke, was slain—which must have been very satisfactory to the Duke!
I have said that some of the knights had but a scanty respect for the gallant Maid. A few, no doubt, objected to the assumption of heavenly inspiration on her part. One, at least, was not so particular. I allude to the Baron De Richemond, who had been exiled from court for the little misdemeanor of having assassinated Cannes de Beaulieu. The Baron had recovered his good name by an actively religious exercise, manifested by his hunting after wizards and witches, and burning them alive, to the delight and edification of dull villagers. This pious personage paid a visit to Jeanne, hoping to obtain, by her intercession, the royal permission to have a share in the war. The disgraced knight, who brought with him a couple of thousand men, when these were most wanted, was not likely to meet with a refusal of service, and the permission sought for was speedily granted. Jeanne playfully alluded to her own supernatural inspiration and the Baron’s vocation as “witch-finder.” “Ah well,” said De Richemond, “with regard to yourself, I have only this to say, that it is difficult to say anything; but if you are from Heaven, it is not I who shall be afraid of you; and if you come from the devil, I do not fear even him, who, in such case, sends you.” Thereupon, they laughed merrily, and began to talk of the next day’s battle.
That battle was fought upon the field of Patay, where the gallant Talbot was made prisoner by the equally gallant Saintrailles. When the great English commander was brought into the presence of Jeanne, he was good-humoredly asked if he had expected such a result the day before. “It is the fortune of war,” philosophically exclaimed the inimitable John; and thereby he made a soldier’s comment, which has often since been in the mouths of the valiant descendants of the French knights who heard it uttered, and which is frequently quoted as being of Gallic origin. But, again, I think that “fortuna belli” was not an uncommon phrase, perhaps, in old days before the French language was yet spoken.
And here, talking of origin, let me notice a circumstance of some interest. Jeanne Darc is commonly described as Jeanne D’Arc, as though she had been ennobled. This, indeed, she was, by the King, but not by that name. To the old family name was added that of du Lys, in allusion to the Lily of France, which that family had served so well. The brothers of Jeanne, now Darc du Lys, entered the army. When Guise sent a French force into Scotland, some gallant gentlemen of this name of Lys were among them. They probably settled in Caledonia, for the name is not an uncommon one there; and there is a gallant major in the 48th who bears it, and who, perhaps, may owe his descent to the ennobled brothers of “The Maid of Orleans.”
Jeanne was not so affected as to believe that nobility was above the desert of her deeds. When her relatives, including her brothers, Peter and John, congratulated her and themselves on all that she had accomplished, her remark was: “My deeds are in truth those of a ministry; but in as great truth never were greater read of by cleric, however profound he may be in all clerical learning.” The degree of nobility allowed to the deserving girl was that of a countess. Her household consisted of a steward, almoner, squire, pages, “hand, foot, and chamber men,” independently of the noble maidens who tended her, and who seem to have been equally served by three “valets de main, de pied, et de chambre.”
But short-lived was the glory; no, I will not say that, let me rather remark that short-lived was the worldly splendor of the chivalrous my-lady countess. She had rendered all the service she could, when she fell wounded before Paris, and was basely abandoned for a while by her own party. She was rescued, ultimately, by D’Alençon, but only to be more disgracefully abandoned on the one side, and evilly treated on the other. When as a bleeding captive she was rudely dragged from the field at Compiègne; church, court, and chivalry, ignobly abandoned the poor and brave girl who had served all three in turn. By all three she was now as fiercely persecuted; and it may safely be said, that if the English were glad to burn her as a witch, to account for the defeat of the English and their allies, the French were equally eager to furnish testimony against her.
Her indecision and vacillation after falling into the hands of her enemies, would seem to show that apart from the promptings of those who had guided her, she was but an ordinary personage. She, however, never lost heart, and her natural wit did not abandon her. “Was St. Michael naked when he appeared to you?” was a question asked by one of the examining commissioners. To which Jeanne replied, “Do you think heaven has not wherewith to dress him?” “Had he any hair on his head?” was the next sensible question. Jeanne answered it by another query, “Have the goodness to tell me,” said she, “why Michael’s head should have been shaved?” It was easy, of course, to convict a prejudged and predoomed person, of desertion of her parents, of leading a vagabond and disreputable life, of sorcery, and finally, of heresy. She was entrapped into answers which tended to prove her culpability; but disregarding at last the complicated web woven tightly around her, and aware that nothing could save her, the heart of the knightly maiden beat firmly again, and as a summary reply to all questions, she briefly and emphatically declared: “All that I have done, all that I do, I have done well, and do well to do it.” In her own words, “Tout ce que j’ai fait, tout ce que je fais, j’ai bien fait, et fais bien de le faire;” and it was a simply-dignified resume in presence of high-born ecclesiastics, who did not scruple to give the lie to each other like common ploughmen.
She was sentenced to death, and suffered the penalty, as being guilty of infamy, socially, morally, religiously, and politically. Not a finger was stretched to save her who had saved so many. Her murder is an indelible stain on two nations and one church; not the less so that the two nations unite in honoring her memory, and that the church has pronounced her innocent. Never did gallant champion meet with such base ingratitude from the party raised by her means from abject slavery to triumph; never was noble enemy so ignobly treated by a foe with whom, to acknowledge and admire valor, is next to the practice of it; and never was staff selected by the church for its support, so readily broken and thrown into the fire when it had served its purpose. All the sorrow in the world can not wash out these terrible facts, but it is fitting that this sorrow should always accompany our admiration. And so, honored be the memory of the young girl of Orleans!
After all, it is a question whether our sympathies be not thrown away when we affect to feel for Jeanne Darc. M. Delepierre, the Belgian Secretary of Legation, has printed, for private circulation, his “Doute Historique.” This work consists chiefly of official documents, showing that the “Maid” never suffered at all, but that some criminal having been executed in her place, she survived to be a pensioner of the government, a married lady, and the mother of a family! The work in which these documents are produced, is not to be easily procured, but they who have any curiosity in the matter will find the subject largely treated in the Athenæum. This “Historical Doubt” brings us so closely in connection with romance, that we, perhaps, can not do better in illustrating our subject, than turn to a purely romantic subject, and see of what metal the champions of Christendom were made, with respect to chivalry.
THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM GENERALLY
AND HE OF ENGLAND IN PARTICULAR.
“Are these things true?
Thousands are getting at them in the streets.”
Sejanus His Fall.
I can hardly express the delight I feel as a biographer in the present instance, in the very welcome fact that no one knows anything about the parentage of St. George. If there had been a genealogical tree of the great champion’s race, the odds, are that I should have got bewildered among the branches. As there is only much conjecture with a liberal allowance of assertion, the task is doubly easy, particularly as the matter itself is of the very smallest importance.
The first proof that our national patron ever existed at all, according to Mr. Alban Butler, is that the Greeks reverenced him by the name of “the Great Martyr.” Further proof of a somewhat similar quality, is adduced in the circumstance that in Greece and in various parts of the Levant, there are or were dozens of churches erected in honor of the chivalrous saint; that Georgia took the holy knight for its especial patron; and that St. George, in full panoply, won innumerable battles for the Christians, by leading forward the reserves when the vanguard had been repulsed by the infidels, and the Christian generals were of themselves too indolent, sick, or incompetent, to do what they expected St. George to do for them.
From the East, veneration for this name, and some imaginary person who once bore it, extended itself throughout the West. It is a curious fact, that long before England placed herself under the shield of this religious soldier, France had made selection of him, at least as a useful adjutant or aide-de-camp to St. Denis. Indeed, our saint was at one time nearly monopolized by France. St. Clotilde, the wife of the first Christian king of France, raised many altars in his honor—a fact which has not been forgotten in the decorations and illustrative adornments of that splendid church which has just been completed in the Faubourg St. Germain, and which is at once the pride and glory of Paris. That city once possessed relics which were said to be those of St. George; but of their whereabouts, no man now knows anything. We do, however, know that the Normans brought over the name of the saint with them, as that of one in whose arm of power they trusted, whether in the lists or in battle. In this respect we, as Saxons, if we choose to consider ourselves as such, have no particular reason to be grateful to the saint, for his presence among us is a symbol of national defeat if not of national humiliation. Not above six centuries have, however, elapsed since the great council of Oxford appointed his feast to be kept as a holyday of lesser rank throughout England; and it is about five hundred years since Edward III. established the Order of the Garter, under the patronage of this saint. This order is far more ancient than that of St. Michael, instituted by Louis XI.; of the Golden Fleece, invented by that ‘good’ Duke Philip of Burgundy, who fleeced all who were luckless enough to come within reach of his ducal shears; and of the Scottish Order of St. Andrew, which is nearly two centuries younger than that of St. George. Venice, Genoa, and Germany, have also instituted orders of chivalry in honor of this unknown cavalier.
These honors, however, and a very general devotion prove nothing touching his birth, parentage, and education. Indeed, it is probably because nothing is known of either, that his more serious biographers begin with his decease, and write his history, which, like one of Zschokke’s tales, might be inscribed “Alles Verkerht.” They tell us that he suffered under Diocletian, in Nicomedia, and on the 23d of April. We are further informed that he was a Cappadocian—a descendant of those savagely servile people, who once told the Romans that they would neither accept liberty at the hands of Rome, nor tolerate it of their own accord. He was, it is said, of noble birth, and after the death of his father, resided with his mother in Palestine, on an estate which finally became his own. The young squire was a handsome and stalwart youth, and, like many of that profession, fond of a military life. His promotion must have been pretty rapid, for we find him, according to tradition, a tribune or colonel in the army at a very early age, and a man of much higher rank before he prematurely died. His ideas of discipline were good, for when the pagan emperor persecuted the Christians, George of Cappadocia resigned his commission and appointments, and not till then, when he was a private man, did he stoutly remonstrate with his imperial ex-commander-in-chief against that sovereign’s bloody edicts and fiercer cruelty against the Christians. This righteous boldness was barbarously avenged; and on the day after the remonstrance the gallant soldier lost his head. Some authors add to this account that he was the “illustrious young man” who tore down the anti-Christian edicts, when they were first posted up in Nicomedia, a conjecture which, by the hagiographers is called “plausible,” but which has no shadow of proof to give warrant for its substantiality.
The reason why all knights and soldiers generally have had confidence in St. George, is founded, we are told, on the facts of his reappearance on earth at various periods, and particularly at the great siege of Antioch, in the times of the crusades. The Christians had been well nigh as thoroughly beaten as the Russians at Silistria. They were at the utmost extremity, when a squadron was seen rushing down from a mountain defile, with three knights at its head, in brilliant panoply and snow-white scarfs. “Behold,” cried Bishop Adhemar, “the heavenly succor which was promised to you! Heaven declares for the Christians. The holy martyrs, George, Demetrius, and Theodore, come to fight for you.” The effect was electrical. The Christian army rushed to victory, with the shout, “It is the will of God!” and the effect of the opportune appearance of the three chiefs and their squadron, who laid right lustily on the Saracens, was decisive of one of the most glorious, yet only temporarily productive of triumphs.
When Richard I. was on his expedition against enemies of the same race, he too was relieved from great straits by a vision of St. George. The army, indeed, did not see the glorious and inspiring sight, but the king affirmed that he did, which, in those credulous times was quite as well. In these later days men are less credulous, or saints are more cautious. Thus the Muscovites assaulted Kars under the idea that St. Sergius was with them; at all events, Pacha Williams, a good cause, and sinewy arms, were stronger than the Muscovite idea and St. Sergius to boot.
Such, then, is the hagiography of our martial saint. Gibbon has sketched his life in another point of view—business-like, if not matter-of-fact. The terrible historian sets down our great patron as having been born in a fuller’s shop in Cilicia, educated (perhaps) in Cappadocia, and as having so won promotion, when a young man, from his patrons, by the skilful exercise of his profession as a parasite, as to procure, through their influence, “a lucrative commission or contract to supply the army with bacon!” In this commissariat employment he is said to have exercised fraud and corruption, by which may be meant that he sent to the army bacon as rusty as an old cuirass, and charged a high price for a worthless article. In these times, when the name and character of St. George are established, it is to be hoped that Christian purveyors for Christian armies do not, in reverencing George the Saint, imitate the practices alleged against him as George the Contractor. It would be hard, indeed, if a modern contractor who sent foul hay to the cavalry, uneatable food to the army generally, or poisonous potted-meat to the navy, could shield himself under the name and example of St. George. Charges as heavy are alleged against him by Gibbon, who adds that the malversations of the pious rogue “were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuit of justice.” If he saved his fortune, it is allowed that he made shipwreck of his honor; and he certainly did not improve his reputation if, as is alleged, he turned Arian. The career of our patron saint, as described by Gibbon, is startling. That writer speaks of the splendid library subsequently collected by George, but he hints that the volumes on history, rhetoric, philosophy, and theology, were perhaps as much proof of ostentation as of love for learning. That George was raised by the intrigues of a faction to the pastoral throne of Athanasius, in Alexandria, does not surprise us. Bishops were very irregularly elected in those early days, when men were sometimes summarily made teachers who needed instruction themselves; as is the case in some enlightened districts at present. George displayed an imperial pomp in his archiepiscopal character, “but he still betrayed those vices of his base and servile extraction,” yet was so impartial that he oppressed and plundered all parties alike. “The merchants of Alexandria,” says the historian of the “Decline and Fall,” “were impoverished by the unjust and almost universal monopoly which he acquired of nitre, salt, paper, funerals, &c., and the spiritual father of a great people condescended to practise the vile and pernicious arts of an informer. He seems to have had as sharp an eye after the profit to be derived from burials, as a certain archdeacon, who thinks intramural burial of the dead a very sanitary measure for the living, and particularly profitable to the clergy. Thus the example of St. George would seem to influence very “venerable” as well as very “martial” gentlemen. The Cappadocian most especially disgusted the Alexandrians by levying a house tax, of his own motion, and as he pillaged the pagan temples as well, all parties rose at length against the common oppressor and “under the reign of Constantine he was expelled by the fury and justice of the people.” He was restored only again to fall. The accession of Julian brought destruction upon the archbishop and many of his friends, who, after an imprisonment of three weeks, were dragged from their dungeons by a wild and cruel populace, and murdered in the streets. The bodies were paraded in triumph upon camels (as that of Condé was by his Catholic opponents, after the battle of Jarnac, on an ass), and they were ultimately cast into the sea. This last measure was adopted in order that, if the sufferers were to be accounted as martyrs, there should at least be no relics of them for men to worship. Gibbon thus concludes: “The fears of the Pagans were just, and their precautions ineffectual. The meritorious death of the archbishop obliterated the memory of his life. The rival of Athanasius was dear and sacred to the Arians, and the seeming conversion of those sectaries introduced his worship into the bosom of the Catholic church. The odious stranger, disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the rank of a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of Cappadocia has been transformed into the famous St. George of England, the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter.”
The romancers have treated St. George and his knightly confraternity after their own manner. As a sample of what reading our ancestors were delighted with, especially those who loved chivalric themes, I know nothing better than “The Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendom, St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St. James of Spain, St. Anthony of Italy, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. David of Wales. Shewing their honourable battles by sea and land. Their tilts, justs, tournaments for ladies; their combats with gyants, monsters, and dragons; their adventures in foreign nations; their enchantments in the Holy Land; their knighthoods, prowess, and chivalry, in Europe, Africa, and Asia; with their victories against the enemies of Christ; also the true manner and places of their deaths, being seven tragedies, and how they came to be called the Seven Saints of Christendom.” The courteous author or publisher of the veracious details, prefaces them with a brief address “to all courteous readers,” to whom “Richard Johnson wisheth increase of virtuous knowledge.” “Be not,” he says, “like the chattering cranes, nor Momus’s mates that carp at everything. What the simple say, I care not. What the spiteful say, I pass not; only the censure of the conceited,” by which good Richard means the learned, “I stand unto; that is the mark I aim at,”—an address, it may be observed, which smacks of the Malaprop school; but which seemed more natural to our ancestors than it does to us.
For these readers Richard Johnson presents a very highly-spiced fare. He brings our patron saint into the world by a Cæsarean operation performed by a witch, who stole him from his unconscious mother, and reared him up in a cave, whence the young knight ultimately escaped with the other champions whom the witch, now slain, had kept imprisoned. The champions, it may be observed, travel with a celerity that mocks the “Express,” and rivals the despatch of the Electric Telegraph. They are scarcely departed from the seven paths which led from the brazen pillar, each in search of adventures, when they are all “in the thick of it,” almost at the antipodes. A breath takes St. George from Coventry, his recovered home, after leaving the witch, to Egypt. At the latter place he slays that terrible dragon, which some think to imply the Arian overcoming the Athanasian, and rescues the Princess Sabra, in whose very liberal love we can hardly trace a symbol of the Church, although her antipathies are sufficiently strong to remind one of the odium theologicum. George goes on performing stupendous feats, and getting no thanks, until he undertakes to slay a couple of lions for the Soldan of Persia, and gets clapped into prison, during seven years, for his pains. The biographer I suspect, shut the knight up so long, in order to have an excuse to begin episodically with the life of St. Denis.
The mystic number seven enters into all the principal divisions of the story. Thus, St. Denis having wandered into Thessaly was reduced to such straits as to live upon mulberries; and these so disagreed with him that he became suddenly transformed into a hart; a very illogical sequence indeed. But the mulberry tree was, in fact, Eglantius the King’s daughter, metamorphosed for her pride. Seven years he thus remained; at the end of which time, his horse, wise as any regularly-ordained physician, administered to him a decoction of roses which brought about the transformation of both his master and his master’s mistress into their “humane shapes.” That they went to court sworn lovers may be taken as a matter of course. There they are left, in order to afford the author an opportunity of showing how St. James, having most unorthodoxically fallen in love with a Jewish maiden, was seven years dumb, in consequence. St. James, however, is a patient and persevering lover. If I had an ill-will against any one I would counsel him to read this very long-winded history, but being at peace with all mankind, I advise my readers to be content with learning that the apostolic champion and the young Jewess are ultimately united, and fly to Seville, where they reside in furnished lodgings, and lead a happy life;—while the author tells of what befell to the doughty St. Anthony.
This notable Italian is a great hand at subduing giants and ladies. We have a surfeit of combats and destruction, and love-making and speechifying, in this champion’s life; and when we are compelled to leave him travelling about with a Thracian lady, who accompanies him, in a theatrical male dress, and looks in it like the Duchess—at least, like Miss Farebrother, in the dashing white sergeant of the Forty Thieves—we shake our head at St. Anthony and think how very unlike he is to his namesake in the etching by Callot, where the fairest of sirens could not squeeze a sigh from the anchorite’s wrinkled heart.
While they are travelling about in the rather disreputable fashion above alluded to, we come across St. Andrew of Scotland, who has greater variety of adventure than any other of the champions. With every hour there is a fresh incident. Now he is battling with spirits, now struggling with human foes, and anon mixed up, unfavorably, with beasts. At the end of all the frays, there is—we need hardly say it—a lady. The bonny Scot was not likely to be behind his fellow-champions in this respect. Nay, St. Andrew has six of them, who had been swans, and are now natural singing lasses. What sort of a blade St. Andrew was may be guessed by the “fact,” that when he departed from the royal court, to which he had conducted the half dozen ladies, they all eloped in a body, after him. There never was so dashing a hero dreamed of by romance—though a rhymer has dashed off his equal in wooing, and Burns’s “Finlay” is the only one that may stand the parallel.
When the six Thracian ladies fall into the power of “thirty bloody-minded satyrs,” who so likely, or so happy to rescue them as jolly St. Patrick. How he flies to the rescue, slays one satyr, puts the rest to flight, and true as steel, in love or friendship, takes the half dozen damsels under his arm, and swings singingly along with them in search of the roving Scot! As for St. David, all this while, he had not been quite so triumphant, or so tried, as his fellows. He had fallen into bad company, and “four beautiful damsels wrapped the drousie champion in a sheet of fine Arabian silk, and conveyed him into a cave, placed in the middle of a garden, where they laid him on a bed, more softer than the down of Culvers.” In this agreeable company the Welsh champion wiled away his seven years. It was pleasant but not proper. But if the author had not thus disposed of him, how do you think he would ever have got back to St. George of England? The author indeed exhibits considerable skill, for he brings St. George and St. David together, and the first rescues the second from ignoble thraldom, and what is worse, from the most prosy enchanter I ever met with in history, and who is really not enchanting at all. This done, George is off to Tripoli.
There, near there, or somewhere else, for the romances are dreadfully careless in their topography, he falls in with his old love Sabra, married to a Moorish King. If George is perplexed at this, seeing that the lady had engaged to remain an unmarried maiden till he came to wed her, he is still more so when she informs him that she has, in all essentials, kept her word, “through the secret virtue of a golden chain steeped in tiger’s blood, the which she wore seven times double about her ivory neck.” St. George does not know what to make of it, but as on subsequently encountering two lions, Sabra, while he was despatching one, kept the other quietly with its head resting on her lap, the knight declared himself perfectly satisfied, and they set out upon their travels, lovingly together.
By the luckiest chance, all the wandering knights and their ladies met at the court of a King of Greece, who is not, certainly, to be heard of in Gillies’ or Goldsmith’s history. The scenery is now on a magnificent scale, for there is a regal wedding on foot, and tournaments, and the real war of Heathenism against all Christendom. As the Champions of Christendom have as yet done little to warrant them in assuming the appellation, one would suppose that the time had now arrived when they were to give the world a taste of their quality in that respect. But nothing of the sort occurs. The seven worthies separate, each to his own country, in order to prepare for great deeds; but none are done for the benefit of Christianity, unless indeed we are to conclude that when George and Sabra travelled together, and he overcame all antagonists, and she inspired with love all beholders;—he subdued nature itself and she ran continually into danger, from which he rescued her:—and that when, after being condemned to the stake, the young wife gave birth to three babes in the wood, and was at last crowned Queen of Egypt, something is meant by way of allegory, in reference to old church questions, and in not very clear elucidation as to how these questions were beneficially affected by the Champions of Christendom!
I may add that when Sabra was crowned Queen of Egypt, every one was ordered to be merry, on pain of death! It is further to be observed there is now much confusion, and that the confusion by no means grows less as the story thunders on. The Champions and the three sons of St. George are, by turns, East, West, North, and South, either pursuing each other, or suddenly and unexpectedly encountering, like the principal personages in a pantomime. Battles, love-making, and shutting up cruel and reprobate magicians from the “humane eye,” are the chief events, but to every event there are dozens of episodes, and each episode is as confusing, dazzling, and bewildering as the trunk from which it hangs.
St. George, however, is like a greater champion than himself; and when he is idle and in Italy, he does precisely what Nelson did in the same place—fall in love with a lady, and cause endless mischief in consequence. By this time, however, Johnson begins to think, rightly, that his readers have had enough of it, and that it is time to dispose of his principal characters. These too, are so well disposed to help him, that when the author kills St. Patrick, the saint burys himself! In memory of his deeds, of which we have heard little or nothing, some are accustomed to honor him, says Mr. Johnson—“wearing upon their hats, each of them, a cross of red silk, in token of his many adventures under the Christian Cross.” So that the shamrock appears to have been a device only of later times.
St. David is as quickly despatched. This champion enters Wales to crush the pagans there. He wears a leek in his helmet, and his followers adopt the same fashion, in order that friend may be distinguished from foe. The doughty saint, of course, comes conqueror out of the battle, but he is in a heated state, gets a chill and dies after all of a common cold. Bruce, returning safe from exploring the Nile, to break his neck by falling down his own stairs, hardly presents a more practical bathos than this. Why the leek became the badge of Welshmen need not be further explained.
It is singular that in recounting the manner of the death of the next champion, St. Denis, the romancer is less romantic than common tradition. He tells us how the knight repaired to then pagan France; how he was accused of being a Christian, by another knight of what we should fancy a Christian order, St. Michael, and how the pagan king orders St. Denis to be beheaded, in consequence. There are wonders in the heavens, at this execution, which convert the heathen sovereign to Christianity; but no mention is made of St. Denis having walked to a monastery, after his head was off, and with his head under his arm. Of this prodigy Voltaire remarked, “Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute,” but of that the romancer makes no mention. St. James suffers by being shut up in his chapel in Spain, and starved to death, by order of the Atheist king. Anthony dies quietly in a good old age, in Italy; St. Andrew is beheaded by the cruel pagan Scots whom, in his old age, he had visited, in order to bring them to conversion: and St. George, who goes on, riding down wild monsters and rescuing timid maidens, to the last—and his inclination, was always in the direction of the maidens—ultimately meets his death by the sting of a venomous dragon.
And now it would seem that two or three hundred years ago, authors were very much like the actors in the Critic, who when they did get hold of a good thing, could never give the public enough of it. Accordingly, the biography of the Seven Champions was followed by that of their sons. I will spare my readers the turbulent details: they will probably be satisfied with learning that the three sons of St. George became kings, “according as the fairy queen had prophesied to them,” and that Sir Turpin, son of David, Sir Pedro, son of James, Sir Orlando, son of Anthony, Sir Ewen, son of Andrew, Sir Phelim, son of Patrick, and Sir Owen, son of David, like their sires, combated with giants, monsters, and dragons; tilted and tournamented in honor of the ladies, did battle in defence of Christianity, relieved the distressed, annihilated necromancers and table-turners, in short, accomplished all that could be expected from knights of such prowess and chivalry.
When Richard Johnson had reached this part of his history, he gave it to the world, awaiting the judgment of the critics, before he published his second portion: that portion wherein he was to unfold what nobody yet could guess at, namely, wherefore the Seven Champions were called par excellence, the Champions of Christendom. I am afraid that meanwhile those terrible, god-like, and inexorable critics, had not dealt altogether gently with him. The Punch they offered him was not made exclusively of sweets. His St. George had been attacked, and very small reverence been expressed for his ladies. But see how calmly and courteously—all the more admirable that there must have been some affectation in the matter—he turns from the censuring judges to that benevolent personage, the gentle reader. “Thy courtesy,” he says, “must be my buckler against the carping malice of mocking jesters, that being worse able to do well, scoff commonly at that they can not mend; censuring all things, doing nothing, but (monkey-like) make apish jests at anything they do in print, and nothing pleaseth them, except it savor of a scoffing and invective spirit. Well, what they say of me I do not care; thy delight is my sole desire.” Well said, bold Richard Johnson. He thought he had put down criticism as St. George had the dragon.
I can not say, however, that good Richard Johnson treats his gentle reader fairly. This second part of his Champions is to a reader worse than what all the labors of Hercules were to the lusty son of Alcmena. An historical drama at Astley’s is not half so bewildering, and is almost as credible, and Mr. Ducrow himself when he was rehearsing his celebrated “spectacle drama” of “St. George and the Dragon” at old Drury—and who that ever saw him on those occasions can possibly forget him?—achieved greater feats, or was more utterly unlike any sane individual than St. George is, as put upon the literary stage by Master Johnson.
One comfort in tracing the tortuosities of this chivalric romance is that the action is rapid; but then there is so much of it, and it is so astounding! We are first introduced to the three sons of St. George, who are famous hunters in England, and whose mother, the lady Sabra, “catches her death,” by going out attired like Diana, to witness their achievements. The chivalric widower thereupon sets out for Jerusalem, his fellow-champions accompany, and George’s three sons, Guy, Alexander, and David, upon insinuation from their mother’s spirit, start too in pursuit. The lads were knighted by the king of England before they commenced their journey, which they perform with the golden spur of chivalry attached to their heels. They meet with the usual adventures by the way: destroying giants, and rescuing virgins, who in these troublesome times seem to have been allowed to travel about too much by themselves. Meanwhile, their sire is enacting greater prodigies still, and is continually delivering his fellow-champions from difficulties, from which they are unable to extricate themselves. Indeed, in all circumstances, his figure is the most prominent; and although the other half-dozen must have rendered some service on each occasion, St. George makes no more mention of the same than Marshal St. Arnaud, in his letters on the victory at the Alma, does of the presence and services of the English.
It is said that Mrs. Radcliffe, whose horrors used to delight and distress our mothers and aunts, in their younger days, became herself affected by the terrors which she only paints to explain away natural circumstances. What then must have been the end of Richard Johnson? His scene of the enchantments of the Black Castle is quite enough to have killed the author with bewilderment. There is a flooring in the old palace of the Prince of Orange in Brussels, which is so inlaid with small pieces of wood, of a thousand varieties of patterns, as to be a triumph of its kind. I was not at all surprised, when standing on that floor, to hear that when the artist had completed his inconceivable labor, he gave one wild gaze over the parquet of the palace, and dropped dead of a fit of giddiness. I am sure that Richard Johnson must have met with some such calamity after revising this portion of his history. It is a portion in which it is impossible for the Champions or for the readers to go to sleep. The noise is terrific, the incidents fall like thunderbolts, the changes roll over each other in a succession made with electric rapidity, and when the end comes we are all the more rejoiced, because we have comprehended nothing; but we are especially glad to find that the knight of the Black Castle, who is the cause of all the mischief, is overcome, flies in a state of destitution to a neighboring wood, and being irretrievably “hard up,” stabs himself with the first thing at hand, as ruthlessly as the lover of the “Ratcatcher’s Daughter.”
Time, place, propriety, and a respect for contemporary history, are amusingly violated throughout the veracious details. Nothing can equal the confusion, nothing can be more absurd than the errors. But great men have committed errors as grave. Shakespeare opened a seaport in Bohemia, and Mr. Macaulay wrote of one Penn what was only to be attributed to another. And now, have the dramatists treated St. George better than the romancers?
The national saint was, doubtless, often introduced in the Mysteries; but the first occasion of which I have any knowledge of his having been introduced on the stage, was by an author named John Kirke. John was so satisfied with his attempt that he never wrote a second play. He allowed his fame to rest on the one in question, which is thus described on his title-page: “The Seven Champions of Christendome. Acted at the Cocke Pit, and at the Red Bull in St. John’s Streete, with a general liking, And never printed till this yeare 1638. Written by J. K.—London, printed by J. Okes, and are (sic) to be sold by James Becket, at his Shop in the Inner Temple Gate, 1638.”
John Kirke treats his subject melodramatically. In the first scene, Calib the Witch, in a speech prefacing her declarations of a love for foul weather and deeds, tells the audience by way of prologue, how she had stolen the young St. George from his now defunct parent, with the intention of making a bath for her old bones out of his young warm blood. Love, however, had touched her, and she had brought up “the red-lipped boy,” with some indefinite idea of making something of him when a man.
With this disposition the old lady has some fears as to the possible approaching term of her life; but, as she is assured by “Tarfax the Devill” that she can not die unless she love blindly, the witch, like a mere mortal, accounting that she loves wisely, reckons herself a daughter of immortality, and rejoices hugely. The colloquy of this couple is interrupted by their son Suckabud, who, out of a head just broken by St. George, makes complaint with that comic lack of fun, which was wont to make roar the entire inside of the Red Bull. The young clown retires with his sire, and then enters the great St. George, a lusty lad, with a world of inquiries touching his parentage. Calib explains that his lady mother was anything but an honest woman, and that his sire was just the partner to match. “Base or noble, pray?” asks St. George. To which the witch replies:—
“Base and noble too;
Both base by thee, but noble by descent;
And thou born base, yet mayst thou write true gent:”
and it may be said, parenthetically, that many a “true gent” is by birth equal to St. George himself.
Overcome by her affection, the witch makes a present to St. George of the half-dozen champions of England whom she holds in chains within her dwelling. One of them is described as “the lively, brisk, cross-cap’ring Frenchman, Denis.” With these for slaves, Calib yields her wand of power, and the giver is no sooner out of sight when George invokes the shades of his parents, who not only appear and furnish him with a corrected edition of his biography, but inform him that he is legitimate Earl of Coventry, with all the appurtenances that a young earl can desire.
Thereupon ensues a hubbub that must have shaken all the lamps in the cockpit. George turns the Witch’s power against herself, and she descends to the infernal regions, where she is punningly declared to have gained the title of Duchess of Helvetia. The six champions are released, and the illustrious seven companions go forth in search of adventures, with Suckabus for a “Squire.” The father of the latter gives him some counsel at parting, which is a parody on the advice of Polonius to Laertes. “Lie,” says Torpax:—
“Lie to great profit, borrow, pay no debts,
Cheat and purloin, they are gaming dicers’ bets.”
“If Cottington outdo me,” says the son, “he be-whipt.” And so, after the election of St. George as the seventh champion of Christendom, ends one of the longest acts that Bull or Cockpit was ever asked to witness and applaud.
The next act is briefer but far more bustling. We are in that convenient empire of Trebizond, where everything happened which never took place, according to the romances. The whole city is in a state of consternation at the devastations of a detestable dragon, and a lion, his friend and co-partner. The nobles bewail the fact in hexameters, or at least in lines meant to do duty for them; and the common people bewail the fact epigrammatically, and describe the deaths of all who have attempted to slay the monsters, with a broadness of effect that doubtless was acknowledged by roars of laughter. Things grow worse daily, the fiends look down, and general gloom is settling thick upon the empire, when Andrew of Scotland and Anthony of Italy arrive, send in their cards, and announce their determination to slay both these monsters.
Such visitors are received with more than ordinary welcome. The emperor is regardless of expense in his liberality, and his daughter Violetta whispers to her maid Carinthia that she is already in love with one of them, but will not say which; a remark which is answered by the pert maid, that she is in love with both, and would willingly take either. All goes on joyously until in the course of conversation, and it is by no means remarkable for brilliancy, the two knights let fall that they are Christians. Now, you must know, that the established Church at Trebizond at this time, which is at any period, was heathen. The court appeared to principally affect Apollo and Diana, while the poorer people put up with Pan, and abused him for denouncing may-poles! Well, the Christians had never been emancipated; nay, they had never been tolerated in Trebizond, and it was contrary to law that the country should be saved, even in its dire extremity, by Christian help. The knights are doomed to die, unless they will turn heathens. This, of course, they decline with a dignified scorn; whereupon, in consideration of their nobility, they are permitted to choose their own executioners. They make choice of the ladies, but Violetta and Carinthia protest that they can not think of such a thing. Their high-church sire is disgusted with their want of orthodoxy, and he finally yields to the knights their swords, that they may do justice on themselves as the law requires. But Andrew and Anthony are no sooner armed again than they clear their way to liberty, and the drop scene falls upon the rout of the whole empire of Trebizond.
The third act is of gigantic length, and deals with giants. There is mourning in Tartary. David has killed the king’s son in a tournament, and the king remarks, like a retired apothecary, that “Time’s plaster must draw the sore before he can feel peace again.” To punish David, he is compelled to undertake the destruction of the enchanter Ormandine, who lived in a cavern fortress with “some selected friends.” The prize of success is the reversion of the kingdom of Tartary to the Welsh knight. The latter goes upon his mission, but he is so long about it that our old friend Chorus enters, to explain what he affirms they have not time to act—namely, the great deeds of St. George, who, as we learn, had slain the never-to-be-forgotten dragon, rescued Sabrina, been cheated of his reward, and held in prison seven years upon bread and water. His squire, Suckabus, alludes to giants whom he and his master had previously slain, and whose graves were as large as Tothill Fields. He also notices “Ploydon’s law,” and other matters, that could hardly have been contemporaneous with the palmy days of the kingdom of Tartary. Meanwhile, David boldly assaults Ormandine, but the enchanter surrounds him with some delicious-looking nymphs, all thinly clad and excessively seductive; and we are sorry to say that the Welsh champion, not being cavalierly mounted on proper principles, yields to seduction, and after various falls under various temptations, is carried to bed by the rollicking nymph Drunkenness.
But never did good, though fallen, men want for a friend at a pinch. St. George is in the neighborhood; and seedy as he is after seven years in the dark, with nothing more substantial by way of food than bread, and nothing more exhilarating for beverage than aqua pura, the champion of England does David’s work, and with more generosity than justice, makes him a present of the enchanter’s head. David presents the same to the King of Tartary, that, according to promise pledged in case of such a present being made, he may be proclaimed heir-apparent to the Tartarian throne. With this bit of cheating, the long third act comes to an end.
The fourth act is taken up with an only partially successful attack by James, David, and Patrick, on a cruel enchanter, Argalio, who at least is put to flight, and that, at all events, as the knights remark, is something to be thankful for. The fifth and grand act reveals to us the powerful magician, Brandron, in his castle. He holds in thrall the King of Macedon—a little circumstance not noted in history; and he has in his possession the seven daughters of his majesty transformed into swans. The swans contrive to make captives of six of the knights as they were taking a “gentle walk” upon his ramparts. They are impounded as trespassers, and Brandron, who has some low comedy business with Suckubus, will not release them but upon condition that they fight honestly in his defence against St. George. The six duels take place, and of course the champion of England overcomes all his friendly antagonists; whereupon Brandron, with his club, beats out his own brains, in presence of the audience.
At this crisis, the King of Macedon appears, restored to power, and inquires after his daughters. St. George and the rest, with a use of the double negatives that would have shocked Lindley Murray, declare
“We never knew, nor saw no ladies here.”
The swans, however, soon take their pristine form, and the three daughters appear fresh from their plumes and their long bath upon the lake. Upon this follows the smart dialogue which we extract as a sample of how sharply the King of Macedon looked to his family interests, and how these champion knights were “taken in” before they well knew how the fact was accomplished.
Mac. Reverend knights, may we desire to know which of you are
unmarried?
Ant., Den., and Pat. We are.
Geo. Then here’s these ladies, take ’em to your beds.
Mac. George highly honors aged Macedon.
The three Knights. But can the ladies’ love accord with us?
The three Ladies. Most willingly!
The three Knights. We thus then seal our contract.
Geo. Which thus we ratifie.
Sit with the brides, most noble Macedon;
And since kind fortune sent such happy chance,
We’ll grace your nuptials with a soldier’s dance.
And, fore George, as our fathers used to say, they make a night of it. The piece ends with a double military reel, and the audiences at the Bull and the Cockpit probably whistled the tune as they wended their way homeward to crab-apple ale and spiced gingerbread.
Next to the Champions of Christendom, the King’s Knight Champion of England is perhaps the most important personage—in the point of view of chivalry. I think it is some French author who has said, that revolutions resemble the game of chess, where the pawns or pieces (les pions) may cause the ruin of the king, save him, or take his place. Now the champ pion, as this French remark reminds me, is nothing more than the field pion, pawn, or piece, put forward to fight in the king’s quarrel.
The family of the Champion of England bears, it may be observed, exactly the name which suits a calling so derived. The appellation “Dymoke” is derived from De Umbrosâ Quercu; I should rather say it is the translation of it; and Harry De Umbrosâ Quercu is only Harry of the Shady or Dim Oak, a very apt dwelling-place and name for one whose chief profession was that of field-pawn to the king.
This derivation or adaptation of names from original Latin surnames is common enough, and some amusing pages might be written on the matter, in addition to what has been so cleverly put together by Mr. Mark Anthony Lower, in his volume devoted especially to an elucidation of English surnames.
The royal champions came in with the Conquest. The Norman dukes had theirs in the family of Marmion—ancestors of that Marmion of Sir Walter Scott’s, who commits forgery, like a common knave of more degenerate times. The Conqueror conferred sundry broad lands in England on his champions; among others, the lands adjacent to, as well as the castle of Tamworth. Near this place was the first nunnery established in this country. The occupants were the nuns of St. Edith, at Polesworth. Robert de Marmion used the ladies very “cavalierly,” ejected them from their house, and deprived them of their property. But such victims had a wonderfully clever way of recovering their own.
My readers may possibly remember how a certain Eastern potentate injured the church, disgusted the Christians generally, and irritated especially that Simeon Stylites who sat on the summit of a pillar, night and day, and never moved from his abiding-place. The offender had a vision, in which he not only saw the indignant Simeon, but was cudgelled almost into pulp by the simulacre of that saint. I very much doubt if Simeon himself was in his airy dwelling-place at that particular hour of the night. I was reminded of this by what happened to the duke’s champion, Robert de Marmion. He was roused from a deep sleep by the vision of a stout lady, who announced herself as the wronged St. Edith, and who proceeded to show her opinion of De Marmion’s conduct toward her nuns, by pommelling his ribs with her crosier, until she had covered his side with bruises, and himself with repentance. What strong-armed young monk played St. Edith that night, it is impossible to say; but that he enacted the part successfully, is seen from the fact that Robert brought back the ladies to Polesworth, and made ample restitution of all of which they had been deprived. The nuns, in return, engaged with alacrity to inter all defunct Marmions within the chapter-house of their abbey, for nothing.
With the manor of Tamworth in Warwickshire, Marmion held that of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire. The latter was held of the King by grand sergeantry, “to perform the office of champion at the King’s coronation.” At his death he was succeeded by a son of the same Christian name, who served the monks of Chester precisely as his sire had treated the nuns at Polesworth. This second Robert fortified his ill-acquired prize—the priory; but happening to fall into one of the newly-made ditches, when inspecting the fortifications, a soldier of the Earl of Chester killed him, without difficulty, as he lay with broken hip and thigh, at the bottom of the fosse. The next successor, a third Robert, was something of a judge, with a dash of the warrior, too, and he divided his estates between two sons, both Roberts, by different mothers. The eldest son and chief possessor, after a bustling and emphatically “battling” life, was succeeded by his son Philip, who fell into some trouble in the reign of Henry III. for presuming to act as a judge or justice of the peace, without being duly commissioned. This Philip was, nevertheless, one of the most faithful servants to a king who found so many faithless; and if honors were heaped upon him in consequence, he fairly merited them all. He was happy, too, in marriage, for he espoused a lady sole heiress to a large estate, and who brought him four daughters, co-heiresses to the paternal and maternal lands of the Marmions and the Kilpecs.
This, however, is wandering. Let us once more return to orderly illustration. In St. George I have shown how pure romance deals with a hero. In the next chapter I will endeavor to show in what spirit the lives and actions of real English heroes have been treated by native historians. In so doing, I will recount the story of Sir Guy of Warwick, after their fashion, with original illustrations and “modern instances.”