THE TRAINING OF PAGES.
“What callest thou Page? What is its humor?
Sir; he is Nobilis ephebus, and
Puer regius, student of Knighthood,
Breaking hearts and hoping to break lances.”— Old Play.
I have in another chapter noticed the circumstance of knighthood conferred on an Irish prince, at so early an age as seven years. This was the age at which, in less precocious England, noble youths entered wealthy knights’ families as pages, to learn obedience, to be instructed in the use of weapons, and to acquire a graceful habit of tending on ladies. The poor nobility, especially, found their account in this system, which gave a gratuitous education to their sons, in return for services which were not considered humiliating or dishonorable. These boys served seven years as pages, or varlets—sometimes very impudent varlets—and at fourteen might be regular esquires, and tend their masters where hard blows were dealt and taken—for which encounters they “riveted with a sigh the armor they were forbidden to wear.”
Neither pages, varlets, nor household, could be said to have been always as roystering as modern romancers have depicted them. There was at least exceptions to the rule—if there was a rule of roystering. Occasionally, the lads were not indifferently taught before they left their own homes. That is, not indifferently taught for the peculiar life they were about to lead. Even the Borgias, infamous as the name has become through inexorable historians and popular operas, were at one time eminently respectable and exemplarily religious. Thus in the household of the Duke of Gandia, young Francis Borgia, his son, passed his time “among the domestics in wonderful innocence and piety.” It was the only season of his life, however, so passed. Marchangy asserts that the pages of the middle ages were often little saints; but this could hardly have been the case since “espiègle comme un page,” “hardi comme un page,” and other illustrative sayings have survived even the era of pagedom. Indeed, if we may believe the minstrels, and they were often as truth-telling as the annalist, the pages were now and then even more knowing and audacious than their masters. When the Count Ory was in love with the young Abbess of Farmoutier, he had recourse to his page for counsel.
“Hola! mon page, venez me conseiller,
L’amour me berce, je ne puis sommeiller;
Comment me prendre pour dans ce couvent entrer?”
How ready was the ecstatic young scamp with his reply:—
“Sire il faut prendre quatorze chevaliers,
Et tous en nonnes il vous les faut habiller,
Puis, à nuit close, à la porte il faut heurter.”
What came of this advice, the song tells in very joyous terms, for which the reader may be referred to that grand collection the “Chants et Chansons de la France.”
On the other hand, Mr. Kenelm Digby, who is, be it said in passing, a painter of pages, looking at his object through pink-colored glasses, thus writes of these young gentlemen, in his “Mores Catholici.”
“Truly beautiful does the fidelity of chivalrous youth appear in the page of history or romance. Every master of a family in the middle ages had some young man in his service who would have rejoiced to shed the last drop of his blood to save him, and who, like Jonathan’s armor-bearer, would have replied to his summons: ‘Fac omnia quæ placent animo tuo; perge quo cupis; et ero tecum ubicumque volueris.’ When Gyron le Courtois resolved to proceed on the adventure of the Passage perilleux, we read that the valet, on hearing the frankness and courtesy with which his lord spoke to him, began to weep abundantly, and said, all in tears, ‘Sire, know that my heart tells me that sooth, if you proceed further, you will never return; that you will either perish there, or you will remain in prison; but, nevertheless, nothing shall prevent me going with you. Better die with you, if it be God’s will, than leave you in such guise to save my own life;’ and so saying, he stepped forward and said, ‘Sire, since you will not return according to my advice, I will not leave you this time, come to me what may.’ Authority in the houses of the middle ages,” adds Mr. Digby, “was always venerable. The very term seneschal is supposed to have implied ‘old knight,’ so that, as with the Greeks, the word signifying ‘to honor,’ and to ‘pay respect,’ was derived immediately from that which denoted old age, πρεσβευω being thus used in the first line of the Eumenides. Even to those who were merely attached by the bonds of friendship or hospitality, the same lessons and admonitions were considered due. John Francis Picus of Mirandola mentions his uncle’s custom of frequently admonishing his friends, and exhorting them to a holy life. ‘I knew a man,’ he says, ‘who once spoke with him on the subject of manners, and who was so much moved by only two words from him, which alluded to the death of Christ, as the motive for avoiding sin, that from that hour, he renounced the ways of vice, and reformed his whole life and manner.’”
We smile to find Mr. Digby mentioning the carving of angels in stone over the castle-gates, as at Vincennes, as a proof that the pages who loitered about there were little saints. But we read with more interest, that “the Sieur de Ligny led Bayard home with him, and in the evening preached to him as if he had been his own son, recommending him to have heaven always before his eyes.” This is good, and that it had its effect on Bayard, we all know; nevertheless that chevalier himself was far from perfect.
With regard to the derivation of Seneschal as noticed above, we may observe that it implies “old man of skill.” Another word connected with arms is “Marshal,” which is derived from Mar, “a horse,” and Schalk, “skilful,” one knowing in horses; hence “Maréchal ferrant,” as assumed by French farriers. Schalk, however, I have seen interpreted as meaning “servant.” Earl Marshal was, originally, the knight who looked after the royal horses and stables, and all thereto belonging.
But to return to the subject of education. If all the sons of noblemen, in former days, were as well off for gentle teachers as old historians and authors describe them to have been, they undoubtedly had a great advantage over some of their descendants of the present day. In illustration of this fact it is only necessary to point to the sermons recently delivered by a reverend pedagogue to the boys who have the affliction of possessing him as headmaster. It is impossible to read some of these whipping sermons, without a feeling of intense disgust. Flagellation is there hinted at, mentioned, menaced, caressed as it were, as if in the very idea there was a sort of delight. The worst passage of all is where the amiable master tells his youthful hearers that they are noble by birth, that the greatest humiliation to a noble person is the infliction of a blow, and that nevertheless, he, the absolute master, may have to flog many of them. How the young people over whom he rules, must love such an instructor! The circumstance reminds me of the late Mr. Ducrow, who was once teaching a boy to go through a difficult act of horsemanship, in the character of a page. The boy was timid, and his great master applied the whip to him unmercifully. Mr. Joseph Grimaldi was standing by, and looked very serious, considering his vocation. “You see,” remarked Ducrow to Joey, “that it is quite necessary to make an impression on these young fellows.”—“Very likely,” answered Grimaldi, dryly, “but it can hardly be necessary to make the whacks so hard!”
The discipline to which pages were subjected in the houses of knights and noblemen, does not appear to have been at all of a severe character. Beyond listening to precept from the chaplain, heeding the behests of their master, and performing pleasant duties about their mistress, they seem to have been left pretty much to themselves, and to have had, altogether, a pleasant time of it. The poor scholars had by far a harder life than your “Sir page.” And this stern discipline held over the pale student continued down to a very recent, that is, a comparatively recent period. In Neville’s play of “The Poor Scholar,” written in 1662, but never acted, the character of student-life at college is well illustrated. The scene lies at the university, where Eugenes, jun., albeit he is called “the poor scholar,” is nephew of Eugenes, sen., who is president of a college. Nephew and uncle are at feud, and the man in authority imprisons his young kinsman, who contrives to escape from durance vile, and to marry a maiden called Morphe. The fun of the marriage is, that the young couple disguise themselves as country lad and lass, and the reverend Eugenes, sen., unconsciously couples a pair whom he would fain have kept apart. There are two other university marriages as waggishly contrived; and when the ceremonies are concluded, one of the newly-married students, bold as any page, impudently remarks to the duped president, “Our names are out of the butteries, and our persons out of your dominions.” The phrase shows that, in the olden time, an “ingenuus puer” at Oxford, if he were desirous of escaping censure, had only to take his name off the books. But there were worse penalties than mere censure. The author of “The Poor Scholar” makes frequent allusion to the whipping of undergraduates, stretched on a barrel, in the buttery. There was long an accredited tradition that Milton had been thus degraded. In Neville’s play, one of the young Benedicks, prematurely married, remarks, “Had I been once in the butteries, they’d have their rods about me.” To this remark Eugenes, jun., adds another in reference to his uncle the president, “He would have made thee ride on a barrel, and made you show your fat cheeks.” But it is clear that even this terrible penalty could be avoided by young gentlemen, if they had their wits about them; for the fearless Aphobos makes boast, “My name is cut out of the college butteries, and I have now no title to the mounting a barrel.”
Young scions of noble houses, in the present time, have to endure more harsh discipline than is commonly imagined. They are treated rather like the buttery undergraduates of former days, than the pages who, in ancient castles, learned the use of arms, served the Chatellaine, and invariably fell in love with the daughters. They who doubt this fact have only to read those Whipping Sermons to which I have referred. Such discourses, in days of old, to a body of young pages, would probably have cost the preacher more than he cared to lose. In these days, such sermons can hardly have won affection for their author. The latter, no doubt, honestly thought he was in possession of a vigorously salubrious principle; but there is something ignoble both in the discipline boasted of, and especially in the laying down the irresistible fact to young gentlemen that a blow was the worst offence that could be inflicted on persons of their class, but that he could and would commit such assault upon them, and that gentle and noble as they were, they dared not resent it!
The pages of old time occasionally met with dreadful harsh treatment from their chivalrous master. The most chivalrous of these Christian knights could often act cowardly and unchristian-like. I may cite, as an instance, the case of the great and warlike Duke of Burgundy, on his defeat at Muret. He was hemmed in between ferocious enemies and the deep lake. As the lesser of two evils, he plunged into the latter, and his young page leaped upon the crupper as the Duke’s horse took the water. The stout steed bore his double burden across, a breadth of two miles, not without difficulty, yet safely. The Duke was, perhaps, too alarmed himself, at first, to know that the page was hanging on behind; but when the panting horse reached the opposite shore, sovereign Burgundy was so wroth at the idea that the boy, by clinging to his steed, had put the life of the Duke in peril, that he turned upon him and poignarded the poor lad upon the beach. Lassels, who tells the story, very aptly concludes it with the scornful yet serious ejaculation, “Poor Prince! thou mightest have given another offering of thanksgiving to God for thy escape, than this!” But “Burgundy” was rarely gracious or humane. “Carolus Pugnax,” says Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, “made Henry Holland, late Duke of Exeter, exiled, run after his horse, like a lackey, and would take no notice of him.” This was the English peer who was reduced to beg his way in the cities of Flanders.
Of pages generally, we shall have yet to speak incidentally—meanwhile, let us glance at their masters at home.