CHAUCER AND PHILIPPA PICARD.
After Italy, England,—who has ever trod in her footsteps, and at length outstript her in the race of intellect,—was the next to produce a great and prevailing genius in poetry, a master-spirit, whom no change of customs, manners, or language, can render wholly obsolete; and who was destined, like the rest of his tribe, to bow before the influence of woman, to toil in her praise, and soar by her inspiration.
Seven years after the death of Dante, Chaucer was born, and he was twenty-four years younger than Petrarch, whom he met at Padua in 1373; this meeting between the two great poets was memorable in itself, and yet more interesting for having first introduced into the English language that beautiful monument to the virtue of women,—the story of Griselda.
Boccaccio had lately sent to his friend the MS. of the Decamerone, of which it is the concluding tale: the tender fancy of Petrarch, refined by a forty years' attachment to a gentle and elegant female, passed over what was vicious and blameable, or only recommended by the wit and the style, and fixed with delight on the tale of Griselda; so beautiful in itself, and so honourable to the sex whom he had poetically deified in the person of one lovely woman. He amused his leisure hours in translating it into Latin, and having finished his version, he placed it in the hands of a citizen of Padua, and desired him to read it aloud. His friend accordingly began; but as he proceeded, the overpowering pathos of the story so affected him, that he was obliged to stop; he began again, but was unable to proceed; the gathering tears blinded him, and choked his voice, and he threw down the manuscript. This incident, which Petrarch himself relates in a letter to Boccaccio, occurred about the period when Chaucer passed from Genoa to Padua to visit the poet and lover of Laura—
Quel grande, alla cui fama angusto è il mondo.
Petrarch must have regarded the English poet with that wondering, enthusiastic admiration with which we should now hail a Milton or a Shakspeare sprung from Otaheite or Nova Zembla; and his heart and soul being naturally occupied by his latest work, he repeated the experiment he had before tried on his Paduan friend. The impression which the Griselda produced upon the vivid, susceptible imagination of Chaucer, may be judged from his own beautiful version of it in the Canterbury Tales; where the barbarity and improbability of the incidents are so redeemed by the pervading truth and purity and tenderness of the sentiment, that I suppose it never was perused for the first time without tears. Chaucer, as if proud of his interview with Petrarch, and anxious to publish it, is careful to tell us that he did not derive the story from Boccaccio, but that it was
Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk,
As proved by his wordes and his work;
Francis Petrark, the Laureat Poete;
which is also proved by internal evidence.
Chaucer so far resembled Petrarch, that, like him, he was at once poet, scholar, courtier, statesman, philosopher, and man of the world; but considered merely as poets, they were the very antipodes of each other. The genius of Dante has been compared to a Gothic cathedral, vast and lofty, and dark and irregular. In the same spirit, Petrarch may be likened to a classical and elegant Greek temple, rising aloft in its fair and faultless proportions, and compacted of the purest Parian marble; while Chaucer is like the far-spreading and picturesque palace of the Alhambra, with its hundred chambers, all variously decorated, and rich with barbaric pomp and gold: he is famed rather as the animated painter of character, and manners, and external nature, than the poet of love and sentiment; and yet no writer, Shakspeare always excepted, (and perhaps Spenser) contains so many beautiful and tender passages relating to, or inspired by, women. He lived, it is true, in rude times, times strangely deficient in good taste and decorum; but when all the institutions of chivalry, under the most chivalrous of our kings and princes,[45] were at their height in England. As a poet, Chaucer was enlisted into the service of three of the most illustrious, most beautiful, and most accomplished women of that age—Philippa, the high-hearted and generous Queen of Edward the Third; the Lady Blanche of Lancaster, first wife of John of Gaunt; and the lovely Anne of Bohemia, the Queen of Richard the Second;[46] for whom, and at whose command, he wrote his "Legende of Gode Women," as some amends for the scandal he had spoken of us in other places. The Countess of Essex, the Countess of Pembroke, and that beautiful Lady Salisbury, the ancestress of the Montagu family, whose famous mischance gave rise to the Order of the Garter, were also among Chaucer's patronesses. But the most distinguished of all, and the favourite subject of his poetry, was the Duchess Blanche. The manner in which he has contrived to celebrate his own loves and individual feelings with those of Blanche and her royal suitor, has given additional interest to both, and has enabled his commentators to fix with tolerable certainty the name and rank of the object of his love, as well as the date and circumstances of his attachment.
In the earliest of Chaucer's poems, "The Court of Love," he describes himself as enamoured of a fair mistress, whom in the style of the time, he calls Rosial, and himself Philogenet: the lady is described as "sprung of noble race and high," with "angel visage," "golden hair," and eyes orient and bright, with figure "sharply slender,"
So that from the head unto the foot all is sweet womanhead,
and arrayed in a vest of green, with her tresses braided with silk and gold. She treats him at first with disdain, and the Poet swoons away at her feet: satisfied by this convincing proof of his sincerity, she is induced to accept his homage, and becomes his "liege ladye," and the sovereign of his thoughts. In this poem, which is extremely wild, and has come down to us in an imperfect state, Chaucer quaintly admonishes all lovers, that an absolute faith in the perfection of their mistresses, and obedience to her slightest caprice, are among the first of duties; that they must in all cases believe their ladye faultless; that,
In every thing she doth but as she should.
Construe the best, believe no tales new,
For many a lie is told that seem'th full true;
But think that she, so bounteous and so fair,
Could not be false; imagine this alway.
....*....*....*....*
And tho' thou seest a fault right at thine eye,
Excuse it quick, and glose it prettily.[47]
Nor are they to presume on their own worthiness, nor to imagine it possible they can earn
By right, her mercie, nor of equity,
But of her grace and womanly pitye.[47]
There is, however, no authority for supposing that at the time this poem was written, Chaucer really aspired to the hand of any lady of superior birth, or was very seriously in love; he was then about nineteen, and had probably selected some fair one, according to the custom of his age, to be his "fancy's queen," and in the same spirit of poetical gallantry, he writes to do her honour; he says himself,
My intent and all my busie care
Is for to write this treatise as I can,
Unto my ladye, stable, true, and sure;
Faithful and kind sith firste that she began
Me to accept in service as her man;
To her be all the pleasures of this book,
That, when her like, she may it rede and look.[48]
Mixed up with all this gallantry and refinement are some passages inconceivably absurd and gross; but such were those times,—at once rude and magnificent—an odd mixture of cloth of frieze and cloth of gold!
The "Parliament of Birds," entitled in many editions, the "Assembly of Fowls," celebrates allegorically the courtship of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster.
Blanche, as the greatest heiress of England, with a duchy for her portion, could not fail to be surrounded by pretenders to her hand; but, after a year of probation, she decided in favour of John of Gaunt, who thus became Duke of Lancaster in right of his bride. This youthful and princely pair were then about nineteen.
The "Parliament of Birds" being written in 1358, when Blanche had postponed her choice for a year, has fixed the date of Chaucer's attachment to the lady he afterwards married; for, here he describes himself as one who had not yet felt the full power of love—
For albeit that I know not love indeed,
Ne wot how that he quitteth folks their hire,
Yet happeth me full oft in books to read
Of his miracles.——
But the time was come when the poet, now in his thirty-second year, was destined to feel, that a strong attachment for a deserving object—for one who will not be obtained unsought, "was no sport," as he expresses it, but
Smart and sorrow, and great heavinesse.
During the period of trial which Lady Blanche had inflicted on her lover, it was Chaucer's fate to fall in love in sad earnest.—The object of this passion, too beautifully and unaffectedly described not to be genuine, was Philippa Picard de Rouet, the daughter of a knight of Hainault, and a favourite attendant of Queen Philippa. Her elder sister Catherine, was at the same time maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche. Both these sisters were distinguished at Court for their beauty and accomplishments, and were the friends and companions of the Princesses they served: and both are singularly interesting from their connection, political and poetical, with English history and literature.
Philippa Picard is one of the principal personages in the poem entitled "Chaucer's Dream," which is a kind of epithalamium celebrating the marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche, which took place at Reading, May 19, 1359. It is a wild, fanciful vision of fairy-land and enchantments, of which I cannot attempt to give an analysis. In the opening lines, written about twelve months after the "Parliament of Birds," we find Chaucer in deep love according to all its forms. He is lying awake,
About such hour as lovers weep
And cry after their lady's grace,
thinking on his mistress—all her goodness and all her sweetness, and marvelling how heaven had formed her so exceeding fair,
And in so litel space
Made such a body and such a face;
So great beauty, and such features,
More than be in other creatures!
He falls into a dream as usual, and in the conclusion fancies himself present at the splendid festivities which took place at the marriage of his patron. The ladye of his affection is described as the beloved friend and companion of the bride. She is sent to grace the marriage ceremony with her presence; and Chaucer seizes the occasion to plead his suit for love and mercy. Then the Prince, the Queen, and all the rest of the Court, unite in conjuring the lady to have pity on his pain, and recompence his truth; she smiles, and with a pretty hesitation at last consents.
Sith his will and yours are one,
Contrary in me shall be none.
They are married: the ladies and the knights wish them
——Heart's pleasance,
In joy and health continuance!
The minstrels strike up,—the multitude send forth a shout; and in the midst of these joyous and triumphant sounds, and in the troubled exultation of his own heart, the sleeper bounds from his couch,—
Wening to have been at the feast,
and wakes to find it all a dream. He looks around for the gorgeous marriage-feast, and instead of the throng of knights and ladies gay, he sees nothing but the figures staring at him from the tapestry.
On the walls old portraiture
Of horsemen, of hawks and hounds,
And hurt deer all full of wounds;
Some like torn, some hurt with shot;
And as my dream was, that was not![49]
He is plunged in grief to find himself thus reft of all his visionary joys, and prays to sleep again, and dream thus for aye, or at least "a thousand years and ten."
Lo, here my bliss!—lo, here my pain!
Which to my ladye I complain,
And grace and mercy of her requere,
To end my woe and all my fear;
And me accept for her service—
That of my dream, the substance
Might turnen, once, to cognisance.[50]
And the whole concludes with a very tender "envoi," expressly addressed to Philippa, although the poem was written in honour of his patrons, the Duke and Duchess. It has been well observed, that nothing can be more delicate and ingenious than the manner in which Chaucer has complimented his mistress, and ventured to shadow forth his own hopes and desires; confessing, at the same time, that they were built on air and ended in a dream: it may be added, that nothing can be more picturesque and beautiful, and vigorous, than some of the descriptive parts of this poem.
There is no reason to suppose that Philippa was absolutely deaf to the suit, or insensible to the fame and talents of her poet-lover. The delay which took place was from a cause honourable to her character and her heart; it arose from the declining health of her royal mistress, to whom she was most strongly and gratefully attached, and whose noble qualities deserved all her affection. It appears, from a comparison of dates, that Chaucer endured a suspense of more than nine years, during which he was a constant and fervent suitor for his ladye's grace. In this interval he translated the Romaunt of the Rose, the most famous poetical work of the middle ages. He addressed it to his mistress; and it is remarkable that a very elaborate and cynical satire on women, which occurs in the original French, is entirely omitted by Chaucer in his version; perhaps because it would have been a profanation to her who then ruled his heart: on other occasions he showed no such forbearance.
In the year 1369, Chaucer lost his amiable patroness, the Duchess Blanche; she died in her thirtieth year; he lamented her death in a long poem, entitled the "Booke of the Duchesse." The truth of the story, the virtues, the charms, and the youth of the Princess, the grief of her husband, and the simplicity and beauty of many passages, render this one of the most interesting and striking of all Chaucer's works.
The description of Blanche, in the "Booke of the Duchesse," shows how trifling is the difference between a perfect female character in the thirteenth century, and what would now be considered as such. It is a very lively and animated picture. Her golden hair and laughing eyes; her skill in dancing, and her sweet carolling; her "goodly and friendly speech;" her debonair looks; her gaiety, that was still "so womanly;" her indifference to general admiration; her countenance, "that was so simple and so benigne," contrasted with her high-spirited modesty and consciousness of lofty birth,
No living wight might do her shame,
She loved so well her own name;
her disdain of that coquetterie which holds men "in balance,"
By half-word or by countenance;
her wit, "without malice, and ever set upon gladnesse;" and her goodness, which the Poet, with a nice discrimination of female virtue, distinguishes from mere ignorance of evil—for though in all her actions was perfect innocence, he adds,
I say not that she had no knowing
What harm was; for, else, she
Had known no good—so thinketh me;
are all beautifully and happily set forth, and are charms so appropriate to woman, as woman, that no change of fashion or lapse of ages can alter their effect. Time
"Can draw no lines there with his antique pen."
But afterwards follows a trait peculiarly characteristic of the women of that chivalrous period. She was not, says Chaucer, one of those ladies who send their lovers off
To Walachie,
To Prussia, and to Tartary,
To Alexandria, ne Turkie;
and on other bootless errands, by way of displaying their power.
She used no such knacks small.
That is, she was superior to such frivolous tricks.
John of Gaunt, who is the principal speaker and chief mourner in the poem, gives a history of his courtship, and tells with what mixture of fear and awe, he then "right young," approached the lovely heiress of Lancaster: but bethinking him that Heaven could never have formed in any creature so great beauty and bounty "withouten mercie,"—in that hope he makes his confession of love; and he goes on to tell us, with exquisite naïveté,—
I wot not well how I began,
Full evil rehearse it, I can:
....*....*....*....*
For many a word I overskipt
In telling my tale—for pure fear,
Lest that my words misconstrued were.
Softly, and quaking for pure dred,
And shame,—
Full oft I wax'd both pale and red;
I durst not once look her on,
For wit, manner, and all was gone;
I said, "Mercie, sweet!"—and no more.
Then his anguish at her first rejection, and his rapture when, at last, he wins from his ladye
The noble gift of her mercie;
his domestic happiness—his loss, and his regrets, are all told with the same truth, simplicity, and profound feeling. For such passages and such pictures as these, Chaucer will still be read, triumphant as the poet of nature, over the rust and dust of ages, and all the difficulties of antique style and obsolete spelling; which last, however, though repulsive, is only a difficulty to the eye, and easily overcome.
To return to Chaucer's own love.—In the opening lines of the "Booke of the Duchesse," he describes himself as wasted with his "eight years' sicknesse," alluding to his long courtship of the coy Philippa:
I have great wonder, by this light,
How that I live!—for day nor night
I may not sleepen well-nigh nought:
I have so many an idle thought
Purely for the default of sleep;
That, by my troth, I take no keep
Of nothing—how it com'th or go'th,
To me is nothing liefe or lothe;[51]
All is equal good to me,
Joy or sorrow—whereso it be;
For I have feeling in no thing,
But am, as 'twere, a mazed[52] thing,
All day in point to fall adown
For sorrowful imagination, &c.
In the same year with the Duchess died the good Queen of Edward the Third; and Philippa Picard being thus sadly released from her attendance on her mistress, a few months afterwards married Chaucer, then in his forty-second year.
In consequence of her good service, Philippa had a pension for her life; and I regret that little more is known concerning her: but it should seem that she was a good and tender wife, and that long years of wedded life did not weaken her husband's attachment for her; for she accompanied Chaucer when he was exiled, about fifteen years after his marriage, though every motive of prudence and selfishness, on both sides, would then have induced a separation.[53] Neither was the poet likely to be easily satisfied on the score of conjugal obedience; he was rather exigeant and despotic, if we may trust his own description of a perfect wife. The chivalrous and poetical lover was the slave of his mistress; but once married, it is all vice versa.
She saith not once nay, when he saith yea
"Do this," saith he, "all ready, Sir," saith she!
The precise date of Philippa's death is not known, but it took place some years before that of her husband. Their residence at the time of their marriage, was a small stone building, near the entrance of Woodstock Park; it had been given to Chaucer by Edward the Third; afterwards they resided principally at Donnington Castle, that fine and striking ruin, which must be remembered by all who have travelled the Newberry road. In the domain attached to this castle were three oaks of remarkable size and beauty, to which Chaucer gave the names of the Queen's oak, the King's oak, and Chaucer's oak; these venerable trees were felled in Evelyn's time, and are commemorated in his Sylva, as among the noblest of their species.
Philippa's eldest son, Thomas Chaucer, had a daughter, Alice, who became the wife of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, the famous favourite of Margaret of Anjou. The grandson of Alice Chaucer, by the Duke of Suffolk, John Earl of Lincoln, was declared heir to the crown by Richard the Third;[54] and had the issue of the battle of Bosworth been different, would undoubtedly have ascended the throne of England;—as it was, the lineage of Chaucer was extinguished on a scaffold.
The fate of Catherine Picard de Rouet, the sister of Chaucer's wife, was still more remarkable,—she was destined to be the mother of a line of kings.
She had been domicella, or maid of honour to the Duchess Blanche, after whose death, the infant children of the Princess were committed to her care.[55] In this situation she won the heart of their father, the Duke of Lancaster, who on the death of his second wife, Constance of Castile, married Catherine, and his children by her were solemnly legitimatized. The conduct of Catherine, except in one instance, had been irreproachable: her humility, her prudence, and her various accomplishments, not only reconciled the royal family and the people to her marriage, but added lustre to her rank: and when Richard the Second married Isabella of France, the young Queen, then only nine years old, was placed under the especial care and tuition of the Duchess of Lancaster.
One of the grand-daughters of Catherine, Lady Jane Beaufort, had the singular fortune of becoming at once the inspiration and the love of a great poet, the queen of an accomplished monarch, and the common ancestress of all the sovereigns of England since the days of Elizabeth.[56]
Never, perhaps, was the influence of woman on a poetic temperament more beautifully illustrated, than in the story of James the First of Scotland, and Lady Jane Beaufort. It has been so elegantly told by Washington Irving in the Sketch-Book, that it is only necessary to refer to it.—James, while a prisoner, was confined in Windsor Castle, and immediately under his window there was a fair garden, in which the Lady Jane was accustomed to walk with her attendants, distinguished above them all by her beauty and dignity, even more than by her state and the richness of her attire. The young monarch beheld her accidentally, his imagination was fired, his heart captivated, and from that moment his prison was no longer a dungeon, but a palace of light and love. As he was the best poet and musician of his time, he composed songs in her praise, set them to music, and sang them to his lute. He also wrote the history of his love, with all its circumstances, in a long poem[57] still extant; and though the language be now obsolete, it is described, by those who have studied it, as not only full of beauties both of sentiment and expression, but unpolluted by a single thought or allusion which the most refined age, or the most fastidious delicacy, could reject;—a singular distinction, when we consider that James's only models must have been Gower and Chaucer, to whom no such praise is due: we must rather suppose that he was no imitator, but that he owed his inspiration to modest and queenly beauty, and to the genuine tenderness of his own heart. His description of the fair apparition who came to bless his solitary hours, is so minute and peculiar, that it must have been drawn from the life:—the net of pearls, in which her light tresses were gathered up; the chain of fine-wrought gold about her neck; the heart-shaped ruby suspended from it, which glowed on her snowy bosom like a spark of fire; her white vest looped up to facilitate her movements; her graceful damsels who followed at a respectful distance; and her little dog gambolling round her with its collar of silver bells,—these, and other picturesque circumstances, were all noted in the lover's memory, and have been recorded by the poet's verse. And he sums up her perfections thus:
In her was youth, beauty, and numble port,
Bountee, richesse, and womanly feature.
God better knows than my pen can report,
Wisdom, largesse,[58] estate,[59] and cunning[60] sure:
In every point so guided her measure,
In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance,
That nature could no more her child advance.
The account of his own feelings as she disappears from his charmed gaze,—his lingering at the window of his tower, till Phœbus
Had bid farewell to every leaf and flower,—
then resting his head pensively on the cold stone, and the vision which steals upon his half-waking, half-dreaming fancy, and shadows forth the happy issue of his love,—are all conceived in the most lively manner. It is judged from internal evidence, that this poem must have been finished after his marriage, since he intimates that he is blessed in the possession of her he loved, and that the fair vision of his solitary dungeon is realised.
When the King of Scots was released, he wooed and won openly, and as a monarch, the woman he had adored in secret. The marriage was solemnized in 1423, and he carried Lady Jane to Scotland where she was crowned soon after his bride and queen.
How well she merited, and how deeply she repaid the love of her devoted and all-accomplished husband, is told in history. When James was surprised and murdered by some of his factious barons, his queen threw herself between him and the daggers of the assassins, received many of the wounds aimed at his heart, nor could they complete their purpose till they had dragged her by force from his arms. She deserved to be a poet's queen and love! These are the souls, the deeds which inspire poetry,—or rather which are themselves poetry, its principle and its essence. It was on this occasion that Catherine Douglas, one of the queen's attendants, thrust her arm into the stanchion of the door to serve the purpose of a bolt, and held it there till the savage assailants forced their way by shattering the frail defence. What times were those!—alas! the love of women, and the barbarity of men!