* * * *
“Master Jehan says he will give me as many skins to write on as I will, so it be to write to you. Which he says good for me. He calls you that sweet, noble gentlewoman, my mother, and ever lifts his cap at your name. He makes sport for the princes with his sayings. I find no mirth in him, save his bad way of speaking English. He is sad enough with me. He lays his hand on my brow, looks at me, and sighs. I would fain please him, for, with all his tristeness, he is kind to me.” [Here three lines are carefully effaced; the words “saved” and “whipping” being alone decipherable.] “When I ply him with questions, he says ever, ‘write to my mother, boy, and love her.’ Why, see, now I do write, and ***** says he is struck by the falling sickness,—and truly he fell thrice up the pan tier’s stairs, coming to see me secretly, for Sir Thomas will not have him about the house * * * his chamber so sorry it would make you weep. The sanctuary is hard by the abbey. I found him much restored, and had got him canary with the gold florence I sent him—for medicine, he said; but other distressed gentlemen were drinking it with him that seemed not much in need of medicine. He is nigh ragged, and takes it to heart that I should go in brocaded satin. I pray you send me the six shillings—for I would not have Sir Thomas know of the torn doublet. he comes home Wednesday. The Prince of Wales is yet sick in Gascony. My good father would have me borrow him a suit of Sir Thomas’s—for one day—that he might visit a nobleman, owes him money, as he says. I was taking it from the house, no one seeing me but Master Jehan, who is ever prying. I was fain to tell him what I was carrying, and where. To see the rage he flew into, shedding tears, and chattering French, and yet not angry with me, for he said French for poor boy, poor child, many times. He bade me take the things back, and said he would go speak to my good father in sanctuary. I learn that he did so, and said bitter words to my good father—who hath not since named dress to me or bringing him aught of Sir Thomas’s. Master Jehan is going again into
Hainault, in Flanders, and in truth I grieve not much. **** My lady, Sir Thomas’s mother, gave me a shilling, saying I did well to defend our badge against the Ferrers’s—their’s is the ‘Six Horse-shoes,’—but this will not pay the doublet. I said not, I beat him for that he said my good father ran from Creçy; and taunted me with my uncle keeping the sign of the ‘Fleece,’ in Watling Street. I warrant you I shall hear no more of it. Master Pollen, the pantler, tells me it is true my father had the tablecloth cut cross-ways in front of him, in sign of disgrace to his knighthood, which is a sore shame to us. I would thou and he were friends, that I might not hear him say such bitter things of thee—which I know thou dost not merit. I pray thee forget not the six shillings (easterling). Master Pollen knows a skilful tailor, his brother, will repair it for that money, and Sir Thomas never know. I am bound to an archery play on the moor—whereat Prince John says there is none to match me. I would Wat Smith knew of this. I would fain see him and Hob, and you and Mistress Adlyn and Peter. I pray you send me the six shillings.
“Your loving dutiful Son,
“John Falstaff”
The above letter * is not dated; but was obviously written towards the autumn of 1365. From this date—to that of our hero’s ripest maturity—there is a deplorable gap in the Falstaff correspondence. Indeed, with the exception of the above specimen, the earliest relic or mention of any manuscript in Sir John’s handwriting may be traced to the conversation recorded in the first chapter of the present book.
* Preserved in the Strongate collection, to which valuable
depository of antiquarian lore (and the facilities afforded
by its enlightened owner for its inspection) the writer
cannot sufficiently express his obligations. He has much
pleasure in being the first to announce that it is the
intention of the fortunate possessor, Mr. Roderick Bolton,
F. S. A., of Kemys-Commander, Monmouthshire, to bequeath
this priceless collection to the British Museum at his
decease. Long may the melancholy event be delayed which
shall establish the nation in possession of so inestimable a
legacy!
Of the four letters entrusted by Falstaff to his page for delivery—the contents of two only can be known with any degree of certainty. The missing epistles are those addressed respectively to Prince John of Lancaster, and Ralph Nevil, Earl of Westmoreland—nominal leaders of the second Royalist expedition which Sir John Falstaff had pledged himself to conduct (it will be seen how the pledge was redeemed) against the northern rebels. The loss of these letters is scarcely to be regretted. Being written on the eve of the setting forth of the expedition, they were doubtless mere official despatches—containing reasons for the writer’s not having taken the field as early as he was expected to—or some other device in warlike stratagem, and therefore of no interest to any but the student of military science. The two remaining epistles—which have been fortunately handed down to us—are of far higher importance, as throwing light upon the author’s condition in mind, body, and finances, at this critical period of his career; when, as has been shown, he was about to raise his mailed heel, a second time, to crush the serpent of Rebellion—which reptile had most unaccountably managed to wriggle away from him alive on the field of Shrewsbury.
The first of these documents is a brief, playful note addressed to the Prince of Wales—on the return of that Royal Leader from the successful assertion of his claims to the Principality by the destruction of the bulk of its inhabitants. The manuscript has not been preserved; but the loss is immaterial. It existed as late as the time of Shakspeare, by whose care a verbatim copy of it has been transmitted to us. It is worded as follows:—
“Sir John Falstaff, Knight, to the son of the King nearest his father, greeting.
“I will imitate the honorable Romans in brevity. I commend me to thee; I commend thee, and I leave thee. Be not too familiar with Poins, for he misuses thy favours so much, that he swears thou art to marry his sister Nell. Repent at idle times as thou may’st, and so farewell!
“Thine by yea and no (which is as much as to say as thou noest him); Jack Falstaff with my familiars; John with my brothers and sisters; and SIR JOHN with all Europe.”
This epistle (meant as a mere reminder to the Prince, that his old companion is in London and anxious to see him) is conceived and written in a spirit of the purest pleasantry. This is evidenced in the mock stateliness of the exordium and signature, as well as in the allusion to imaginary brothers and sisters (Sir John, as the family annals and this history satisfactorily prove, being an only son). The caution against Poins is, of course, a joke; but, as will ever happen in the most playful badinage of a true satirist, founded on a subtle perception of the truth. It is more than probable that Mr. Poins—not having wit to perceive the drift of the Prince’s assumed easiness of disposition—may have contemplated the advancement of his family by some such device as the matrimonial device alluded to. At any rate, one thing is certain, Mr. Poins did not relish the joke.
However, this trifle serves to display Sir John Falstaff, on the eve of a vast military undertaking, light of heart and dauntless of spirit. The second letter is of a very different character and satisfactorily disproves the shortsighted, shallow theory, that our knight was incapable, on fitting occasions, of the loftiest sentiments as well as the most serious reflection. This letter exists in manuscript, carefully preserved in the collection to which I have so frequently expressed my obligations. I have been favoured with a photographic copy—which I hasten to transcribe with the idiomatic and orthographic modifications I have thought fit to observe in all such cases, for the greater ease of the general reader. Here and there a hiatus in the text occurs, due to the ravages of time. These I might easily have supplied from imagination; but have rigorously abstained from yielding to any such temptation: knowing well that the most imperfect ruin is more valuable to the antiquarian student than the most elaborate restoration.
TO DAME URSULA SWINSTEAD, AT THE TRENCHER, COOK’S HOUSE, BY THAMES STREET. *
* The “Cooks’ Quarter,” or assemblage of public eating-
houses by the River Thames, existed in flourishing vigour as
early as the reign of Henry the Second, and is
affectionately described by Fitzstephen. A good idea of the
barbarity of the times, and the utter ignorance of the first
principles of commercial reciprocity, may be gleaned from a
fact mentioned by that old writer, namely, that “the public
cooks sold no wine, while the taverners dressed no meat.”
This unnatural state of things existed for more than three
centuries, during which time it was impossible to obtain a
glass of ale with your ham sandwich, or a chop with your
pint of claret. It was not till the reign of Richard the
Second that a reform was effected. Then, the great discovery
was made, that it was possible to supply all the component
parts of a meal, solid as well as fluid, in one
establishment. In the simple words of Stowe, “since then the
cooks have sold wine, and the taverners dressed meat.”
Surely this triumph over the habits and prejudices of ages
must have originated in a master mind. Who so likely to feel
the evil, so powerful to remedy it, as Sir John Falstaff?
Assuming him to have been the Man of the Hour (that is, the
dinner hour), in addition to his other claims to
immortality, the hero of these pages must be ever revered as
the inventor of the noble Art and custom of Dining in the
City ‘.—Vide Fitzstephen and Stowe; Annals and Survey.
“Madam,—You doubtless never thought to hear of me again. Myself never thought to trouble you more with knowledge of my existence. I speak not of paltry money debts. You will do me the kindness (I may not say justice) to believe that I have not injured only to affront you.
“I am an old man, madam—fifty-three in birthdays, and I may not say how much in suffering and wickedness. Nay, I must put wickedness first. You, madam,—I am in no mood for flattery,—are not young. You were a widow with three prattling children—Robin, Davy, and Maudlin (they have ne’er a thought for old Uncle Jack now, I warrant me)—when I first knew you eighteen years ago. Would for your sake that time had never been! No matter! I would say you have approached that calm, sober lifetime—and there is so little left to love or sorrow for in me—that you may hear what I have to say without heartrending.
“I write, madam, to bid you a last farewell. I am for the wars, from which my chance to return alive is one to a thousand; and that one I will cast from me. You will think at my age,—having so well proved my courage,—I might be let to sleep on my laurels. They will not have it so. They will have courage like charity; wherefore a man, to keep his good name, shall not give his groat to one or two beggars and rest niggard ever after. He must be giving to his death. All’s one for that. Duty to honour and my sovereign apart, I must to the wars, having naught left to live for save the earning a soldier’s grave.
“I will speak the truth as a dying man speaks it, though it be to own himself villain. I have wronged you, but you know not how deeply. For eighteen years have I paid court to you—ever putting off our marriage upon some pretext, or earning your displeasure by some offence—but ever renewing the tie by fresh oaths and blandishments. All this time, madam, I was a married man. You knew it not—the world knew it not—but it was so. Blame me as you will, but pity me. As a headstrong youth, I contracted a foolish marriage with one who—well, she is no more; let her faults perish with her.
“This woman has made me what I am: she has been my blight and ruin. I concealed her, like an ugly wound, down on my father’s old estate; and like a wound in the flesh did she prey upon my heart and purse; for Lollard, witch, worse, as I knew her to be, was she not my wife? Happily, we had no children.