ANSWER TO THE FOREGOING.
To Sir John Falstaff, Knight, be this deliverred.
“Sir Edward Poins grieves that his many duties as a humble but diligent servant of King Henry (whom Heaven preserve!) may not permit him to enjoy the pleasure of Sir John Falstaff’s company at Windsor Castle, whereof his Most Gracious Majesty hath been pleased to appoint Sir Edward for a time custodian. It is not, however, in Sir Edward’s nature to refuse a service to any one. If Sir John Falstaff is anxious for himself or friends to obtain the privilege of viewing the improvements in progress as well as the tapestries and pictures of the palace, Sir Edward will give instructions to the wardens and porters of the building to admit Sir John and friends to the same (within the hours allotted to the admission of the public) with the assurance that Sir John and friends will be treated with right due courtesy.
“P.S. It is entreated that no largesse or drink money shall be given to any of the Castle servitors—the same subjecting such servitors to immediate dismissal.”
That Sir Edward Poins—always a faithful imitator, to the best of his ability, of King Henry the Fifth—should have thus behaved towards his early friend and patron will surprise no student of human nature. This coolness and ingratitude, however, of a supposed friend had no other effect than to induce Sir John Falstaff during his residence in the neighbourhood to choose his associates exclusively from the middle classes—the lesser landowners, clergy, and even small traders of extra-palatial Windsor. In such unassuming society Sir John passed his time for the most part agreeably enough, and not altogether unprofitably—though with many serious drawbacks to his comfort, dignity, and finances.
On the whole, I confess, I feel no temptation whatever to expatiate upon this portion of my hero’s rapidly closing career. The Windsor adventures of Sir John Falstaff, forming as they do the basis of one of the most admirably faithful and picturesque of Shakspeare’s historical studies, present, after all, but an exceptional and, in my opinion, most painful episode in the knight’s history. They show us the harrowing spectacle of a great man in his decline. Many thoughtless commentators have pronounced the portrait of Sir John Falstaff, as drawn in the “Merry Wives of Windsor,” to be wanting in verisimilitude, and have therefore called its authenticity into question. No discerning mind can mistake the likeness. It is the same man whom we have so often seen drawn by the same master-hand under more favourable circumstances—but how changed, how fallen! The features are all unmistakeably there; but the expression, bearing, and complexion, how sadly deteriorated! Age, disappointment, and suffering have done their work. Sir John can no longer hold his ground against the most contemptible adversary. The victor is vanquished—the biter bitten. The more than match for the keen-witted Harry Monmouth—the conqueror of Gascoigne and the terror of Poins—becomes the easy dupe of a couple of practical-joking Berkshire housewives. It is distressing to contemplate a man—whom we have seen cross swords with Douglas; capture Colevile of the Grange; and who, after all (as hath been demonstrated), there is strong reason to believe, was the actual slayer of the terrible Henry Percy—sunk so low as to receive without resentment a sound cudgelling administered, in a fit of insensate jealousy, by a bourgeois inhabitant of Peascod Street, Windsor—who, for aught I can discover to the contrary, may have been a retired grocer. * It may be urged that Sir John Falstaff, in justice to his knightly standing, could not challenge an ignoble curmudgeon like Ford to mortal combat; and that he acted becomingly in preferring the more appropriate vengeance of keeping that citizen’s money—intrusted to him for an avowedly immoral purpose. This was all very well in its way, but did not wipe out the original outrage. That shameful business of the buck-basket, also, was an indignity to which Sir John in the heyday of his powers could never have submitted. “Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at him” with a vengeance, at this time, and the meanest are permitted to do so with impunity. His very retainers turn against him (always excepting the faithful Bardolph, who relieves his master, when under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, of the cost of his maintenance, by turning tapster and waiting on the knight at another person’s expense). He is even braved by Pistol; and that “drawling, affecting rogue,” Nym, refuses to carry his messages. He is cajoled, hoaxed, bamboozled. He suffers himself to be “made an ass” in Windsor Park, where he exposes himself in a tom-fool disguise, and gets pinched by all the charity boys and girls in the parish, believing them to be avenging fairies. He is bound to admit that his wit has been “made a Jack a Lent of.” A Cambrian parson, even, dares to laugh at him; and he is “not able to answer the Welsh flannel.” It is a sad business.
I repeat that I have no heart to dwell upon these painful details. Shakspeare has not scrupled to particularise them, and the curious are referred to his able but pitiless pages. My good friend GEORGE CRUIKSHANK also—an amiable man in the social relations of life, but who when there is a stern truth to be recorded pictorially, has no more feeling than the sun peering through a photographic lens—has added his testimony to the principal features of the case. Let my feelings be spared—for I sympathise with poor Sir Jack, and, with all his faults, love him.
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There is this excuse to be urged for Sir John Falstaff’s submitting to all kinds of temporary inconvenience and degradation at the hands of the contemptible citizens of Windsor. His mind was occupied with more exalted subjects. He still contemplated the possibility of his restoration to Court favour. He was sixty-three, it is true, and prematurely broken in constitution. But a courtier and statesman must be very old and shaken indeed to renounce his hopes of power and advancement. Sir John watched his opportunity, and was willing to abide his time. You will be willing to abide your time, reader, at the age of a hundred (Heaven send you may live to it!) and never suspect for a moment that your “time” will be out in the early part of next autumn.
* For the events here referred to, see the Merry Wives of
Windsor.
Sir John’s opportunity (as he imagined) at length arrived. King Henry the Fifth prepared for his memorable invasion of France, by demanding, from the French king, the hand of the Princess Katherine, and a concession of territory sufficiently unreasonable to ensure the refusal desired by the English crown. The Dauphin Louis answered the application by his memorable present of a cask of tennis balls, which he assured King Henry “were fitter playthings for him, according to his former course of life, than the provinces demanded.” * The British cabinet was nonplussed, there being nobody in office capable of replying to a joke. This was Sir John Falstaffs opportunity.
Sir John, who had, of course, his agents posted about the Court, heard of the dilemma. He despatched the following private note to His Majesty, having securely arranged for its certain delivery into the royal hands:—