I. HOW MR. JOHN FALSTAFF CAME INTO HIS PROPERTY, AND WAS KNIGHTED
BY KING RICHARD THE SECOND.
THERE is nothing in the latter and more publicly known portion of Sir John Falstaff’s career to make it surprising that he should have approached the middle period of life without having acquired greater nominal celebrity than that afforded by the registers of retail traders. Such greatness as he afterwards attained to, having for its foundation a profound knowledge of mankind, must needs absorb the study of a long life to develop its Aloetie splendours.
Therefore, having clearly established my hero’s antecedents, and seen him launched on the sea of life, I might fairly take leave of him for many years to come, as of an adventurous emigrant crossing the ocean, with the perils of whose long voyage we have nothing to do, and who will only claim more attention when he shall have cleared his forest and founded his colony on the other side of the world.
But it must not be forgotten that we are treating of a knight and a gentleman of the olden time. There are two events in the life of such a person which, injustice to chivalry and noble birth, the historian may not pass over: these are,
1. His accession to the inheritance of his ancestors.
2. The time and manner of his receiving the dignity of knighthood.
Sir Gilbert Falstaff, Knight, was gathered to his fathers early in the year 1381. The tidings of the melancholy event were conveyed to his son and successor, then residing in the English town of Calais, by a faithful attendant returning from England, whither he had been despatched on his young master’s business.
Master John Falstaff, at this period, occupied apartments in one of His Majesty’s fortresses in Calais, in favour of which he had vacated an official suite in the Government-house of the same town. Here, for some months, he had discharged the duties of an onerous but subordinate post, wholly unsuited to his peculiar genius. Even at that early period the Government of England was celebrated for a habit of injudicious selection in the matter of public appointments—putting usually the right man in the wrong place, and vice versa. Falstaff—burning to distinguish himself in the service of his native land (and having his own private reasons for wishing to do so at a convenient distance)—exerted his court interest to obtain a colonial appointment. At the head of an invading army, or in command of a beleaguered city, there is no reason to doubt that he would have acquitted himself with satisfaction to all parties; but, Government having nothing more suitable to offer him than a deputy-collectorship of the wool duties (for which, it is true, he was certainly qualified on the grounds accepted by British Governments in all ages—his mother’s father having been a wool-stapler), what could be expected but a directly contrary result? The exact deficit in the Falstaff accounts has not been preserved in the public records. But there is no reason to doubt that it was on a scale commensurate with the greatness of our hero’s soul, inasmuch as, after a few months’ probation, an intimation was forwarded to him that his resignation of office would be accepted. It is at least probable that the nation required his services in a wider and more honourable field. But of this we have no means of judging accurately, an adverse destiny placing it out of the ex-deputy-collector’s power to avail himself of any such pending advantages. Adverse destiny, in his case, took the shape of an Anglo-French jailer.
Falstaff, in fact, like all men born to sway large destinies, had a lavish disregard of trifling expenditure. Like Julius Cæsar, he contracted debts; that is to say, as much like Julius Cæsar as possible—our hero lacking that arch-insolvent’s facilities of obtaining credit. With two millions of somebody else’s money (about the amount, I believe, on the Julian schedule), what would not Falstaff have done? It is difficult to answer. It may be safely stated, however, that it was from no fault of John Falstaff’s that Julius Cæsar had the best of him in this respect.
At any rate, having started this historic parallel between these two great men, we may bring it to a triumphant close by stating that young Falstaff, like young Cæsar, was now a captive in the hands of pirates and waiting for his ransom.
It was in search of this talisman that the faithful attendant, alluded to in the opening of the present chapter, had been despatched, on a somewhat forlorn hope, to England. The faithful attendant returned without it, having no better substitute to offer than the tidings of Sir Gilbert’s death. The prodigal but philosophic son declared, with a sigh, that, under the circumstances, he must try and make that do.
He sent for the pirate chieftains,—in modern English, for his detaining creditors,—a Flemish clothier and a Lombard money-lender. He informed them of the death of his obdurate parent, with whom he had been at variance for years, but of whose princely estate he was now the undisputed possessor. Now was the time for him to show his gratitude to the real friends who had stood by him in the hour of need; who had been long-suffering in his extravagance; lenient even in their tardy severity. What could he do for them?
“Pay us our money,” suggested the matter-of-fact traders.
Falstaff treated the proposition with disdain. Of course he would pay them—a dozen times over if they liked. But he would be still in their debt. No; nothing would satisfy him but that his dear friends should accompany him to England, to assist him in taking possession of his inheritance. Falstaff Castle was close to the coast—they might see it almost on a fine day. He would want their assistance in refurnishing his ancestral halls. He must take them to court, and introduce them to his bosom friend the young king, with whom (now the unnaturally adverse court influence of his father was removed) he was all powerful. In a word, the heir of Falstaff would not be able to enjoy his fortune unless he secured that of two friends at the same time.
It is no discredit to the intellectual powers of these simple traders that they suffered themselves to be won over by the eloquence of their greathearted captive. They agreed to release him from durance—previously securing themselves by the most terribly binding documents (such as our hero, at all periods of his life, was ready to sign with the greatest alacrity)——and to accompany him to England.
In those days the traveller crossed from Calais to Dover in an open galley; that is to say, when he crossed at all: for, in a large proportion of cases, the galley went down about half way and gave the traveller a premature opportunity of studying the engineering difficulties of the proposed submarine railway.
In a still greater frequency of cases the traveller waited several days at Calais for a fair wind. When it came, the gallant rowers hoisted what they called a sail, stuck an image of the Virgin in the prow of the boat, prayed to it—and became sick like men.
Jack and his faithful attendant, being Britons, and endowed with that peculiar native salt in their veins for which the analytical chemists have as yet found no name, were good sailors. The Fleming and the Lombard were bad ones, and howled dismally at the bottom of the boat. The crew were Frenchmen. No further explanation of their condition is necessary.
When the galley had made about three parts of her course, our hero’s faithful attendant broke silence with—
“Don’t you think now would be about the time, sir?”
“What for?”
“What for! why, to pitch them overboard, of course.”
Falstaff wheeled suddenly round on his seat, and looked his faithful attendant full in the face. There was approval in the scrutiny, mingled with compassion.
“And do you suppose, young man,” the master inquired, with a transparent assumption of severity, “that I am going to be guilty of such an act of treachery?”
“Then what the plague else did you bring ‘em here for?” was the sulky reply. “They’ve got your bonds in their pockets. The sailors are all sick—none of ‘em would be a bit the wiser.”
“Away, tempter!” said Jack, with twinkling eyes. “How dare you lure an innocent youth to his destruction? Avaunt thee, fiend! Vade retro Sathanas!”
“Come! I’m not going to stand being called out of names.”
“Then hearken to the voice of Wisdom. Suppose I were to commit the breach of confidence and gratitude you so insidiously propose, and, in your own words, pitch these worthy gentlemen overboard. What then?”
“Well, it would be a matter between ourselves and the lobsters.”
“And pray, sir, in that case—who is to pay our expenses to London?”
The faithful attendant opened his eyes as wide as they would go, which was not very far, and a grin of intelligence dawned upon his usually stolid countenance. Mutual esteem once more reigned between the master and servant.
A word as to this faithful attendant. Two years ago, having borrowed sufficient money for his continental outfit, and to liquidate such debts as might militate against his departure, our hero, with a serene mind and an easy conscience, had entered St. Paul’s Church in search of a serving man. A certain aisle in the cathedral was at that period the central exchange or rendezvous for unhired domestics. A servant out of place would not attempt such profanation in the present day. In fact, a beneficent and considerate Dean and Chapter have wisely placed it beyond the means of such a person to do so.
Our hero passed a great many candidates for employment, some of whom he rejected as being all fool, others as too exclusively rogue. Neither of which elements, unmixed, would suit him. At length he came upon a stern looking young man, with straight thick eyebrows, a gash for a mouth, and a nose vermilion beyond his years. The red pose argued chronic and perennial thirst. This, in its turn, was suggestive of easily-purchased fidelity.
“My friend,” said Jack to him of the proboscis; “I like your looks.”
“You ought to,” replied the salamandrine; “I have been twelve years looking after you.”
It was little Peter! subsequently nicknamed Bardolph, in honour of a fan cied resemblance to a nobleman of the Court. What wonderful vicissitudes Peter may have undergone since the memorable evening when he straddled away from home in that very small leathern suit we may not pause to inquire. He was promptly retained by his old leader, whom he never quitted alive. Peter took kindly to the name of Bardolph; and, in the course of time, believed himself allied to the noble family from which it had been derived.
Falstaff and his travelling companions touched English soil between Dover and Deal. Who knows—for history delights in such coincidences—but it may have been on the very spot where some fourteen hundred years previously, that very identical Julius Cæsar, between whom and our hero so many points of resemblance have been established, landed on a similar errand—only with a few more people to back him?
The Fleming and the Lombard were put on shore alive, to their considerable astonishment. Bardolph was despatched to the nearest inn, on the coast, of which he knew every inch, in search of horses.
Our hero reviewed his position.
“I don’t quite know what to do with them, now I have got them,” he meditated. “I am afraid they won’t find the Falstaff Estates quite up to my representations. I must make it out that I have been robbed by servants during my exile. At any rate, one thing is decided. They don’t go WITHOUT PAYING FOE IT.”
Bardolph returned running, with yellow cheeks, purple lips, and a blue nose,—altogether a remarkable facial chromatic phenomenon.
His tidings were startling.
The lads of Kent had risen in open rebellion, and were devastating the land with fire and sword. They had burnt and sacked every gentleman’s seat in the county, having hanged such of the proprietors as they could lay hands on, and were now marching on to London. Horses, shelter, or provisions were out of the question.
Falstaff was delighted. Had he been Destiny itself, he could scarcely have pre-ordained things more in accordance with his present wishes. He mastered his real emotion, and counterfeited another. He tore his hair, and threw himself writhing and moaning on the beach.
His visitors were naturally curious to know what had happened.
The matter was this, he told them—when he could collect his scattered thoughts:—he was a ruined man. The peasantry were in arms—had declared themselves against the landowners. His ancestral castle had doubtless, ere this, perished in the flames. Nothing remained for him but a nameless grave, which he would thank his companions to dig for him on the beach.
The commercial mind is sceptical in all ages. The Fleming and the Lombard—not by any means sure that they had acted wisely in the first instance in trusting themselves to the mercies of their plausible debtor—became doubly suspicious. They held a brief consultation apart, the result of which was a somewhat lugubrious proposal that they should proceed experimentally to Dover.
Towards Dover they walked; Falstaff mechanically yielding to his conductors, as one whom despair had robbed of volition.
Remarkable as the statement may read, it soon proved that Bardolph had spoken the truth. Smoking homesteads, trampled crops, with here and there a smouldering rick or coppice, too well corroborated his story. Scared and crouching figures, emerging from concealment, warned the travellers not to approach the town as they valued their lives. Numbers of the rebels, maddened with success, were still in possession of the neighbourhood, vowing destruction to every man with a delicate skin and a whole coat over it.
What was to be done?
Falstaff, magnanimously forgetting his own troubles in his anxiety for his guests, suggested that the latter should return to whence they came, leaving him to his fate. In another hour it might be too late. Their boat would be seized.
Not if the commercial gentlemen knew it. If every rebel in ten thousand rebels had been in ten parts, and every part a rebel, they would have faced the entire insurgent camp rather than those terrible waves a second time in the same day. Besides, the thing was out of the question. The gallant crew—including the body servants of the two merchants—learning that plunder was the order of the day, had hastened in divers directions across country to enrol themselves under the national banner like the truest imaginable Britons. The unlucky foreigners begged of our hero not to desert them, promising that, if he would see them safely through the present difficulty, he should have no cause to complain of their—ahem!—leniency.
John winked—aside; and repressed an inclination to execute, there, on the beach, what might have anticipated the invention of hornpipes by some centuries.
He wrung the hands of his two friends, and vowed that, at all hazards, he would stand by them. Still he was at a loss to decide for the present emergency.——
The merchants suggested that they should proceed to the Falstaff Estate. It was possible that the incendiary spark had not yet reached so far. The fact was, these two gentlemen were rather anxious for a glimpse of the princely domain, of which they had heard such glowing accounts, under any circumstances. Even its blazing ruins would be a consolation, as proving that they had not been utterly taken in.
Falstaff appeared to brighten at the proposal. Yes, he declared, there was hope in it. The people had been wronged and oppressed, and there was some excuse for their violence in certain quarters. But when he reflected what indulgent, beneficent masters—if, indeed, parents were not the fitter word—his ancestors had always been to their tenants:—no! for the sake of human nature, he could not believe in such black ingratitude as to suppose Falstaff had come to any harm. It would still be in his power to give his friends a cordial welcome. He led the way almost cheerfully, deploring only that the journey must be performed on foot.
At the first opportunity he whispered Bardolph, “Slip on before us, borrow a horse, steal an ass, or run like mad. The lads may have spared the old den for my sake. If you find it standing, set a light to every room. I’ll detain these gulls so as to give you time. Burn every stick and rag except Wykeham’s tower. Fire won’t touch that.” Exit Bardolph in advance at a brisk trot.
His master explained.
“I have sent him on to herald us, and to meet us with horses; if, as I still hope, honesty and good faith be not extinct upon earth.”
Our hero was taken ill frequently on the road; the result of his agitation and irrepressible misgivings. It was found necessary to solace him with repose by the wayside, and refreshments from the private stores of his companions.
“Oh, my friends!” said Jack, in a voice wherein gratitude struggled bravely against exhaustion; “How shall I ever repay you for this kindness? And if it should be too late—too late!”
“Come! come! Don’t give way. We cannot have far to go now. We shall soon know the worst.”
“True! let me strive to be a man, and remember that I am answerable for the safety of others.”
They reached Maldyke, six miles from Falstaff.
Here the sight of a goodly castellated mansion, gutted and smoking in the centre of a forest of charcoal, reduced our hero to a state of prostration. He threw himself on his face, imploring, as a last act of friendship, that his companions should despatch him with their knives.
The gateway of this mansion was situated on the public road. From the raised portcullis of this gateway swung a human body, dead, and half-naked.
Yesterday, this estate had belonged to Sir Simon Ballard. To-day, Sir Simon was its sole remaining occupant. But the rebels had hanged him by the neck, and he was dead.
Falstaff groaned piteously.
“Rouse, man, rouse!” said the Fleming. “Surely this is not your castle?”
“It’s—it’s—” sobbed Jack, spasmodically; “it’s one of them!!!”
Then, falling upon his knees before the corpse of his old enemy, he clasped his hands, and exclaimed, piteously,
“My poor uncle! my poor uncle George! And is this the reward for your devotion to my interests?”
The two merchants led him away compassionately.
For several roods they passed through the crops and woodlands of the ill-fated Ballard. The rebels had spared nothing.
“You see, gentlemen,” said Falstaff, appealing to the devastation on either hand, “to what they have reduced me.”
There could be no harm in Jack’s assuming right of property in the defunct Ballard’s possessions. In the first place, those possessions were no longer particularly worth having. In the second, it were unreasonable to suppose that their late proprietor could possibly have any further use for them.
The Fleming and the Lombard felt extremely sorry for their unfortunate guide and debtor. Nay; they even hoped that, in the upshot of things, he might prove still to be in the possession of something valuable, as an excuse for their assisting him with further advances.
As they neared the Falstaff Valley, Jack’s uneasiness increased visibly.
“It is my home, gentlemen,” he explained, “where I first saw light.* It may be that they have spared me that. I scarcely dare hope it. But we shall know anon.”
* See Book I. Chapter I. in explanation of this glaring
breach of veracity.
They reached the summit of the hill overlooking the valley,—down which, fourteen years ago, Sir Thomas Mowbray, now Earl of Nottingham, had come, laughing and cantering with his friend Maître Jean, the Chronicler, now curé of Lestines, and a most respectable clergyman.
Falstaff gave a rapid glance in the direction of his paternal mansion, then drew a long breath.
“Enough! I know the worst,” he said; and seemed all the easier for the knowledge.
Not a trace of Falstaff Castle was standing except William of Wykeham’s Tower. The rest was mere smouldering dunghill.
Bardolph had been spared the crime of arson. The rebels had been before him. He had found the castle in the state I have described it, and——
Master Lambert, the Reve, hanging by the heels from a beech tree, with his skull cleft. The travellers discovered the faithful messenger contemplating this edifying spectacle with mingled philosophy and satisfaction.
At the sight of the steward’s corpse Falstaff uttered a piercing cry, and fled.
“Follow him!” cried Bardolph, eagerly (he had caught and appreciated a flying wink from his broken-hearted patron), “or he will do himself a mischief.”
The ruined landowner, after some search, was discovered in the orchard with his girdle slung to the arm of a pear tree. Into a noose, at the nether extremity of this, he was about to slip his neck, when his privacy was invaded. The rescuing party uttered a cry of thanksgiving for their timely arrival. They needed not to have hurried themselves. Our hero’s inherent good breeding would have induced him to wait for them under any circumstances.
The merchants tried verbal consolation.
Futile in the extreme! The intending suicide assured them that they had but frustrated his purpose for a time. He could have borne the loss of home and fortune—his friends might judge, from the sole remaining tower, of what a dwelling the rebels had deprived him (though, of course, they could have no conception of the extent of the family jewels, plate, &c.); but what he could not bear was the sight of his faithful steward, hung by the heels like an unclean beast, doubtless as a punishment for his fidelity!
“Bardolph!” sobbed the ruined man. “How we loved him!”
“Don’t speak of it, sir!”
Bardolph himself was so overcome that he did not venture to show his face, which he concealed within his palms. The latter, it should be stated, were more than capacious enough for the purpose.
“He loved you, Bardolph!”
“Like a mother, sir. But don’t!”
The Flemish merchant then tried vinous consolation from his private flask. Falstaff rejected it. Bardolph didn’t.
Falstaff—calmed in a measure, but determined—begged of his friends to make the best of their way to London, and leave him to die. He had now nothing left in the world but his sword. That, he was now too brokenhearted to turn to advantage. Would they be kind enough to go, leaving him their forgiveness for the trouble he had so unwittingly caused them. That was all! Stay—another boon—a dying man’s request. Would they promise to be kind to his faithful Bardolph, the last of a thousand devoted retainers?
“Don’t, sir!” that valuable relic gasped, kicking out his right leg spasmodically.
Now, the Lombard creditor, in spite of his being a trader in money, was a good-natured fellow. He hit upon a third and more efficacious means of consolation—to wit, the pecuniary.
“Come, Master Falstaff’,” he said kindly, in the cosmopolite French of the period. “Things are not at the worst. You are young and strong, and, with a good name to back you, may recover lost ground. Who ever knew an outbreak of peasants last over a few days? If a few hundred marks will set you on your legs for a time, they are yours; and no questions about the past till you are ready to answer them. Remember you have promised to bring us to London and show us the Court. We are in your hands.”
Jack leaped to his feet and dried his eyes. He was rebuked. This was no time for selfish considerations. His eyes were opened.
“When I reflect,” he said, “that, without me, your lives are not safe; that those fierce Kentish rebels will spare nobody, unless guaranteed by the safe conduct of a true man of Kent; for, after all, they must respect my presence—come, gentlemen, I will see you safe to London, and the young king shall hear of your devotion.”
What a good sort of fellow this poor ruined, broken-hearted Jack Falstaff was after all!
They led him away from the scene of devastation. At a few paces from the ruins, he declared he must return for a minute or two. His friendly gaolers, for so they had constituted themselves, looked at each other. Was their prisoner to be trusted alone?
“Gentlemen,” said Jack, with much earnestness, and real tears starting from his eyes, “I give you my honour, as a man and a soldier, that I will return immediately.”
They let him go, and waited for him.
Jack scrambled hastily over a heap of seething fragments, what had once formed the right wing of his father’s dwelling, and found himself in a patch of ground sloping down towards the stagnant moat.
It was a wilderness of charred weeds. Nothing remained to tell that the spot had once been a dainty garden.
Yes. One thing. A hardy Kentish rose-bush still asserted its life above a mass of filth, bricks, and potsherds. It bore one flower.
Jack tore this fiercely from its stem, and concealed it in his bosom, as if he had been stealing a diamond. He hastened to rejoin his companions with the most unconcerned look he could assume.
“What’s afoot now?” growled Bardolph, sotto voce. The worthy henchman was merely anxious to catch the new order of the day, if any.
“Hold your tongue!” said his master angrily, and looking very much ashamed of himself, “Don’t speak to me!”
Lady Alice Falstaff had been dead four years. The long loved son who should have closed her bonny blue eyes, was away at the time;—never mind where, or what doing. The last flower of her pretty garden withered and dried up beneath Jack’s doublet. He never noticed its final disappearance: you see his time was so much occupied.
This was the way in which Master John Falstaff came into his property, the residue of which he disposed of some few weeks later for the price of three new suits and a couple of horses, but which he never ceased to speak of as a princely inheritance, of which the troubles in 1381 had deprived him. Of course he found great advantage in this; for such is the inestimable value of rank and possessions, that the mere recollection of them—nay, the bare assertion of imaginary claims to them—will often procure for a gentleman credit and esteem.
The manner of Sir John Falstaff’s attaining to the honour of knighthood, is a sequel to the same adventure.
He conducted his foreign guests faithfully towards London, as he had promised. On their way, they were beset by several companies of rebels, amongst whose numbers Jack recognised old acquaintances, to whom he made himself known, and who were glad to let him and his company pass free, for the sake of old times. On all such occasions our hero was careful to have it impressed upon the merchants that they owed their safety entirely to his countenance; and the gratitude of those poor travellers knew no bounds. Still, great precautions were necessary. In the first place, Jack counselled them strongly to destroy all written papers they might have about them; assuring them, that of all public evils, the men of Kent looked upon the art of writing as the greatest, considering it a Norman invention, to which they owed the bulk of their misfortunes. Admitting the policy of this precaution, the merchants destroyed Jack’s bonds before his eyes. Next to manuscripts, he assured them the most dangerous thing they could possibly carry about with them was money. He courageously took upon himself the onus of bearing their purses for them, of the contents of which he distributed a considerable portion as largesse to the insurgents. The purses were faithfully restored to their owners.
At Blackheath our travellers came up with the body of the insurgent camp, commanded by Jack’s old master of fence, Wat Smith, who had assumed the name of Tyler. Here it was Jack’s good fortune to rescue the Princess of Wales, the young king’s mother, from the fury of the malcontents, whom their honest but mistaken leader was unable to control. Jack asserted himself as a man of Kent, and claimed immunity for the princess as a Kentish woman—for had she not been known in the heyday of her beauty as the Fair Maid of Kent? Was she not the widow of the Black Prince, who had humbled the pride of the haughty Frenchmen, to whom it was notorious that all such evils as taxes, game laws, bad harvests, and expensive beer, were attributable? The princess, he assured them, had just been on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, to pray at the shrine of St. Thomas à Beckett for an extension of the peerage, by which every man of the age of twenty-one would be entitled to landed property and a seat at His Majesty’s council. In conclusion, he would simply state, that, in order to prove her sisterly affection, the princess was anxious to kiss them all round—a proposition whereat the populace was highly amused, and to which the princess readily assented, only too glad to be let off so easily.
Thus did Jack Falstaff rescue the Princess of Wales from imminent danger, at no greater cost to her highness than a little sacrifice of personal dignity, and much subsequent expenditure of soap and water—all of which I have told briefly, seeing that the main incidents of the scene (doubtless taken down from the words of Falstaff himself) have been already chronicled by our old friend Maître Jean Froissart, curate of Lestines—and from his cheerful pages copied into the books of Hume and others.
For this good service to the royal family was John Falstaff knighted, on the same day which saw the like honour conferred upon one William Walworth, a fishmonger, for knocking out the misguided brains of poor Wat Smith—a much honester man than himself. Jack witnessed the perpetration of this murderous act of snobbishness, and took a deeply rooted dislike to Sir William Walworth ever afterwards.
Wat Tyler did not die unavenged. Sir John Falstaff dealt with Sir William Walworth for fish. When Walworth sent in his bill, he began to understand the meaning of Nemesis.
Bardolph greatly distinguished himself in the sacking of London by the Kentish rebels, several of whom he had the honour of bringing to justice on the pacification of society.