LETTER FROM MASTER RICHARD WHITTINGTON.—AND OTHER MATTERS.
WHETHER or not it is that I have been taking an overdose of that familiarity which is said to produce contempt, I will not pretend to say, but one thing is very certain—namely, that I by no means feel that exalted respect for the late William Shakspeare as an historical authority, which on my setting forth on the present biographical pilgrimage formed so prominent an ingredient in my wallet of provisions for the journey. Candidly, Shakspeare turns out to be, by no means, the man I had taken him for. An able dramatist, undoubtedly—endowed with considerable power of insight into the secret springs of human emotion, with an aptness for a rugged forcible kind of versification, and an unquestionable turn for humour—he must, nevertheless, be pronounced lamentably deficient in those higher attributes of the historical writer, by which it is the laudable ambition of the present scribe (for instance), to know himself distinguished—and of which the most scrupulous correctness as to dates and localities, is by no means the least essential. And, indeed, as I reflect on the subject and turn over a variety of precedents in my mind, I am reluctantly brought much nearer than I ever expected to come to the by no means uncommon opinion that Shakspeare is an overrated personage in literature.
I am led to this admission—most distasteful to my feelings and predilections—by the irresistible fact that nearly all of his commentators and critics, for the most part persons of vast erudition and acumen, by whose exalted standard the present humble recruit in the army of letters would shrink from offering himself for measurement; who, commencing (like their unpretending junior) with the most enthusiastic faith in, not to say idolatrous admiration for, the subject of their investigations, will seldom be found to have proceeded to any depth in their labours ere they agree in making out Shakspeare a most ridiculous, not to say contemptible personage. The late Mr. Thomas Campbell, who, notwithstanding the unavoidable accident of his birthplace, may be considered a tolerably competent and impartial judge of English literature, being employed by certain publishers to prepare an edition of the works of the Immortal Bard, as he is termed (I am not fond of this slavish kind of nomenclature myself, considering that, as a rule, one man is nearly as good as another), and plunging into his task with great ardour and alacrity, and in the most reverential spirit imaginable, nevertheless speedily got sick of the service of adulation—I would say “puffery,” were the epithet consistent with the dignity of history—on which he had been engaged, and even complained, in a letter to a friend, of the kind of stuff he was compelled, by the necessities of his position and the terms of his contract, to “write about Old Shakey.” Now from such high-flown designations as the Immortal Bard, the Sweet Swan, &c.,—to which Mr. Campbell, at the outset of his editorial career, had been addicted, like other people,—“Old Shakey” (in the forcible words of a modern art-critic) is “not fall”—it is catastrophe and, depend upon it, the learned gentleman had found out some weak points in the poet’s character to justify the familiarity. I may be answered, I am aware, with the stale proverb that no man is a hero in the eyes of his own valet, the abstract wisdom of which, as well as its partial application to the case in point, I cheerfully admit. An editor or commentator of a great man’s writings unquestionably occupies, to the great man, the position of a valet or groom of the chambers, having to perform for him the most menial offices, such as looking out his new readings for him, polishing his sentences, trimming his periods, and throwing away his slipslop. These irksome and even degrading duties may excite in the bosom of the overworked official a feeling of disgust for his situation, which no liberality or punctuality in the matter of wages and perquisites can altogether annihilate; and the constant absorption of his attention by such ignoble matters of external detail, can scarcely fail to blind him to the inner greatnesses of the demi-god whose wig and whiskers, so to speak, he is eternally occupied in brushing and oiling. I would, therefore, guard against too hastily accepting the opinion of such persons upon the great men whom they are employed, as it were, to render presentable to society, just as I would hesitate to base my estimate of the soldierly and statesmanlike qualities of the first Cæsar on the representations of the ingenious artist in laurel who was engaged to conceal the baldness of the great Roman by the “gentleman’s real wreath of glory” of the period; or, were I a sculptor (which it may be a fortunate thing for the British metropolis I am not, seeing that I have influential friends who would undoubtedly employ me in adding to the public monuments), as I should decline modelling a statue of England’s last, greatest, and most symmetrical George upon the one-sided views of the tailor who measured him for his last padded and frogged surtout, or of the hosier who was in the secret of the royal calves, during the decadence of the first—whatever you like to call him—of Europe. Nevertheless, there is no withstanding overwhelming masses of evidence, let them emanate from sources never so obscure or prejudiced. And when we find that the commentators upon Shakspeare, almost without exception, when they have taken hold of what are vulgarly considered the finest passages in that author’s writings,—when they have carefully held up those passages against every possible kind of light, turned them inside out, pulled and tugged at them, this way and that, ripped open their seams, scratched off their nap or surfaces, and, in fact, submitted them to every conceivable test,—when, I say, we find that the commentators, having made these searching experiments, almost invariably decide that what to the superficial observer has appeared something of exquisite goodness and beauty must be accepted as nothing more or less than the rankest nonsense—why, then, the dispassionate judge is bound to shake his head in common deprecation with the scrutineers, and admit that very possibly the Sweet Swan, &c., may be nothing more than “Old Shakey” after all. Nay, some of the most laborious and indefatigable of the class alluded to have so carefully sifted the matter, and so thoroughly have convinced themselves of the utter flimsiness and impalpability of the supposed Mr. Shakspeare’s claims to literary distinction, as to have been irresistibly led to the conviction that no such person ever could have existed; but that the rather ingenious and plausible-looking phantasms in the forms of plays and poems, bearing his name, must be considered as mere spontaneous exhalations or fungi produced from a kind of intellectual chaos—much as primroses, oak-trees, horses, beautiful women, poets, and philosophers are held to have sprung into existence, by the tenets of certain kindred thinkers on subjects connected with theology.
The last is a culminating phase of Shakspearian free-thinking, to which, I confess, I have not yet been able to bring myself. I am still young, and possibly hampered by nursery traditions on the subject. But I hope it will be admitted that I am gradually emancipating myself from the unpopular trammels of Shakspearian superstition, when I venture so far as to affirm that the Swan of Avon (I must be understood now to make use of the designation in an ironical sense) was, in some respects, a———Yes! I have lashed myself up to the necessary pitch of defiant resolution—a humbug! I fearlessly assert that there is a prevalent looseness in his chronology, for which I defy his most slavish admirers to prove that the correctness of his grammar is at all of a quality to compensate. Why, he actually leads us to infer that within a few weeks, at the outside, of the treacherously won field of Gualtree, Sir John Falstaff, being then on his second visit to the domain of Mr. Justice Shallow, in Gloucestershire (having just returned from the inglorious campaign), did receive, through the officious instrumentality of Ancient Pistol, tidings of the death of King Henry the Fourth. Now I hope I have, by this time, proved, to the satisfaction of the most captious, that the battle of Gualtree must have been fought (bought, or stolen, whichever the reader pleases) in the summer of 1410. The lamented death of Henry the Fourth—lamentable because it did not take place some forty-seven years earlier—occurred on Saint Cutlibert’s Day, otherwise the 19th of March, 1413. Assuming then, as we are led to, from the representations of the Shakspearian chronicle, that Sir John Falstaff, on the disbanding of the Royalist army under Prince John of Lancaster and the Earl of Westmoreland, betook himself, at once, to the hospitable mansion of Mr. Robert Shallow, and there remained until the Sovereign’s demise, this would give to our knight’s visit a duration of something like two years and three-quarters. Now, though I freely admit that we find nothing in the antecedents of Sir John to make it improbable that he should have extended a gratuitous residence in comfortable quarters to that, or even a longer period, in the event of impunity having been granted to him to do so, it is in the wildest degree incredible that even a greater fool than Mr. Robert Shallow—did history present us with such a personage—would tamely have submitted to the infliction of guests so expensive as our knight and his retainers, for even one-twentieth part of that term. No country gentleman’s revenues could have stood it. The unaided exertions of the insatiable Bardolph alone would have exhausted the family cellar and exchequer in a fortnight.
It is therefore undeniable that in this particular instance, if in no other, Shakspeare has not only violated historical truth—either wilfully or through negligence—but has also shown an imperfect appreciation of the probabilities. That Falstaff and his retinue could not possibly have lived on the Shallow estate for the space of two years and three quarters, is as self-evident as that an able-bodied man could not subsist for the same period on a single leg of mutton. The supposition that Master Shallow would have continued glad to see them, up to the end of a residence so protracted, is too insanely preposterous to be entertained for a single moment.
Having carefully balanced the matter, I am inclined to decide that the second visit of Sir John Falstaff to Master Shallow’s, as described in the Shakspearian chronicle—the account of which offers strong internal evidence of a basis on authentic information—took place precisely as exhibited by the dramatist, who chose, however, for his own convenience of composition, and with the reckless indifference to the higher canons of criticism by which many really able writers of that period were unfortunately characterised, to anticipate the course of events to the culpable extent I have alluded to. It could not be otherwise. It has been made clear, from documentary evidence recently laid before the reader *, that the Falstaff expedition to Yorkshire deviated into Gloucestershire in the month of June, 1410. The unqualified statement that Henry Plantagenet, surnamed Bolingbroke, and fourth English king of his baptismal appellation, breathed his last on the 19th of March (in the old style), otherwise the festival day of St. Cuthbert **, in the year 1413, was by no means incautiously hazarded. The writer will stake his reputation on its accuracy, which, if called into question for a moment, he is prepared to corroborate by the undeniable evidence of Hollinshed, Hardyng, Stowe, Speed, White Kennet, Mangnall, Pinnock, and other writers of antiquity. You see there is no getting over facts. They are things of such matchless stubbornness that none but a donkey would venture to cope with them in the exhibition of that valuable attribute.
* Vide Epistle from Sir John Falstaff, Knight, to Master
Robert Shallow, Cust. Rot., &c., in the Strongate
Collection; or (for greater convenience of reference) in pp.
134, 135, of the present biography.
** Vide Romish Calendar.
We must consider, then, that there is a period of two years and probably seven or eight months in the life of Sir John Falstaff unaccounted for in the Shakspeare Chronicles. In what manner were those years and odd months employed by the hero of these pages? For once in a way, the biographer is driven to supply an extensive gap in his narrative by mere conjecture. It is reasonable to suppose that the time was passed by Sir John in his native country, as I find no evidence, in the records of continental nations, of the influence of a master spirit of our knight’s calibre on the dynastic, social, or religious struggles of the period. It is also to be feared that Sir John continued to live in comparative obscurity, and certainly in exclusion from court favour. The latter hypothesis is, indeed, based on something more than conjecture, and may be considered proved by certain important omissions in the chronicles of the time. On the 23rd of January, 1411, Sir John Falstaff would have completed his fifty-ninth year. A moment’s reflective calculation will convince the most inconsiderate that on the same date in the following year our knight would have attained the reverend age of threescore. Extend this line of inductive reasoning to another twelve months, and a result of sixty-one is obtained. Now, it would be reasonable to suppose that had Sir John Falstaff, at these times, been in the enjoyment of that royal esteem to which his merits and services undoubtedly entitled him, any one of the three anniversaries indicated would have been made the occasion of court festivities. I defy the most laborious investigation to produce the slightest authentic evidence, from the writings of the time, of any such recognition of our knight’s importance and public services having been made at any of the royal residences. It will be found, it is true, by consulting Hollinshed, the Cotton MSS., Stowe and other authorities, that London, in the commencement of 1413, was the scene of great military and naval pageantry; that numbers of the king’s forces were mustered in the metropolis, and that there was such a display of ships and galleys on the river Thames as had not been seen since the magnificent days of Edward the Third. From the same and contemporary writings, it will be found that towards the close of the Christmas holidays—which King Henry the Fourth, in consequence of the mortal illness wherewith he was already smitten, had kept in strict seclusion with his Queen Joanna, at the Palace of Eltham—His Majesty, in spite of grievous bodily suffering, made shift to return to London, in order to be present at certain rejoicings ordained to be held at his chief palace of Westminster, at a time closely coincident with the anniversary of our hero’s birth. I am inclined to think, however, that it will prove, on careful investigation, that the mustering of troops and display of naval armaments had been commanded, not, as would superficially appear, to celebrate the day of Falstaff’s nativity by tournaments, sham fights, water quintains, and the like, but with the more serious design of carrying out a project, long entertained by the king, of proceeding with a powerful army to Palestine, there to assist in the attempt to recover the holy sepulchre from the hands of the Paynim followers of Mahomet *—a kind of moral Insolvent or Bankruptcy Court of the period, to which very great rascals indeed were accustomed to apply for protection against the prosecutions of conscience, and by which (if enabled to do things on a liberal scale as to expenses in other people’s lives and property), they were supposed to whitewash themselves of all liabilities in this world and the next. The rejoicings at Westminster may be partially explained by the fact that King Henry’s birthday happened to fall within a few days of that of Sir John Falstaff. And, keeping in view the habitual and ineradicable selfishness of Henry’s character, it is more than probable that His Majesty had decreed the festivities in question on his own account, and not on that of our more meritorious hero. As a proof that, in spite of the numerous embarrassments of the royal family, the glaring and systematic manner in which the priceless services of Falstaff were ignored by the court could not have been attributable to any absolute scarcity of means, it may be mentioned that about this time Queen Joanna presented one Thomas Chaucer, an individual whose only claims to personal distinction lay in the fact that he was, as it were, the halfbrother of English Poetry—being the son of its reputed father—with the manors of Wotten and Stantesfield for life: the hospitalities of which, there can be no question or doubt, would have been dispensed with much greater dignity and liberality by Sir John Falstaff. As a further proof that the favours heaped upon this mere Son of a Somebody were only conferred with a view to the humiliation and discomfiture of Sir John Falstaff, it may be mentioned that Mr. Thomas Chaucer—a man of the slenderest physical and mental dimensions—was shortly afterwards appointed to fill the Speaker’s Chair of the House of Commons—a seat which, had the appointment of the Right Man to the Right Place been a recognised principle in those days any more than it is at the present time, Sir John Falstaff was, most obviously, the man to fill. But, as has been repeatedly urged, our knight had powerful enemies. I name no names, as a rule, and have an abhorrence of malicious insinuations. I will content myself with the statement that the dignity of Lord Chief Justice of England, with all its influence for good and evil, continued to be represented by a distinguished personage, with whom we are already acquainted in that capacity, until some years after the demise of Sir John Falstaff.
* Vide the writings of Froissart, Gr. P. R. James, and
others. The Italian poet Torquato Tasso has an able work not
wholly disconnected with the interesting subject of the
Crusades as these expeditions were termed.
Sir John lived in London—there can be no doubt of that. Had his name been John Dory instead of John Falstaff, the sea could not have been a more indispensable element to his existence than was the metropolitan atmosphere to him, surnamed and organised as he actually was. Where else could there have been found a Boar’s Head, with its accommodating hostess, its inexhaustible cellars, and still more (if the adjective can be said to admit of a comparative degree) inexhaustible credit? What other English city, district, or province, has ever, at any time of the world’s history, produced a hero-worshipping class so willing to pay liberal terms for the honour of even an ex-great man’s society. Where else in England have there ever been known such good dinners, such boon companions, and such accommodating tradespeople?
Talking of tradespeople (a subject to which I am by no means greatly addicted, suggesting, as it does, such painful memories and still more disagreeable possibilities) there is a document extant, the faithful transcript of an earlier document, no longer in existence, which will serve to throw some light on the position of Sir John Falstaff during this most obscure, and consequently most interesting, portion of his biography. It is a letter from Master Richard Whittington, mercer, some time Lord Mayor of London, addressed to Sir John Falstaff, in answer to a communication from that great man, which has unfortunately not been preserved. The epistle, as will be seen, is not dated; but the unmistakable allusion contained in it to King Henry the Fourth’s intended expedition to the Holy Land leaves no doubt that it must have been written in the winter of 1412-13. The shrewd, sarcastic tone of the letter (the orthography whereof in the following transcript has been modified for the convenience of the modern reader, in obedience to the rule invariably observed throughout this work) will, it is hoped, be found sufficiently characteristic of its distinguished writer, to dispense with any necessity for the production, as evidence, of the original manuscript, which was unfortunately destroyed in the ever-lamentable burning of the famous Whittington library, in Arundel Street, Strand, some two or three years since.
“TO MINE EXCELLENT FRIEND SIR JOHN FALSTAFF, KNIGHT, BE THESE DELIVERED.
“Right worshipful Sir John,
“Methinks, in future, I shall call you my cat. For as there be those who insist that I owe my standing as a good citizen and man of wealth to a certain cat which I took with me to Barbarie (where, Heaven be praised! I never was), who did there earn for me large sums in money, slaves, and jewels, by freeing the king’s chamber of mice and rats; so will you have it that I have risen to be alderman and mayor, to buy lands and endow churches, alone through having ridden on your crupper from Blackheath to the Southwark side of London Bridge, in the year of grace, 1364, when we were both lads, little wotting we should live to know each the other as old men. Now I call my patron to witness that I had never a cat that did aught for me beyond skimming the milk in my kitchen. I took with me to Flanders, and thence through France and Germany to the ignorant estates of the East, a certain Thrift or Judgment, which the witless have fabled into a cat, whereby I was enabled to point out to many foolish peoples the way to clear themselves of grievous pests and torments in government and common life, which might well be likened to rats and mice, for the which good services I was so well rewarded by the thankful rulers of those countries as to return to mine own with the means for large and honourable trading. But the vulgar will have it that it was not I myself, but the cat, effected all this. So would you have it, Sir John, that because I came to London a barefoot, ragged, herring-bodied scarecrow, and am now a man of substance (not in the flesh, Sir John; there you have still the best of me), I owe my advancement to you, who brought me half a dozen miles on the way. It was a pleasant ride,—I mind it well,—and a timely, for I was heartsore and footsore when you took me up. But I am a trader, Sir John, and keep books. And when I look over our account, I cannot but think that I have long ago paid for that ride at a rate of posting far beyond what my travels to Germany and the Asiatic countries (which the blockheads will have Barbarie) cost me altogether. Let us cast the sum. There was two shillings (out of the first four of my earning), soon after our coming to London, to replace your torn doublet, which you declared you dared not write to your lady mother about. * There was five marks on your coming of age, when you had bidden certain young noblemen of the court to meet you at the tavern, which I was fain to lend you, as you had lost the money set aside for their entertainment, the night before, at play. You wept so bitterly, and so feared me with threatening self-destruction, that I must needs do this though it forced me to put off my first slender venture with the Flemings. Then, when they knighted you, there was forty other marks, that you might present yourself becomingly at court. Ten marks on my being made mayor, that it might not be said I forgot an old friend who had helped me to my rise in life. Since then, at divers times, in silks, velvets, and moneys lent, eight hundred and forty-three pounds nine and elevenpence. Now, all this I have been told, time after time, I have owed you for bringing me to London, and putting me in the way of fortune. It hath been a dear ride to me, Sir John. Blackheath to London is, let us say, six-miles. A hundred and forty-one pounds eight shillings seven pence and a fraction is costly posting for times like these, Sir John. Methinks it is time I should hold myself quit of your debt, or that if any be still due you should forgive me the remainder. A truce to jesting, old friend Jack. I will lend thee no more money, and that is the plain truth of the matter. It is of no more use to thee than pearls to a pig. Thou art no more going to the Holy Land with King Henry than I am going thither behind thee on thy crupper (which Heaven forefend, considering the costliness of that mode of travel). Come thou hither to dine, sup, and sleep as often as may list thee, and thou art welcome to the best my roof can afford. But I am a trader, Sir Jack, and a keen one,—I give naught for naught. Sell us thy company, good-fellowship, merry jests and gentleness, and I will pay thee in kind (saving the jests and merry tales, wherein I am the bankrupt and thou the niggard miser). Show us thy jolly face and we will reflect it in endless bowls of as many wines as thou mayest name, like to a face in a chamber lined with tinted mirrors, till thou seest thyself million-fold, and of all colours. Mine honest wife and thy little playfellows, whom thou hast deserted, have been trained in my school. They join the outer world in calling thee foul names, since thou withholdest from them that familiarity which is their due. Dame Alice calls thee downright rogue,—that thou wilt not pay her the long arrears of society and converse thou owest her,—and for which she says she has a mind to pursue thee up and down every law court in Christendom. The little Jews have long arrears of caresses against thee, and are prone to insist on their bargain to the letter. Pay these debts, thou hardened prodigal, and we will see what can be effected for the future. As for money, thou shalt none of it, for it only serves to keep thee from us, wasting that of thy company which is our lawful right, as thine oldest friends, on thankless tavern roysterers who love thee not. I am now too old a merchant to repeat that kind of unprofitable venture.
* See ante, p. 108.
“I have again fallen into jesting, mine old friend, which methinks between aged men who love each other, on grave matters, should not be. If thou art in serious strait I will help thee as heretofore and while I live, and no man save ourselves the wiser; but the spirit of a weakly man, born to poverty and grown up in the need of turning all around him to his selfish advantage, will assert itself within me; and I cannot bear to serve thee that I may lose thee. When thou lackest naught (it is the shopman who states his debt) thou dost never think of the poor shambling youth of Blackheath, whom thou didst lift, not only into horseback, but out of despair and heart-sickness by the contagion of thy health, courage, and kindliness; and to whom at the turning point of his fortunes (for despair was then setting in) thou didst give a ride worth far more than many hundreds of pounds a mile. Whereas, ‘when thy purse is empty, thou art ever prompt to remember Master Richard Whittington, some time lord mayor of London and always a rich merchant and housekeeper. This is the only charge thou wilt ever hear me bring against thee; for it is the only thing in which thou hast ever wronged me—and I meddle not with other men’s debts or claims; but when one justly owes me that which I deem he can pay, I will ever urge it, though he were my brother.
“Dear, beloved, and, whatever the world may of thee (for I have the conceit that I look deeper into men’s natures than the thoughtless commonalty), honoured Sir John Falstaff, if money could win thee to be near me and mine—who love thee deservedly, and to whom thou hast never been aught but what is just and pure—thou shouldst have it from my well-stored coffers poured untold into thy pockets. But I have ever found it act as a spell that parts us. Remedy this if thou canst. Come and dwell with us—with all thine extravagancies and all thy retinue if thou wilt. Our cellars may perchance even hold out a year’s siege against the redoubtable Master Bardolph. All I stipulate is that thou shalt give me thy stalwart Jackanapes, Robin, to save from perdition, by placing him in the new school I am building; this for his own sake and more for that of two sober little kitchen-maidens of Mistress Alice’s, whom I should be loath to grow familiar with the kind of conversation I fear he must have picked up ere this in thine erratic progress.
“Briefly, Jack, I will not send thee the money thou demandest. Come and ask for it, and Dame Alice and I (with the bantlings to hold on by thy skirts) will do our best to keep thee from going away till thou gettest it.
“Thy friend,
“Richard Whittington.”
It is scarcely probable that Sir John Falstaff being in, even for him, unusually embarrassed circumstances, could have withstood the temptation of indefinite hospitality, at the expense of a wealthy and sympathetic friend. It may, therefore, be taken for granted that the winter of 1413-14 was passed by our knight and his retainers under the genial roof of the renowned citizen, mercer, traveller and philanthropist, Master Richard Whittington. I use the term “Master,” being inclined to think that the distinguished Londoner in question had not yet attained to the dignity of knighthood. My memory fails me on the subject, and the question is not one of sufficient importance to demand reference to authorities. Certain indications in the above letter lead me to believe that it was written by a plain undubbed citizen: for though Whittington himself, as a cosmopolitan philosopher, may have held all titular distinctions in contempt, and considered himself no better man after knighthood than before it, yet it would be in the highest degree unreasonable to suppose that the wife of his bosom could have participated in his apathy on the question. The above letter was, most obviously, written under the immediate supervision of the excellent Dame Alice Whittington—obviously from the terms of reverential decorum in which that lady is spoken of in it. Is it likely, that a city gentlewoman of the period, whose husband had successfully aspired to chivalric honours, would allow that husband to speak of her in a letter to another knight of real noble birth, as mere “Mistress Alice,” or that the writer would have been permitted by her to sign his epistle without the affix of “eques”? Certainly not. This, however, is irrelevant. The present work purports to be the history of Sir John Falstaff. That of Richard Whittington has been already written, and published in a neat and commodious form, profusely illustrated, and to be had of all booksellers.
A.D. 1413. Assuming that Sir John Falstaff actually spent his Christmas with the Whittington family, surrounded by the, to him, unwonted luxuries of a refined, pure-minded matron (who, if, as I have supposed, she had been inclined to look over her husband’s letters and insist on his asserting, on his and her behalf, any dignities which his honourable exertions might have earned for the pair of them, need be none the worse for that); the innocent prattling of an honest man’s young children; and, above all, the enduring friendship and protection of the honest man himself—an old warrior with the world, who had passed through many fires, and who could be lenient to the failures of combatants in more trying, if less honourable fields, only thanking his stars that he himself was alive, sitting by his fireside, and with all his scars in front!—a thoughtful friend who could perceive good, where the world only saw bad; who could remember the beauteous promise of spring in the very depths of winter!—why should Sir John Falstaff have torn himself away from such a peaceful haven—old creaky hulk as he was, with every timber starting, and not sea-worthy for a two years’ voyage—to be again buffeted about on the turbulent waters of uncertainty and dissipation? Alas! alas! Why does the poisoned cup kill? Why does the broken leg limp? Why does the bent bough grow downwards, and trail its meagre fruit among the worms and mud? Why does the old maimed hound hunt in dreams? Why do the ruined gamesters in the German demon stories, gamble away, first their doublets, then their vests, then their hose, then their shirts, and ultimately, their souls?
I can fancy Sir John Falstaff for a few days leading a life of marvellous peace, and even happiness, in the orderly household of sage Master Whittington, who loved our friend for the strong latent good that was in him, and to whom the doubly errant knight’s vices and irregularities were mere hateful excrescences, to be abhorred, as we abhor the consumption that kills our favourite sister, but which makes us love herself the more in our indignation at its rapacious cruelty. I can fancy a few pleasant evenings by the big fireside, Sir John telling innumerable pleasant stories from the vast resources of his sixty years’ experience, tempering them, with that sagacity of his which no excess or reverses could blind, to the innocence and capacity of his hearers. Dame Alice embroidering, or sitting sedately with her hands crossed upon her straight-cut mediæval skirt, as we see the ladies in the old illuminations; Master Richard, in an arm-chair like a young cathedral, playing with a big gold chain, of bulk and substance to suggest the idea of a watch-guard with which a fine-grown Titan, particularly anxious to be up to the time of day, might have carried Big Ben in his waistcoat pocket; and the little people, crawling lovingly over the knight’s round knees, and looking up into his bloated, purple, damaged, handsome face, with a by no means misplaced confidence in, and admiration for, their amusing instructor. For—come!—where do you find a single instance on record of Sir John Falstaff having by word or deed—expressed, performed, or omitted—contributed to the corruption of a single innocent creature? You may tell me of little Robin the page, whom Sir John dragged mercilessly after him through the various moral sloughs and slums he himself was destined to wade through. To this I can only answer, that Robin was corrupt as St. Giles’s when Sir John found him; and that I do not pretend to set up my poor scapegrace old knight as a social reformer. He was merely a reprehensible, cynical, laisser aller philosopher. He took things as he found them, and could no more mend them than he could mend himself. He could no more have made a good boy of Robin than he could have forced Bardolph to sign the temperance pledge, or than he could have spared sufficient money from his own daily expenses to found a Magdalen hospital for the especial reformation of Mistress Dorothea Tearsheet—assuming the prevalent aspersions on that lady’s reputation to have been based on anything but the most malicious calumny.
But those pleasant evenings in the Whittington household could not have lasted. The first flush of pleasure derived from comfortable quarters, abundant and luxurious provisions, and the security from legal interference being over, the very respectability of the thing would become irksome. Let Whittington try never so hard to place his guest on a footing of equality with himself, the unconscious patronage of the man who had fought and won, over the man who had merely skirmished and lost, would, in the long run, become intolerable. And then there is the great force of habit. There is undoubted fascination in “the desolate freedom of the wild ass.” Unlimited sand, with an occasional root of cactus or prickly pear, would, I presume, be far more acceptable to a quadruped of that species than a daily branmash, turnips, and warm straw bedding, where there would be harness and padlocks withal. I can fancy Falstaff beginning to find the early hours and decorous regulations of the Whittington establishment considerably too much for him. Respectable members of the Mercers’ Company would doubtless look in, and gaze upon him as a curious monster. He would yearn for the naughtinesses of the Boar’s Head, with its limed sack, sanded floor, and obsequious retainers. And then there would be the ever-present and dreadful consciousness of Master Whittington himself, to whom no weak point in the character of Sir John Falstaff was a mystery; who would help Sir John liberally to sack, knowing it was not good for him; who would lend Sir John money, knowing he would bestow it in bad uses; who would let Sir John talk himself breathless, and smilingly count all Sir John’s lies on his fingers! Depend upon it, there is nothing so intolerable to a sensible man who has made a fool of himself through life as the silent criticism of another sensible man, who is aware of the fact, and who himself has done nothing of the kind.
Therefore I am inclined to think that Sir John Falstaff and his old friend Richard Whittington must have come to a one-sided quarrel within a month, at the utmost, of Sir John’s more than probable residence in the Whitting-ionian household. It may have been a question of stopping out late, or of introducing an unbecoming companion (let us say Ancient Pistol, whom Sir John, in a moment of vinous aberration, may have been so inconsiderate as to present to Dame Alice Whittington as a model member of mass-going society). At any rate, it is very certain that, in the month of March, 1413, Sir John Falstaff was no longer, if he had recently been, a guest of Master Richard Whittington, or even a resident in the British metropolis.
Sir John Falstaff, on the 21st of March, 1413, was again the honoured visitor of Master Robert Shallow, in the Commission of the Peace for the county of Gloucester.