ROUND THE FIRST.
The two plucky ones were in admirable condition. At first it might have been feared that the Westminster Boy, who had bolted from his training a short time previously, would not be able to come to the scratch; while it was presumed that the Northern Customer, having been for some weeks out of collar, and at grass, might have accumulated a troublesome superabundance of pork; whereas it proved——
But no! The penholder of Jones is too much for the grasp of my attenuated fingers. I cannot manage it. I may not attempt to particularise the various fibbings, sloggings, grassings, and chancery suits to which the conflicting champions subjected one another. I will confine myself to a statement in plain language,—that the gallant Percy, having more than once drawn claret from the heroic Plantagenet, and the latter mountain of courage having given birth to a ridiculous mouse under the left ogle of his opponent, both champions having repeatedly kissed the old woman *, and risen from that filial process in a piping condition, the future winner of the Agincourt belt had it all his own way, until the terror of the Scottish borders was eventually gone into and finished.
* Mother Earth. Vide “Tintinabulus.” London edition, 1857.
After all, there is nothing like plain, straightforward, intelligible, unadorned English!
Then, says Shakspeare, the Prince of Wales, having wiped his ensanguined sword, and, let us assume, briefly congratulated himself on being well out of a serious difficulty, delivered a funereal oration over the body of his late adversary, which proved his Royal Highness to be gifted with the most eminent qualifications for a popular lecturer. This burst of eloquence being terminated to his own satisfaction, he looked round with the pardonable vanity of a public speaker, to see if anybody had been listening to him. He was disappointed to discover no one but Sir John Falstaff, apparently dead, on the ground.
However, being in the oratorical vein, his Royal Highness was not to be deterred from speaking, by so contemptible a reason as the absence of a living auditory. He accordingly let off the following speech, addressed to what he considered a dead gentleman. A foolish proceeding, if you will, but princes are privileged:—
“What! old acquaintance! could not all this flesh
Keep in a little life?
Poor Jack, farewell!
I could have better spar’d a better man.
O! I should have a heavy miss of thee,
If I were much in love with vanity.
Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day,
Though many dearer, in this bloody fray.
Embowell’d will I see thee by and by;
Till then, in blood by noble Percy lie.”
Having delivered himself of this laboured composition, the Prince of Wales went away to tell his father what a clever thing he had done.
And then Sir John Falstaff—got up! He had had ample breathing time, and felt, upon the whole, much better. He had sufficiently recovered his faculties to overhear and understand the concluding phrases of the Prince’s soliloquy.
“Embowelled!” said Jack, rising slowly (the expression is Shakspeare’s);
“If thou embowel me to-day, I’ll give you leave to powder me, and eat me
“to-morrow. ‘Sblood, ‘twas time to counterfeit, or that hot, termagant Scot
“had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit! I lie; I am no counterfeit.
“To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath
“not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth,
“is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The
“better part of valour is—discretion; in the which better part I have saved
“my life.”
The unapproachable wisdom of these words, which have claimed the discussion of the subtlest modern commentators, it is too late in the day to dwell upon.
And then Sir John Falstaff looked round and saw the dead body of poor Harry Percy. He was frightened, and confessed himself so. But let it be borne in mind he only confessed it to himself. The bravest are subject to fear. The faculty of apprehension implies comprehension. Lord Nelson had a dread of the sea to his dying day, because he knew it would be sure to make him sick for the first few days of a voyage. “You were frightened,” said a bantering subaltern, after the Battle of Inkermann, to a veteran whose cheeks had turned as white as his hair on entering the action. “Quite true,” said the brave old man, who had been nearly cut to pieces; “if you had been half so frightened as I was, you would have run away.”
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Let Sir John Falstaff speak for himself on the occasion:—
“Zounds! I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should counterfeit too, and rise?”
Quite possible! Sir John knew very little of the defunct Percy’s character. How was he to divine that Hotspur had but been distinguished by the worser part of valour—brute courage? For aught he knew, the young Northumbrian might have been as sensible a man as himself. But let us not interrupt the knight’s soliloquy.
“I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I’ll make him sure; yea, and swear I killed him. Why may not he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me.”
(This episode of the civil war may be supposed to have taken place in a sheltered ravine of the plain of Shrewsbury, then intersected by the numerous branches of a stream, the source of which—on the hill of Haughmond—is now dried up.)
“Therefore, sirrah, with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.”
Saying these words, Sir John Falstaff inflicted a gash upon the still warm body of Percy, which he proceeded to hoist on his shoulders. Not an easy task, considering our knight’s bulk; but he was born to face and conquer difficulties!
The native impetuosity of the Prince of Wales’s character cannot be better illustrated than by his impatience to procure a witness of some kind or another to his recent achievement. In the absence of a better, he pounced upon his little brother John, Prince of Lancaster, and possibly the most uninteresting character in English history. He dragged that mild prince to the scene of action, which they reached just in time to meet Sir John Falstaff bearing off the mortal remains of the illustrious Percy.
Bewilderment and utter confusion of the distinguished visitors—especially Prince Henry.
“Now then, Hal,” said Prince John (I translate the stilted versification of Shakspeare into familiar prose); “I thought you told me this stout party had gone to that thingamy from which no what-do-you-call-it returns?”
“Ahem! so I did,” replied the elder, stammering and blushing a little.
“I saw the individual in question in a positively door-nail condition, not ten minutes ago; and I can scarcely believe my senses——”
“Mr. Paunch—are you dead?”
No reply.
“Because, if you are, be so kind as to say so—like a man. Seeing is by no means believing in this exceptional case. I should be an ass, indeed, if I were to say I am all ears; but I listen attentively for your own testimony as to whether you are what you appear to be, or not.”
“No, that’s certain,” replied Sir John, throwing down his body (I now quote the chronicler textually). “I am not a double man. There is Percy: if your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.”
The Prince of Wales scratched his ear, and looked very uncomfortable. The Prince of Lancaster eyed his brother with an unmistakeable expression of opinion that the latter was the greatest humbug in the family—which was saying a good deal.
“Why,—” Prince Henry stammered awkwardly, addressing himself to Sir John Falstaff,—“Percy I killed myself, and saw thee dead.”
Prince John of Lancaster whistled a popular melody in a low key.
Sir John Falstaff lifted up his hands, and exclaimed—
“Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down, and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour take the sin upon their own heads. I’ll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive and would deny it, I would make him eat a piece of my sword.”
Prince John of Lancaster continued to whistle, and implied that the story was, to say the least,—singular. It was evident he was inclined to attach more credit to the representations of Sir John Falstaff than to those of his elder brother. You see, they had been, at school together. No man is a hero in the eyes of the valet who takes off his boots when he is not in a condition to remove them himself; or in those of the little brother whom he has fleeced, fagged, and bullied at a public college.
Appearances were certainly against the Prince of Wales, and he was, at any rate, philosopher enough to make the best of the difficulty. For once, the conqueror of Agincourt—Englishman and warrior as he was—knew and confessed himself beaten. He felt that in this particular contest Sir John Falstaff had got decidedly the best of him, and morally yielded his sword with princely grace.
He contented himself with remarking to the Prince of Lancaster, “this is the strangest fellow, brother John.”
And then, addressing Falstaff,
“Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back.
For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.”
At this juncture a retreat was sounded, proving that the fortune of war had decided in favour of the Royalist faction. The two princes hastened to their father’s tent, Sir John Falstaff following, with the body of Hotspur on his back, soliloquising as follows:
“I’ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, Heaven reward him! If I do grow great, I’ll grow less; for I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.”
The above is the Shakspearian account, and—as I have already stated—in consistency I am bound to adopt it. But what I want to know is this,—why, if the Prince of Wales really killed Hotspur, the paid chroniclers of the period have not reported it? I admit I can come to no definite conclusion upon the subject, and will confine myself to the expression of an opinion that the death of Hotspur is still an open question,—with the supplementary reminder that Sir John Falstaff, being only a private gentleman of limited means, could not hope for the historic recognition of an honour disputed with him by the heir-apparent of England. And—to come to the point at once—I really believe that Sir John Falstaff did kill Hotspur, and that his royal patron bore him a grudge on that account to his dying day. It is the only logical explanation of Henry the Fifth’s notorious ingratitude to his former boon companion, whom it would have been so easy and natural for him to load with honours.
The Earl of Douglas, as we have seen, was punished by being sent back to Scotland. Sir John Falstaff, contrary to his reasonable expectations, was not made either Duke or Earl, in recompense of an achievement for which, whether really performed by him or no, he at least obtained credit in the opinion of many impartial persons. Herein we find not merely an illustration of the proverbial ingratitude of monarchs, but also one, by implication, of the personal jealousy of Prince Henry towards Sir John Falstaff, whom, as the sequel will show, the Prince of Wales treated with the most pointed malignity from the date of the Shrewsbury action to that of the knight’s death.
I will merely remark that Henry Plantagenet—fifth English king of that name—was not a man to do anything without a motive.
What Sir John Falstaff really gained by his glorious victory of Shrewsbury shall be seen in future chapters. It will be found that he was not a loser by the transaction. I will conclude the present chapter by a quotation from our knight’s expressed opinions before entering the field of battle:—
“Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour pricks me off when I
“come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No.
“Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery
“then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that word honour?
“Air; a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday?
“Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible, then?
“Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why?
“Detraction will not suffer it;—therefore, I’ll none of it. Honour is a
“mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism.”
I think the above observations prove that Sir John Falstaff knew rather more about honour than most people of his time, and therefore deserves a prominent position amongst the honourable men of the age he lived in.