| Love holdeth it great humbleness, And virtue eke, that thou wilt make A-night full oft thy head to ache, In thy study so thou writest And ever more of Love enditest. |
The Ruler of the Gods, therefore, has taken pity on the poet’s lonely life—
| That is, that thou hast no tidings | |
| Of Lovë’s folk, if they be glad, | |
| Nor of nothing ellës that God made: | |
| And not only from far countree, | |
| Whence no tiding cometh to thee, | |
| But of thy very neighëbores | |
| That dwellen almost at thy doors, | |
| Thou hearest neither that nor this; | |
| For, when thy labour done all is, | |
| And hast y-made thy reckonings, | |
| Instead of rest and newë things | |
| Thou go’st home to thy house anon, | |
| And, all so dumb as any stone, | |
| Thou sittest at another book | |
| Till fully dazed is thy look, | |
| And livest thus as an heremite, | |
| Although thy abstinence is lite.[111] | [little |
Here we have the central figure of the Aldgate Chamber, but what was the background? Was his room, as some will have it, such as that to which his eyes opened in the “Book of the Duchess”?
| And sooth to say my chamber was | |
| Full well depainted, and with glass | |
| Were all the windows well y-glazed | |
| Full clear, and not one hole y-crazed, | [cracked |
| That to behold it was great joy; | |
| For wholly all the story of Troy | |
| Was in the glazing y-wrought thus ... | |
| And all the walls with colours fine | |
| Were painted, bothë text and glose, | [commentary |
| And all the Romance of the Rose. | |
| My windows weren shut each one | |
| And through the glass the sunnë shone | |
| Upon my bed with brightë beams.... |
Those lines were written before the Aldgate days; and the hints which can be gathered from surviving inventories and similar sources make it very improbable that the poet was lodged with anything like such outward magnificence. The storied glass and the frescoed wall were far more probably a reminiscence from Windsor, or from Chaucer’s life with one of the royal dukes; and the furniture of the Aldgate dwelling-house is likely to have resembled in quantity that which we have seen recorded of Hugh le Benere, and in quality the similar but more valuable stock of Richard de Blountesham. (Riley, p. 123.) Richard possessed bedding for three beds to the total value of fifty shillings and eightpence; his brass pot weighed sixty-seven pounds; and, over and above his pewter plates, dishes, and salt-cellars, he possessed “three silver cups, ten shillings in weight.” Three better cups than these, at least, stood in the Chaucer cupboard; for on New Year’s Day, 1380, 1381, and 1382, the accounts of the Duchy of Lancaster record presents from John of Gaunt to Philippa Chaucer of silver-gilt cups with covers. The first of these weighed thirty-one shillings, and cost nearly three pounds; the second and third were apparently rather more valuable. We must suppose, therefore, that the Aldgate rooms were handsomely furnished, as a London citizen’s rooms went; but we must beware here of such exaggerations as the genius of William Morris has popularized. The assumption that the poet knew familiarly every book from which he quotes has long been exploded; and it is quite as unsafe to suppose that the artistic glories which he so often describes formed part of his home life. There were tapestries and stained glass in churches for every man to see, and in palaces and castles for the enjoyment of the few; but they become fairly frequent in citizens’ houses only in the century after Chaucer’s death; and it was very easy to spend an income such as his without the aid of artistic extravagance. Froissart, whose circumstances were so nearly the same, and who, though a priest, was just as little given to abstinence, confesses to having spent 2000 livres (or some £8000 modern English money) in twenty-five years, over and above his fat living of Lestinnes. “And yet I hoard no grain in my barns, I build no churches, or clocks, or ships, or galleys, or manor-houses. I spend not my money on furnishing fine rooms.... My chronicles indeed have cost me a good seven hundred livres, at the least, and the taverners of Lestinnes have had a good five hundred more.”[112] Froissart’s confession introduces a witty poetical plea for fresh contributions; and if Chaucer had added a couple of similar stanzas to the “Complaint to his Empty Purse,” it is probable that their tenor would have been much the same: “Books, and the Taverner; and I’ve had my money’s worth from both!”
1. GROUND PLAN AND SECTION OF THE CLERGY-HOUSE AT ALFRISTON—A TYPICAL
TIMBER HOUSE OF THE 14TH CENTURY. (For the Hall, see Chaucer’s “Miller’s Tale”)