Chaucer’s portrait is copied from a drawing by Occleve the poet (Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 4866). Occleve made, or caused to be made, shortly after Chaucer’s death, several portraits of him, of which two remain; and on these are founded the many now scattered over the country. The same features recur in all. The peculiar aquiline nose, mouth a little drooping, eyes downcast, the forked beard and fair complexion, the broad round jaw, are the same in all. Occleve always depicted Chaucer with a rosary in his hand, and his penner, containing his pen and inkhorn, hanging to his vest. His hands are small and well-shapen, his form is portly, his air calm, benevolent, almost pathetic.
These lines run beside the miniature in Occleve’s MS.:—
Al thogh his lyfe be queynt, the resemblaunceextinguished
Of him hath in me so fressh lyflynesseliveliness
That to putte othir men in remembraunce
Of his persone I have heere his lyknesselikeness
Do make, to this end in sothfastnesse,had made (faire faire), truth
That thei that have of him lest thought and myndelost
By this peynture may ageyn him fynde.painting
Although his life be quench’d, so clear doth lie
Within my mind the living look of him,
That to put other men in memory
Of his appearance, here his face I limn,
That they to whom his image groweth dim,
And they that have of him lost thought and mind,
By this poor portrait may again him find.
The portraits by Occleve, his personal friend and disciple, whose deep affection for Chaucer is touchingly reiterated in his ‘Lament’ for him, maybe relied on as most conscientious pictures from memory of the great poet’s habitual appearance.
Notes on the Woodcuts.
The Tournament. (See [Title-page].)—There must always have been, to some extent, a grotesque element in the Tournament. The desire to be conspicuous forced the combatants to assume the gayest and the biggest decoration. At a later date the tilting helmets sprouted into the most preposterous sizes and shapes. Figures and ‘favours’ assumed for the occasion, the gifts of enthusiastic lady-loves, as well as hereditary devices, surmounted the helm and glittered on coat-armour and harness. In Edward III.’s reign the beauty and éclat of the tourney was in its zenith; in Richard II.’s the beautiful began to be overpowered by the grotesque. I have tried to tone down the grotesque as much as may be, but a general dazzle and confusion of colour is inseparable from the scene, vivid, violent, and exciting as it was. Tents were often erected within the pale of the lists for the convenience of those awaiting or hors de combat. Shields or targets, for peace or war, were suspended in couples before them, emblazoned with the arms of each lord; and whoso sent to touch the targets was tilted with according to his wish—i.e., with sharp or blunt lances.
The end of Theseus’ tourney was clearly a riot, but I have preferred to represent the orderly onset of the first combatants, guided by a MS. Froissart of the fifteenth century. It has been suggested to me that it would be impossible to tilt across the bar unless the spear-arm were next the bar, as the horse’s neck would impede the stroke, and the rider’s own spear would unhorse him: in tent-pegging and all sports with the lance the rider brings his spear-arm next the mark. But having found several early miniatures in which the spear is aimed as here given, I considered myself justified in trusting to contemporary MSS. in spite of modern theories.
The horses were the chief sufferers in these mimic frays. The heavy beasts, protected as they were by a great weight of armour, were often injured. The best-trained dreaded the shock of encounter, and, as we read in Froissart, their restiveness and swerving at the last moment frequently spoiled the ‘course,’ despite the most violent spurring, to their masters’ deep chagrin and disappointment, and the disgust of the lady-loves.
The high saddles, sometimes locking the rider in his seat all round, were constructed to retain him on his horse, however violent the push; but they were the cause of many an unhappy accident. Death like Arcite’s, from crushing against the saddle-bow, was by no means uncommon. So died William the Conqueror himself four hundred years before; when, riding down the steep street of Mantes, his horse stumbled among the embers he had kindled. (See Green’s Short History of the English People, p. 85.)
Suffocation in the dust was a still more frequent cause of death; as thrown riders could not rise, nor rid themselves of their ponderous casques.