Chaucer and His Times

by Grace E. Hadow

CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES

CHAPTER I

CHAUCER’S LIFE AND TIMES

“The biography of Chaucer is built upon doubts and thrives upon perplexities” according to one of the most famous of Chaucer scholars, and the more carefully we consider the evidence upon which this statement is based, the more fully do we find it endorsed. The name Chaucer itself has been variously derived from the Latin calcearius, a shoemaker, the French chaussier, a maker of long hose, and the French chaufecire, chafe-wax (i. e. a clerk of the court of Chancery whose duty consisted in affixing seals to royal documents). The one point of agreement seems to be that the family was undoubtedly of French origin, though whether the founder of the English branch came over with the Conqueror or in Henry III’s reign, cannot be decided. Most scholars are now agreed that Geoffrey Chaucer was born about 1340, and that his father was John Chaucer, a vintner of Thames Street, London, though at one time his birth was dated as early as 1328, and Mr. Snell, in his Age of Chaucer, endeavours further to darken counsel—already sufficiently obscure—by suggesting that there may have been two contemporary Geoffreys, and that the facts which are usually accepted as throwing light on the history of the poet may really apply to his unknown namesake. This theory, however, has at present no evidence to support it, and it is reasonable to assume that Chaucer was a native of London. Possibly it was his early association with the wine-trade that gave him such insight into its mysteries, and called forth the Pardoner’s warning:—

Now kepe yow fro the whyte and fro the rede,
And namely fro the whyte wyn of Lepe,
That is to selle in Fish-strete or in Chepe.
This wyn of Spayne crepeth subtilly
In othere wynes, growing faste by,
Of which there ryseth swich fumositee
That when a man hath dronken draughtes three
And weneth that he be at hoom in Chepe,
He is in Spayne, right at the toune of Lepe.
(Pardoners Tale, l. 562, etc.)

And it is noteworthy that more than once Chaucer goes out of his way to inveigh against drunkenness:—

A lecherous thing is wyn, and dronkenesse
Is ful of stryving and of wrecchednesse
······
For dronkenesse is verray sepulture
Of mannes wit and his discrecioun.
(Pardoners Tale, l. 549-559.)

Of his early years we know nothing. Probably he lived the life of other boys of that time: Lydgate’s portrait of the mediæval school-boy may well stand for a type:—

I had in custom to come to school late
Not for to learn but for a countenance,
With my fellows ready to debate,
To jangle and jape was set all my pleasaunce.
Whereof rebuked was my Chevisaunce[1]
To forge a lesyng and thereupon to muse
When I trespassed myselfe to excuse.
······
Loth to rise, lother to bed at eve;
With unwashed handes ready aye to dinner;
My Paternoster, my Creed, or my Believe
Cast at the Cook; lo! this was my manner;
Waved with each wind, as doth a reede-spear;
Snibbed[2] of my friends such taches[3] for to amend
Made deaf eare list nat to them attend.
(Testament.)