“Even were it a gift, I would ask it fearlessly for our old friendship’s sake. She must have a tomb becoming my rank, and I am penniless. A careless soldier, who is no courtier, cannot force kings to gratitude, or even to justice. The ring, I warn you, is of no great money value—as a jewel it would fetch little—let me say nothing. But to me it is priceless as an heirloom (you see it bears the letters of my ancestor, Keingelt Falstaff, with the hand grasping a staff), and should death fly me, as he will those who willingly pursue him, I would redeem it with—but this is idle. Only one thing could make me forego my resolution, which is a forgiveness I will not even ask for. I make but one stipulation; that if I fall (as I shall do) you will say you received the ring as a gift in token of our betrothal. The story of my secret marriage will be then publicly known, and it will be no shame for you to own that you once thought to be a poor knight’s lady.
“I have said enough. Farewell! That pardon which I do not beg for alive I know will be freely given after my death. I have but one merit to set against my faults—I love thee. It is said. Farewell!
“John Falstaff.”
“The boy may be trusted with the money, and will call for it any time in the morning not later than eleven of the o’clock, when we start westward.”
The story of Sir John’s unfortunate marriage, alluded to in the above, is too apocryphal to be entitled to a moment’s discussion. It may, indeed, be unhesitatingly set down as a pure fiction, invented from combined motives of policy and humanity—the former requiring no explanation; the latter originating in a good-natured desire that Mistress Ursula should at least have the comfort of believing that she had bestowed her heart’s affections and substantial friendship for a period of so many years upon a deserving object.
It is well known that Sir John Falstaff never married. “A soldier,” as the sage Bardolph once observed in answer to an inquiry upon this very subject, “is better accommodated than with a wife.” Sir John appears also to have considerately felt that a wife might be better accommodated than with a soldier; and though, doubtless, in his desire to please the fair sex, he frequently gave rise to dreams of happiness in numerous sensitive imaginations by ‘promising the honour of his matrimonial alliance, he was never so cruel as to dispel such visions by the harsh realities that must have ensued upon performance. There is no happiness like that of anticipation. Sir John delighted in making people happy—ladies especially—and the more at a time the better.
It would betray an ignorance of the times to suppose that our knight belonged to any of those chivalric orders who were bound to celibacy. Such institutions—as far as concerns England at any rate—had been long obsolete at his birth. Nevertheless, a lingering trace of their spirit may be found in the contemplation of Sir John Falstaff viewed as a man of gallantry. The knights of old, instead of seeking to advance themselves by matrimonial alliance or to sink their renown in the peaceful joys of domesticity, were accustomed to give vent to their superabundant affections in Platonic attachments. This would seem to have been the case with our hero; who, at the period of his history now under consideration, entertained a chaste regard for a gentlewoman of good family, named Mistress Dorothea Tearsheet, between whom and Sir John no engagement of any kind appears to have existed. I regret that this lady’s reputation should have been the subject of much calumny and misunderstanding, chiefly owing to some ribald expressions on the part of those ill-regulated young men, the Prince of Wales and his friend Poins. It is also brought forward in evidence against her, that she committed the impropriety of accepting an invitation to supper with Sir John, at the Old Boar’s Head, on the night of the day on which the letter just quoted was written, and then and there indulged in certain conduct and expressions by no means compatible with the bearing of a reproachless damsel. To these charges I can only answer: that, in the first place, it has been asserted * that Mistress Dorothea was connected with Sir John Falstaff by the ties of relationship—an assertion which has never been refuted except by a sneer from the Prince of Wales, of whose veracity we know sufficient by this time—and there could be surely nothing wrong in a lady partaking of a farewell repast with a respected kinsman about to depart on a perilous enterprise, and who must have been more than double her age. Besides, it must not be forgotten that any suspicion of impropriety on the occasion was more than guarded against by the matronly presence of Mrs. Quickly. With regard to the freedom of Mistress Tearsheet’s conduct and language, I need merely appeal to the manners of the age. The chaste Queen Elizabeth herself, more than two centuries later, is known to have taken part in the discussion of topics which would not be considered admissible within the circle of a modern drawing-room. That the lady was entitled to the highest respect is proved by the jealous care taken by Sir John Falstaff that she should be treated with ‘such by all comers, manifested in the fact, that when, on the night of the supper alluded to, Ancient Pistol, having entered the room in a state of intoxication, applied some injurious epithets to the lady, Sir John was so far roused from his habitual forbearance—and from the comfortable process of digestion—as to administer to the tipsy officer one of the soundest drubbings he ever received in the course of his well-pummelled existence. Which incident you may read in the Second Part of King Henry the Fourth, or view depicted in Mr. Cruikshank’s engraving.
* Prince Henry.—Sup any women with him?
Page.—None, my lord, but old Mistress Quickly and Mistress
Doll Tearsheet.
Prince Henry.—What pagan may that be?
Page.—A proper gentlewoman, sir, and a kinswoman of my
master’s. Henry IV. Part H. Act ii. Sc. 2.
Other specimens of the Falstaff correspondence will be introduced, and duly commented on, in chronological order.