“Thy friend,
“Richard Whittington.”
It is scarcely probable that Sir John Falstaff being in, even for him, unusually embarrassed circumstances, could have withstood the temptation of indefinite hospitality, at the expense of a wealthy and sympathetic friend. It may, therefore, be taken for granted that the winter of 1413-14 was passed by our knight and his retainers under the genial roof of the renowned citizen, mercer, traveller and philanthropist, Master Richard Whittington. I use the term “Master,” being inclined to think that the distinguished Londoner in question had not yet attained to the dignity of knighthood. My memory fails me on the subject, and the question is not one of sufficient importance to demand reference to authorities. Certain indications in the above letter lead me to believe that it was written by a plain undubbed citizen: for though Whittington himself, as a cosmopolitan philosopher, may have held all titular distinctions in contempt, and considered himself no better man after knighthood than before it, yet it would be in the highest degree unreasonable to suppose that the wife of his bosom could have participated in his apathy on the question. The above letter was, most obviously, written under the immediate supervision of the excellent Dame Alice Whittington—obviously from the terms of reverential decorum in which that lady is spoken of in it. Is it likely, that a city gentlewoman of the period, whose husband had successfully aspired to chivalric honours, would allow that husband to speak of her in a letter to another knight of real noble birth, as mere “Mistress Alice,” or that the writer would have been permitted by her to sign his epistle without the affix of “eques”? Certainly not. This, however, is irrelevant. The present work purports to be the history of Sir John Falstaff. That of Richard Whittington has been already written, and published in a neat and commodious form, profusely illustrated, and to be had of all booksellers.
A.D. 1413. Assuming that Sir John Falstaff actually spent his Christmas with the Whittington family, surrounded by the, to him, unwonted luxuries of a refined, pure-minded matron (who, if, as I have supposed, she had been inclined to look over her husband’s letters and insist on his asserting, on his and her behalf, any dignities which his honourable exertions might have earned for the pair of them, need be none the worse for that); the innocent prattling of an honest man’s young children; and, above all, the enduring friendship and protection of the honest man himself—an old warrior with the world, who had passed through many fires, and who could be lenient to the failures of combatants in more trying, if less honourable fields, only thanking his stars that he himself was alive, sitting by his fireside, and with all his scars in front!—a thoughtful friend who could perceive good, where the world only saw bad; who could remember the beauteous promise of spring in the very depths of winter!—why should Sir John Falstaff have torn himself away from such a peaceful haven—old creaky hulk as he was, with every timber starting, and not sea-worthy for a two years’ voyage—to be again buffeted about on the turbulent waters of uncertainty and dissipation? Alas! alas! Why does the poisoned cup kill? Why does the broken leg limp? Why does the bent bough grow downwards, and trail its meagre fruit among the worms and mud? Why does the old maimed hound hunt in dreams? Why do the ruined gamesters in the German demon stories, gamble away, first their doublets, then their vests, then their hose, then their shirts, and ultimately, their souls?
I can fancy Sir John Falstaff for a few days leading a life of marvellous peace, and even happiness, in the orderly household of sage Master Whittington, who loved our friend for the strong latent good that was in him, and to whom the doubly errant knight’s vices and irregularities were mere hateful excrescences, to be abhorred, as we abhor the consumption that kills our favourite sister, but which makes us love herself the more in our indignation at its rapacious cruelty. I can fancy a few pleasant evenings by the big fireside, Sir John telling innumerable pleasant stories from the vast resources of his sixty years’ experience, tempering them, with that sagacity of his which no excess or reverses could blind, to the innocence and capacity of his hearers. Dame Alice embroidering, or sitting sedately with her hands crossed upon her straight-cut mediæval skirt, as we see the ladies in the old illuminations; Master Richard, in an arm-chair like a young cathedral, playing with a big gold chain, of bulk and substance to suggest the idea of a watch-guard with which a fine-grown Titan, particularly anxious to be up to the time of day, might have carried Big Ben in his waistcoat pocket; and the little people, crawling lovingly over the knight’s round knees, and looking up into his bloated, purple, damaged, handsome face, with a by no means misplaced confidence in, and admiration for, their amusing instructor. For—come!—where do you find a single instance on record of Sir John Falstaff having by word or deed—expressed, performed, or omitted—contributed to the corruption of a single innocent creature? You may tell me of little Robin the page, whom Sir John dragged mercilessly after him through the various moral sloughs and slums he himself was destined to wade through. To this I can only answer, that Robin was corrupt as St. Giles’s when Sir John found him; and that I do not pretend to set up my poor scapegrace old knight as a social reformer. He was merely a reprehensible, cynical, laisser aller philosopher. He took things as he found them, and could no more mend them than he could mend himself. He could no more have made a good boy of Robin than he could have forced Bardolph to sign the temperance pledge, or than he could have spared sufficient money from his own daily expenses to found a Magdalen hospital for the especial reformation of Mistress Dorothea Tearsheet—assuming the prevalent aspersions on that lady’s reputation to have been based on anything but the most malicious calumny.
But those pleasant evenings in the Whittington household could not have lasted. The first flush of pleasure derived from comfortable quarters, abundant and luxurious provisions, and the security from legal interference being over, the very respectability of the thing would become irksome. Let Whittington try never so hard to place his guest on a footing of equality with himself, the unconscious patronage of the man who had fought and won, over the man who had merely skirmished and lost, would, in the long run, become intolerable. And then there is the great force of habit. There is undoubted fascination in “the desolate freedom of the wild ass.” Unlimited sand, with an occasional root of cactus or prickly pear, would, I presume, be far more acceptable to a quadruped of that species than a daily branmash, turnips, and warm straw bedding, where there would be harness and padlocks withal. I can fancy Falstaff beginning to find the early hours and decorous regulations of the Whittington establishment considerably too much for him. Respectable members of the Mercers’ Company would doubtless look in, and gaze upon him as a curious monster. He would yearn for the naughtinesses of the Boar’s Head, with its limed sack, sanded floor, and obsequious retainers. And then there would be the ever-present and dreadful consciousness of Master Whittington himself, to whom no weak point in the character of Sir John Falstaff was a mystery; who would help Sir John liberally to sack, knowing it was not good for him; who would lend Sir John money, knowing he would bestow it in bad uses; who would let Sir John talk himself breathless, and smilingly count all Sir John’s lies on his fingers! Depend upon it, there is nothing so intolerable to a sensible man who has made a fool of himself through life as the silent criticism of another sensible man, who is aware of the fact, and who himself has done nothing of the kind.
Therefore I am inclined to think that Sir John Falstaff and his old friend Richard Whittington must have come to a one-sided quarrel within a month, at the utmost, of Sir John’s more than probable residence in the Whitting-ionian household. It may have been a question of stopping out late, or of introducing an unbecoming companion (let us say Ancient Pistol, whom Sir John, in a moment of vinous aberration, may have been so inconsiderate as to present to Dame Alice Whittington as a model member of mass-going society). At any rate, it is very certain that, in the month of March, 1413, Sir John Falstaff was no longer, if he had recently been, a guest of Master Richard Whittington, or even a resident in the British metropolis.
Sir John Falstaff, on the 21st of March, 1413, was again the honoured visitor of Master Robert Shallow, in the Commission of the Peace for the county of Gloucester.