The Life of Sir John Falstaff

by Robert B. Brough

To which Sir John had replied that he must be excused.

But Master Shallow would not excuse him: he should not be excused. There was no excuse should serve: Sir John should not be excused. And Master Shallow had immediately ordered supper, and bidden Sir John to off with his boots.

It is needless to say that Sir John had no wish to be excused, but that he had come intentionally to stop. He had long had Master Robert Shallow “tempering between his finger and thumb,” and had now come to “seal with him.” He had, years ago, seen to the bottom of Justice Shallow. He knew that ornament to the magistracy to be nothing better than a time-serving humbug, and he had come, as I think most justifiably, to take any possible advantage of him. It was a breach of hospitality, if you will; but remember we are treating of great men and their motives. My only regret is that I am compelled to exhibit my hero, towards the end of his career, engaged in the pursuit of “such small deer” as a pitiful country justice. When I compare John Falstaff, in his sixty-seventh year, on this particular evening, stretching his limbs under Master Shallow’s oak (as yet the mahogany tree was an unnaturalised exotic), picking the short legs of Master Shallow’s roasted hens, and washing down as much of Master Shallow’s garrulous mendacity as limitless draughts of Master Shallow’s sack and Bordeaux might enable him—all the while meditating through what particular chink in Master Shallow’s vanity he could best get at the same gentleman’s purse-strings;—when I compare this with another picture presented on the preceding evening, by another great man of imperfect notions of meum and teum, frequently mentioned in these pages, younger in years, but centuries older in depravity than Sir John, and with both feet already in the grave—legs, body, and all rapidly sliding in after them—Henry Bolingbroke on his death-bed, in short—counselling his young son and successor—

“to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels: that action hence borne out
May waste the memory of the former days;”

(that is, the days of his early rascality, the fruits of which he would have his son preserve by the fomentation of fresh villanies)—when I compare the conduct of these two waning celebrities, the one within half a dozen hours of death, the other with good two years and a quarter of life in him, (alas! no more,) I am more forcibly than ever reminded of my reluctantly formed suspicion, that the character of Sir John Falstaff may have been really deficient in the heroic element after all, and am made to feel that he comes out, by comparison with the more wholesale practitioner, in a pitifully moral and respectable light.

I am getting so near the end of my poor old knight, (I call him mine, though I have but the sorriest stepfather’s claim to him, and doubtless deserve to have him removed from my charge for ill-treating him as I have done,) and am so closely in sight of the overthrow of his last hopes and energies, that I have scarcely the heart any longer to make light of his rogueries. I will try and explain how I feel with regard to Sir John Falstaff. Consider me a street urchin in a town where a very fat old gentleman has been in the habit of misconducting himself, and so publishing his irregularities in the public thoroughfares, as to have forfeited the respect of well-behaved citizens, and make himself the target for all kinds of pleasantry from the lowest and most thoughtless. I have had my jeer, and my pebble, and perhaps my rotten egg, at the poor old man, with the rest of the gamins, and rare fun we have considered it. But a day arrives when I see the old gentleman paler than usual. The red of his cheeks has become an unwholesome purple. He no longer walks jauntily, but totters. The stick, that he used to shake in merry defiance at his tatterdemalion critics, is now necessary to support his steps. There is a tear in his eye. He is suffering—failing—and I (being, perhaps, a sensitive, well-meaning ragamuffin) beat my breast, and am ashamed of my conduct. I feel inclined to go whimpering for pardon to him, and ask him to let me serve him in some menial but comforting capacity. But the stronger boys are not of my way of thinking. To them he is more ridiculous than ever in his weakness and decay. They pelt him the more, and laugh at him the louder. He falls. I run to try and help him. I look in his face, and wonder that I could ever have seen there anything to laugh at. It is to me all sadness and bitter suffering. I forget the stories I have heard against him. I am conscious of nothing but an old man, fallen in the mud, who cannot raise himself. I would do anything to express to him my contrition and sympathy. I feel an absurd inclination to offer him my tops and marbles—nay, my very slice of bread and butter itself. At least, I would treat him respectfully. But——the other boys jeer at me, and I am ashamed of my passing weakness; and, like a mean-spirited young sneak as I am, I turn round, and make game of the poor old gentleman more mercilessly than ever, with a strong sensation that I deserve to be flayed alive for doing so.

At any rate, I am glad that the spring of 1413 was a genial one—seeing that Sir John had but two more springs of any kind between him and the grave; and was doomed to bask in but little more sunshine, either of the actual or of the figurative kind. It pleases me to dwell on such little pleasures and comforts I may find proof of his having enjoyed from this time forth. I am delighted to feel confident that the supper provided for him by the anxious care of Master Shallow was good and abundant. I take comfort in believing that William Cook had done his spiriting with zeal and ability: that the short-legged hens were roasted to a turn; that the joint of mutton was a small brown haunch, which had walked, when capable of pedestrian exercise, towards Gloucestershire, in a south-easterly direction—from the Welsh mountains in fact (a hope, not without foundation in presumptive evidence—seeing that Master Shallow had, at any rate, one kindly friend from that hospitable district—Hugh Evans, byname, a gentleman in holy orders, at this time established in the neighbouring county of Berkshire); that the pigeons were plump and tender victims, either served up on an altar of the crispest toast, or brought to the sacrifice in a sarcophagus of melting crust; and that the “pretty little tiny kickshaws” embraced every available delicacy of the early season.

At all events, it is certain that Sir John had had something he liked, and plenty of it. There is no record in his life that displays him in a more thorough state of serenity and genial goodfellowship with all mankind than the passages in the chronicle of Henry the Fourth *, referring to the evening in question. There we find Sir John “unbuttoning himself after supper,” lounging “upon benches after noon” in Master Shallow’s orchard, inhaling the soft breeze of the premature summer, listening to the carols of the birds immortalised (through the medium of these pages) by the poet Thomas Chaucer ** and partaking of a “last year’s pippin” of the worthy justice’s “own graffing,” with the addition of a “dish of carraways and so forth.” The “so forth” is not particularised in the chronicler’s page; but from the conduct of Master Shallow himself and of his kinsman, Silence, on the festive occasion, it would seem to have been a long time in bottle, and furnished forth with no niggard hand.

* Part II. Act v. Scene 3.
** Nicholas Chaucer, kinsman of the above, was at about this
time a distinguished member of the Grocers’ Company, in the
city of London. Assuming that he combined with his aromatic
calling the congenial one of butterman, the preservation of
Thomas Chaucer’s manuscript—doubtless submitted to his
relative’s approval in the regular way of business—is at
once accounted for.

Let us follow the scene, as described in the chronicle, for its termination sounds the key-note to the great crisis in the history of our hero’s declining fortunes.