CHAPTER XIII

"CANTERBURY TALES"--THIRD AND FOURTH DAYS

"... quasi peregrin, che si ricrea Nel tempio del suo voto riguardando, E spera gia ridir com' ello stea." "Paradiso," xxxi., 43

On the morning of the third day we find the Physician speaking; he tells the tragedy of Virginia, not straight from Livy, whom Chaucer had probably never had a chance of reading, but from its feebler echo in the "Roman de la Rose." Even so, however, the pity of it comes home to his hearers.

Our Hostë gan to swear as he were wood; [mad 'Harrow!' quoth he, 'by nailës and by blood! This was a false churl and a false justice! ... By _Corpus_ bonës! but I have triacle [medicinal syrup Or else a draught of moist and corny ale, Or but I hear anon a merry tale, Mine heart is lost, for pity of this maid. Thou _bel ami_, thou Pardoner,' he said 'Tell us some mirth, or japës, right anon!' 'It shall be done,' quoth he, 'by saint Ronyon! But first' (quoth he) 'here at this alë stake I will both drink and eaten of a cake.' And right anon the gentles gan to cry 'Nay! let him tell us of no ribaldry....' 'I grant, ywis,' quoth he; 'but I must think Upon some honest thing, the while I drink.'

The suspicion of the "gentles" might seem premature; but they evidently suspected this pardon-monger of too copious morning-draughts already, and the tenor of his whole prologue must have confirmed their fears. With the cake in his mouth, and the froth of the pot on his lips, he takes as his text, _Radix malorum est cupiditas_, "Covetousness is the root of all evil," and exposes with cynical frankness the tricks of his trade. By a judicious use of "my longë crystal stones, y-crammëd full of cloutës and of bones," I make (says he) my round 100 marks a year;[162] and, when the people have offered, then I mount the pulpit, nod east and west upon the congregation like a dove on a barn-gable, and preach such tales as this.... Hereupon follows his tale of the three thieves who all murdered each other for the same treasure. It is told with admirable spirit; and now the Pardoner, carried away by sheer force of habit, calls upon the company to kiss his relics, make their offerings, and earn his indulgences piping-hot from Rome. Might not a horse stumble here, at this very moment, and break the neck of some unlucky pilgrim, who would then bitterly regret his lost opportunities in hell or purgatory? Strike, then, while the iron is hot--

I counsel that our Host here shall begin, For he is most enveloped in sin! ... Come forth, sir Host, and offer first anon, And thou shalt kiss my relics every one ... Yea, for a groat! unbuckle anon thy purse. 'Nay, nay,' quoth he, 'then have I Christë's curse ...

The Host, as his opening words may suggest, answers to the purpose, easy words to understand, but not so easy to print here in the broad nakedness of their scorn for the Pardoner and all his works--

This Pardoner answerëd not a word; So wroth he was, no wordë would he say. 'Now,' quoth our Host, 'I will no longer play With thee, nor with none other angry man.' But right anon the worthy Knight began (When that he saw that all the people lough) [laughed 'No more of this, for it is right enough! [quite Sir Pardoner, be glad and merry of cheer; And ye, sir Host, that be to me so dear, I pray now that ye kiss the Pardoner; And, Pardoner, I pray thee draw thee near, And, as we diden, let us laugh and play.' Anon they kist, and riden forth their way.

The thread of the tales here breaks off; and then suddenly we find the Wife of Bath talking, talking, talking, almost without end as she was without beginning. Her prologue is half a dozen tales in itself, longer almost, and certainly wittier, than all the other prologues put together. The theme is marriage, and her mouth speaks from the abundance of her heart. Here, indeed, we have God's plenty: fish, flesh, and fowl are set before us in one dish, not to speak of creeping things: it is in truth a strong mess, savoury to those that have the stomach for it, but reeking of garlic, crammed with oaths like the Shipman's talk; a sample of the Eternal Feminine undisguised and unrefined, in its most glaring contrast with the only other two women of the party, the Prioress and her fellow-nun--

Men may divine, and glosen up and down, But well I wot, express, withouten lie, God bade us for to wax and multiply; That gentle text can I well understand. Eke, well I wot, he said that mine husband Should leavë father and mother, and takë me; But of no number mention madë he Of bigamy or of octogamy, Why shouldë men speak of it villainy?

The good wife tells how she has outlived five husbands, and proclaims her readiness for a sixth. The five martyrs are sketched with a master-touch, and are divided into categories according to their obedience or disobedience. But, with all their variety of disposition, time and matrimony had tamed even the most stubborn of them; even that clerk of Oxford whose earlier wont had been to read aloud nightly by the fire from a Book of Bad Women--

... And when I saw he wouldë never fine [finish To readen on this cursed book all night, All suddenly three leavës have I plight [plucked Out of his book, right as he read; and eke I with my fist so took him on the cheek That in our fire he fell backward adown; And up he start as doth a wood lioun [mad And with his fist he smote me on the head, That in the floor I lay as I were dead ...

But the quarrels of lovers are the renewal of love; and when the husband had been brought, half by violence and half by cajolery, to give his wife her own way in everything, then--

After that day we never had debate. God help me so, I was to him as kind As any wife from Denmark unto Ind.

For all social purposes, as we have said, this was the only woman of the company; and where there is one woman there are always two men as ready to quarrel over her as if she were Helen of Troy. Moreover, in this case, professional jealousies were also at work. Already in the middle of her prologue the Summoner had fallen into familiar dialogue with this merry wife; and now, at the end--

The Friar laughed when he had heard all this; 'Now, dame,' quoth he, 'so have I joy or bliss, This is a long preamble of a tale!' And when the Summoner heard the Friar gale [cry out 'Lo,' quoth the Summoner, 'Goddës armes two! A friar will intermit him ever-mo. [interfere Lo, goodë men, a fly, and eke a frere Will fall in every dishë and matère. What speak'st thou of a "preambulation"? What? amble, or trot, or peace, or go sit down! Thou lettest our disport in this manère.' 'Yea, wilt thou so, sir Summoner?' quoth the Frere; 'Now, by my faith, I shall, ere that I go, Tell of a Summoner such a tale or two That all the folk shall laughen in this place.' 'Now ellës, Friar, I beshrew thy face,' [curse Quoth this Summoner, 'and I beshrewë me, But if I tellë tales, two or three, Of friars, ere I come to Sittingbourne, That I shall make thine heartë for to mourn, For well I wot thy patience is gone.' Our Hostë crièd 'Peace! and that anon;' And saidë: 'Let the woman tell her tale; Ye fare as folk that drunken be of ale. Do, dame, tell forth your tale, and that is best.' 'All ready, sir,' quoth she, 'right as you list, If I have licence of this worthy Frere.' 'Yes, dame,' quoth he, 'tell forth, and I will hear.'

The lady, having thus definitely notified her choice between the rivals (on quite other grounds, as the next few lines show, than those of religion or morality), proceeds to tell her tale on the theme that nothing is so dear to the female heart as "sovereignty" or "mastery." Then the quarrel blazes up afresh, and the Friar (after an insulting prologue for which the Host calls him to order) tells a story which is, from first to last, a bitter satire on the whole tribe of Summoners. Then the Summoner, "quaking like an aspen leaf for ire," stands up in his stirrups and claims to be heard in turn. His prologue, which by itself might suffice to turn the tables on his enemy, is a broad parody of those revelations to devout Religious which announced how the blessed souls of their particular Order (for the Friars were not alone in this egotism) enjoyed for their exclusive use some choice and peculiar mansion in heaven--under the skirts of the Virgin's mantle, for instance, or even within the wound of their Saviour's side. Then begins the tale itself of a Franciscan Stiggins on his daily rounds, and of the "oldë churl, with lockës hoar," who at one stroke blasphemed the whole convent, and took ample change out of Friar John for many a good penny or fat meal given in the past, and for much friction in his conjugal relations. The whole is told with inimitable humour, and it is to be regretted that we hear nothing of the comments with which it was received. At this point comes another gap in Chaucer's plan.

Then suddenly our Host calls upon the Clerk of Oxford--

Ye ride as still and coy as doth a maid, Were newly spousëd, sitting at the board; This day ne heard I of your tongue a word ... For Goddës sake, as be of better cheer! It is no timë for to study here.

The Clerk, thus rudely shaken from his meditations, tells the story of Patient Griselda, which he had "learned at Padua, of a worthy clerk ... Francis Petrarch, the laureate poet." The good Clerk softens down much of that which most shocks the modern mind in this truly medieval conception of wifely obedience; and, as a confirmed bachelor, he adds an ironical postscript which is as clever as anything Chaucer ever wrote.[163] We must revere the heroine, but despair of finding her peer--

Griseld' is dead, and eke her patience, And both at once burièd in Itayle.

So begins this satirical ballad, and goes on to bid the wife of the present day to enjoy herself at her husband's expense--

Be aye of cheer as light as leaf on lind, [lime-tree And let him care and weep, and wring and wail!

The last line rouses a sad echo in one heart at least, for the Merchant had been wedded but two months--

'Weeping and wailing, care and other sorrow, I know enough, on even and a-morrow' Quoth the Merchant, 'and so do other more That wedded be ...'

His tale turns accordingly on the misadventures of an old knight who had been foolish enough to marry a girl in her teens. Upon this the Host congratulates himself that _his_ wife, with all her shrewishness and other vices more, is "as true as any steel." Here ends the third day; the travellers probably slept at the Pilgrim's House at Ospringe, parts of which stand still as Chaucer saw it.

Next morning the Squire is first called upon to

... say somewhat of love; for certes ye Do ken thereon as much as any man.

He modestly disclaims the compliment, and tells (or rather leaves half told) the story of Cambuscan, with the magic ring and mirror and horse of brass. Chaucer had evidently intended to finish the story; for the Franklin is loud in praise of the young man's eloquence, and sighs to mark the contrast with his own son, who, in spite of constant paternal "snybbings," haunts dice and low company, and shows no ambition to learn of "gentillesse." "Straw for your 'gentillessë,' quoth our Host," and forthwith demands a tale from the Franklin, who, with many apologies for his want of rhetoric, tells admirably a Breton legend of chivalry and magic.

Another gap brings us to the Second Nun, who tells the tale of St. Cecilia from the Golden Legend, with a prefatory invocation to the Virgin translated from Dante. By the time this is ended the pilgrims are five miles further on, at Boughton-under-Blee. Here, at the foot of the hilly forest of Blean, with only eight more miles before them to Canterbury, they are startled by the clattering of horse-hoofs behind them. It was a Canon Regular with a Yeoman at his heels.[164] The man had seen the pilgrims at daybreak, and warned his master; and the two had ridden hard to overtake so merry a company. While the Canon greeted the pilgrims, our Host questioned his Yeoman, who first obscurely hinted, and then began openly to relate, such things as made the Canon set spurs to his horse and "flee away for very sorrow and shame." The Yeoman is now only too glad to make a clean breast of it. He has been seven years with this monastic alchemist, who has fallen meanwhile from one degree of poverty to another; half-cheat, half-dupe, with a thousand tricks for cozening folk of their money, but always wasting his own on the search for the philosopher's stone. Meanwhile, after ruinous expenses and painful care, every experiment ends in the same way: "the pot to-breaketh, and farewell, all is go!" The experimenters pick themselves up, look round on the mass of splinters and the dinted walls, and begin to quarrel over the cause--

Some said it was along on the fire making, Some saidë Nay, it was on the blowing, (Then was I feared, for that was mine office,) 'Straw!' quoth the third, 'ye be lewëd and nice [ignorant and foolish It was not tempered as it ought to be.' 'Nay,' quoth the fourthë, 'stint and hearken me; Because our fire ne was not made of beech, That is the cause, and other none, so I theech!' [so may I thrive!

At last the mess is swept up, the few recognizable fragments of metal are put aside for further use, another furnace is built, and the indefatigable Canon concocts a fresh hell-broth, sweeping away all past failures with the incurable optimism of a monomaniac, "There was defect in somewhat, well I wot." Many of the fraternity, however, are arrant knaves, without the least redeeming leaven of folly; and the Yeoman goes on to tell the tricks by which such an one beguiled a "sotted priest" who had set his heart on this unlawful gain.

By this time the company was come to "Bob Up and Down," which was probably the pilgrims' nickname for Upper Harbledown. Here our Host found the Cook straggling behind, asleep on his nag in broad daylight--

'Awake, thou Cook,' quoth he, 'God give thee sorrow! What aileth thee to sleepë by the morrow? Hast thou had fleas all night, or art thou drunk?'

The Cook opens his mouth, and at once compels his neighbours to adopt the latter and less charitable theory. He is evidently in no state for story-telling; so the Manciple offers himself instead, not without a few broad jests at his fellow's infirmity--

And with this speech the Cook was wroth and wraw, [indignant And on the manciple he 'gan noddë fast For lack of speech; and down the horse him cast, Where as he lay till that men up him took!

The Manciple, fearing lest the Cook's resentment should prompt some future revenge in the way of business, pulled out a gourd of wine, coaxed another draught into the drunken man, and earned his half-articulate gratitude. Then he told the fable of the crow from Ovid's Metamorphoses.

The tale was ended, and the sun began to sink, for it was four o'clock.[165] The cavalcade began to "enter at a thorpë's end"--no doubt the village of Harbledown, the last before Canterbury, famous for the Black Prince's Well and for the relics of St. Thomas at its leper hospital. Here at last the pilgrims remember the real object of their journey. The Host lays aside his oaths (all but one, "Cokkës bones!" which slips out unawares) and looks round now for the hitherto neglected Parson, upon whom he calls for a "fable."

This Parson answered all at once 'Thou gettest fable none y-told for me, For Paul, that writeth unto Timothee, Reproveth them that weyven soothfastness [depart from And tellen fables and such wretchedness ... I cannot gestë "_rum, ram, ruf_" by letter,[166] Nor, God wot, rhyme hold I but little better; And therefore if you list--I will not glose-- I will you tell a merry tale in prose To knit up all this feast, and make an end; And Jesu, for His gracë, wit me send To shewë you the way, in this voyage, Of thilkë perfect, glorious pilgrimage That hight Jerusalem celestial ...' Upon this word we have assented soon, For as us seemed, it was for to doon [right to do To enden in some virtuous sentence, And for to give him space and audience.

The Host voices the common consent, reinforcing his speech for once with a prayer instead of an oath. The Parson then launches out into a treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins and their remedies, translated from the French of a 13th-century friar. The treatise (like Chaucer's other prose writings) lacks the style of his verse; but it contains one lively and amusing chapter of his own insertion, satirizing the extravagance of costume in his day (lines 407 ff.).

Long before the Parson had ended, the city must have been in full view below--white-walled, red-roofed amid its orchards and green meadows, but lacking that perfect bell-tower which, from far and near, is now the fairest sight of all. At this point an anonymous and far inferior poet has continued Chaucer's narrative in the "Tale of Beryn." The prologue to that tale shows us the pilgrims putting up at the Chequers Inn, "that many a man doth know," fragments of which may still be seen close to the Cathedral at the corner of Mercery Lane.[167] Travelling as they did in force--and especially with such redoubtable champions among their party--they would no doubt have been able to choose this desirable hostel without too great molestation; but in favour of less able-bodied pilgrims the city authorities were obliged to pass a law that no hosteler should "disturb no manner of strange man coming to the city for to take his inn; but it shall be lawful to take his inn at his own lust without disturbance of any hosteler."[168] In the Cathedral itself--

The Pardoner and the Miller, and other lewd sots, Sought themselves in the church right as lewd goats, Peerëd fast and porëd high upon the glass, Counterfeiting gentlemen, the armës for to blase, [blazon

till the Host bade them show better manners, and go offer at the shrine. "Then passed they forth boisterously, goggling with their heads," kissed the relics dutifully, saw the different holy places, and presently sat down to dinner. How the Miller (being accustomed to such sleight of hand) stole afterwards a bosom-full of "Canterbury brooches"; how uproarious was the merriment after supper, and how the Pardoner became the hero of a scandalous adventure--this and much more may be read at length in the prologue to the "Tale of Beryn." It will already have been noted, however, that the anonymous poet entirely agrees with Chaucer in laying stress on what may be called the bank-holiday side of the pilgrimage. That side does indeed come out with rather more than its due prominence when we thus skip the separate tales and run straight through the plot of the pilgrims' journey; but, when all allowances have been made, Chaucer enables us to understand why orthodox preachers spoke on this subject almost as strongly as the heresiarch Wycliffe; and, on the other hand, how great a gap was made in the life of the common folk by the abolition of pilgrimages.

The very fidelity with which the poet paints his own time shows us the Reformation in embryo. We have in fact here, within the six hundred pages of the "Canterbury Tales," one of the most vivid and significant of all scenes in the great Legend of the Ages; and his pilgrims, so intent upon the present, so exactly mirrored by Chaucer as they moved and spoke in their own time, tell us nevertheless both of another age that was almost past and of a future time which was not yet ripe for reality. The Knight is still of course the most respected figure in such a company; and he brings into the book a pale afterglow of the real crusades; but the Host now treads close upon his heels, big with the importance of a prosperous citizen who has twice sat in Parliament side by side with knights of the shire. The good Prioress recalls faintly the heroic age of monasticism; yet St. Benedict and St. Francis would have recognized their truest son in the poor Parson, upon whom the pilgrims called only in the last resort. The Monk and the Friar, the Summoner and the Pardoner, do indeed remind us how large a share the Church claimed in every department of daily life; but they make us ask at the same time "how long can it last?" Extremes meet; and the "lewd sots" who went "goggling with their heads," gaping and disputing at the painted windows on their way to the shrine, were lineal ancestors to the notorious "Blue Dick" of 250 years later, who made a merit of having mounted on a lofty ladder, pike in hand, to "rattle down proud Becket's glassie bones."