CHAPTER VII

LONDON CUSTOM-HOUSE

"Forget six counties overhung with smoke, Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke, Forget the spreading of the hideous town; Think rather of the pack-horse on the down, And dream of London, small, and white, and clean, The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green; Think, that below bridge the green lapping waves Smite some few keels that bear Levantine staves, Cut from the yew wood on the burnt-up hill, And pointed jars that Greek hands toiled to fill, And treasured scanty spice from some far sea, Florence gold cloth, and Ypres napery, And cloth of Bruges, and hogsheads of Guienne; While nigh the thronged wharf Geoffrey Chaucer's pen Moves over bills of lading----" W. MORRIS

There are two episodes of Chaucer's life which belong even more properly to Chaucer's England; in which it may not only be said that our interest is concentrated less on the man than on his surroundings, but even that we can scarcely get a glimpse of the man except through his surroundings. These two episodes are his life in London, and his Canterbury Pilgrimage; and with these we may most fitly begin our survey of the world in which he lived.

The most tranquilly prosperous period of the poet's life was that space of twelve years, from 1374 to 1386, during which he lived over the tower of Aldgate and worked at the Customs House, with occasional interruptions of foreign travel on the King's business. The Tower of London, according to popular belief, had its foundations cemented with blood; and this was only too true of Chaucer's Aldgate. It was a massive structure, double-gated and double-portcullised, and built in part with the stones of Jews' houses plundered and torn down by the Barons who took London in 1215. But, in spite of similar incidents here and there, England was generally so free from civil war that the townsfolk were very commonly tempted to avoid unnecessary outlay upon fortifications. The traveller in Germany or Switzerland is often surprised to see even villages strongly walled against robber barons; while we may find great and wealthy English towns like Lynn and Cambridge which had little other defence than a ditch and palisade.[79] Even in fortified cities like London, the tendency was to neglect the walls--at one period we find men even pulling them gradually to pieces[80]--and to let the towers or gates for private lodgings. As early as the last year of Edward I., we find Cripplegate thus let out; and such notices are frequent in the "Memorials of London Life," collected by Mr. Riley from the City archives.[81]

Here Chaucer had only half a mile to go to his daily work, by streets which we may follow still. If he took the stricter view, which held that gentlefolk ought to begin their day with a Mass, and to hear it fasting, then he had at least St. Michael's, Aldgate, and All Hallows Stonechurch on his direct way, and two others within a few yards of his road. If, however, he was of those who preferred to begin the day with a sop of wine or "a draught of moist and corny ale," then the noted hostelry of the Saracen's Head probably stood even then, and had stood since the time of the Crusades, within a few yards of Aldgate Tower. Close by the fork of Fenchurch and Leadenhall Streets he would pass a "fair and large-built house," the town inn of the Prior of Hornchurch. Then, in Fenchurch Street, the mansion and garden of the Earls of Northumberland, and again, at the corner of Mart Lane, the manor and garden of Blanch Apleton. Turning down Mart Lane (now corrupted into _Mark_), the poet would pass the great chain, ready to be stretched at any moment across the narrow street, which marked the limits of Aldgate and Tower Street wards. He would cross Tower Street a few yards to the eastward of "the quadrant called Galley Row, because galley men dwelt there." These galley men were "divers strangers, born in Genoa and those parts," whose settlement in London had probably been the object of Chaucer's first Italian mission, and who presently prospered sufficiently to fill not only this quadrant, but also part of Minchin Lane, and to possess a quay of their own. But, like their cousins the Lombards, these Genoese soon showed themselves smarter business men even than their hosts. They introduced unauthorized halfpence of Genoa, called "Galley halfpence"; and these, with similar "suskings" from France, and "dodkins" from the Low Countries, survived the strict penalties threatened by two Acts of Parliament, and lasted on at least till Elizabeth's reign. "In my youth," writes Stow, "I have seen them pass current, but with some difficulty, for the English halfpence were then, though not so broad, somewhat thicker and stronger."[82] Stow found a building on the quay which he identified with their hall. "It seemeth that the builders of the hall of this house were shipwrights, and not carpenters;" for it was clinker-built like a boat, "and seemeth as it were a galley, the keel turned upwards." But this building was probably later than Chaucer's time. The galley quay almost touched that of the Custom-House; and here our poet had abundant opportunities of keeping up his Italian while sampling the "wines of Crete and other sweet wines in one of the cellars, and red and white wines in the other cellar."[83] His poems show an appreciation of good vintages, which was no doubt partly hereditary and partly acquired on the London quays, where he could talk with these Mediterranean mariners and drink the juice of their native grapes, remembering all the while how he had once watched them ripening on those southern slopes--

How richly, down the rocky dell, The torrent vineyard streaming fell To meet the sun and sunny waters That only heaved with a summer swell![84]

When Chaucer began his work in 1374 there was no regular building for the Customs; the King hired a house for the purpose at £3 a year, and a single boatman watched in the port to prevent smuggling. In 1383, however, one John Churchman built a house, which Richard II. undertook to hire for the rest of the builder's life; this became the first Custom-House, and lasted until Elizabeth's reign. The lease gives its modest proportions exactly: a ground floor, in which the King kept his weigh-beams for wool and other merchandise; a "solar," or upper chamber, for a counting-house; and above this yet another solar, 38 by 21-1/2 feet, partitioned into "two chambers and one _garret_, as men call it." For this new house the King paid the somewhat higher rent of £4. Chaucer was bound by the terms of his appointment to do the work personally, without substitute, and to write his "rolls touching the said office with his own hand"; but it is probable that he accepted these terms with the usual medieval licence. He went abroad at least five times on the King's service during his term of office; and the two original rolls which survive are apparently not written by his hand. His own words in the "House of Fame" show that he took his book-keeping work at the office seriously; but it is not likely that the press of business was such as to keep him always at the counting-house; and he may well have helped his boatman to patrol the port, which extended down-river to Gravesend and Tilbury. It is at least certain that, in 1376, he caught John Kent smuggling a cargo of wool away from London, and so earned prize-money to the value of £1000 in modern currency. It is certain also that his daily work for twelve years must have kept him in close daily contact with sea-faring folk, who, from Homer's days at least, have always provided the richest food for poetry and romance. The commonest seaman had stirring tales to tell in those days, when every sailor was a potential pirate, and foreign crews dealt with each other by methods still more summary than plank-walking.[85] Moreover, there was even more truth than now in the proverb that "far fowls have fair feathers"; and the Genoese on Galley Quay had sailed many seas unknown even to the tempest-tossed shipman of Dartmouth, whose southern limit was Cape Finisterre. They had passed the Pillars of Hercules, and seen the apes on the Rock of Gibraltar, and shuddered from afar at the Great Whirlpool of the Bay of Biscay, which sucked in its floods thrice daily, and thrice belched them forth again; and into which about this time "four vessels of the town of Lynn, steering too incautiously, suddenly fell, and were swallowed up under their comrades' eyes."[86]

Moreover, the very streets and markets of London then presented a pageant unquestionably far more inspiring to a man of Chaucer's temperament than anything that can be seen there to-day. It is easy to exaggerate the contrast between modern and medieval London, if only by leaving out of account those subtle attractions which kept even William Morris from tearing himself away from the much-abused town. It is also undeniable that, however small and white, Chaucer's London was not clean, even to the outward eye; and that the exclusive passion for Gothic buildings is to some extent a mere modern fashion, as it was the fashion two hundred years ago to consider them a positive eyesore. To some great poet of the future, modern London may well supply a grander canvas still; but to a writer like Chaucer, content to avoid psychological problems and take men and things as they appear on the surface, there was every possible inspiration in this busy capital of some 40,000 souls, where everybody could see everything that went on, and it was almost possible to know all one's fellow-citizens by sight. Some streets, no doubt, were as crowded as any oriental bazaar; but most of the buying and selling went on in open market, with lavish expenditure of words and gestures; while the shops were open booths in which the passer-by could see master and men at their work, and stop to chat with them on his way. In the absence of catalogues and advertisements, every man spread out his gayest wares in the sun, and commended them to the public with every resource of mother-wit or professional rhetoric. Cornhill and Cheapside were like the Mercato Vecchio at Florence or St. Mark's Square at Venice. Extremes meet in modern London, and there is theme enough for poetry in the deeper contrasts that underlie our uniformity of architecture and dress. But in Chaucer's London the crowd was almost as motley to man's eye as to God's--

Barons and burgesses and bondmen also ... Baxters and brewsters and butchers many, Woolwebsters and weavers of linen, Tailors and tinkers and tollers in markets, Masons and miners and many other crafts ... Of all-kind living labourers leapt forth some, As dykers and delvers that do their deeds ill, And drive forth the long day with _Dieu vous sauve, Dame Emme_ Cooks and their knaves cried "Hot pies, hot! Good griskin and geese! go dine, go!" Taverners unto them told the same [tale] "White wine of Alsace and red wine of Gascoyne, Of the Rhine and of Rochelle, the roast to defye!" [digest.[87]

The very sticks and stones had an individuality no less marked. The churches, parish and monastic, stood out as conspicuously as they still stand in Norwich, and were often used for secular purposes, despite the prohibitions of synods and councils. For even London had in Chaucer's time scarcely any secular public buildings, while at Norwich, one of the four greatest towns in the kingdom, public meetings were sometimes held in the Tolhouse, sometimes in the Chapel of St. Mary's College, in default of a regular Guildhall. The city houses of noblemen and great churchmen were numerous and often splendid, and Besant rightly emphasizes this feudal aspect of the city; but he seems in his enumeration of the lords' retainers to allow too little for medieval licence in dealing with figures; and certainly he has exaggerated their architectural magnificence beyond all reason.[88] But at least the ordinary citizens' and artisans' dwellings presented the most picturesque variety. Here and there a stone house, rare enough to earn special mention in official documents; but most of the dwellings were of timber and plaster, in front and behind, with only side-gables of masonry for some sort of security against the spreading of fires.[89] The ground floor was generally open to the street, and formed the shop; then, some eight or ten feet above the pavement, came the "solar" or "soller" on its projecting brackets, and sometimes (as in the Custom House) a third storey also. Outside stairs seem to have been common, and sometimes penthouses on pillars or cellar steps further broke the monotony of the street, though frequent enactments strove to regulate these in the public interest. Of comfort or privacy in the modern sense these houses had little to offer. The living rooms were frequently limited to hall and bower (_i.e._ bedroom); only the better sort had two chambers; glass was rare; in Paris, which was at least as well-built as London, a well-to-do citizen might well have windows of oiled linen for his bedroom, and even in 1575 a good-sized house at Sheffield contained only sixteen feet of glass altogether.[90] Meanwhile the wooden shutters which did duty for casements were naturally full of chinks; and the inhabitants were exposed during dark nights not only to the nuisance and danger of "common listeners at the eaves," against whom medieval town legislation is deservedly severe, but also to the far greater chances of burglary afforded by the frailty of their habitations. It is not infrequently recorded in medieval inquests that the housebreaker found his line of least resistance not through a window or a door, but through the wall itself.[91] Moreover, in those unlighted streets, much that was most picturesque by day was most dangerous at night, from the projecting staircases and penthouses down to doorways unlawfully opened after curfew, wherein "aspyers" might lurk, "waiting men for to beaten or to slayen." These and many similar considerations will serve to explain why night-walking was treated in medieval towns as an offence presumptively no less criminal than, in our days, the illegal possession of dynamite. The 15th-century statutes of Oxford condemn the nocturnal wanderer to a fine double that which he would have incurred by shooting at a proctor and his attendants with intent to injure.[92]

But to return to the inside of the houses. The contract for a well-to-do citizen's dwelling of 1308 has been preserved, by a fortunate chance, in one of the city Letter-books. "Simon de Canterbury, carpenter, came before the Mayor and Aldermen ... and acknowledged that he would make at his own proper charges, down to the locks, for William de Hanigtone, skinner, before the Feast of Easter then next ensuing, a hall and a room with a chimney, and one larder between the said hall and room; and one solar over the room and larder; also, one oriel at the end of the hall, beyond the high bench, and one step with a porch from the ground to the door of the hall aforesaid, outside of that hall; and two enclosures as cellars, opposite to each other, beneath the hall; and one enclosure for a sewer, with two pipes leading to the said sewer; and one stable, [_blank_] in length, between the said hall and the old kitchen, and twelve feet in width, with a solar above such stable, and a garret above the solar aforesaid; and at one end of such solar, there is to be a kitchen with a chimney; and there is to be an oriel between the said hall and the old chamber, eight feet in width.... And the said William de Hanigtone acknowledged that he was bound to pay to Simon before-mentioned, for the work aforesaid, the sum of £9 5_s._ 4_d._ sterling, half a hundred of Eastern martenskins, fur for a woman's head, value five shillings, and fur for a robe of him, the said Simon, etc."[93] Read side by side with this the list of another fairly well-to-do citizen's furniture in 1337. Hugh le Benere, a Vintner who owned several tenements, was accused of having murdered Alice his wife.[94] He refused to plead, was condemned to prison for life, and his goods were inventoried. Omitting the stock-in-trade of six casks of wine (valued at six marks), the wearing apparel, and the helmet and quilted doublet in which Hugh had to turn out for the general muster, the whole furniture was as follows: "One mattress, value 4_s._; 6 blankets and one serge, 13_s._ 6_d._; one green carpet, 2_s._; one torn coverlet, with shields of sendal, 4_s._; ... 7 linen sheets, 5_s._; one table-cloth, 2_s._; 3 table-cloths, 18_d._; ... one canvas, 8_d._; 3 feather beds, 8_s._; 5 cushions, 6_d._; ... 3 brass pots, 12_s._; one brass pot, 6_s._; 2 pairs of brass pots, 2_s._ 6_d._; one brass pot, broken, 2_s._ 6_d._; one candlestick of latten, and one plate, with one small brass plate, 2_s._; 2 pieces of lead, 6_d._; one grate, 3_d._; 2 andirons, 18_d._; 2 basins, with one washing vessel, 5_s._; one iron grating, 12_d._; one tripod, 2_d._; ... one iron spit, 3_d._; one frying-pan, 1_d._; ... one funnel, 1_d._; one small canvas bag, 1_d._; ... one old linen sheet, 1_d._; 2 pillows, 3_d._; ... one counter, 4_s._; 2 coffers, 8_d._; 2 curtains, 8_d._; 2 remnants of cloth, 1_d._; 6 chests, 10_s._ 10_d._; one folding table, 12_d._; 2 chairs, 8_d._; one portable cupboard, 6_d._; 2 tubs, 2_s._; also firewood, sold for 3_s._; one mazer cup, 6_s._; ... one cup called "note" (_i.e._ cocoanut) with a foot and cover of silver, value 30_s._; 6 silver spoons, 6_s._"[95]

This implies no very high standard of domestic comfort. The hall, it must be remembered, had no chimney in the modern sense, but a hole in the roof to which the smoke went up from an open hearth in the centre of the room, more or less assisted in most cases by a funnel-shaped erection of lath and plaster.[96] It is not generally realized what draughts our ancestors were obliged to accept as unavoidable, even when they sat partially screened by their high-backed seats, as in old inn kitchens. A man needed his warmest furs still more for sitting indoors than for walking abroad; and to Montaigne, even in 1580, one of the most remarkable things in Switzerland was the draughtless comfort of the stove-warmed rooms. "One neither burns one's face nor one's boots, and one escapes the smoke of French houses. Moreover, whereas we [in France] take our warm and furred _robes de chambre_ when we enter the house, they on the contrary dress in their doublets, with their heads uncovered to the very hair, and put on their warm clothes to walk in the open air."[97] The important part played by furs of all kinds, and the matter-of-course mention of dirt and vermin, are among the first things that strike us in medieval literature.

But the worst discomfort of the house, to the modern mind, was the want of privacy. There was generally but one bedroom; for most of the household the house meant simply the hall; and some of those with whom the rest were brought into such close contact might indeed be "gey ill to live wi'."[98] We have seen that, even as a King's squire, Chaucer had not a bed to himself; and sometimes one bed had to accommodate three occupants. This was so ordered, for instance, by the 15th-century statutes of the choir-school at Wells, which provided minutely for the packing: "two smaller boys with their heads to the head of the bed, and an older one with his head to the foot of the bed and his feet between the others' heads." A distinguished theologian of the same century, narrating a ghost-story of his own, begins quite naturally: "When I was a youth, and lay in a square chamber, which had only a single door well shut from within, together with three more companions in the same bed...." One of these, we presently find, "was of greater age, and a man of some experience."[99] The upper classes of Chaucer's later days had indeed begun to introduce revolutionary changes into the old-fashioned common life of the hall; a generation of unparalleled success in war and commerce was already making possible, and therefore inevitable, a new cleavage between class and class. The author of the B. text of "Piers Plowman," writing about 1377, complains of these new and unsociable ways (x., 94).

"Ailing is the Hall each day in the week, Where the lord nor the lady liketh not to sit. Now hath each rich man a rule to eaten by himself In a privy parlour, for poor men's sake, Or in a chamber with a chimney, and leave the chief Hall, That was made for meals, and men to eaten in."

Few men, however, could afford even these rudiments of privacy; people like Chaucer, of fair income and good social position, still found in their homes many of the discomforts of shipboard; and their daily intercourse with their fellow-men bred the same blunt familiarity, even beneath the most ceremonious outward fashions. It was not only starveling dependents like Lippo Lippi, whose daily life compelled them to study night and day the faces and outward ways of their fellow-men.

But let us get back again into the street, where all the work and play of London was as visible to the passer-by as that of any colony of working ants under the glass cases in a modern exhibition. Often, of course, there were set pageants for edification or distraction--Miracle Plays and solemn church processions twice or thrice in the year,--the Mayor's annual ride to the palace of Westminster and back,--the King's return with a new Queen or after a successful campaign, as in 1357, when Edward III. "came over the Bridge and through the City of London, with the King of France and other prisoners of rich ransom in his train. He entered the city about tierce [9 a.m.] and made for Westminster; but at the news of his coming so great a crowd of folk ran together to see this marvellous sight, that for the press of the people he could scarce reach his palace after noonday." Frequent again were the royal tournaments at Smithfield, Cheapside, and Westminster, or "trials by battle" in those same lists, when one gentleman had accused another of treachery, and London citizens might see the quarrel decided by God's judgment.[100] Here were welcome contrasts to the monotony of household life; for there was in all these shows a piquant element of personal risk, or at least of possible broken heads for others. Even if the King threw down his truncheon before the bitter end of the duel, even if no bones were broken at the tournament, something at least would happen amongst the crowd. Fountains ran wine in the morning, and blood was pretty sure to be shed somewhere before night. In 1396, when the little French Princess of eight years was brought to her Royal bridegroom at Westminster, nine persons were crushed to death on London Bridge, and the Prior of Tiptree was among the dead. Even the church processions, as episcopal registers show, ended not infrequently in scuffling, blows, and bloodshed; and the frequent holy days enjoyed then, as since, a sad notoriety for crime. Moreover, these things were not, as with us, mere matters of newspaper knowledge; they stared the passer-by in the face. Chaucer must have heard from his father how the unpopular Bishop Stapledon was torn from his horse at the north door of St. Paul's and beheaded with two of his esquires in Cheapside; how the clergy of the cathedral and of St. Clement's feared to harbour the corpses, which lay naked by the roadside at Temple Bar until "women and wretched poor folk took the Bishop's naked corpse, and a woman gave him an old rag to cover his belly, and they buried him in a waste plot called the Lawless Church, with his squires by his side, all naked and without office of priest or clerk."[101] Chaucer himself must have seen some of the many similar tragedies in 1381, for they are among the few events of contemporary history which we can definitely trace in his poems--

Have ye not seen some time a palë face Among a press, of him that hath been led Toward his death, where as him gat no grace, And such a colour in his face hath had, Men mightë know his face that was bestead Amongës all the faces in that rout?[102]

What modern Londoner has witnessed this, or anything like it? Yet to all his living readers Chaucer appealed confidently, "Have ye not seen?" Scores of wretched lawyers and jurors were hunted down in that riot, and hurried through the streets to have their heads hacked off at Tower Hill or Cheapside, "and many Flemings lost their head at that time, and namely [specially] they that could not say 'Bread and Cheese,' but 'Case and Brode.'"[103] It may well have been Simon of Sudbury's white face that haunted Chaucer, when the mob forgot his archbishopric in the unpopularity of his ministry, forgot the sanctity of the chapel at whose altar he had taken refuge, "paid no reverence even to the Lord's Body which the priest held up before him, but worse than demons (who fear and flee Christ's sacrament) dragged him by the arms, by his hood, by different parts of the body towards their fellow-rioters on Tower Hill without the gates. When they had come thither, a most horrible shout arose, not like men's shouts, but worse beyond all comparison than all human cries, and most like to the yelling of devils in hell. Moreover, they cried thus whensoever they beheaded men or tore down their houses, so long as God permitted them to work their iniquity unpunished."[104] De Quincey has noted how such cries may make a deeper mark on the soul than any visible scene. And here again Chaucer has brought his own experience, though half in jest, as a parallel to the sack of Ilion and Carthage or the burning of Rome--

So hideous was the noise, _benedicite!_ Certës, he Jacke Straw, and his meinie Ne madë never shoutës half so shrill, When that they woulden any Fleming kill ...[105]

Last tragedy of all--but this time, though he may well have seen, the poet could no longer write--Richard II.'s corpse "was brought to St. Paul's in London, and his face shown to the people," that they might know he was really dead.[106]

Nor was there less comedy than tragedy in the London streets; the heads grinned down from the spikes of London Bridge on such daily buffooneries as scarcely survive nowadays except in the amenities of cabdrivers and busmen. The hue and cry after a thief in one of these narrow streets, encumbered with show-benches and goods of every description, must at any time have been a Rabelaisian farce; and still more so when it was the thief who had raised the hue and cry after a true man, and had slipped off himself in the confusion. The crowds who gather in modern towns to see a man in handcuffs led from a dingy van up the dingy court steps would have found a far keener relish in the public punishments which Chaucer saw on his way to and from work; fraudulent tradesmen in the pillory, with their putrid wares burning under their noses, or drinking wry-mouthed the corrupt wine which they had palmed off on the public; scolding wives in the somewhat milder "thewe"; sometimes a penitential procession all round the city, as in the case of the quack doctor and astrologer whose story is so vividly told by the good Monk of St. Alban's. The impostor "was set on a horse [barebacked] with the beast's tail in his hand for a bridle, and two pots which in the vulgar tongue we call _Jordans_ bound round his neck, with a whetstone in sign that he earned all this by his lies; and thus he was led round the whole city."[107] A lay chronicler might have given us the reverse of the medal; some priest barelegged in his shirt, with a lighted taper in his hand, doing penance for his sins before the congregation of his own church. The author of "Piers Plowman" knew this well enough; in introducing us to his tavern company, it is a priest and a parish clerk whom he shows us cheek-by-jowl with the two least reputable ladies of the party. The whole passage deserves quoting in full as a picture of low life indeed, but one familiar enough to Chaucer and his friends in their day; for it is a matter of common remark that even the distance which separated different classes in earlier days made it easier for them to mix familiarly in public. The very catalogue of this tavern company is a comedy in itself, and may well conclude our survey of common London sights. Glutton, on his way to morning mass, has passed Bett the brewster's open door; and her persuasive "I have good ale, gossip" has broken down all his good resolutions--

Then goeth Glutton in, and great oaths after. Ciss the seamstress sat on the bench, Wat the warrener, and his wife drunk, Tim the tinker, and twain of his knaves, Hick the hackneyman and Hugh the needler; Clarice of Cock's Lane, the clerk of the church, Sir Piers of Prydie and Pernel of Flanders; An hayward and an hermit, the hangman of Tyburn, Daw the dyker, with a dozen harlots [rascals Of porters and pickpurses and pilled tooth-drawers; [bald A ribiber and a ratter, a raker and his knave [lute-player, scavenger A roper and a ridingking, and Rose the disher, [mercenary trooper Godfrey the garlicmonger and Griffin the Welshman, And upholders an heap, early by the morrow [furniture-brokers Give Glutton with glad cheer good ale to hansel.[108] [try