CHAPTER VIII

ALDGATE TOWER

"For though the love of books, in a cleric, be honourable in the very nature of the case, yet it hath sorely exposed us to the adverse judgment of many folk, to whom we became an object of wonder, and were blamed at one time for greediness in that matter, or again for seeming vanity, or again, for intemperate delight in letters; yet we cared no more for their revilings than for the barking of curs, contented with His testimony alone to Whom it pertaineth to try the hearts and reins.... Yet perchance they would have praised and been kindly affected towards us if we had spent our time in hunting wild beasts, in playing at dice, or in courting ladies' favours."--The "Philobiblon" of Bp. R. de Bury (1287-1345).

Even in the 14th century a man's house was more truly his castle in England than in any country of equal population; and Chaucer was particularly fortunate in having secured a city castle for his house. The records show that such leases were commonly granted by the authorities to men of influence and good position in the City; in 1367 the Black Prince specially begged the Mayor that Thomas de Kent might have Cripplegate; and we have curious evidence of the keen competition for Aldgate. The Mayor and Aldermen granted to Chaucer in 1374 "the whole dwelling-house above Aldgate Gate, with the chambers thereon built and a certain cellar beneath the said gate, on the eastern side thereof, together with all its appurtenances, for the lifetime of the said Geoffrey." There was no rent, though of course Chaucer had to keep it in repair; in an earlier lease of 1354, the tenant had paid 13_s._ 4_d._ a year besides repairs. The City promised to keep no prisoners in the tower during Chaucer's tenancy,[109] but naturally stipulated that they might take possession of their gate when necessary for the defence of the City. In 1386, as we have already seen and shall see more fully hereafter, there was a scare of invasion so serious that the authorities can scarcely have failed to take the gates into their own hands for a while. Though this need not necessarily have ended Chaucer's tenancy altogether, yet he must in fact have given it up then, if not earlier; and a Common Council meeting held on October 4 resolved to grant no such leases in future "by reason of divers damages that have befallen the said city, through grants made to many persons, as well of the Gates and the dwelling-houses above them, as of the gardens and vacant places adjoining the walls, gates, and fosses of the said city, whereby great and divers mischiefs may readily hereafter ensue." Yet _on the very next day_ (and this is our first notice of the end of Chaucer's tenancy) a fresh lease of Aldgate tower and house was granted to Chaucer's friend Richard Forster by another friend of the poet's, Nicholas Brembre, who was then Mayor. This may very likely have been a pre-arranged job among the three friends; but the flagrant violation of the law may well seem startling even to those who have realized the frequent contrasts between medieval theory and medieval practice; and after this we are quite prepared for Riley's footnote, "Within a very short period after this enactment was made, it came to be utterly disregarded."[110] The whole transaction, however, shows clearly that the Aldgate lodging was considered a prize in its way.

That Chaucer loved it, we know from one of the too rare autobiographical passages in his poems, describing his shy seclusion even more plainly than the Host hints at it in the "Canterbury Tales." The "House of Fame" is a serio-comic poem modelled vaguely on Dante's "Comedia," in which a golden eagle carries Chaucer up to heaven, and, like Beatrice, plays the part of Mentor all the while. The poet, who was at first somewhat startled by the sudden rush through the air, and feared lest he might have been chosen as an unworthy successor to Enoch and Elias, is presently quieted by the Eagle's assurance that this temporary apotheosis is his reward as the Clerk of Love--

Love holdeth it great humbleness, And virtue eke, that thou wilt make A-night full oft thy head to ache, In thy study so thou writest And ever more of Love enditest.

The Ruler of the Gods, therefore, has taken pity on the poet's lonely life--

That is, that thou hast no tidings Of Lovë's folk, if they be glad, Nor of nothing ellës that God made: And not only from far countree, Whence no tiding cometh to thee, But of thy very neighëbores That dwellen almost at thy doors, Thou hearest neither that nor this; For, when thy labour done all is, And hast y-made thy reckonings, Instead of rest and newë things Thou go'st home to thy house anon, And, all so dumb as any stone, Thou sittest at another book Till fully dazed is thy look, And livest thus as an heremite, Although thy abstinence is lite.[111] [little

Here we have the central figure of the Aldgate Chamber, but what was the background? Was his room, as some will have it, such as that to which his eyes opened in the "Book of the Duchess"?

And sooth to say my chamber was Full well depainted, and with glass Were all the windows well y-glazed Full clear, and not one hole y-crazed, [cracked That to behold it was great joy; For wholly all the story of Troy Was in the glazing y-wrought thus ... And all the walls with colours fine Were painted, bothë text and glose, [commentary And all the Romance of the Rose. My windows weren shut each one And through the glass the sunnë shone Upon my bed with brightë beams....

Those lines were written before the Aldgate days; and the hints which can be gathered from surviving inventories and similar sources make it very improbable that the poet was lodged with anything like such outward magnificence. The storied glass and the frescoed wall were far more probably a reminiscence from Windsor, or from Chaucer's life with one of the royal dukes; and the furniture of the Aldgate dwelling-house is likely to have resembled in quantity that which we have seen recorded of Hugh le Benere, and in quality the similar but more valuable stock of Richard de Blountesham. (Riley, p. 123.) Richard possessed bedding for three beds to the total value of fifty shillings and eightpence; his brass pot weighed sixty-seven pounds; and, over and above his pewter plates, dishes, and salt-cellars, he possessed "three silver cups, ten shillings in weight." Three better cups than these, at least, stood in the Chaucer cupboard; for on New Year's Day, 1380, 1381, and 1382, the accounts of the Duchy of Lancaster record presents from John of Gaunt to Philippa Chaucer of silver-gilt cups with covers. The first of these weighed thirty-one shillings, and cost nearly three pounds; the second and third were apparently rather more valuable. We must suppose, therefore, that the Aldgate rooms were handsomely furnished, as a London citizen's rooms went; but we must beware here of such exaggerations as the genius of William Morris has popularized. The assumption that the poet knew familiarly every book from which he quotes has long been exploded; and it is quite as unsafe to suppose that the artistic glories which he so often describes formed part of his home life. There were tapestries and stained glass in churches for every man to see, and in palaces and castles for the enjoyment of the few; but they become fairly frequent in citizens' houses only in the century after Chaucer's death; and it was very easy to spend an income such as his without the aid of artistic extravagance. Froissart, whose circumstances were so nearly the same, and who, though a priest, was just as little given to abstinence, confesses to having spent 2000 livres (or some £8000 modern English money) in twenty-five years, over and above his fat living of Lestinnes. "And yet I hoard no grain in my barns, I build no churches, or clocks, or ships, or galleys, or manor-houses. I spend not my money on furnishing fine rooms.... My chronicles indeed have cost me a good seven hundred livres, at the least, and the taverners of Lestinnes have had a good five hundred more."[112] Froissart's confession introduces a witty poetical plea for fresh contributions; and if Chaucer had added a couple of similar stanzas to the "Complaint to his Empty Purse," it is probable that their tenor would have been much the same: "Books, and the Taverner; and I've had my money's worth from both!"

Professor Lounsbury ("Studies in Chaucer," chap. v.) has discoursed exhaustively, and very judicially, on Chaucer's learning; he shows clearly what books the poet knew only as nodding acquaintances, and how many others he must at one time have possessed, or at least have had at hand for serious study; and it would be impertinent to go back here over the same ground. But Professor Lounsbury is less clear on the subject which most concerns us here--the average price of books; for the three volumes which he instances from the King's library were no doubt illuminated, and he follows Devon in the obvious slip of describing the French Bible as "written in the _Gaelic_ language." (II., 196; the reference to Devon should be p. 213, not 218.) But, at the lowest possible estimate, books were certainly an item which would have swelled any budget seriously in the 14th century. This was indeed grossly overstated by Robertson and other writers of a century ago; but Maitland's "Dark Ages," while correcting their exaggerations, is itself calculated to mislead in the other direction. A small Bible was cheap at forty shillings, _i.e._ the equivalent of £30 in modern money; so that the twenty volumes of Aristotle which Chaucer's Clerk of Oxford had at his bed's head could scarcely have failed to cost him the value of three average citizens' houses in a great town.[113] Among all the church dignitaries whose wills are recorded in Bishop Stafford's Register at Exeter (1395-1419) the largest library mentioned is only of fourteen volumes. The sixty testators include a Dean, two Archdeacons, twenty Canons or Prebendaries, thirteen Rectors, six Vicars, and eighteen layfolk, mostly rich people. The whole sixty apparently possessed only two Bibles between them, and only one hundred and thirty-eight books altogether; or, omitting church service-books, only sixty; _i.e._ exactly one each on an average. Thirteen of the beneficed clergy were altogether bookless, though several of them possessed the _baselard_ or dagger which church councils had forbidden in vain for centuries past; four more had only their Breviary. Of the laity fifteen were bookless, while three had service-books, one of these being a knight, who simply bequeathed them as part of the furniture of his private chapel. Any similar collection of wills and inventories would (I believe) give the same results, which fully agree with the independent evidence of contemporary writers. Bishop Richard de Bury (or possibly the distinguished theologian, Holcot, writing in his name) speaks bitterly of the neglect of books in the 14th century. Not only (he says) is the ardent collector ridiculed, but even education is despised, and money rules the world. Laymen, who do not even care whether books lie straight or upside down, are utterly unworthy of all communion with them; the secular clergy neglect them; the monastic clergy (with honourable exceptions among the friars) pamper their bodies and leave their books amid the dust and rubbish, till they become "corrupt and abominable, breeding-grounds for mice, riddled with worm-holes." Even when in use, they have a score of deadly enemies--dirty and careless readers (whose various peculiarities the good Bishop describes in language of Biblical directness)--children who cry for and slobber over the illuminated capitals--and careless or slovenly servants. But the deadliest of all such enemies is the priest's concubine, who finds the neglected volume half-hidden under cobwebs, and barters it for female finery. There is an obvious element of exaggeration in the good Bishop's satire; but the Oxford Chancellor, Gascoigne, a century later, speaks equally strongly of the neglect of writing and the destruction of literature in the monasteries of his time; and there is abundant official evidence to prove that our ancestors did not atone for natural disadvantages by any excessive zeal in the multiplication, use, or preservation of books.[114]

Chaucer was scarcely born when the "Philobiblon" was written; and already in his day there was a growing number of leisured laymen who did know the top end of a book from the bottom, and who cared to read and write something beyond money accounts. Gower, who probably made money as a London merchant before he became a country squire, was also a well-read man; but systematic readers were still very rare outside the Universities, and Mrs. Green writes, even of a later generation of English citizens, "So far as we know, no trader or burgher possessed a library."[115] Twenty-nine years after Chaucer's death, the celebrated Whittington did indeed found a library; yet this was placed not at the Guildhall, to which he was a considerable benefactor, but in the Greyfriars' convent. The poet's bookishness would therefore inevitably have made him something of a recluse, and we have no reason to tax his own description with exaggeration.

London has never been a silent city, but Chaucer enjoyed at least one of the quietest spots in it. If (as we have every reason to suppose) the Ordinance of 1345 was far from putting an end to the nuisances which it indicates, then Chaucer must have heaved a sigh of relief when he had seen the Custom-House locked up, and turned his back on Spurrier Lane. The Spurriers were addicted to working after dark for nefarious ends of their own; "and further, many of the said trade are wandering about all day, without working at all at their trade; and then, when they have become drunk and frantic, they take to their work, to the annoyance of the sick and of all their neighbourhood, as well as by reason of the broils that arise between them and the strange folks who are dwelling among them. And then they blow up their fires so vigorously, that their forges begin all at once to blaze, to the great peril of themselves and of all the neighbourhood around. And then too, all the neighbours are much in dread of the sparks, which so vigorously issue forth in all directions from the mouths of the chimneys in their forges."[116] We may trust that no such offensive handiwork was carried on round Aldgate, whither the poet would arrive about five o'clock in the evening, and sit down forthwith to supper, as the sun began to slant over the open fields. We may hope, at least, that he was wont to sup at home rather than at those alluring cook-shops which alternated with wine-taverns along the river bank; and that, as he "defyed the roast" with his Gascon wine, Philippa sat and sipped with him from one of time-honoured Lancaster's silver-gilt cups. Even if we accept the most pessimistic theories of Chaucer's married life, we need scarcely doubt that the pair sat often together at their open window in the twilight--

Both of one mind, as married people use, Quietly, quietly the evening through.

The sun goes down, a common greyness silvers everything; Epping Forest and the Hampstead heights stand dim against the afterglow. From beneath their very windows the long road stretches far into the fading landscape; men and cattle begin to straggle citywards, first slowly, and then with such haste as their weariness will permit, for the curfew begins to ring out from Bow steeple.[117] Chaucer himself has painted this twilight scene in "Troilus and Criseyde," written during this very Aldgate time. The hero watches all day long, with his friend Pandarus, at one of the gates of Troy, for had not Criseyde pledged her word to come back on that day at latest? Every creature crawling along the distant roads gives the lover fresh hopes and fresh heart-sickness; but it is sorest of all when the evening shadows leave most to the imagination--

The day go'th fast, and after that com'th eve And yet came not to Troilus Criseyde. He looketh forth by hedge, by tree, by greve, [grove And far his head over the wall he laid ... "Have here my truth, I see her! Yond she is! Have up thine eyen, man! May'st thou not see?" Pandarus answered, "Nay, so mote I the! All wrong, by God! What say'st thou, man? Where art? That I see yond is but a farë-cart." The warden of the gatës gan to call The folk which that without the gatës were, And bade them driven in their beastës all, Or all the night they musten bleven there; [remain And far within the night, with many a tear, This Troilus gan homeward for to ride, For well he seeth it helpeth nought t' abide.

And far within the night, while the "uncunning porters" sing over their liquor or snore on their pallets, Chaucer turns and returns the leaves of Virgil or Ovid, of Dante or the "Romance of the Rose." Does he not also, to poor Philippa's disgust, "laugh full fast" to himself sometimes over that witty and ungallant book of satires which contains "of wicked wives ... more legendës and lives than be of goodë wives in the Bible"? It is difficult to escape from this conviction. His "Wife of Bath" cites the treatises in question too fully and too well to make it probable that Chaucer wrote from mere memory. Remembering this probability, and the practical certainty that, like his contemporaries, Chaucer needed to read aloud for the full comprehension of what he had under his eyes, we shall then find nothing unexpected in his pretty plain allusions to reprisals. Sweet as honey in the mouth, his books proved sometimes bitter in the belly, like that of the Apocalypse. "Late to bed" suits ill with "early to rise," and the poet hints pretty plainly that an imperious and somewhat unsympathetic "Awake, Geoffrey!" was often the first word he heard in the morning. When the Golden Eagle caught the sleeping poet up to heaven--

At the last to me he spake In mannës voice, and said "Awake! And be not so aghast, for shame!" And called me then by my name And, for I should the better abraid [rouse Me dreamed, "Awake!" to me he said Right in the samë voice and steven [tone That useth one I couldë neven; [name And with that voice, sooth for to say'n My mindë came to me again; For it was goodly said to me, So it was never wont to be. "House of Fame," ii., 47.