Part 12
There, near there, or somewhere else, for the romances are dreadfully careless in their topography, he falls in with his old love Sabra, married to a Moorish King. If George is perplexed at this, seeing that the lady had engaged to remain an unmarried maiden till he came to wed her, he is still more so when she informs him that she has, in all essentials, kept her word, “through the secret virtue of a golden chain steeped in tiger’s blood, the which she wore seven times double about her ivory neck.” St. George does not know what to make of it, but as on subsequently encountering two lions, Sabra, while he was despatching one, kept the other quietly with its head resting on her lap, the knight declared himself perfectly satisfied, and they set out upon their travels, lovingly together.
By the luckiest chance, all the wandering knights and their ladies met at the court of a King of Greece, who is not, certainly, to be heard of in Gillies’ or Goldsmith’s history. The scenery is now on a magnificent scale, for there is a regal wedding on foot, and tournaments, and the real war of Heathenism against all Christendom. As the Champions of Christendom have as yet done little to warrant them in assuming the appellation, one would suppose that the time had now arrived when they were to give the world a taste of their quality in that respect. But nothing of the sort occurs. The seven worthies separate, each to his own country, in order to prepare for great deeds; but none are done for the benefit of Christianity, unless indeed we are to conclude that when George and Sabra travelled together, and he overcame all antagonists, and she inspired with love all beholders;--he subdued nature itself and she ran continually into danger, from which he rescued her:--and that when, after being condemned to the stake, the young wife gave birth to three babes in the wood, and was at last crowned Queen of Egypt, something is meant by way of allegory, in reference to old church questions, and in not very clear elucidation as to how these questions were beneficially affected by the Champions of Christendom!
I may add that when Sabra was crowned Queen of Egypt, every one was ordered to be merry, on pain of death! It is further to be observed there is now much confusion, and that the confusion by no means grows less as the story thunders on. The Champions and the three sons of St. George are, by turns, East, West, North, and South, either pursuing each other, or suddenly and unexpectedly encountering, like the principal personages in a pantomime. Battles, love-making, and shutting up cruel and reprobate magicians from the “humane eye,” are the chief events, but to every event there are dozens of episodes, and each episode is as confusing, dazzling, and bewildering as the trunk from which it hangs.
St. George, however, is like a greater champion than himself; and when he is idle and in Italy, he does precisely what Nelson did in the same place--fall in love with a lady, and cause endless mischief in consequence. By this time, however, Johnson begins to think, rightly, that his readers have had enough of it, and that it is time to dispose of his principal characters. These too, are so well disposed to help him, that when the author kills St. Patrick, the saint burys himself! In memory of his deeds, of which we have heard little or nothing, some are accustomed to honor him, says Mr. Johnson--“wearing upon their hats, each of them, a cross of red silk, in token of his many adventures under the Christian Cross.” So that the shamrock appears to have been a device only of later times.
St. David is as quickly despatched. This champion enters Wales to crush the pagans there. He wears a leek in his helmet, and his followers adopt the same fashion, in order that friend may be distinguished from foe. The doughty saint, of course, comes conqueror out of the battle, but he is in a heated state, gets a chill and dies after all of a common cold. Bruce, returning safe from exploring the Nile, to break his neck by falling down his own stairs, hardly presents a more practical bathos than this. Why the leek became the badge of Welshmen need not be further explained.
It is singular that in recounting the manner of the death of the next champion, St. Denis, the romancer is less romantic than common tradition. He tells us how the knight repaired to then pagan France; how he was accused of being a Christian, by another knight of what we should fancy a Christian order, St. Michael, and how the pagan king orders St. Denis to be beheaded, in consequence. There are wonders in the heavens, at this execution, which convert the heathen sovereign to Christianity; but no mention is made of St. Denis having walked to a monastery, after his head was off, and _with_ his head under his arm. Of this prodigy Voltaire remarked, “Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute,” but of that the romancer makes no mention. St. James suffers by being shut up in his chapel in Spain, and starved to death, by order of the Atheist king. Anthony dies quietly in a good old age, in Italy; St. Andrew is beheaded by the cruel pagan Scots whom, in his old age, he had visited, in order to bring them to conversion: and St. George, who goes on, riding down wild monsters and rescuing timid maidens, to the last--and his inclination, was always in the direction of the maidens--ultimately meets his death by the sting of a venomous dragon.
And now it would seem that two or three hundred years ago, authors were very much like the actors in the _Critic_, who when they _did_ get hold of a good thing, could never give the public enough of it. Accordingly, the biography of the Seven Champions was followed by that of their sons. I will spare my readers the turbulent details: they will probably be satisfied with learning that the three sons of St. George became kings, “according as the fairy queen had prophesied to them,” and that Sir Turpin, son of David, Sir Pedro, son of James, Sir Orlando, son of Anthony, Sir Ewen, son of Andrew, Sir Phelim, son of Patrick, and Sir Owen, son of David, like their sires, combated with giants, monsters, and dragons; tilted and tournamented in honor of the ladies, did battle in defence of Christianity, relieved the distressed, annihilated necromancers and table-turners, in short, accomplished all that could be expected from knights of such prowess and chivalry.
When Richard Johnson had reached this part of his history, he gave it to the world, awaiting the judgment of the critics, before he published his second portion: that portion wherein he was to unfold what nobody yet could guess at, namely, wherefore the Seven Champions were called _par excellence_, the Champions of Christendom. I am afraid that meanwhile those terrible, god-like, and inexorable critics, had not dealt altogether gently with him. The _Punch_ they offered him was not made exclusively of sweets. His St. George had been attacked, and very small reverence been expressed for his ladies. But see how calmly and courteously--all the more admirable that there must have been some affectation in the matter--he turns from the censuring judges to that benevolent personage, the gentle reader. “Thy courtesy,” he says, “must be my buckler against the carping malice of mocking jesters, that being worse able to do well, scoff commonly at that they can not mend; censuring all things, doing nothing, but (monkey-like) make apish jests at anything they do in print, and nothing pleaseth them, except it savor of a scoffing and invective spirit. Well, what they say of me I do not care; thy delight is my sole desire.” Well said, bold Richard Johnson. He thought he had put down criticism as St. George had the dragon.
I can not say, however, that good Richard Johnson treats his gentle reader fairly. This second part of his Champions is to a reader worse than what all the labors of Hercules were to the lusty son of Alcmena. An historical drama at Astley’s is not half so bewildering, and is almost as credible, and Mr. Ducrow himself when he was rehearsing his celebrated “spectacle drama” of “St. George and the Dragon” at old Drury--and who that ever saw him on those occasions can possibly forget him?--achieved greater feats, or was more utterly unlike any sane individual than St. George is, as put upon the literary stage by Master Johnson.
One comfort in tracing the tortuosities of this chivalric romance is that the action is rapid; but then there is so much of it, and it is so astounding! We are first introduced to the three sons of St. George, who are famous hunters in England, and whose mother, the lady Sabra, “catches her death,” by going out attired like Diana, to witness their achievements. The chivalric widower thereupon sets out for Jerusalem, his fellow-champions accompany, and George’s three sons, Guy, Alexander, and David, upon insinuation from their mother’s spirit, start too in pursuit. The lads were knighted by the king of England before they commenced their journey, which they perform with the golden spur of chivalry attached to their heels. They meet with the usual adventures by the way: destroying giants, and rescuing virgins, who in these troublesome times seem to have been allowed to travel about too much by themselves. Meanwhile, their sire is enacting greater prodigies still, and is continually delivering his fellow-champions from difficulties, from which they are unable to extricate themselves. Indeed, in all circumstances, his figure is the most prominent; and although the other half-dozen _must_ have rendered some service on each occasion, St. George makes no more mention of the same than Marshal St. Arnaud, in his letters on the victory at the Alma, does of the presence and services of the English.
It is said that Mrs. Radcliffe, whose horrors used to delight and distress our mothers and aunts, in their younger days, became herself affected by the terrors which she only paints to explain away natural circumstances. What then must have been the end of Richard Johnson? His scene of the enchantments of the Black Castle is quite enough to have killed the author with bewilderment. There is a flooring in the old palace of the Prince of Orange in Brussels, which is so inlaid with small pieces of wood, of a thousand varieties of patterns, as to be a triumph of its kind. I was not at all surprised, when standing on that floor, to hear that when the artist had completed his inconceivable labor, he gave one wild gaze over the _parquet_ of the palace, and dropped dead of a fit of giddiness. I am sure that Richard Johnson must have met with some such calamity after revising this portion of his history. It is a portion in which it is impossible for the Champions or for the readers to go to sleep. The noise is terrific, the incidents fall like thunderbolts, the changes roll over each other in a succession made with electric rapidity, and when the end comes we are all the more rejoiced, because we have comprehended nothing; but we are especially glad to find that the knight of the Black Castle, who is the cause of all the mischief, is overcome, flies in a state of destitution to a neighboring wood, and being irretrievably “hard up,” stabs himself with the first thing at hand, as ruthlessly as the lover of the “Ratcatcher’s Daughter.”
Time, place, propriety, and a respect for contemporary history, are amusingly violated throughout the veracious details. Nothing can equal the confusion, nothing can be more absurd than the errors. But great men have committed errors as grave. Shakespeare opened a seaport in Bohemia, and Mr. Macaulay wrote of one Penn what was only to be attributed to another. And now, have the dramatists treated St. George better than the romancers?
The national saint was, doubtless, often introduced in the Mysteries; but the first occasion of which I have any knowledge of his having been introduced on the stage, was by an author named John Kirke. John was so satisfied with his attempt that he never wrote a second play. He allowed his fame to rest on the one in question, which is thus described on his title-page: “The Seven Champions of Christendome. Acted at the _Cocke Pit_, and at the _Red Bull_ in St. John’s Streete, with a general liking, And never printed till this _yeare_ 1638. Written by J. K.--London, printed by J. Okes, and are (_sic_) to be sold by James Becket, at his Shop in the Inner Temple Gate, 1638.”
John Kirke treats his subject melodramatically. In the first scene, Calib the Witch, in a speech prefacing her declarations of a love for foul weather and deeds, tells the audience by way of prologue, how she had stolen the young St. George from his now defunct parent, with the intention of making a bath for her old bones out of his young warm blood. Love, however, had touched her, and she had brought up “the red-lipped boy,” with some indefinite idea of making something of him when a man.
With this disposition the old lady has some fears as to the possible approaching term of her life; but, as she is assured by “Tarfax the Devill” that she can not die unless she love blindly, the witch, like a mere mortal, accounting that she loves wisely, reckons herself a daughter of immortality, and rejoices hugely. The colloquy of this couple is interrupted by their son Suckabud, who, out of a head just broken by St. George, makes complaint with that comic lack of fun, which was wont to make roar the entire inside of the Red Bull. The young clown retires with his sire, and then enters the great St. George, a lusty lad, with a world of inquiries touching his parentage. Calib explains that his lady mother was anything but an honest woman, and that his sire was just the partner to match. “Base or noble, pray?” asks St. George. To which the witch replies:--
“Base and noble too; Both base by thee, but noble by descent; And thou born base, yet mayst thou write true gent:”
and it may be said, parenthetically, that many a “true gent” is by birth equal to St. George himself.
Overcome by her affection, the witch makes a present to St. George of the half-dozen champions of England whom she holds in chains within her dwelling. One of them is described as “the lively, brisk, cross-cap’ring Frenchman, Denis.” With these for slaves, Calib yields her wand of power, and the giver is no sooner out of sight when George invokes the shades of his parents, who not only appear and furnish him with a corrected edition of his biography, but inform him that he is legitimate Earl of Coventry, with all the appurtenances that a young earl can desire.
Thereupon ensues a hubbub that must have shaken all the lamps in the cockpit. George turns the Witch’s power against herself, and she descends to the infernal regions, where she is punningly declared to have gained the title of Duchess of Helvetia. The six champions are released, and the illustrious seven companions go forth in search of adventures, with Suckabus for a “Squire.” The father of the latter gives him some counsel at parting, which is a parody on the advice of Polonius to Laertes. “Lie,” says Torpax:--
“Lie to great profit, borrow, pay no debts, Cheat and purloin, they are gaming dicers’ bets.”
“If Cottington outdo me,” says the son, “he be-whipt.” And so, after the election of St. George as the seventh champion of Christendom, ends one of the longest acts that Bull or Cockpit was ever asked to witness and applaud.
The next act is briefer but far more bustling. We are in that convenient empire of Trebizond, where everything happened which never took place, according to the romances. The whole city is in a state of consternation at the devastations of a detestable dragon, and a lion, his friend and co-partner. The nobles bewail the fact in hexameters, or at least in lines meant to do duty for them; and the common people bewail the fact epigrammatically, and describe the deaths of all who have attempted to slay the monsters, with a broadness of effect that doubtless was acknowledged by roars of laughter. Things grow worse daily, the fiends look down, and general gloom is settling thick upon the empire, when Andrew of Scotland and Anthony of Italy arrive, send in their cards, and announce their determination to slay both these monsters.
Such visitors are received with more than ordinary welcome. The emperor is regardless of expense in his liberality, and his daughter Violetta whispers to her maid Carinthia that she is already in love with one of them, but will not say which; a remark which is answered by the pert maid, that she is in love with both, and would willingly take either. All goes on joyously until in the course of conversation, and it is by no means remarkable for brilliancy, the two knights let fall that they are Christians. Now, you must know, that the established Church at Trebizond at this time, which is at any period, was heathen. The court appeared to principally affect Apollo and Diana, while the poorer people put up with Pan, and abused him for denouncing may-poles! Well, the Christians had never been emancipated; nay, they had never been tolerated in Trebizond, and it was contrary to law that the country should be saved, even in its dire extremity, by Christian help. The knights are doomed to die, unless they will turn heathens. This, of course, they decline with a dignified scorn; whereupon, in consideration of their nobility, they are permitted to choose their own executioners. They make choice of the ladies, but Violetta and Carinthia protest that they can not think of such a thing. Their high-church sire is disgusted with their want of orthodoxy, and he finally yields to the knights their swords, that they may do justice on themselves as the law requires. But Andrew and Anthony are no sooner armed again than they clear their way to liberty, and the drop scene falls upon the rout of the whole empire of Trebizond.
The third act is of gigantic length, and deals with giants. There is mourning in Tartary. David has killed the king’s son in a tournament, and the king remarks, like a retired apothecary, that “Time’s plaster must draw the sore before he can feel peace again.” To punish David, he is compelled to undertake the destruction of the enchanter Ormandine, who lived in a cavern fortress with “some selected friends.” The prize of success is the reversion of the kingdom of Tartary to the Welsh knight. The latter goes upon his mission, but he is so long about it that our old friend Chorus enters, to explain what he affirms they have not time to act--namely, the great deeds of St. George, who, as we learn, had slain the never-to-be-forgotten dragon, rescued Sabrina, been cheated of his reward, and held in prison seven years upon bread and water. His squire, Suckabus, alludes to giants whom he and his master had previously slain, and whose graves were as large as Tothill Fields. He also notices “Ploydon’s law,” and other matters, that could hardly have been contemporaneous with the palmy days of the kingdom of Tartary. Meanwhile, David boldly assaults Ormandine, but the enchanter surrounds him with some delicious-looking nymphs, all thinly clad and excessively seductive; and we are sorry to say that the Welsh champion, not being cavalierly mounted on proper principles, yields to seduction, and after various falls under various temptations, is carried to bed by the rollicking nymph Drunkenness.
But never did good, though fallen, men want for a friend at a pinch. St. George is in the neighborhood; and seedy as he is after seven years in the dark, with nothing more substantial by way of food than bread, and nothing more exhilarating for beverage than _aqua pura_, the champion of England does David’s work, and with more generosity than justice, makes him a present of the enchanter’s head. David presents the same to the King of Tartary, that, according to promise pledged in case of such a present being made, he may be proclaimed heir-apparent to the Tartarian throne. With this bit of cheating, the long third act comes to an end.
The fourth act is taken up with an only partially successful attack by James, David, and Patrick, on a cruel enchanter, Argalio, who at least is put to flight, and _that_, at all events, as the knights remark, is something to be thankful for. The fifth and grand act reveals to us the powerful magician, Brandron, in his castle. He holds in thrall the King of Macedon--a little circumstance not noted in history; and he has in his possession the seven daughters of his majesty transformed into swans. The swans contrive to make captives of six of the knights as they were taking a “gentle walk” upon his ramparts. They are impounded as trespassers, and Brandron, who has some low comedy business with Suckubus, will not release them but upon condition that they fight honestly in his defence against St. George. The six duels take place, and of course the champion of England overcomes all his friendly antagonists; whereupon Brandron, with his club, beats out his own brains, in presence of the audience.
At this crisis, the King of Macedon appears, restored to power, and inquires after his daughters. St. George and the rest, with a use of the double negatives that would have shocked Lindley Murray, declare
“We never knew, nor saw no ladies here.”
The swans, however, soon take their pristine form, and the three daughters appear fresh from their plumes and their long bath upon the lake. Upon this follows the smart dialogue which we extract as a sample of how sharply the King of Macedon looked to his family interests, and how these champion knights were “taken in” before they well knew how the fact was accomplished.
_Mac._ Reverend knights, may we desire to know which of you are unmarried? _Ant., Den., and Pat._ We are. _Geo._ Then here’s these ladies, take ’em to your beds. _Mac._ George highly honors aged Macedon. _The three Knights._ But can the ladies’ love accord with us? _The three Ladies._ Most willingly! _The three Knights._ We thus then seal our contract. _Geo._ Which thus we ratifie. Sit with the brides, most noble Macedon; And since kind fortune sent such happy chance, We’ll grace your nuptials with a soldier’s dance.
And, fore George, as our fathers used to say, they make a night of it. The piece ends with a double military reel, and the audiences at the Bull and the Cockpit probably whistled the tune as they wended their way homeward to crab-apple ale and spiced gingerbread.
Next to the Champions of Christendom, the King’s Knight Champion of England is perhaps the most important personage--in the point of view of chivalry. I think it is some French author who has said, that revolutions resemble the game of chess, where the pawns or pieces (_les pions_) may cause the ruin of the king, save him, or take his place. Now the _champ pion_, as this French remark reminds me, is nothing more than the field _pion_, pawn, or piece, put forward to fight in the king’s quarrel.
The family of the Champion of England bears, it may be observed, exactly the name which suits a calling so derived. The appellation “Dymoke” is derived from _De Umbrosâ Quercu_; I should rather say it is the translation of it; and Harry De Umbrosâ Quercu is only Harry of the Shady or Dim Oak, a very apt dwelling-place and name for one whose chief profession was that of field-pawn to the king.
This derivation or adaptation of names from original Latin surnames is common enough, and some amusing pages might be written on the matter, in addition to what has been so cleverly put together by Mr. Mark Anthony Lower, in his volume devoted especially to an elucidation of English surnames.