Part 20

But Battie could play the fool, even to better purpose by the sick bed, than the buffoon at his club. It is told of him that he had a young male patient whom obstinate quinsy threatened with almost instant suffocation. Battie had tried every remedy but his foolery, and at last he had recourse to _that_. Setting his wig wrong side before, twisting his face into a compound comic expression, and darting his head suddenly within the curtains, he cut such antics, poured forth such delicious folly, and was altogether so irresistible, that his patient, after gazing at him for a moment in stupefaction, burst into a fit of laughter which broke the imposthume, and rescued the sufferer from impending death.

The above, however, is only a sample of how a professional man could apply folly to a wise end. We have something more resembling the professional fool or dwarf, in the case of a retainer of the Duke of Ancaster who died in 1779. Walpole mentions him in a letter to Lady Ossory. “I hear the Duke of Ancaster has left a legacy to a very small man that was always his companion, and whom, when he was drunk, he used to fling at the heads of the company, as others fling a bottle.”

Although, professionally, the vocation had gone, it is still worth observing, that other patent places which had originated in feudal times, had not gone with that of the jester. “If my memory does not deceive me,” says Burke in his speech on the royal household, in 1780, “a person of no slight consideration held the office of patent hereditary cook to an Earl of Warwick.” The orator rightly conjectured that the Earl’s soups “were not the better for the dignity of his kitchen;” and he adds his belief that “an Earl of Gloucester officiated as steward of the household to the Archbishops of Canterbury.” The orator found a curious relic of those old times when these practices were common, in the household of George III. He did not meet with any witty fellow there patented as fool, but he discovered something akin to it; namely, that the turnspit in the King’s kitchen was a Member of Parliament!

The annals of succeeding reigns bear the names of several courtiers whose office it was to amuse and gratify their Royal patron. How George III. himself could play the court jester with effect, I will tell in a chapter devoted to sovereigns who occasionally were their own fools. How Colonel Haager and others of more recent periods have played first cousins to the more ancient jokers, it is unnecessary here to enumerate. I will rather conclude my long, and I fear imperfect, chapter, by showing also the conclusion of the actual line of hired fools in noble English households. It is not so very long since the last of this class died and left no successor. Mr. Douce, in his pleasant Essay on clowns and fools, gives the names of the last of them who practised professionally in this country. The household fool survived the court fool; and after Muckle John closed the line of the latter, there was still bread to be earned by the profession of the former. According to Mr. Douce, the favourite Lord Chancellor of George I., the eminent Lord Talbot, kept a fool, probably at his country-house, if at all. Mr. Douce tells us that his name was Rees Pengelding, and that he was a shrewd fellow who rented a farm under his patron. It happened that Rees was a little backward with his rent, and he was harshly menaced by the steward, who wound up his objurgations by exclaiming, “I’ll fit you! I’ll fit you!” Now it happened that the steward, in his earlier days, had been a tailor, the remembrance of which caused Rees to call out in return, “Fit me! will you? Well, it will be the first time in your life you ever did such a thing!”

I feel bound to add, that Lord Campbell, in his life of Chancellor Talbot, makes no mention of this fool, Pengelding. May not the latter have been simply favoured, because of the sharpness of his wit? It is difficult to conceive that the profound scholar in Roman civil law; the friend and equal of Philip Yorke, the enlightened statesman; the only Chancellor who had ever sat on the Woolsack without making an accuser, a detractor, or an enemy; a man, in short, in whom was “joined the utmost freedom of dispute with the highest good breeding, and the vivacity of mirth with primitive simplicity of manners,”--it would be difficult to conceive that such a man, the friend of Butler the divine, and patron of Thompson, could take delight in a mere household fool, were we not reminded that even more intellectual Chancellors than he, in earlier, but not in less refined days, could find relaxation in listening to the professional joker. In connection with my subject, I shall be excused if I notice that when Talbot was appointed Chancellor, a grand “Revel” was given in his honour by the Inner Temple (1734), and that this was the last festivity of the sort at which royalty attended at an Inn of Court. There has been a royal entertainment in our own days, at Lincoln’s Inn, but Talbot’s “Revel” was the last of its class.

Mr. Douce also names a certain Robin Rush as being fool, in the last century, to Lord Bussy Mansel; and Mr. Douce adds, that in 1807 there were people living who remembered him. Sir Edward Stradling, of St. Dorret’s Castle, Glamorganshire, was another of the lords of land who kept a fool in his house at the same period;--a fool of sharp and ready wit. We have still more satisfactory proof of the existence of a household fool in the last century, in the person of Dicky Pearce, “fool to Lord Suffolk,” for which fool, being dead, Dean Swift did what Ronsard failed to do for a more witty jester at the court of France,--namely, write his epitaph. Dicky Pearce lies in Berkeley churchyard, Gloucestershire, and these are the lines the Dean has placed above his grave:--

“Here lies the Earl of Suffolk’s fool, Men called him Dicky Pearce; His folly served to make folks laugh. When wit and mirth were scarce.

“Poor Dick, alas! is dead and gone; What signifies to cry? Dickeys enough are still behind To laugh at by and by.”

The last recorded instance of a domestic fool being kept in an English family, is that of the jester retained at Hilton Castle, Durham, by John Hilton, the descendant of the old barons of that name, who died 1746. Surtees, in his ‘History of Durham,’ notices this fact, and adds one touch of the wit of this anonymous fool, who seems to have borrowed a traditionary joke of his great predecessor, Archie Armstrong. His master, we are told, on one occasion of his returning to his northern seat from London, left his carriage at the ferry near the castle, and proceeded towards that building over a foot-bridge, at the end of which the fool was awaiting his patron. The latter was attired in a gaily gold-embroidered dress, according to the fashion of the times, and made in the south, by a fashionable tailor. The fool gazed on his master with mingled astonishment and vexation, and, in place of greeting his return with a welcome, boldly looked him in the face, and inquired, “Who’s the fool now?” This is the last recorded joke of the last recorded jester; and the long line could not have gone out with a milder, though it might have done so with a less impertinent, jest. Hilton’s fool may, I think, fairly rank as the _ultimus stultorum_ (he was remembered by aged Cumberland people, as late as 1812), though in point of fact the honour may be disputed by the nameless individual who figured, though it was only for the nonce, at the Eglinton tournament, in 1839, where knights tilted in spectacles, and the spectators looked on at the solemn fun, under rain and from beneath umbrellas.

Thus the fool went out in a rather gorgeous fashion. There was a grand tableau as the curtain descended which had been up in England for so many centuries. I am bound to add that the Eglinton fool may find a rival as to the honour of closing the merry line, in Shemus Anderson, the fool of Murthley Castle, Perthshire, who died in the year 1833. He had grown tolerably rich in his vocation; had suffered losses, like Dogberry; but left behind him some comfortable hundreds of pounds to his heirs. Shemus, however, never wore the cap and bells, or nursed the bauble, or whirled the bladder and peas, or shook the clappers, or carried motley. He was a fool in undress; but in respect of fulness of character and costume, of circus jokes, and all the accessories of the part, excepting its indecencies, the Eglinton fool was the last of the race. He flickered up for a moment, as did the padded knights and the Queen of Beauty, to afford some idea to the times present of the aspect of the times past, as far as the latter could be exhibited in one of its gorgeous follies. The blaze of splendour was great, and the fool’s fire of conundrums burnt bravely, but the rain extinguished it all; the umbrellas gave an air of ridicule to the scene; the thing was felt to be, after all, only a splendid sham; and accordingly the fool and the pseudo-feudal lords and ladies disappeared for ever. All that remains of the old reality are rags and shreds and fragments in the mansions of our nobles and gentles. At Glamis Castle a motley jacket still hangs, or did recently hang, on a peg in the wall, and at Stourhead is still preserved a jester’s baldric, which may be devoutly kissed as a relic by the worshippers of Folly.

Some resemblance may be certainly traced between the conditions of the English court fool and the ancient parasite, and between the English household fool and the old Roman slave. With all, there was laughter excited by liberty of speech, which must have occasionally fallen like refreshing dew upon the ear of despot or noble, unaccustomed to listen to aught from others save his own exceeding glorification. The despot still retained the power of punishing the fool; and in this particular, the household jester, who was often a menial servant, the drudge of the family, very closely resembled the Roman slave, with whom his master would graciously exchange jokes one day, and whom he would scourge the next. The two, capricious master and servile yet audacious wit, agreed very well with despotism, and coarse times and manners; but with liberty and refinement, both expired, or underwent such modifications, or took such new forms, as to be no longer recognizable. The fool was for a season, but eccentricity of character, which was his great merit, naturally survived him.

It has been objected to many of the ancient traits of court jesters, that they were inventions of writers of fiction, and that they only illustrated a rude state of society. Thus, the incident of Scogan chalking the path to be taken by his wife to church, has been pronounced too farcical to be true. But the degree of humour which moved King Edward’s jester to this act, has influenced many persons of later and more refined times than those in which Scogan uttered very questionable jokes for the amusement of his royal and princely patrons. We all know how Lord Hardwicke, when he was an attorney’s clerk, and was ordered by his mistress to purchase a cauliflower, executed this commission, but sent the vegetable home in a sedan-chair at the lady’s cost. An instance more striking and closer to the point, is given us in the person of the wealthy Margaret Wharton, whom Foote introduced in one of his pieces, as “Peg Pennyworth,” a name which the lady had acquired when a visitor at Scarborough, by sending every night for a pennyworth of strawberries and cream, for her supper. In this dramatic piece, Mrs. Wharton afforded mirth to princes, courtiers, and citizens, with whom the farce was a great favourite. Ord, in his ‘History of Cleveland,’ narrates several anecdotes of her humour, of which I select one that may contrast with that of Scogan. “In one of her visits to Scarborough,” we are told, “she, with her usual economy, had a family pie for dinner, which she directed the footman to convey to the bakehouse. This he declined, as not belonging to his place, or rather derogatory to his consequence. She then moved the question to the coachman, but found a still stronger objection. To save the pride of both, she resolved to take it herself, and ordered one to harness, and bring out the carriage, and the other to mount behind, and they took the pie, with all honour and ceremony, to the bakehouse. When baked, coachee was ordered to put to a second time, and the footman to mount behind; and the pie returned in the same dignified state. ‘Now,’ says she to the coachman, ‘you have kept your place, which is to drive; and yours,’ to the footman, ‘which is to wait; and I mine, which was to have my pie for dinner.’” It was just this sort of eccentricity of character which gave value to the old counterfeit fools, as we shall see further in subsequent pages.

Meanwhile I take leave of the English portion of my subject with the comment of Stillingfleet, who says:--

“Leave to low buffoons by custom bred, And form’d by nature to be kicked and fed, The vulgar and unenvied task to hit All persons, right or wrong, with random wit. Our wise forefathers, born in sober days, Resigned to fools the tart and witty phrase; The motley coat gave warning for the jest, Excused the wound and sanctified the pest. But we from high to low all strive to sneer, Will all be wits, and not the livery wear.”

If my readers have but patience to go forward, they will soon find themselves in company with the _Fous du Roi_, at the Court of France, where, for a long period, it was not possible for a fool to appear _without_ his livery; but to which now the following lines are not less applicable than they are to other localities:--

“Why, pray, of late do Europe’s kings No jester in their courts admit? They’ve grown such stately solemn things; To bear a joke, they think not fit. But though each court a jester lacks, To laugh at monarchs to their face, All mankind do behind their backs, Supply the honest jester’s place.”

THE COURT FOOLS OF FRANCE.

Under the word _Ministrelli_, a term said to belong to “Monk’s Latin,” were anciently comprehended in France, not merely Minstrels, but Buffoons, Mimes, and Jesters generally. They are called in common parlance, says Du Fresne, in his Glossary, “Menestreux or Menestriers,” because they belong to the lower order of officers at court--“quod minoribus aulæ ministris accenserentur.” The same author shows the early identity of the minstrel with the jester, by quoting an ordinance regulating the arrangement of a fishermen’s religious festival held in early times at Toulouse; and which is to this effect. “Also, the fishermen shall be assembled, who ought to be present in the procession on that day with the _ministri_ or _joculatores_; because the aforesaid fishermen are bound to have, on this special occasion, _ministri_ or _joculatores_, in honour of the cross.... And they should lead the procession, with the _ministri_ or _joculatores_ beating the drum, as far as the church of St. Stephen.” From _joculator_, the French obtain their word _jongleur_, and through the latter we have our own term _juggler_. The monks made little distinction between different orders of minstrels, who were usually described by them as minstrels, or jesters; signifying that the officials designated under those names were one and the same. There is little doubt, at all events, of the French jester having ultimately sprung from the profession of the minstrel, when the latter was in its decline. It is perplexing, however, to find that although the minstrel or joculator is continually represented as being something of a musician, yet that Du Fresne, who frequently so describes him, also quotes a law of 1381, wherein we read that this worthy was altogether forbidden from playing on either a stringed or wind instrument: “Nullus ministreys seu jogulator audeat pinsare vel sonare instrumentum cujuscunque generis.” The law was evidently not of universal application, as may be gathered from Aimonius, who, when treating of the miracles of St. Benedict, shows us a buffoon, both singing and playing, in his vocation of bard. His words are: “Tanta vero illis securitas, ut scurram se præcedere facerent, qui musico instrumento res fortiter gestas et priorum bella præcineret, quatenus his acrius incitarentur.”

Enough, however, has been previously said on this subject; I will therefore turn from it, to that of the costume of the French “fou.” Most of the French writers on the subject of court jesters, maintain that the colours of the native fool were, almost invariably, yellow and green, striped. Many scores of pages have been written to show that these colours were selected, because they were in little estimation by modish people; yellow being generally worn by executioners, or by criminals, and green signifying jealousy and various other bad qualities. All this may be ingenious, but it is purely imaginary; for we find French court buffoons glittering in scarlet and gold, as well as green and yellow, and sometimes dressed in suits in which were to be counted the seven hues of Iris herself.

One especial circumstance is remarkable in our neighbours’ fools; namely, their consumption or waste of shoe-leather. In 1404, I meet, in the _Collection de la Chambre des Comptes_, with an entry of forty-seven pairs of shoes to Hancelin Coc, fool of Charles VI., and of seven pairs for the fool’s “varlet,” showing that Sir Witless was sometimes thought sufficiently noble or gentle to be worthy of a man to attend upon him; and yet Hancelin was dressed in a suit of _iraigne_, a material of which I can find no explanation in any French author, but which is described as of a reddish brown, and which was also used “pour garnir la chaière nécessaire pour servir au retrait du dit seigneur, le roy Charles VI.”

Thus the French fools were not always attired in green and yellow, and an additional proof is to be found in the fact, that on the occasion of the marriage, at Abbeville, of Louis XII., with Mary, the sister of Henry VIII. (subsequently wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk), among the personages, allegorical or otherwise, that were made to take part in the rejoicings, was to be seen the figure of Triboulet, the King’s fool, in a serge dress of red and yellow stripes. In a succeeding page referring to this jester, another proof will be found that green and yellow were not the exclusively official colours worn by the jesters at the court of France.

It is not easy,--I should rather say, it is impossible, to define with any certainty the period at which the “Plaisans,” as our merry friends are sometimes called, first held official rank, and were entitled to assume the appellation of _Fou_ by right of legal appointment to the office. Flögel simply states, “the custom was so general, that historians expressed some surprise when they had to speak of a French court without an official fool in it.” Two such examples we have in Philip Augustus and Charles VII., neither of whom had any relish for the antics and humour of the green-and-yellow-striped mirth makers.

The earliest example of a French court fool, given by Dr. Rigollet, is in the reign of Hugh Capet; but Flögel goes back a full century, and about the year 894 finds one, named Jean, at the court of Charles the Simple. This good fellow’s influence was so great, that Charles once remarked to him, he thought they had better change places. As Jean did not look well pleased at the proposal, Charles asked him if he were not content at the idea of being a king. “Oh, content enough,” was the reply; “but I should be exceedingly ashamed at having such a fool.” It was this fool who once tried his master’s nerves, by rushing into his room one morning, with the exclamation, “Oh, Sire, such news! four thousand men have risen in the city.” “What!” cried the startled King; “with what intention have they risen?” “Well,” said Jean, placing his finger on his nose, “probably with the intention of lying down again at bedtime.”

It is possible that this fool, like his master, was rather German than French; and we commence quite early enough with the latter, when we begin from the period of the father of Hugh Capet, whose fool comes before us in a very solemn and melodramatic way. The celebrated Duke, in 943, went on an expedition against the Normans, and among his followers, says the ever lively Ordericus Vitalis, was his buffoon, _mimus_, or _joculator_, as he is called by the chronicler. One day, at the Duke’s table, the conversation fell on some holy personages who had died in the odour of sanctity. The _joculator_, being a fool, was a freethinker; and he dealt so rudely and sarcastically with these dead and sanctified individuals, in his ribald remarks, that the avenging justice of Heaven was aroused, and, says the smart Norman historian, a violent storm bursting forth from the skies, the lightnings flashed, and a thunderbolt, tearing down from the clouds, dashed through the roof, and at one stroke annihilated the jester and all who had moved him to asperse the Saints, or who had joined in the laugh he had raised against them.

Taking the _Mimus_ to be a species of court fool who sang to the accompaniment of some instrument, when required, then Louis VIII. had such an official at court, though whether this _mimus_ held his post by patent or not, is not mentioned by Nicholas de Braia, who notices the fact itself. This chronicler describes a grand banquet given by the King, shortly after his coronation, and which must have been a very jovial affair. “While they warm their hearts with the genial gift of Bacchus,” says the poet historian, “and care is swept away from the brow of the Prince by draughts of various wines, a mime celebrated for his skill on the harp, rises, and smiting his instrument, sings the praises of the King.” These praises were very highly strung indeed; and we only need to be told that censure, if necessary, or sarcasm, if opportunity allowed, was scattered amid the laudation, to be assured that the _mimus_ here spoken of was really something of the official fool also.

Although examples constantly present themselves of the unlicensed liberty which the French _plaisants_ took with their masters, instances are not wanting of their delicacy or timidity. For instance, when the fleet of Philip was captured or destroyed by that of Edward III., there was no one at court bold enough to communicate tidings of the disaster to the King, except a court fool, whose name has not, however, been mentioned by any historian. Going into the royal chamber, the _fou_ began muttering, “Those cowardly Englishmen! The chicken-hearted Britons!” “How so, Cousin?” asked Philip. “How so? Why, because they have not courage enough to jump into the sea, like your French sailors, who went headlong over from their ships, leaving those to the enemy who did not care to follow them!” And thus the King learned, by a most unpleasant method, the humiliation that had come upon him as well as defeat. The sarcasm must have fallen as painfully on the King’s ear as the assertion of the _Journal des Débats_ on the ear of all England, with respect to those Indian calamities which included the massacre of our women and children, namely, that France looked upon it all, “with curiosity and satisfaction!”