Part 11
But no! The penholder of Jones is too much for the grasp of my attenuated fingers. I cannot manage it. I may not attempt to particularise the various fibbings, sloggings, grassings, and chancery suits to which the conflicting champions subjected one another. I will confine myself to a statement in plain language,--that the gallant Percy, having more than once drawn claret from the heroic Plantagenet, and the latter mountain of courage having given birth to a ridiculous mouse under the left ogle of his opponent, both champions having repeatedly kissed the old woman *, and risen from that filial process in a piping condition, the future winner of the Agincourt belt had it all his own way, until the terror of the Scottish borders was eventually gone into and finished.
* Mother Earth. Vide “Tintinabulus.” London edition, 1857.
After all, there is nothing like plain, straightforward, intelligible, unadorned English!
Then, says Shakspeare, the Prince of Wales, having wiped his ensanguined sword, and, let us assume, briefly congratulated himself on being well out of a serious difficulty, delivered a funereal oration over the body of his late adversary, which proved his Royal Highness to be gifted with the most eminent qualifications for a popular lecturer. This burst of eloquence being terminated to his own satisfaction, he looked round with the pardonable vanity of a public speaker, to see if anybody had been listening to him. He was disappointed to discover no one but Sir John Falstaff, apparently dead, on the ground.
However, being in the oratorical vein, his Royal Highness was not to be deterred from speaking, by so contemptible a reason as the absence of a living auditory. He accordingly let off the following speech, addressed to what he considered a dead gentleman. A foolish proceeding, if you will, but princes are privileged:--
“What! old acquaintance! could not all this flesh Keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell! I could have better spar’d a better man. O! I should have a heavy miss of thee, If I were much in love with vanity. Death hath not struck so fat a deer to-day, Though many dearer, in this bloody fray. Embowell’d will I see thee by and by; Till then, in blood by noble Percy lie.”
Having delivered himself of this laboured composition, the Prince of Wales went away to tell his father what a clever thing he had done.
And then Sir John Falstaff--got up! He had had ample breathing time, and felt, upon the whole, much better. He had sufficiently recovered his faculties to overhear and understand the concluding phrases of the Prince’s soliloquy.
“Embowelled!” said Jack, rising slowly (the expression is Shakspeare’s);
“If thou embowel me to-day, I’ll give you leave to powder me, and eat me “to-morrow. ‘Sblood, ‘twas time to counterfeit, or that hot, termagant Scot “had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit! I lie; I am no counterfeit. “To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath “not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liveth, “is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed. The “better part of valour is--discretion; in the which better part I have saved “my life.”
The unapproachable wisdom of these words, which have claimed the discussion of the subtlest modern commentators, it is too late in the day to dwell upon.
And then Sir John Falstaff looked round and saw the dead body of poor Harry Percy. He was frightened, and confessed himself so. But let it be borne in mind _he only confessed it to himself_. The bravest are subject to fear. The faculty of apprehension implies comprehension. Lord Nelson had a dread of the sea to his dying day, because he knew it would be sure to make him sick for the first few days of a voyage. “You were frightened,” said a bantering subaltern, after the Battle of Inkermann, to a veteran whose cheeks had turned as white as his hair on entering the action. “Quite true,” said the brave old man, who had been nearly cut to pieces; “if you had been half so frightened as I was, you would have run away.”
Let Sir John Falstaff speak for himself on the occasion:--
“Zounds! I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy, though he be dead. How if he should counterfeit too, and rise?”
Quite possible! Sir John knew very little of the defunct Percy’s character. How was he to divine that Hotspur had but been distinguished by the worser part of valour--brute courage? For aught he knew, the young Northumbrian might have been as sensible a man as himself. But let us not interrupt the knight’s soliloquy.
“I am afraid he would prove the better counterfeit. Therefore I’ll make him sure; _yea, and swear I killed him_. Why may not he rise as well as I? Nothing confutes me but eyes, and nobody sees me.”
(This episode of the civil war may be supposed to have taken place in a sheltered ravine of the plain of Shrewsbury, then intersected by the numerous branches of a stream, the source of which--on the hill of Haughmond--is now dried up.)
“Therefore, sirrah, with a new wound in your thigh, come you along with me.”
Saying these words, Sir John Falstaff inflicted a gash upon the still warm body of Percy, which he proceeded to hoist on his shoulders. Not an easy task, considering our knight’s bulk; but he was born to face and conquer difficulties!
The native impetuosity of the Prince of Wales’s character cannot be better illustrated than by his impatience to procure a witness of some kind or another to his recent achievement. In the absence of a better, he pounced upon his little brother John, Prince of Lancaster, and possibly the most uninteresting character in English history. He dragged that mild prince to the scene of action, which they reached just in time to meet Sir John Falstaff bearing off the mortal remains of the illustrious Percy.
Bewilderment and utter confusion of the distinguished visitors--especially Prince Henry.
“Now then, Hal,” said Prince John (I translate the stilted versification of Shakspeare into familiar prose); “I thought you told me this stout party had gone to that thingamy from which no what-do-you-call-it returns?”
“Ahem! so I did,” replied the elder, stammering and blushing a little.
“I saw the individual in question in a positively door-nail condition, not ten minutes ago; and I can scarcely believe my senses----”
“Mr. Paunch--are you dead?”
No reply.
“Because, if you are, be so kind as to say so--like a man. Seeing is by no means believing in this exceptional case. I should be an ass, indeed, if I were to say I am all ears; but I listen attentively for your own testimony as to whether you are what you appear to be, or not.”
“No, that’s certain,” replied Sir John, throwing down his body (I now quote the chronicler textually). “I am not a double man. There is Percy: if your father will do me any honour, so; if not, let him kill the next Percy himself. I look to be either earl or duke, I can assure you.”
The Prince of Wales scratched his ear, and looked very uncomfortable. The Prince of Lancaster eyed his brother with an unmistakeable expression of opinion that the latter was the greatest humbug in the family--which was saying a good deal.
“Why,--” Prince Henry stammered awkwardly, addressing himself to Sir John Falstaff,--“Percy I killed myself, and saw thee dead.”
Prince John of Lancaster whistled a popular melody in a low key.
Sir John Falstaff lifted up his hands, and exclaimed--
“Didst thou? Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down, and out of breath; and so was he: but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock. If I may be believed, so; if not, let them that should reward valour take the sin upon their own heads. I’ll take it upon my death, I gave him this wound in the thigh: if the man were alive and would deny it, I would make him eat a piece of my sword.”
Prince John of Lancaster continued to whistle, and implied that the story was, to say the least,--singular. It was evident he was inclined to attach more credit to the representations of Sir John Falstaff than to those of his elder brother. You see, they had been, at school together. No man is a hero in the eyes of the valet who takes off his boots when he is not in a condition to remove them himself; or in those of the little brother whom he has fleeced, fagged, and bullied at a public college.
Appearances were certainly against the Prince of Wales, and he was, at any rate, philosopher enough to make the best of the difficulty. For once, the conqueror of Agincourt--Englishman and warrior as he was--knew and confessed himself beaten. He felt that in this particular contest Sir John Falstaff had got decidedly the best of him, and morally yielded his sword with princely grace.
He contented himself with remarking to the Prince of Lancaster, “this is the strangest fellow, brother John.”
And then, addressing Falstaff,
“Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back. For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.”
At this juncture a retreat was sounded, proving that the fortune of war had decided in favour of the Royalist faction. The two princes hastened to their father’s tent, Sir John Falstaff following, with the body of Hotspur on his back, soliloquising as follows:
“I’ll follow, as they say, for reward. He that rewards me, Heaven reward him! If I do grow great, I’ll grow less; for I’ll purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do.”
The above is the Shakspearian account, and--as I have already stated--in consistency I am bound to adopt it. But what I want to know is this,--why, if the Prince of Wales really killed Hotspur, the paid chroniclers of the period have not reported it? I admit I can come to no definite conclusion upon the subject, and will confine myself to the expression of an opinion that _the death of Hotspur is still an open question_,--with the supplementary reminder that Sir John Falstaff, being only a private gentleman of limited means, could not hope for the historic recognition of an honour disputed with him by the heir-apparent of England. And--to come to the point at once--I really believe that Sir John Falstaff _did_ kill Hotspur, and that his royal patron bore him a grudge on that account to his dying day. It is the only logical explanation of Henry the Fifth’s notorious ingratitude to his former boon companion, whom it would have been so easy and natural for him to load with honours.
The Earl of Douglas, as we have seen, was punished by being sent back to Scotland. Sir John Falstaff, contrary to his reasonable expectations, was not made either Duke or Earl, in recompense of an achievement for which, whether really performed by him or no, he at least obtained credit in the opinion of many impartial persons. Herein we find not merely an illustration of the proverbial ingratitude of monarchs, but also one, by implication, of the personal jealousy of Prince Henry towards Sir John Falstaff, whom, as the sequel will show, the Prince of Wales treated with the most pointed malignity from the date of the Shrewsbury action to that of the knight’s death.
I will merely remark that Henry Plantagenet--fifth English king of that name--_was not a man to do anything without a motive_.
What Sir John Falstaff really gained by his glorious victory of Shrewsbury shall be seen in future chapters. It will be found that he was not a loser by the transaction. I will conclude the present chapter by a quotation from our knight’s expressed opinions before entering the field of battle:--
“Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour pricks me off when I “come on? How then? Can honour set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. “Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery “then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that word honour? “Air; a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday? “Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible, then? “Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? “Detraction will not suffer it;--therefore, I’ll none of it. Honour is a “mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism.”
I think the above observations prove that Sir John Falstaff knew rather more about honour than most people of his time, and therefore deserves a prominent position amongst the honourable men of the age he lived in.
BOOK THE FOURTH, 1410--1413.
I. OF THE SIGNAL VICTORY GAINED BY SIR JOHN FALSTAFF
OVER THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND.
There is reason to believe that Sir John Falstaff remained for some months in the north-west of England, doubtless employed in pursuit of the scattered remnants of the rebel forces. Some considerable time must have elapsed from the date of the battle of Shrewsbury to that of his next appearance in London of which we have any positive record. Sir John was most favourably received on his return to the metropolis, where he was more than compensated for the ingratitude of the court by the hospitable treatment of the citizens, at whose expense he and his retainers feasted in great profusion for many weeks, solely on the strength of the glowing accounts received (never mind from what source) of our knight’s achievements in Shropshire.
But a warrior like Sir John may not long rest on his laurels. A new enemy had to be faced, arising in an unexpected quarter.
One of the most eminent men of the reign of Henry the Fourth (after Sir John Falstaff) was William Gascoigne, Knight and Chief Justice of England. The biography of this wise and excellent judge will be found in Master Fuller’s work upon English Worthies; a book which would be irreproachable but for the culpable and glaring omission of a personage so eminently entitled to prominence in such a collection as the hero of these pages. The anecdote of Sir William’s courageous committal of the Prince of Wales for contempt of court--in the celebrated criminal action of the King _versus_ Bardolph--is too well known to need recapitulation here. It is true that, bearing as it does on two of the most conspicuous characters in this narrative, some slight discussion might be opportunely employed on the occurrence; for instance, as to the nature of the offence which originally got our rubicund friend “into trouble,” and what was the real extent of the magnanimity displayed by the Prince, on the one hand, and the Lord Chief Justice, on the other. It would be valuable to the cause of historic truth to make quite certain whether the whole affair was, or was not, what, in the parlance of modern criminal jurisprudence, is called a “put up concern” between the two distinguished actors, having for its object a harvest of mutual popularity. The fact that Bardolph _was at liberty_ in an incredibly short space of time after the event, lends a slight colour of such suspicion as I have hinted at to the transaction; but the rights of the matter are involved in such hopeless obscurity as to render all investigation on the subject worse than idle.
Though in the enjoyment of much and well-merited court favour, and public approbation, and being a man of modest integrity, it is still not unnatural or inexcusable that Sir William Gascoigne should feel some little jealousy of the more brilliant attainments and more enviable renown of a warrior, statesman, wit, and scholar like Sir John Falstaff.
The weakness of envy is perhaps the most difficult of all Adam’s legacy for the best of us to rid ourselves of. History, ancient and modern, abounds in illustrations of the tenacity of this vice, even in the noblest natures. Dionysius the elder, and the great Cardinal Richelieu, though the one an absolute monarch of the fairest island in Greek colonised Europe, and the other the virtual master of the most warlike and polished realm of the seventeenth century, were both jealous of the pettiest scribblers of their respective days. The author of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and “The Citizen of the World,” could not see a mountebank throw a summerset but he must risk the scattering of his valuable brains in an attempt to do the same thing better. To seek an illustration nearer our own time, have we not the celebrated little boy of the United States of America, who, though he had carried away the prizes for writing and arithmetic, committed suicide because an inferior mathematician of his own class defeated him in the correct spelling of “phthisic!”?
Is it then a great wonder that the Lord Chief Justice of England (an office which, after all, was then of little more importance than that of a police magistrate of the present day) should have felt envious of a man so vastly his superior in every way (except in the trifling matters of solvency and conventional honesty), as Sir John Falstaff, and should have sought to annoy his brilliant rival by every means in his power; of which, considering the official position of the one man, and the habits of the other, there could have been no scarcity?
Amongst other illustrations of what must be called _petty persecution_--(for, in a work of this serious description, things should receive their right names without respect to persons)--on the part of Sir William Gascoigne towards Sir John Falstaff, it may be mentioned that the former chose to consider the Gadshill expedition as a grave offence, punishable by the defective criminal code of the period. He summoned Sir John to appear before him to answer the charge. Sir John treated the invitation with the contempt it deserved, and went off to kill Percy--stay, that is a slip of the pen--I should say, to distinguish himself in the glorious field of Shrewsbury.
It will hardly be supposed that the tidings of Sir John Falstaff’s safe return from action under a perfect forest of fresh-grown laurels were particularly agreeable to Sir William Gascoigne. Gall and wormwood, on the contrary, may be assumed to have been the flavour imparted by them to the chief judicial mind. At any rate, it is indisputable that his lordship had not many days heard of our hero’s safe arrival and honoured treatment in London when he took a walk, attended only by a single follower, for the express purpose of taking Sir John Falstaff into custody. There is but one consideration which makes such a proceeding _wholly inexcusable_--namely, that the Justice should have nursed his vindictiveness for a period of so many months. This, it must be admitted, argues a relentless and unforgiving nature.
The Chief Justice was an artful man, as will be believed from his having risen to high rank in the legal profession. He thought it prudent to veil his malignant design even from his attendant.
“What’s he that goes there?” He enquired, breaking off a general conversation to point towards a stout gentleman whom he saw walking leisurely down the street followed by a diminutive page.
“Falstaff, an’t please your Lordship.”
His Lordship affected absence of mind.
“He that was in question for the robbery?”
_The_ robbery! You observe, reader? There was but one robbery present to his Lordship’s mind, and that one committed possibly more than a twelvemonth back.
“He, my Lord: but he hath since done good service at Shrewsbury; and, as I hear, is now going with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster.”
“What, to York?”
The countenance of his worship fell considerably. These tidings were baffling to his hopes of vengeance. Sir John Falstaff was once more in the king’s commission, and consequently not liable to arrest. Still Sir William was loth to let his prey slip wholly away from him.
“Call him back,” he said to his servant.
There was some difficulty in getting the knight to arrest his course.
In the first place, he was afflicted with a sudden deafness. This temporary obstacle overcome, he showed an obtuseness of understanding as to what was said to him that was really surprising in a man of his intellectual antecedents. At length the Justice attacked him personally, with--
“Sir John Falstaff, a word with you.”
The Chief Justice had his wish--rather more than his wish, in fact. Sir John Falstaffs manner of gratifying it shall be given in the exact words of the chronicler *:--
* “Henry IV” (Part II.) Act I. Sc. 2.
Sir John Falstaff.--My good lord! God give your lordship good time of day. I am glad to see your lordship abroad; I heard say your lordship was sick: I hope your lordship goes abroad by advice. Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, hath yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time; and I most humbly beseech your lordship, to have a reverend care of your health.
Chief Justice.--Sir John, I sent for you before your expedition to Shrewsbury.
Sik John Falstaff.--An’t please your lordship, I hear his majesty is returned with some discomfort from Wales.
Chief Justice.--I talk not of his majesty:--You would not come when I sent for you.
Sir John Falstaff__And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this same villainous apoplexy.
Chief Justice.--Well, heaven mend him! I pray you, let me speak with you.
Sib John Falstaff.--This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an’t please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a rascally tingling.
Chief Justice.--What tell you me of it? be it as it is.
Sir John Falstaff.--It hath its original from much grief; from study, and perturbation of the brain: I have read the cause of his effects in Galen: it is a kind of deafness.
Chief Justice.--I think you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you.
Sir John Falstaff.--Very well, my lord, very well: rather, an’t please you, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.
Chief Justice.--To punish you by the heels would amend the attention of your ears; and I care not, if I do become your physician.
Sir John Falstaff.--I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient; your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to me, in respect of poverty; but how I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or, indeed, a scruple itself.
Chief Justice.--I sent for you, when there were matters against you for your life, to come speak with me.
Sir John Falstaff.--As I was then advised by my learned counsel in the laws of this land-service, I did not come.
Chief Justice.--Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy.
Sir John Falstaff.--He that buckles him in my belt cannot live in less.
Chief Justice.---Your means are very slender, and your waste great.
Sir John Falstaff.--I would it were otherwise; I would my means were greater, and my waist slenderer.
Chief Justice.--You have misled the youthful prince.
Sir John Falstaff.--The young prince hath misled me: I am the fellow with the great belly, and he my dog.
Chief Justice.--Well, I am loath to gall a new-healed wound: your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little gilded over your night’s exploit on Gads hill: you may thank the unquiet time for your quiet o’er-posting that action.
Sir John Falstaff.--My lord?--
Chief Justice.’--But since all is well, keep it so: wake not a sleeping wolf.
Sir John Falstaff.--To wake a wolf is as bad as to smell a fox.
Chief Justice.--What! you are as a candle, the better part burnt out.
Sir John Falstaff.--A wassel candle, my lord: all tallow: if I did say of wax, my growth would approve the truth.
Chief Justice.--There is not a white hair on your face, but should have his effect of gravity.
Sir John Falstaff.--His effect of gravy, gravy, gravy.
Chief Justice__You follow the young prince up and down, like his ill angel.