In the days of Chaucer

Table Of Contents

Page

Introduction vii

/. Where and When the Boy Lived —

Chapter I When And Where The Boy Lived Who

THE CHAUCERS WERE

EOFFREY CHAUCER,

the earliest of the great poets who have written In English, and the only writer of his time whose works are still read by others than students of language and literature, died In 1400, five centuries ago.

His life was during the childhood of England, for we must not forget that what we call the "old days" are truly the young days, when modern England was In Its beginning. The life of his time was simpler than our own, and In every way easier to be understood by those who lived in it. Even though It is now a part of I

^'history" and studied by scholarly men, we must not think the story of Chaucer's time a matter of dull learning : there were great and serious happenings, of course, but there were also the little every-day incidents, the round of work and play, the bits of talk, the comedies and jests of home, of school, that fill our hours to-day. We see all these in the poems of Chaucer, for he shows us the living England of the fourteenth century, making it pass before our eyes as it passed before his own — good and evil, comic or tragic, the life of high and low, rich and poor, good and bad.

In trying to make the England of Geoffrey Chaucer live again before our minds, we must first be sure to remember how many things were nearly the same. We are to bear it in mind that if we might be carried back to the land and times in which he lived, there would be no lack of surroundings we should find familiar. Out in the country, far from towns and farms, 2 there would be little to remind us we had gone back five hundred years from these days of the twentieth century: fields and woods, sea and sky, plants, insects, animals, would be the same or so like all we know that we could see in them no hint of their earlier date.

Closer study would show differences : we should find the sheep smaller, and the oxen, too ; for long years of careful breeding have made the farm animals larger. But only when we met inhabitants, when we took part in the life of town, village, or city would we know we had entered upon a different time. We might, on seeing a farm laborer, be struck by the oddity of his dress or by the unusual form of the tools he carried; but until we heard him speak, the man would not seem to us so very different from men of his kind as we see them about us to-day.

An attempt to talk with him, however, would bring out proof that "time works wonders." We could not understand the common English of that day until custom had taught us to catch the familiar words in the pronunciation of the time, and to know the grammar of the language when it was less simple.

Beginning thus, by finding the language not quite our own, but more like a foreigner's English, a dialect, we should, as we walked beside the farmer or shepherd to his home, come upon much that would be quite as strange as himself. On our way, w^e should no doubt take sly glances at his clothing, glances he would not notice, since he would be looking with as much curiosity at what we wore. He would be wearing "hose/' trousers and stockings combined; a loosely fitting doublet, or jacket, and a hood or cap of cloth — altogether a convenient and appropriate dress, and with the addition of a warm cloak, an excellent one for cold weather.

This was the simplest form of the costume of the time, but the rich added every sort of adornment they could devise, as Chaucer's poems will show you, for he describes the dress of his characters as if he were poet, artist, and tailor in one.

When we come near a town, we shall find little smoke in the air — there are no factories, no regular chimneys to the houses, and wood is almost the only fuel, though "sea-coal," as they called it, was in use by brewers and clothiers. Water or wind turns the mills that grind the grain, and most other work is done by hand.

In the towns, we see few shops, and not many tradesmen at work, the blacksmith, the tailor, the joiner, the cobbler — all these must have been kept busy; but the list of crafts is not a long one, and their business was carried on among their neighbors. Streets are narrow, because there is little traffic, and, being near together, the houses are convenient for friendly gossip.

The shopkeeper can talk with his neighbor over the way, or at either side ; in summer, housewives find their doorsteps attractive, and hfe goes on in the open air. Neighbors are friends or enemies, as it may happen, and, either way, keep the day from being dull.

Supposing that we have made friends with our imaginary guide Into the past, we settle down i : the village with him, and soon find how little of the outer world comes to these village folk. But what Is brought to them has a weight and interest, a living quality not found in printed news. They learn of the outside world from the lips of travellers, from pilgrims, glad to tell the story that wins them a seat by the log-fire, and a place at the table ; from the archer who shot many an arrow In the battle he describes; from a friar who can repeat the learned words of the abbots and monks In the abbeys and monasteries; from the carters who have been with harvest wagons to fairs In busy market towns, 6 and brought back the gossip of the day. Most exciting of all it is to listen to the mysteries told by credulous and superstitious sailors who have sailed unknown seas.

We find the people divided sharply into classes, and jealous of their rights and customs — the nobles, the clergy, merchants, farmers, laborers — their sons usually expecting to follow In the father's footsteps, and not only willing but proud to be known by their dress as of this or that vocation.

We find the people all Christians, in name If no more; going to the church services more or less as a matter of course, and yet anything but strait-laced. And we are amazed at the multitude of the folk who depend on the church for a livelihood — men and women, good, bad, or indifferent, and popular or unpopular, loved or hated, according to their lives and works.

For the most part, the people are not oppressed by want, and this partly because their needs are few. The houses are but rude huts with scant furnishing ; their food comes from their own fields and meadows ; their clothing is simple in fashion and sound in texture, lasting many years. Work is not hard to find, since nearly all labor is such as can be done by the unskilled, and because, after the middle of the century, the plague made workers scarce. Amusements are many and within the reach of. all, since they find their sport in such games or exercises as now amuse our young folk, or In pageants and processions, of which there Is no lack; and during earlier years of the time we are considering there were no threatening signs of the great civil wars that were In the Wars of the Roses to make all England a battlefield for the warfare of her nobles.

Altogether, Chaucer's land was a nation In Its first youth. There was enough of variety to make Its people Interesting to one another — variety in life, in dress. In occupation — and yet the old strife of races 8 was at an end, Norman and Saxon were united In a common patriotism, and under a single standard the English had shown their valor on many a noted field, against the French, the Scots, or the Welsh.

England was a nation, a young, healthy, child-like nation, with a child's faults and a child's virtues.

But we do not mean to deal with the larger facts of the times; those are for general histories and for the students. We shall try rather to make you glad to read of Chaucer, the man and the poet, as you might have known him If you had been his friend or neighbor, so that you may come to the reading of his works with the feeling that he was a man of flesh and blood, who loved his books, his countrymen, and his native land. It Is the only way to read him aright, for no poet was ever less fitted to be made only a text-book from which to study lessons. Study him we must, if we are to understand the beginnings of English verse; but the best study of a poet is when we learn to read his work with pleasure. Until we know him and something of the Hfe he led, we cannot feel his charm.

In the first place, we must not imagine that anyone of the time took the trouble to put down for later ages even the briefest account of Chaucer's life. The old writers of chronicles were careful to tell us of battles, of floods, of kings and warriors, but they could not understand that after five centuries we care much more about the poet than about the king or the great barons, and the battles they fought. We do not know certainly even the date of Chaucer's birth. For many years it was believed upon tradition that the date 1328 was once marked on his tombstone in Westminster Abbey. But later scholars think this a mistake, and have decided that the poet must have been born about 1340.

A good reason for accepting the later 10 date Is this: In the year 1386 there was a trial held in the city of Westminster, and the record shows that Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the witnesses. In the proceedings It is stated that Chaucer is a man of forty years and upward, and has borne arms for twenty-seven years. If this was meant to be taken as at all an exact statement, the very smallest boy in school has only to subtract a little more than forty from 1386, and the remainder will give the date of Chaucer's birth as about 1340. But the testimony may not have been meant to be more than a proof that the witness was past middle age, just as men nowadays when about to vote will say, "over twenty-one," even if they are forty or more. Indeed, It is known that In the same trial other witnesses made widely wrong statements as to their ages, and also as to the period during which they "bore arms" — statements making them bear arms In infancy. May It not be that II the old French word "armeez" means "bore a coat-of-arms" ? This was the age of heraldry, and even an infant might have a coat-of-arms. "Armeez" has that meaning in the testimony given by Chaucer in this very trial.

If we had no other evidence, we might still be doubtful; but we find that to put his birth at about this time fits in fairly well with the facts of his life, and seems probable in so many ways that it may be accepted until we know more exactly. Thus, if we take the statement that he had borne arms for twenty-seven years in 1386, and reckon back, we shall see that he began military life in 1359, and was then nineteen or a year or two less when he first bore arms — which seems reasonable, especially when we find that it was in 1359 we first hear of Chaucer as a soldier, for we know he was with the army of Edward III during an expedition to France made in that year. 12

Besides, there are legal records showing that John Chaucer, the poet's father, was under fourteen In 1324, and unmarried during some part of 1328; so It does not therefore seem likely his son was born In 1328.

Let us then believe, until we know more exactly, that It was some time not long after 1340 that we must think of the arrival of Geoffrey, son of John Chaucer, the vintner of the little city London on the Thames. John Chaucer, the wine-merchant and tavern-keeper, lived not far from the river, and one boundary of his garden was a small brook, called "Wall Brook," the place of which Is still to be found on the map of London, since the street "Walbrook," not far from the Cannon Street Station, retains the name of the little water-course that bounded the Chaucer garden.

It was an excellent place for a tavern. London Bridge, then a long stone bridge, 13 with a gate-house guarding each end and a chapel in the middle, was, even in the fourteenth century, a busy thoroughfare over which horsemen and footmen were coming and going all day. John Chaucer's tavern was sure of plenty of custom, for in those times whoever was thirsty must drink either ale or small beer — water was not thought at all wholesome. Probably the idea had good foundation, so far as the city water was concerned, for all sources of supply were likely to be polluted by the waste of the town.

We may be sure that the wayfarers over the bridge often turned aside to visit the tavern kept by the Chancers near Dowgate Hill. From his earliest boyhood the poet is likely to have seen all sorts and conditions of men as they visited the tavern. Probably it was a well-known hostelry, since Geoffrey's grandfather also had been a vintner, and may have kept a tavern in the same house or the same neighborhood. Back of the grandfather, Robert, we know nothing of the family, though from the name (which seems to be a form of the French word ^^ chancier, ^^ meaning "shoemaker" or "stocking-weaver") we may guess that some ancestor was of that trade. The name was not an uncommon one in those times, which makes it not easy to tell which of the many that bore it were related to the poet's family.

Chapter II His Boyhood And Education As It May

HAVE BEEN HE BECOMES A PAGE IN

THE ENGLISH COURT

There is nothing recorded of Geoffrey's boyhood, and we must imagine it for ourselves by fitting together what we can find out about the lives of boys of that day, remembering that he was the son of a well-to-do citizen of London, then a city of less than 50,000 inhabitants.

Certain things we can take for granted because of his later life. Thus there is no doubt that Chaucer was well educated, for we find him in manhood showing knowledge of all the learning of his time — Latin, French, the sciences, and literature, and this in spite of his passing a busy life in court and in the city. Where he went 16 to school we do not know. It may be that he was taught at home by a tutor, some churchman, or In some of the church schools. We know about what he must have studied — languages, grammar and rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, for these were the branches then taught. While we might find much to criticize in the old method of teaching, it is well to remember that from it came the training that made the author of the "Canterbury Tales," and to turn out so finished a product is all that can be expected of any system, no matter how scientific. For him, at least, the system must have been fairly good, since it made him a student all his life, and a lover of learning. The school-days of an English boy in the Middle Ages were never very pleasant. There was far too much reliance on the rod as a means of education. In his book "Chaucer's England," Matthew Browne says; "It Is quite bad enough to think of their discomfort at a public school in those days. Tumbling out of bed before daylight on frosty mornings ; no fire, or, when fire came, a smoky room; long lessons before breakfast; lumps of meat flung to the boys as If they were dogs; long, dreary prayers ; no women about the place to give an air of light and tenderness, but only frowsy, dirty monks and other men ; then, the dark hole [a prison or cell, used as punishment] and plenty of the rod — It must have been delightful."

We can imagine that all he says Is true, and yet believe It Is not a complete, and so not a fair picture. While it applies to the cold and dreary days of winter, there could not be a school without some brightness. Even in the Middle Ages, really good teachers existed to make the best of bad conditions, to give life to the lessons they taught, and to enliven the duller hours of school by their good humor. There were also the usual school-boy tricks, and the llti8 tie jokes of the class-room, for these things must be wherever young people meet together. In spring and autumn, too, even dingy old halls become bright, and in expecting the pleasures of the playground the hours of study soon pass. It is easy to give a wrong impression of anything by telling only one side of its story.

Once school was out, what a number of games there were for the boys of Chaucer's London ! They seem to have had all we play to-day, besides a great number that have been long forgotten. It would take too much space to give even a hasty list of them. We can mention only a few of the more usual ones. Thus, for in-doors and rainy weather, there were cards, chess — which was very generally played, and even taught as a part of fashionable education — dice, ''tables," or backgammon, besides the old tricks we know as amusements of All-hallo3ye'en, such as "bobcherry" and the like. Out of doors they engaged in leaping, wrestling, casting the stone, and especially archery, the last being thought so important that citizens were required to practise with the bow on all feast days.

Boys had already many sorts of ballgames, the early forms of cricket, handball, foot-ball, frap-ball, golf, and hockey. Besides these games there were, of course, the regular out-door sports, such as swimming, riding, sailing, and in winter there was skating on the Moorfield, north of the city, and at times on the Thames itself, though instead of our dainty and convenient "club skates," that are clamped to the feet in an instant, young Chaucer, if he wished to skate, had to content himself with the thigh-bones of an animal, clumsily tied to his feet — just how, we do not know. It would be interesting to see one of these old skates, of which some specimens have been dug up, and to find out whether there was any edge to them, or whether the skater merely shuffled along over the Ice, really sliding. The chances are that there was some sort of edge, since an old writer speaks of skaters "going like the wind," which they could hardly have done on the round surface of a bone.

Besides the sports somewhat familiar to us, there were some that Imitated old forms of warfare, and so have naturally been given up. Tilting was practised with a stick Instead of a lance, and against the "quintain," instead of against a knight. There were many sorts of quintains, but the idea of all was to set up a mark so that If the tilter failed to strike it fairly he would receive a buffet from a stuffed bag, or perhaps be drenched by the upsetting of a tub of water, or would in some other way pay a penalty for his awkwardness.

We may know that these games were really played at the time, for It was necessary to pass a law forbidding boys to play at "Prisoners' Base" at Westminster 21 during the sessions of parliament ! There is something delightful in the idea of the grave counsellors of Edward III being annoyed by the shouts of the small boys chasing one another about Westminster Hall without the slightest regard for the dignity of the legislators who were making history within.

Besides all these every-day sports there were spectacles to be seen everywhere — pageants, processions of trade-guilds, shows, jugglers, acrobats, strolling musicians, men with trained animals, all the catchpenny contrivances that would serve to tempt a few coins out of the purses that hung heavy from the girdles of the prosperous citizens of England's capital. And each holiday had its form of merrymakings

In order to understand why this was the

case, we must remember that in those

times there was more leisure to give to such

forms of amusement. In the first place, there were fewer books to read. The few manuscripts there were In all England were kept mainly in the universities or abbeys. Making copies of them was a long, slow, and costly matter, and there was no public to pay for them. Not all, even among the nobles, could read, as you know; and it was much pleasanter to listen to old ballads sung by minstrels than to spell out dry "Lives of the Saints." Then, too, people had to take their recreation in the daylight, for at night the streets were unlighted (there were no street-lamps in London till 141 6), and in-doors the candles or torches were too costly to be much used except in the homes of the great nobles, wealthy churchmen, or merchant princes. Consequently most people kept early hours, and had time for some rest during the long day they secured by early rising.

Not only did they have more time, but more inclination for such amusements.

Reading so much less, they thought the more of the real life that went on before their eyes. Where a modern family would stay in-doors with their eyes fixed upon newspapers or books, the same family in the reign of Edward III. would dress themselves in their best and be out in the streets or fields to see and to be seen.

On holidays, the folks of London town took part as actors or spectators in the customary performances of the season. And they kept many more holidays and holy days than have survived to our time. Christmas was rather a season than a day of rejoicing, and its celebration lasted until Twelfth Day, at least, and often till Candlemas, that is, the second of February. The beginning and the end of the year each had its observances. And to these we must add Candlemas itself, Shrovetide, St. Valentine's Day, Palm Sunday, Easter, May Day, Midsummer Eve, Michaelmas, and a number of saints* 24 days, to say nothing of every Saturday afternoon and Sunday, for there was no Idea until long after Chaucer's lifetime that there was any harm In games or amusements on Sunday, which, except for churchgoing, was kept as a feast-day.

Without bearing In mind the difference between his life and ours In these respects, It Is Impossible for us to put ourselves In Chaucer's place and to understand his poems and his career. We must get Into our minds a picture of his home.

The tavern of his father stood, as has been said, on the rapid little brook that flowed Into the Thames at Dowgate. It was no doubt a plaster or a wooden building, roofed with tiles, having a court In the centre, around which was the tavern, with galleries. On the ground floor were the public rooms, furnished with a few rude tables and benches or stools, while upstairs, reached from the court in the centre, were the rooms for the lodgers and 25 the family. Being in so public a thoroughfare, it was probably a busy place, with the coming and going of the guests, the running to and fro of the maids and the grooms, the passing of serving-men, and the babel of loud talk, in French and the dialects of English.

What better place could there have been for the boy Geoffrey to study the people of his period? To the tavern came the knights and their esquires, the merchants and the prentices, the buyers and sellers of cloth and wool, the courtiers and the monks, the minstrels and jugglers ; and all passed before the keen eyes of the boy who was to paint them so vividly for us of five hundred years later.

John Chaucer, the keeper of the tavern, must have been a man of substance and of good repute, for we are told that he had been with King Edward in 1338 upon a visit to Cologne and Antwerp, when the English were forming an alli- 26 ance with the Germans against the French. King Edward was bent upon making an Impression of wealth and power, and he would not be likely to take with him one who was no more than a mere keeper of a tavern. John Chaucer may have had charge of the king's supplies; but as Geoffrey's mother was also a member of the party, It would seem that the Chaucers were not merely on a business trip. This journey was made but a few years before the birth of the poet, and Is important to us only as showing the respectable rank of his parents.

We may note that in all probability the name of Chaucer's mother was Agnes, and that she was the heir and "consangulnea" or relative — perhaps a niece — of Hamo de Compton, a "moneyer," which was, if we may judge by a line In Chaucer's translation of the "Romance of the Rose," either a banker or a money-changer. So she may have been heiress to a man who was well-to-do, and may have brought her husband a rich dowry.

But even in London, the richest city of England, we should not expect to find at that period any impressive buildings except the great churches and castles. The houses were in many cases very mean affairs of timber and mortar, for brick and stone were as yet rarely used for private houses. Most of them were of but one story, and only the better class of citizens had added the upper rooms, then known as "solars," a name that is thought to be derived from the Latin "50/^nwm," and to have been first given to the flat roof of a house upon which one could sit in the sun, and then to have come to mean any upper story. Access to the solar was usually by an outside stairway.

The shops of this very prosperous city

were not at all magnificent, being merely

little booths built out in front of the houses,

so as to make an open counter, where the merchant could display his goods In sight of the passers-by. The counter being protected from the weather only by its roof, it must have been necessary to remove all goods into the house whenever there came more than a gentle shower; and at night all the goods had to be taken in from these booths, and stored away till morning.

The unpaved roads in front of the houses were of course often muddy, and there was little attempt to keep them clear. If you will look at any ordinary country road with its ditches along the sides to carry off the water that runs down from the high part In the middle, you will have a perfect Idea of the London street of Chaucer's boyhood; though some of the more travelled streets were beginning to be paved during his later lifetime. To keep their feet out of the mud the people sometimes wore high clogs of wood, but it Is probable that In the very wet days most kept In-doors, for the umbrella was 29 to be unknown for some centuries. How It did rain at times! There was one year before Chaucer was ten years old when the old chroniclers assure us that it rained almost continuously from midsummer till Christmas.' This was in 1349; but at about that time in the world's history there were recorded many unaccountable freaks of nature.

This was the period of the "Black Death," that terrible scourge during which millions of people died of a mysterious and incurable malady. There is no reason why we should recount its horrors, and it will be enough to say that in the city of London alone it is believed to have caused the death of half the inhabitants during the fourteen months of its continuance. That there is hardly a reference to this enormous calamity in the writings of Chaucer, seems to indicate that he is more likely to have been eight years old or less at the time than twenty, as he would have been if 30 born, according to. the older authorities, in 1328. To a little child the great plague would soon become only a vague memory, but a young man of twenty would have been deeply impressed by the terrible scenes he then witnessed.

There is another possible explanation of the absence In Chaucer's works of any trace of the darkest side of the life of the English people. Chaucer was not a poet of the people. He soon became attached to the English court, as we shall see, and passed his young manhood with those whose lives were far from any share in the troubles of the poor and humble. They looked to their poet for literature that would give pleasure to their leisure hours. Naturally, he chose such subjects and such methods of treatment as were most acceptable to his fashionable patrons, and left to others the recording of the sufferings of the poor, the injustice of the powerful, and the shortcomings of the clergy.