Canterbury Tales and Other Poems, Geoffrey Chaucer [good fiction books to read txt] 📗

Wife of Bath’s Prologue, where, after the jolly Dame has asserted that “half so boldly there can no man swear and lie as a woman can”, the poet hastens to interpose, in his own person, these two lines: “I say not this by wives that be wise, But if it be when they them misadvise.”

 

And again, in the Prologue to the “Legend of Good Women,”

from a description of the daisy —

 

“She is the clearness and the very light, That in this darke world me guides and leads,”

 

the poet, in the very next lines, slides into an address to his lady: “The heart within my sorrowful heart you dreads And loves so sore, that ye be, verily, The mistress of my wit, and nothing I,” &c.

 

When, therefore, the Clerk of Oxford is made to say that he will tell a tale —

 

“The which that I Learn’d at Padova of a worthy clerk,

As proved by his wordes and his werk.

He is now dead, and nailed in his chest, I pray to God to give his soul good rest.

Francis Petrarc’, the laureate poete,

Highte this clerk, whose rhetoric so sweet Illumin’d all Itaile of poetry… .

But forth to tellen of this worthy man, That taughte me this tale, as I began.” …

 

we may without violent effort believe that Chaucer speaks in his own person, though dramatically the words are on the Clerk’s lips. And the belief is not impaired by the sorrowful way in which the Clerk lingers on Petrarch’s death — which would be less intelligible if the fictitious narrator had only read the story in the Latin translation, than if we suppose the news of Petrarch’s death at Arqua in July 1374 to have closely followed Chaucer to England, and to have cruelly and irresistibly mingled itself with our poet’s personal recollections of his great Italian contemporary. Nor must we regard as without significance the manner in which the Clerk is made to distinguish between the “body” of Petrarch’s tale, and the fashion in which it was set forth in writing, with a proem that seemed “a thing impertinent”, save that the poet had chosen in that way to “convey his matter” — told, or “taught,” so much more directly and simply by word of mouth. It is impossible to pronounce positively on the subject; the question whether Chaucer saw Petrarch in 1373 must remain a moot-point, so long as we have only our present information; but fancy loves to dwell on the thought of the two poets conversing under the vines at Arqua; and we find in the history and the writings of Chaucer nothing to contradict, a good deal to countenance, the belief that such a meeting occurred.

 

Though we have no express record, we have indirect testimony, that Chaucer’s Genoese mission was discharged satisfactorily; for on the 23d of April 1374, Edward III grants at Windsor to the poet, by the title of “our beloved squire” — dilecto Armigero nostro — unum pycher. vini, “one pitcher of wine” daily, to be “perceived” in the port of London; a grant which, on the analogy of more modern usage, might he held equivalent to Chaucer’s appointment as Poet Laureate. When we find that soon afterwards the grant was commuted for a money payment of twenty marks per annum, we need not conclude that Chaucer’s circumstances were poor; for it may be easily supposed that the daily “perception” of such an article of income was attended with considerable prosaic inconvenience.

A permanent provision for Chaucer was made on the 8th of June 1374, when he was appointed Controller of the Customs in the Port of London, for the lucrative imports of wools, skins or “wool-fells,” and tanned hides — on condition that he should fulfil the duties of that office in person and not by deputy, and should write out the accounts with his own hand. We have what seems evidence of Chaucer’s compliance with these terms in “The House of Fame”, where, in the mouth of the eagle, the poet describes himself, when he has finished his labour and made his reckonings, as not seeking rest and news in social intercourse, but going home to his own house, and there, “all so dumb as any stone,” sitting “at another book,” until his look is dazed; and again, in the record that in 1376 he received a grant of L731, 4s. 6d., the amount of a fine levied on one John Kent, whom Chaucer’s vigilance had frustrated in the attempt to ship a quantity of wool for Dordrecht without paying the duty. The seemingly derogatory condition, that the Controller should write out the accounts or rolls (“rotulos”) of his office with his own hand, appears to have been designed, or treated, as merely formal; no records in Chaucer’s handwriting are known to exist — which could hardly be the case if, for the twelve years of his Controllership (1374-1386), he had duly complied with the condition; and during that period he was more than once employed abroad, so that the condition was evidently regarded as a formality even by those who had imposed it. Also in 1374, the Duke of Lancaster, whose ambitious views may well have made him anxious to retain the adhesion of a man so capable and accomplished as Chaucer, changed into a joint life-annuity remaining to the survivor, and charged on the revenues of the Savoy, a pension of L10 which two years before he settled on the poet’s wife — whose sister was then the governess of the Duke’s two daughters, Philippa and Elizabeth, and the Duke’s own mistress. Another proof of Chaucer’s personal reputation and high Court favour at this time, is his selection (1375) as ward to the son of Sir Edmond Staplegate of Bilsynton, in Kent; a charge on the surrender of which the guardian received no less a sum than L104.

 

We find Chaucer in 1376 again employed on a foreign mission.

In 1377, the last year of Edward III., he was sent to Flanders with Sir Thomas Percy, afterwards Earl of Worcester, for the purpose of obtaining a prolongation of the truce; and in January 13738, he was associated with Sir Guichard d’Angle and other Commissioners, to pursue certain negotiations for a marriage between Princess Mary of France and the young King Richard II., which had been set on foot before the death of Edward III.

The negotiation, however, proved fruitless; and in May 1378, Chaucer was selected to accompany Sir John Berkeley on a mission to the Court of Bernardo Visconti, Duke of Milan, with the view, it is supposed, of concerting military plans against the outbreak of war with France. The new King, meantime, had shown that he was not insensible to Chaucer’s merit — or to the influence of his tutor and the poet’s patron, the Duke of Lancaster; for Richard II. confirmed to Chaucer his pension of twenty marks, along with an equal annual sum, for which the daily pitcher of wine granted in 1374 had been commuted.

Before his departure for Lombardy, Chaucer — still holding his post in the Customs — selected two representatives or trustees, to protect his estate against legal proceedings in his absence, or to sue in his name defaulters and offenders against the imposts which he was charged to enforce. One of these trustees was called Richard Forrester; the other was John Gower, the poet, the most famous English contemporary of Chaucer, with whom he had for many years been on terms of admiring friendship —

although, from the strictures passed on certain productions of Gower’s in the Prologue to The Man of Law’s Tale,<6> it has been supposed that in the later years of Chaucer’s life the friendship suffered some diminution. To the “moral Gower” and “the philosophical Strode,” Chaucer “directed” or dedicated his “Troilus and Cressida;” <7> while, in the “Confessio Amantis,”

Gower introduces a handsome compliment to his greater contemporary, as the “disciple and the poet” of Venus, with whose glad songs and ditties, made in her praise during the flowers of his youth, the land was filled everywhere. Gower, however — a monk and a Conservative — held to the party of the Duke of Gloucester, the rival of the Wycliffite and innovating Duke of Lancaster, who was Chaucer’s patron, and whose cause was not a little aided by Chaucer’s strictures on the clergy; and thus it is not impossible that political differences may have weakened the old bonds of personal friendship and poetic esteem. Returning from Lombardy early in 1379, Chaucer seems to have been again sent abroad; for the records exhibit no trace of him between May and December of that year. Whether by proxy or in person, however, he received his pensions regularly until 1382, when his income was increased by his appointment to the post of Controller of Petty Customs in the port of London. In November 1384, he obtained a month’s leave of absence on account of his private affairs, and a deputy was appointed to fill his place; and in February of the next year he was permitted to appoint a permanent deputy —

thus at length gaining relief from that close attention to business which probably curtailed the poetic fruits of the poet’s most powerful years. <8>

 

Chaucer is next found occupying a post which has not often been held by men gifted with his peculiar genius — that of a county member. The contest between the Dukes of Gloucester and Lancaster, and their adherents, for the control of the Government, was coming to a crisis; and when the recluse and studious Chaucer was induced to offer himself to the electors of Kent as one of the knights of their shire — where presumably he held property — we may suppose that it was with the view of supporting his patron’s cause in the impending conflict. The Parliament in which the poet sat assembled at Westminster on the 1st of October, and was dissolved on the 1st of November, 1386. Lancaster was fighting and intriguing abroad, absorbed in the affairs of his Castilian succession; Gloucester and his friends at home had everything their own way; the Earl of Suffolk was dismissed from the woolsack, and impeached by the Commons; and although Richard at first stood out courageously for the friends of his uncle Lancaster, he was constrained, by the refusal of supplies, to consent to the proceedings of Gloucester. A commission was wrung from him, under protest, appointing Gloucester, Arundel, and twelve other Peers and prelates, a permanent council to inquire into the condition of all the public departments, the courts of law, and the royal household, with absolute powers of redress and dismissal. We need not ascribe to Chaucer’s Parliamentary exertions in his patron’s behalf, nor to any malpractices in his official conduct, the fact that he was among the earliest victims of the commission.<9> In December 1386, he was dismissed from both his offices in the port of London; but he retained his pensions, and drew them regularly twice a year at the Exchequer until 1388. In 1387, Chaucer’s political reverses were aggravated by a severe domestic calamity: his wife died, and with her died the pension which had been settled on her by Queen Philippa in 1366, and confirmed to her at Richard’s accession in 1377. The change made in Chaucer’s pecuniary position, by the loss of his offices and his wife’s pension, must have been very great. It would appear that during his prosperous times he had lived in a style quite equal to his income, and had no ample resources against a season of reverse; for, on the 1st of May 1388, less than a year and a half after being dismissed from the Customs, he was constrained to assign his pensions, by surrender in Chancery, to one John Scalby. In May 1389, Richard II.,