Chaucer for Children: A Golden Key. Geoffrey Chaucer
is known of him for several years, except that he was in such distress that he was actually obliged to part with his two pensions for a sum of money in order to pay his debts.
During all the eventful years that followed Edward III.’s death, up to this time, Chaucer had been writing busily, in the midst of his weightier affairs. The ‘Complaint of Mars,’ ‘Boece,’ ‘Troilus and Cressida,’ the ‘House of Fame,’ and the ‘Legend of Good Women,’ all of which I hope you will read some day, were written in this period; also some reproachful words to his scrivener, who seems to have written out his poems for him very carelessly. Some persons think that Chaucer’s pathetic ‘Good Counsel,’ and his short ‘Balade sent to King Richard,’ reflect the disappointment and sadness at his changed lot, which he must have felt; and that, therefore, these poems were written at about the same time.
X.
In 1389 there was another great change in the government. The King, being of age, wished to govern the country without help, and he sent away one of his uncles, who was on the people’s side, and asked John of Gaunt to come back to England. John of Gaunt’s son was made one of the new ministers. Immediately Chaucer was thought of. He was at once appointed Clerk of the King’s Works—an office of some importance—which he was permitted to hold by deputy; and his salary was two shillings per day—that is £36 10s. 0d. a-year, equal to about £370 of our money.
It seems that Chaucer kept this appointment only for two years. Why, we cannot tell.[19] While he held this office (viz., Sept. 1390)a misfortune befell him. Some notorious thieves attacked him, near the ‘foule Ok’ (foul Oak), and robbed him of £20 (nearly £200 present currency) of the King’s money, his horse, and other movables. This was a mishap likely enough to overtake any traveller in those days of bad roads and lonely marshes, for there was no great protection by police or soldiery in ordinary cases. The King’s writ, in which he forgives Chaucer this sum of £20, is still extant.
What he did, or how he lived, for some time after his retirement from the King’s Works in 1391, is not known; but in 1394, King Richard granted him a pension of £20 (= £200 present currency) per annum for life. This was the year when John of Gaunt married Chaucer’s sister-in-law; but, in spite of this rich alliance, I fear Chaucer was still in great distress, for we hear of many small loans which he obtained on this new pension during the next four years, which betray too clearly his difficulties. In 1398, the King granted him letters to protect him against arrest—that is, he wrote letters forbidding the people to whom Chaucer owed money to put him in prison, which they would otherwise have done.
It is sad that during these latter years of his life, the great poet who had done so much, and lived so comfortably, should have grown so poor and harassed. He ought to have been beyond the reach of want. He had had large sums of money; his wife’s sister was Duchess of Lancaster; his son[20] was holding grants and offices under John of Gaunt. Perhaps he wasted his money.[21] But we cannot know exactly how it all came about at this distance of time. And one thing shows clearly how much courage and patience Chaucer had; for it was when he was in such want in 1388, two years after he had been turned out of the Customs, that he was busiest with the greatest work of his life, called the Canterbury Tales. Some men would have been too sad after so much disgrace and trouble, to be able to write stories and verses; but I think Chaucer must have felt at peace in his mind—he must have known that he did not deserve all the ill-treatment he got—and had faith that God would bring him through unstained.
XI.
The Canterbury Tales are full of cheerfulness and fun; full of love for the beautiful world, and full of sympathy for all who are in trouble or misery. The beauty of Chaucer’s character, and his deep piety, come out very clearly in these tales, as I think you will see. No one could have sung the ‘ditties and songs glad’ about birds in the medlar trees, and the soft rain on the ‘small sweet grass,’ and the ‘lily on her stalk green,’ and the sweet winds that blow over the country, whose mind was clouded by sordid thoughts, and narrow, selfish aims. No one could have sung so blithely of ‘fresh Emily,’ and with such good-humoured lenity even of the vulgar, chattering ‘Wife of Bath,’ whose heart was full of angry feelings towards his fellow-creatures. And no one, who was not in his heart a religious man, could have breathed the words of patience with which Arcite tries to comfort his friend, in their gloomy prison—or the greater patience of poor persecuted Griselda—or the fervent love of truth and honourable dealing, and a good life, which fills so many of his poems—or a hundred other touching prayers and tender words of warning. There was a large-heartedness and liberality about Chaucer’s mind, as of one who had mixed cheerfully with all classes, and saw good in all. His tastes were with the noble ranks among whom he had lived; but he had deep sympathy with the poor and oppressed, and could feel kindly even to the coarse and the wicked. He hated none but hypocrites; and he was never tired of praising piety and virtue.
Chaucer wrote a great many short poems, which I have not told you of. Many have been lost or forgotten. Some may come back to us in the course of time and search. All we know of, you will read some day, with the rest of the Canterbury Tales not in this book: a few of these poems I have placed at the end of the volume; and among them one ‘To his empty Purse,’ written only the year before his death.[22]
There is only a little more I can tell you about Chaucer’s life before we begin the stories. We got as far as 1398, when the King gave Chaucer letters of protection from his creditors.
About this time another grant of wine was bestowed on him, equal to about £4 a year, or £40 of our money. In the next year, King Richard, who had not gained the love of his subjects, nor tried to be a good King, was deposed—that is, the people were so angry with him that they said, “You shall not be our King any more;” and they shut him up in a tower, and made his cousin, Henry, King of England. Now this Henry was the son of John of Gaunt, by his first wife, Blanche, and had been very badly treated by his cousin, the King. He was a much better man than Richard, and the people loved him. John of Gaunt did not live to see his son King, for he died while Henry was abroad; and it must have been a real grief to Chaucer, then an old man of sixty,[23] when this long and faithful friend was taken from him.
Still it is pleasant to find that Henry of Lancaster shared his father’s friendship for Chaucer. I dare say he had been rocked on Chaucer’s knee when a little child, and had played with Chaucer’s children. He came back from France, after John of Gaunt’s death, and the people made him King, and sent King Richard to the castle of Pomfret (where I am sorry to say he was afterwards murdered).
The new King had not been on the throne four days before he helped Chaucer. John of Gaunt himself could not have done it quicker. He granted him an annuity of £26 13s. 4d. a year, in addition to the other £20 granted by Richard.
The royal bounty was only just in time, for poor old Chaucer did not long survive his old friend, the Duke of Lancaster. He died about a year after him, when Henry had been King thirteen months.
John of Gaunt was buried in St. Paul’s, by the side of his first and best-loved wife, Blanche; Geoffrey Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey.
So ended the first, and almost the greatest, English writer, of whom no one has spoken an ill word, and who himself spoke no ill words.
Poet, soldier, statesman, and scholar, ‘truly his better ne his pere, in school of my rules could I never find. … In goodness of gentle, manly speech he passeth all other makers.’[24]
XII.
And now for Chaucer’s ‘speech.’ How shall I show you its ‘goodness,’ since it is so difficult to read this old English? Wait a bit. You will soon understand it all, if you take pains at the first beginning. Do not be afraid of the funny spelling, for you must remember that it is not so much that Chaucer spells differently from us, as that we have begun to spell differently from Chaucer. He would think our English quite as funny, and not half so pretty as his own; for the old English, when spoken, sounded very pretty and stately, and not so much like a ‘gabble’ as ours.
I told you a little while ago, you know, that our talking is much faster than talking was in Chaucer’s