imprimis, as concerns the authenticity of these tales perhaps the less debate may be the higher wisdom, if only because this nicolas de caen, by common report, was never a gradgrindian. and in this volume in particular, writing it (as nicolas is supposed to have done) in 1470, as a dependant on the duke of burgundy, it were but human nature should he, in dealing with the putative descendants of dom manuel and alianora of provence, be niggardly in his ascription of praiseworthy traits to any member of the house of lancaster or of valois. rather must one in common reason accept old nicolas as confessedly a partisan writer, who upon occasion will recolor an event with such nuances as will be least inconvenient to a yorkist and burgundian bias.
the reteller of these stories needs in addition to plead guilty of having abridged the tales with a free hand. item, these tales have been a trifle pulled about, most notably in “the story of the satraps,” where it seemed advantageous, on reflection, to put into gloucester’s mouth a history which in the original version was related ab ovo, and as a sort of bungling prologue to the story proper.
item, the re-teller of these stories desires hereby to tender appropriate acknowledgment to mr. r. e. townsend for his assistance in making an english version of the lyrics included hereinafter; and to avoid discussion as to how freely, in these lyrics, nicolas has plagiarized from raimbaut de vaqueiras and other elder poets.1
and—“sixth and lastly”—should confession be made that in the present rendering a purely arbitrary title has been assigned this little book; chiefly for commercial reasons, since the word “dizain” has been adjudged both untranslatable and, in its pristine form, repellantly outré.
2
you are to give my titular makeshift, then, a wide interpretation; and are always to remember that in the bleak, florid age these tales commemorate this chivalry was much the rarelier significant of any personal trait than of a world-wide code in consonance with which all estimable people lived and died. its root was the assumption (uncontested then) that a gentleman will always serve his god, his honor and his lady without any reservation; nor did the many emanating by-laws ever deal with special cases as concerns this triple, fixed, and fundamental homage.
such is the trinity served hereinafter. now about lady-service, or domnei, i have written elsewhere. elsewhere also i find it recorded that “the cornerstone of chivalry is the idea of vicarship: for the chivalrous person is, in his own eyes at least, the child of god, and goes about this world as his father’s representative in an alien country.”
i believe the definition holds: it certainly tends to explain the otherwise puzzling pertinacity with which the characters in these tales talk about god and act upon an assured knowledge as to heaven’s private intentions and preferences. these people are the members of one family engrossed, as all of us are apt to be when in the society of our kin, by family matters and traditions and by-words. it is not merely that they are all large children consciously dependent in all things upon a not foolishly indulgent father, who keeps an interested eye upon the least of their doings, and punishes at need,—not merely that they know themselves to act under surveillance and to speak within ear-shot of a divine eavesdropper. the point is, rather, that they know this observation to be as tender, the punishment to be as unwilling, as that which they themselves extend to their own children’s pranks and misdemeanors. the point is that to them heaven is a place as actual and tangible as we consider alaska or algiers to be, and that their living is a conscious journeying toward this actual place. the point is that the father is a real father, and not a word spelt with capital letters in the church service; not an abstraction, not a sort of a something vaguely describable as “the life force,” but a very famous kinsman, of whom one is naïvely proud, and whom one is on the way to visit.... the point, in brief, is that his honor and yours are inextricably blended, and are both implicated in your behavior on the journey.
we nowadays can just cloudily imagine this viewing of life as a sort of boarding-school from which one eventually goes home, with an official report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation for being debarred from the comforts of this view, the psychoanalysts have no doubt invented for it some opprobrious explanation. at all events, this chivalry was a pragmatic hypothesis: it “worked,” and served society for a long while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic mêlée wherein contended “courtesy and humanity, friendliness, hardihood, love and friendship, and murder, hate, and virtue, and sin.”
3
for the rest, since good wine needs no bush, and an inferior beverage is not likely to be bettered by arboreal adornment, i elect to piece out my exordium (however lamely) with “the printer’s preface.” and it runs in this fashion:
“here begins the volume called and entitled the dizain of queens, composed and extracted from divers chronicles and other sources of information, by that extremely venerable person and worshipful man, messire nicolas de caen, priest and chaplain to the right noble, glorious and mighty prince in his time, philippe, duke of burgundy, of brabant, etc., in the year of the incarnation of our lord god a thousand four hundred and seventy: and imprinted by me, colard mansion, at bruges, in the year of our said lord god a thousand four hundred and seventy-one; at the commandment of the right high, mighty and virtuous princess, my redoubted lady, isabella of portugal, by the grace of god duchess of burgundy and lotharingia, of brabant and limbourg, of luxembourg and of gueldres, countess of flanders, of artois, and of burgundy, palatine of hainault, of holland, of zealand and of namur, marquesse of the holy empire, and lady of frisia, of salins and of mechlin; whom i beseech almighty god less to increase than to continue in her virtuous disposition in this world, and after our poor fleet existence to receive eternally. amen.”
