the episode called love-letters of falstaff

i. "that gray iniquity"

there was a sound of scuffling within as sir john falstaff—much broken since his loss of the king's favor, and now equally decayed in wit and health and reputation—stood fumbling at the door of the angel room. he was particularly shaky this morning after a night of particularly hard drinking.

but he came into the apartment singing, and, whatever the scuffling had meant, found bardolph in one corner employed in sorting garments from a clothes-chest, while at the extreme end of the room mistress quickly demurely stirred the fire; which winked at the old knight rather knowingly.

"then came the bold sir caradoc," carolled sir john. "ah, mistress, what news?—and eke sir pellinore.—did i rage last night, bardolph? was i a bedlamite?"

"as mine own bruises can testify," bardolph assented. "had each one of them a tongue, they would raise a clamor beside which babel were as an heir weeping for his rich uncle's death; their testimony would qualify you for any mad-house in england. and if their evidence go against the doctor's stomach, the watchman at the corner hath three teeth—or, rather, hath them no longer, since you knocked them out last night—that will, right willingly, aid him to digest it."

"three, say you?" asked the knight, rather stiffly lowering his great body into his great chair set ready for him beside the fire. "i would have my valor in all men's mouths, but not in this fashion, for it is too biting a jest. three, say you? well, i am glad it was no worse; i have a tender conscience, and that mad fellow of the north, hotspur, sits heavily upon it, so that thus this percy, being slain by my valor, is per se avenged, a plague on him! three, say you? i would to god my name were not so terrible to the enemy as it is; i would i had 'bated my natural inclination somewhat, and had slain less tall fellows by some threescore. i doubt agamemnon slept not well o' nights. three, say you? give the fellow a crown apiece for his mouldy teeth, if thou hast them; if thou hast them not, bid him eschew this vice of drunkenness, whereby his misfortune hath befallen him, and thus win him heavenly crowns."

"indeed, sir," began bardolph, "i doubt—"

"doubt not, sirrah!" cried sir john, testily; and continued, in a virtuous manner: "was not the apostle reproved for that same sin? thou art a didymus, bardolph;—an incredulous paynim, a most unspeculative rogue! have i carracks trading in the indies? have i robbed the exchequer of late? have i the golden fleece for a cloak? nay, it is paltry gimlet, and that augurs badly. why, does this knavish watchman take me for a raven to feed him in the wilderness? tell him there are no such ravens hereabout; else had i ravenously limed the house-tops and set springes in the gutters. inform him that my purse is no better lined than his own broken skull: it is void as a beggar's protestations, or a butcher's stall in lent; light as a famished gnat, or the sighing of a new-made widower; more empty than a last year's bird-nest, than a madman's eye, or, in fine, than the friendship of a king."

"but you have wealthy friends, sir john," suggested the hostess of the boar's head tavern, whose impatience had but very hardly waited for this opportunity to join in the talk. "yes, i warrant you, sir john. sir john, you have a many wealthy friends; you cannot deny that, sir john."

"friends, dame?" asked the knight, and cowered closer to the fire, as though he were a little cold. "i have no friends since hal is king. i had, i grant you, a few score of acquaintances whom i taught to play at dice; paltry young blades of the city, very unfledged juvenals! setting my knighthood and my valor aside, if i did swear friendship with these, i did swear to a lie. but this is a censorious and muddy-minded world, so that, look you, even these sprouting aldermen, these foul bacon-fed rogues, have fled my friendship of late, and my reputation hath grown somewhat more murky than erebus. no matter! i walk alone, as one that hath the pestilence. no matter! but i grow old; i am not in the vaward of my youth, mistress."

he nodded his head with extreme gravity; then reached for a cup of sack that bardolph held at the knight's elbow.

"indeed, i know not what your worship will do," said mistress quickly, rather sadly.

"faith!" answered sir john, finishing the sack and grinning in a somewhat ghastly fashion; "unless the providence that watches over the fall of a sparrow hath an eye to the career of sir john falstaff, knight, and so comes to my aid shortly, i must needs convert my last doublet into a mask, and turn highwayman in my shirt. i can take purses yet, ye uzzite comforters, as gaily as i did at gadshill, where that scurvy poins, and he that is now king, and some twoscore other knaves did afterward assault me in the dark; yet i peppered some of them, i warrant you!"

"you must be rid of me, then, master," bardolph interpolated. "i for one have no need of a hempen collar."

"ah, well!" said the knight, stretching himself in his chair as the warmth of the liquor coursed through his inert blood; "i, too, would be loth to break the gallows' back! for fear of halters, we must alter our way of living; we must live close, bardolph, till the wars make us croesuses or food for crows. and if hal but hold to his bias, there will be wars: i will eat a piece of my sword, if he have not need of it shortly. ah, go thy ways, tall jack; there live not three good men unhanged in england, and one of them is fat and grows old. we must live close, bardolph; we must forswear drinking and wenching! but there is lime in this sack, you rogue; give me another cup."

the old knight drained this second cup, and unctuously sucked at and licked his lips. thereafter,

"i pray you, hostess," he continued, "remember that doll tearsheet sups with me to-night; have a capon of the best, and be not sparing of the wine. i will repay you, upon honor, when we young fellows return from france, all laden with rings and brooches and such trumperies like your norfolkshire pedlars at christmas-tide. we will sack a town for you, and bring you back the lord mayor's beard to stuff you a cushion; the dauphin shall be your tapster yet; we will walk on lilies, i warrant you, to the tune of hey, then up go we!"

"indeed, sir," said mistress quickly, in perfect earnest, "your worship is as welcome to my pantry as the mice—a pox on 'em!—think themselves; you are heartily welcome. ah, well, old puss is dead; i had her of goodman quickly these ten years since;—but i had thought you looked for the lady who was here but now;—she was a roaring lion among the mice."

"what lady?" cried sir john, with great animation. "was it flint the mercer's wife, think you? ah, she hath a liberal disposition, and will, without the aid of prince houssain's carpet or the horse of cambuscan, transfer the golden shining pieces from her husband's coffers to mine."

"no mercer's wife, i think," mistress quickly answered, after consideration. "she came with two patched footmen, and smacked of gentility;—master dumbleton's father was a mercer; but he had red hair;—she is old;—and i could never abide red hair."

"no matter!" cried the knight. "i can love this lady, be she a very witch of endor. observe, what a thing it is to be a proper man, bardolph! she hath marked me;—in public, perhaps; on the street, it may be;—and then, i warrant you, made such eyes! and sighed such sighs! and lain awake o' nights, thinking of a pleasing portly gentleman, whom, were i not modesty's self, i might name;—and i, all this while, not knowing! fetch me my book of riddles and my sonnets, that i may speak smoothly. why was my beard not combed this morning? no matter, it will serve. have i no better cloak than this?" sir john was in a tremendous bustle, all a-beam with pleasurable anticipation.

but mistress quickly, who had been looking out of the window, said,

"come, but your worship must begin with unwashed hands, for old madam

wish-for't and her two country louts are even now at the door."

"avaunt, minions!" cried the knight. "avaunt! conduct the lady hither, hostess; bardolph, another cup of sack. we will ruffle it, lad, and go to france all gold, like midas! are mine eyes too red? i must look sad, you know, and sigh very pitifully. ah, we will ruffle it! another cup of sack, bardolph;—i am a rogue if i have drunk to-day. and avaunt! vanish! for the lady comes."

he threw himself into a gallant attitude, suggestive of one suddenly palsied, and with the mien of a turkey-cock strutted toward the door to greet his unknown visitor.

2. "then was jack falstaff, now sir john, a boy"

the woman who entered was not the jolly city dame one looked for: and, at first sight, you estimated her age as a trifle upon the staider side of sixty. but to this woman the years had shown unwonted kindliness, as though time touched her less with intent to mar than to caress; her form was still unbent, and her countenance, bloodless and deep-furrowed, bore the traces of great beauty; and, whatever the nature of her errand, the woman who stood in the doorway was unquestionably a person of breeding.

sir john advanced toward her with as much elegance as he might muster; for gout when coupled with such excessive bulk does not beget an overpowering amount of grace.

"see, from the glowing east, aurora comes," he chirped. "madam, permit me to welcome you to my poor apartments; they are not worthy—"

"i would see sir john falstaff, sir," declared the lady, courteously, but with some reserve of manner, and looking him full in the face as she said this.

"indeed, madam," suggested sir john, "if those bright eyes—whose glances have already cut my poor heart into as many pieces as the man in the front of the almanac—will but desist for a moment from such butcher's work and do their proper duty, you will have little trouble in finding the bluff soldier you seek."

"are you sir john?" asked the lady, as though suspecting a jest. "the son of old sir edward falstaff, of norfolk?"

"his wife hath frequently assured me so," sir john protested, very gravely; "and to confirm her evidence i have about me a certain villainous thirst that did plague sir edward sorely in his lifetime, and came to me with his other chattels. the property i have expended long since; but no jew will advance me a maravedi on the falstaff thirst. it is a priceless commodity, not to be bought or sold; you might as soon quench it."

"i would not have known you," said the lady, wonderingly; "but," she added, "i have not seen you these forty years."

"faith, madam," grinned the knight, "the great pilferer time hath since then taken away a little from my hair, and added somewhat (saving your presence) to my belly; and my face hath not been improved by being the grindstone for some hundred swords. but i do not know you."

"i am sylvia vernon," said the lady. "and once, a long while ago, i was

sylvia darke."

"i remember," said the knight. his voice was altered. bardolph would hardly have known it; nor, perhaps, would he have recognized his master's manner as he handed dame sylvia to the best chair.

"a long while ago," she repeated, sadly, after a pause during which the crackling of the fire was very audible. "time hath dealt harshly with us both, john;—the name hath a sweet savor. i am an old woman now. and you—"

"i would not have known you," said sir john; then asked, almost resentfully, "what do you here?"

"my son goes to the wars," she answered, "and i am come to bid him farewell; yet i should not tarry in london, for my lord is feeble and hath constant need of me. but i, an old woman, am yet vain enough to steal these few moments from him who needs me, to see for the last time, mayhap, him who was once my very dear friend."

"i was never your friend, sylvia," said sir john.

"ah, the old wrangle!" said the lady, and smiled a little wistfully. "my dear and very honored lover, then; and i am come to see him here."

"ay!" interrupted sir john, rather hastily; and he proceeded, glowing with benevolence: "a quiet, orderly place, where i bestow my patronage; the woman of the house had once a husband in my company. god rest his soul! he bore a good pike. he retired in his old age and 'stablished this tavern, where he passed his declining years, till death called him gently away from this naughty world. god rest his soul, say i!"

this was a somewhat euphemistic version of the taking-off of goodman quickly, who had been knocked over the head with a joint-stool while rifling the pockets of a drunken guest; but perhaps sir john wished to speak well of the dead, even at the price of conferring upon the present home of sir john an idyllic atmosphere denied it by the london constabulary.

"and you for old memories' sake yet aid his widow?" the lady murmured.

"that is like you, john."

there was another silence, and the fire crackled more loudly than ever.

"and are you sorry that i come again, in a worse body, john, strange and time-ruined?"

"sorry?" echoed sir john; and, ungallant as it was, he hesitated a moment before replying: "no, faith! but there are some ghosts that will not easily bear raising, and you have raised one."

"we have summoned up no very fearful spectre, i think," replied the lady; "at most, no worse than a pallid, gentle spirit that speaks—to me, at least—of a boy and a girl who loved each other and were very happy a great while ago."

"are you come hither to seek that boy?" asked the knight, and chuckled, though not merrily. "the boy that went mad and rhymed of you in those far-off dusty years? he is quite dead, my lady; he was drowned, mayhap, in a cup of wine. or he was slain, perchance, by a few light women. i know not how he died. but he is quite dead, my lady, and i had not been haunted by his ghost until to-day."

he stared at the floor as he ended; then choked, and broke into a fit of coughing which unromantic chance brought on just now, of all times.

"he was a dear boy," she said, presently; "a boy who loved a young maid very truly; a boy that found the maid's father too strong and shrewd for desperate young lovers—eh, how long ago it seems, and what a flood of tears the poor maid shed at being parted from that dear boy!"

"faith!" admitted sir john, "the rogue had his good points."

"ah, john, you have not forgotten, i know," the lady said, looking up into his face, "and, you will believe me that i am very heartily sorry for the pain i brought into your life?"

"my wounds heal easily," said sir john.

"for though my dear dead father was too wise for us, and knew it was for the best that i should not accept your love, believe me, john, i always knew the value of that love, and have held it an honor that any woman must prize."

"dear lady," the knight suggested, with a slight grimace, "the world is not altogether of your opinion."

"i know not of the world," she said; "for we live away from it. but we have heard of you ever and anon; i have your life quite letter-perfect for these forty years or more."

"you have heard of me?" asked sir john; and, for a seasoned knave, he looked rather uncomfortable.

"as a gallant and brave soldier," she answered; "of how you fought at sea with mowbray that was afterward duke of norfolk; of your knighthood by king richard; of how you slew the percy at shrewsbury; and captured coleville o' late in yorkshire; and how the prince, that now is king, did love you above all men; and, in fine, of many splendid doings in the great world."

sir john raised a protesting hand. he said, with commendable modesty: "i have fought somewhat. but we are not bevis of southampton; we have slain no giants. heard you naught else?"

"little else of note," replied the lady; and went on, very quietly: "but we are proud of you at home in norfolk. and such tales as i have heard i have woven together in one story; and i have told it many times to my children as we sat on the old chapel steps at evening, and the shadows lengthened across the lawn, and i bid them emulate this, the most perfect knight and gallant gentleman that i have known. and they love you, i think, though but by repute."

once more silence fell between them; and the fire grinned wickedly at the mimic fire reflected by the old chest, as though it knew of a most entertaining secret.

"do you yet live at winstead?" asked sir john, half idly.

"yes," she answered; "in the old house. it is little changed, but there are many changes about."

"is moll yet with you that did once carry our letters?"

"married to hodge, the tanner," the lady said; "and dead long since."

"and all our merry company?" sir john demanded. "marian? and tom and little osric? and phyllis? and adelais? zounds, it is like a breath of country air to speak their names once more."

"all dead," she answered, in a hushed voice, "save adelais, and even to me poor adelais seems old and strange. walter was slain in the french wars, and she hath never married."

"all dead," sir john informed the fire, as if confidentially; then he laughed, though his bloodshot eyes were not merry. "this same death hath a wide maw! it is not long before you and i, my lady, will be at supper with the worms. but you, at least, have had a happy life."

"i have been content enough," she said, "but all that seems run by; for, john, i think that at our age we are not any longer very happy nor very miserable."

"faith!" agreed sir john, "we are both old; and i had not known it, my lady, until to-day."

again there was silence; and again the fire leapt with delight at the jest.

sylvia vernon arose suddenly and cried, "i would i had not come!"

then said sir john: "nay, this is but a feeble grieving you have wakened. for, madam—you whom i loved once!—you are in the right. our blood runs thinner than of yore; and we may no longer, i think, either sorrow or rejoice very deeply."

"it is true," she said; "but i must go; and, indeed, i would to god i had not come!"

sir john was silent; he bowed his head, in acquiescence perhaps, in meditation it may have been; but he stayed silent.

"yet," said she, "there is something here which i must keep no longer: for here are all the letters you ever writ me."

whereupon she handed sir john a little packet of very old and very faded papers. he turned them awkwardly in his hand once or twice; then stared at them; then at the lady.

"you have kept them—always?" he cried.

"yes," she responded, wistfully; "but i must not be guilty of continuing such follies. it is a villainous example to my grandchildren," dame sylvia told him, and smiled. "farewell."

sir john drew close to her and took her hands in his. he looked into her eyes for an instant, holding himself very erect,—and it was a rare event when sir john looked any one squarely in the eyes,—and he said, wonderingly, "how i loved you!"

"i know," she murmured. sylvia vernon gazed up into his bloated old face with a proud tenderness that was half-regretful. a quavering came into her gentle voice. "and i thank you for your gift, my lover,—o brave true lover, whose love i was not ever ashamed to own! farewell, my dear; yet a little while, and i go to seek the boy and girl we know of."

"i shall not be long, madam," said sir john. "speak a kind word for me in

heaven; for i shall have sore need of it."

she had reached the door by this. "you are not sorry that i came?"

sir john answered, very sadly: "there are many wrinkles now in your dear face, my lady; the great eyes are a little dimmed, and the sweet laughter is a little cracked; but i am not sorry to have seen you thus. for i have loved no woman truly save you alone; and i am not sorry. farewell." and for a moment he bowed his unreverend gray head over her shrivelled fingers.

3. "this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile"

"lord, lord, how subject we old men are to the vice of lying!" chuckled sir john, and leaned back rheumatically in his chair and mumbled over the jest.

"yet it was not all a lie," he confided, as if in perplexity, to the fire; "but what a coil over a youthful green-sickness 'twixt a lad and a wench more than forty years syne!

"i might have had money of her for the asking," he presently went on; "yet i am glad i did not; which is a parlous sign and smacks of dotage."

he nodded very gravely over this new and alarming phase of his character.

"were it not a quaint conceit, a merry tickle-brain of fate," he asked of the leaping flames, after a still longer pause, "that this mountain of malmsey were once a delicate stripling with apple cheeks and a clean breath, smelling of civet, and as mad for love, i warrant you, as any amadis of them all? for, if a man were to speak truly, i did love her.

"i had the special marks of the pestilence," he assured a particularly incredulous—and obstinate-looking coal,—a grim, black fellow that, lurking in a corner, scowled forbiddingly and seemed to defy both the flames and sir john. "not all the flagons and apples in the universe might have comforted me; i was wont to sigh like a leaky bellows; to weep like a wench that hath lost her grandam; to lard my speech with the fag-ends of ballads like a man milliner; and did, indeed, indite sonnets, canzonets, and what not of mine own elaboration.

"and moll did carry them," he continued; "plump brown-eyed moll, that hath married hodge the tanner, and reared her tannerkins, and died long since."

but the coal remained incredulous, and the flames crackled merrily.

"lord, lord, what did i not write?" said sir john, drawing out a paper from the packet, and deciphering by the firelight the faded writing.

read sir john:

"_have pity, sylvia? cringing at thy door

entreats with dolorous cry and clamoring,

that mendicant who quits thee nevermore;

now winter chills the world, and no birds sing

in any woods, yet as in wanton spring

he follows thee; and never will have done,

though nakedly he die, from following

whither thou leadest.

"canst thou look upon

his woes, and laugh to see a goddess' son

of wide dominion, and in strategy

"more strong than jove, more wise than solomon,

inept to combat thy severity?

have pity, sylvia! and let love be one

among the folk that bear thee company_."

"is it not the very puling speech of your true lover?" he chuckled; and the flames spluttered assent. "among the folk that bear thee company," he repeated, and afterward looked about him with a smack of gravity. "faith, adam cupid hath forsworn my fellowship long since; he hath no score chalked up against him at the boar's head tavern; or, if he have, i doubt not the next street-beggar might discharge it."

"and she hath commended me to her children as a very gallant gentleman and a true knight," sir john went on, reflectively. he cast his eyes toward the ceiling, and grinned at invisible deities. "jove that sees all hath a goodly commodity of mirth; i doubt not his sides ache at times, as if they had conceived another wine-god."

"yet, by my honor," he insisted to the fire; then added, apologetically,—"if i had any, which, to speak plain, i have not,—i am glad; it is a brave jest; and i did love her once."

then the time-battered, bloat rogue picked out another paper, and read:

"'my dear lady,—that i am not with thee to-night is, indeed, no fault of mine; for sir thomas mowbray hath need of me, he saith. yet the service that i have rendered him thus far is but to cool my heels in his antechamber and dream of two great eyes and of that net of golden hair wherewith lord love hath lately snared my poor heart. for it comforts me—' and so on, and so on, the pen trailing most juvenal sugar, like a fly newly crept out of the honey-pot. and ending with a posy, filched, i warrant you, from some ring.

"i remember when i did write her this," he explained to the fire. "lord, lord, if the fire of grace were not quite out of me, now should i be moved. for i did write it; and it was sent with a sonnet, all of hell, and heaven, and your pagan gods, and other tricks of speech. it should be somewhere."

he fumbled with uncertain fingers among the papers. "ah, here it is," he said at last, and he again began to read aloud.

read sir john:

"cupid invaded hell, and boldly drove

before him all the hosts of erebus,

till he had conquered: and grim cerberus

sang madrigals, the furies rhymed of love,

old charon sighed, and sonnets rang above

the gloomy styx; and even as tantalus

was proserpine discrowned in tartarus,

and cupid regnant in the place thereof.

"thus love is monarch throughout hell to-day;

in heaven we know his power was always great;

and earth acclaimed love's mastery straightway

when sylvia came to gladden earth's estate:—

thus hell and heaven and earth his rule obey,

and sylvia's heart alone is obdurate.

"well, well," sighed sir john, "it was a goodly rogue that writ it, though the verse runs but lamely! a goodly rogue!

"he might," sir john suggested, tentatively, "have lived cleanly, and forsworn sack; he might have been a gallant gentleman, and begotten grandchildren, and had a quiet nook at the ingleside to rest his old bones: but he is dead long since. he might have writ himself armigero in many a bill, or obligation, or quittance, or what not; he might have left something behind him save unpaid tavern bills; he might have heard cases, harried poachers, and quoted old saws; and slept in his own family chapel through sermons yet unwrit, beneath his presentment, done in stone, and a comforting bit of latin: but he is dead long since."

sir john sat meditating for a while; it had grown quite dark in the room as he muttered to himself. he rose now, rather cumbrously and uncertainly, but with a fine rousing snort of indignation.

"zooks!" he said, "i prate like a death's-head. a thing done hath an end,

god have mercy on us all! and i will read no more of the rubbish."

he cast the packet into the heart of the fire; the yellow papers curled at the edges, rustled a little, and blazed; he watched them burn to the last spark.

"a cup of sack to purge the brain!" cried sir john, and filled one to the brim. "and i will go sup with doll tearsheet."

* * * * *

september 29, 1422

"anoon her herte hath pitee of his wo, and with that pitee, love com in also; thus is this quene in pleasaunce and in loye."

_meanwhile had old dome sylvia returned contentedly to the helpmate whom she had accepted under compulsion, and who had made her a fair husband, as husbands go. it is duly recorded, indeed, on their shared tomb, that their forty years of married life were of continuous felicity, and set a pattern to all norfolk. the more prosaic verbal tradition is that lady vernon retained sir robert well in hand by pointing out, at judicious intervals, that she had only herself to blame for having married such a selfish person in preference to a hero of the age and an ornament of the loftiest circles.

i find, on consultation of the allonby records, that sylvia vernon died of a quinsy, in 1419, surviving sir robert by some three months. she had borne him four sons and four daughters: of these there remained at winstead in 1422 only sir hugh vernon, the oldest son, knighted by henry v at agincourt, where vernon had fought with distinction; and adelais vernon, the youngest daughter, with whom the following has to do.