by B.B. Irvine
Chapter 2 Selection from The Complete Memoirs of Leopold LaPied (1390)
This being the controversial section dealing with Mr. Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous “Canterbury Tales” and Mr. Leopold LaPied’s relations with Mr. Geoffrey Chaucer, with an Afterword by Sir Llellington Limeswell, PhD, FRS [see Chapter 1]
21 April 1390
London
Now that Mister Geoffrey Chaucer’s celebrated “Canterbury Tales” has been printed once again, I am reminded of the time I spent watching him diligently inscribing painstaking characters upon foolscap with a long quill pen in the “Tabard” – little did I know then exactly what he was composing!
You may remember that at one time in my life (which has always been a potpourri) I was a writer for a church newsletter. I was living in Gloucestershire at the time, at a loss for something to do, and the church and a priest with a not altogether miniscule ego and a few extra pounds a year convinced me that my future lay in writing.
It was in 1386, in early April, that I made my way to London to look for something to write about, and perhaps find some activity which would interest the readers of the Gloucestershire Ecclesiast. By the second day, I was well worn and weary as I chanced to cross the tall spired Bridge of London and came upon a dingy tavern with a small signboard over the shabby entrance with a picture in peeling paint of a tabard for a midget on it. Next to it was another grimy tavern, “The Bell,” which I had visited the last time I was in London after the French wars, but it was closed and, my thirst barely contained in my dry mouth, I was forced to enter “The Tabard” and seek solace in a goblet of wine or a mug of beer.
The condition of the interior was much the same as that of the sign, only it was a good deal dimmer and very crowded with pious seeming folk, including a few nuns and a priest or two. Chaucer (although I did not know it to be he at the time) was sitting slightly apart from the rest of the huddle, scribbling on a hodge-podge of foolscap with a fancy French quill, and sipping wine from a goblet every once in a while.
I made my way across the stuffy room and procured myself a mug of rich and foamy dark brown beer from the chubby, good-natured Host. Making some sign about me indicating the crowd, I said to him, “Pardon, my good man, but is this the normal business you do here at your fine inn?”
The Host chuckled richly and drew another beer as he answered me promptly: “Nay, good sir, but we are going on a pilgrammage to Canterbury early tomorrow morning.” He left me to myself and served the beer.
I scratched my beard and wondered what I should do. Certainly a pilgrammage is no news to the readers, yet I had so far been unable to get much news from London and I was feeling (or so I told myself) weak in my soul. So, with not much convincing, I convinced myself that a pilgrammage to Canterbury with this cross of life would cleanse my soul and give me something to write about.
By chance or the will of Jesus Christ, my eye happened to rest on Chaucer at the instant he cursed and broke his point and furiously glared around him at the boisterous crowd. His angry eyes affixed upon mine and he growled most loudly at me, “What is the name of the west wind, good fellow?”
I replied swiftly (for in those days I was still loose of tongue, and not much summoning was required to unloose a flood of words), “The western wind? Why, ’tis named Zephyrus, good sir.”
Chaucer nodded his thanks, all the clouds on his brow vanishing as does a fox before the hounds, and resumed his writing. When he had written “Zephyrus,” he looked up at me, his face now good-natured and his eyes atwinkle, and said, “Many thanks. Would you like to have a seat and sup wine or beer with me?”
Of course I said yes, as I like beer, and sat across from him. He yelled for more wine and a beer and then looked at me. “Are you going on the pilgrammage to Canterbury with this loud and mixed company?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I am LaPied, another Englishman with a French name, and a writer for the Gloucestershire Ecclesiast.”
He regarded me keenly and introduced himself as, “Geoffrey Chaucer, currently of Greenwich, formerly of a French prison (but that was long ago), then of various places.”
“Ahh, yes,” said I. “Are you related to the Knight of Kent in Parliament?”
Chaucer smiled sardonically. “Dear sir,” said he. “I am the Knight of Kent in Parliament.”
“I am honored.”
“You need not be, for I am not. Politics in extreme bores me.” So we sat and drank, he wine, I beer, and the crowd swirled around us in happy waves. “I am writing a book,” he said to me.
“That is a good thing to do.”
He nodded seriously. “I think it is to jest the pilgrammage.”
“Pilgrammages are sometimes humorous.”
“This is so.” He drained his glass. “For example,” he said, pointing to a very large man wearing a worsted semi-cope and talking with leering eyes to a buxom bar maid. “You would not guess he is a friar.”
“Surely you jest?”
“Nay, he’s a friar indeed, though not by deed. He’s a kindly scoundrel, though, despite being a rather shady sort of fellow.”
“But aren’t most these days?”
Chaucer laughed good humoredly. “Aye, or so I’ve lately felt. Take the pretty prioress over yonder.”
I strained round, saying in bafflement, “But surely a prioress isn’t allowed on such pilgrammages? I thought the bishops strictly forbade any contact with the outer universe.” Which was indeed quite true, for as any clergyman knows, nuns and monks and priests who wander outside the monastery walls pick up bad habits. For example, I knew of a nun who had gone on several pilgrammages and come back wearing the latest clothes, much to her bishop’s distress.
Chaucer chuckled richly. “Indeed, isn’t that so? But I think it’s simply ridiculous to coop up nuns in shabby monasteries. They are human, too, though certain peoples would rather not believe so, or would rather overlook it. And she likes dogs, too.” His eyes glittered warmly. “A high-spirited lass of gentle upbringing. She likes dogs, too, though this is also forbidden. I once heard of a monastery where dogs and animals were kept, until the bishops complained that the din was interuppting the services.”
“Are you going on the pilgrammage?” I drained my glass.
“But of course! Why, with this motley group (present company is excepted, of course) I would venture anywhere! Why, just look at the cross of life! This collection is simply too good to pass by!” He grinned, his teeth yellow against his luxurious beard. “For example, yon bonny monk. Now, he’s a character indeed! A hunter, a tracker of beasts, with a fine stable of horses. A monk who kills? Surely, there is some difference between him and others! Look at him eat that fowl! Like a wolf, a starving, mangey wolf into a sweet young kid he moves! And yet he is a monk! He’s a man I very much admire.”
“He does have his merits.”
He snorted. “He’s a man who’s not afraid of being a man is what you mean! Not like some monks who hang about piously preaching meekly to the masses! No, he’s a manly man, one who loves life!”
At this junction, the meal was announced and we paused to feast on roasts and fowl, devouring all set before me. And afterwards, as the thirty of us sat drinking our wine and beginning to digest our food, Harry Bailey (our rotund Host) made the famous suggestion that Geoffrey Chaucer recounts in his Prologue: we should each tell a tale on the way to and from Canterbury.
I thought this a novel idea at the time (although I did not participate, excusing myself by regretfully stating that I had to leave before Canterbury was reached to do some private business in Cornwall – Chaucer, I think, found it amusing and may have divined my rather unscrupulous intents in Cornwall, if I were really going there – but until then I was still honored to be in such fine company and begged them not to exclude me. They swore they would not, and so I can continue) and even now it behooves me to suggest to any pilgrims that this is a good way to pass the dusty miles.
We moved to our lodgings soon afterward. In hi
s “Tales” Geoffrey Chaucer recounts the awakening and ride to the watering place of St. Thomas (with the resplendent Knight leading the way looking noble), so I will not repeat it save to tell you that it was a while to get there (“slightly faster than walking” is how Geoffrey put it) and that the Summoner told me dirty jokes and generally made a likeable ass of himself, even with his pimples and the beaten demeanor of his tired nag.
After the excellent Tale the Knight told us, we watered our horses and stretched out to snooze and relax. I found myself near the monk that Chaucer had described as a hunter. I engaged him quickly in a conversation. “Hunted much hare?” I asked him promptly.
“Oh, aye,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “’Tis always good hunting around my church and monastery.”
“Do you get much time in the cloisters?”
He squinted at me. “Oh… now and then. Funny, that fellow over there swapping stories with the Knight – Chicer? Choocer? What? – you know, the writer – asked me almost the same thing. Told him the same thing, too. Anybody who thinks that monks can’t do anything outside a cloister is off his rot.”
“I must say that I agree.”
“Hmpf. So did he – Chusser? Chewser? Whatever – thinks that it’s silly to study Austin all the time. Got to say I agree with him. Wish more people thought that way. ‘Let Austin have his labor to himself,’ that’s what he said.” The monk peered at Chaucer talking earnestly with the Knight, and his protruding eyes waggled around. “He’s not as simple as he looks. No shirker from duty is he. Why, I heard him speak of a business treaty with Genoa he concluded not long ago.”
“Yes, he does look like a trader.”
“What with his beard, yes. I’d get a beard myself if I felt like it.” He wiped his bald head. “And what of yourself?”
“I write for the Gloucestershire Ecclesiast.”
So we proceeded to discuss the church and various things.
The next afternoon at Deptford, I chanced to sit near the Prioress, Madame Eglentyne. I found her simply full of gossip about the church, a simple soul fitted quite well into her service. “Tell me,” I said after a bit. “What is a prioress doing on a pilgrammage with a ruffianly group of characters as we?”
She giggled coyly. “Oh, but don’t think of yourself as that. Why, there are many here who are of noble bearing and position. Take that fellow over there – ” she pointed to Chaucer (everybody seemed very taken with Chaucer, who told little jokes with good humor and was at least halfway respectable looking) “– the one who’s talking with that monk. I don’t know what he used to be, or is now, but he’s a very masterly sort of person.”
Chaucer laughed and slapped the monk on the shoulder. Their laughter echoed lightly across the dusty road. “He is indeed.”
“And he’s always so quiet when he’s got his foolscap and quill! Always hunched over a table burning the wax late, sitting in a corner looking so very serious! I wonder what he’s writing?”
“I think it a journal of his pilgrimmage,” I said vaguely.
“Oh, that’s nice. One should have a hobby. What does he do?”
“He writes. I think he was once a knight or something.”
“He really does look well-travelled. A rugged type.”
“He’s been to the Continent a few times.”
“Well, he’s very, very handsome.”
The Summoner spoke up (he had snuck up sharply – he was that sort of fellow) and said, “Who, Chaucer? He’s not so handsome.”
“I think he’s very handsome,” said Madame Eglentyne defensively.
“He just looks handsome,” replied the Summoner.
“He’s a good sort,” I put in.
“If you like writers,” said the Summoner gloomily. “I don’t cotton to him much. Why, the first few minutes after I got to the ‘Tabard,’ he had me telling him my whole story. Everything, my life, my loves (and they were indeed a large part of my life, and surely are a large bit of my current life – excuse me, Prioress) and what I liked to eat and drink.” He looked over to Chaucer, who was now deep in discussion with a bony Oxford student who looked rather sallow yet well read (if you know that type). “It’s amazing that that guy is so quiet all the time! I mean, he keeps pretty quiet, but he gets around. Seems a bit strange, him so quiet and yet snooping around.”
The Prioress sniffed audibly. “I find nothing curious or strange when I see a writer talking to everybody yet keeping quiet. In order to record a story, one must keep silent and watch closely.”
The Summoner rubbed his bumpy cheeks (Chaucer had said, in a kindly way, that the Summoner’s face looked like a foccacia, an Italian flat bread baked with tomato sauce and cheese) and huh-huhhed a laugh that bathed me in sour cheese and cheap wine. He said: “Watchful waiting, that’s Geoffrey all over. Everything goes onto foolscap with the fancy French quill he has. Huh-huh-huh, maybe a few good tales I’ve heard about the miller’s daughter – sorry, Prioress – a few good tales will halt his crawling hand and scratchy quill.” He walked off toward Chaucer and the squinty looking student.
Later, I chanced to sit beside the Pardoner as we ate dinner. He ate with the typical abandon of a starving young man, his droopy yellow locks flopping about like limp ribbons as he voraciously gnawed a roast swan leg. “Pass the wine?” he said to me.
I did so, then asked, “This your first pilgrammage?”
“Nay.”
“You make much money?”
“Some now and then.”
I masticated thoroughly and swallowed. “You like being a pardoner?”
“It has its points.” He peered around him. “Pass the salt?”
I passed him the salt dish and he pinched a big wad of grainy white salt over his swan leg. “So you like being a pardoner?”
“Sure. Meet interesting people. Met the Bishop of Canterbury once. See that?” He pointed to a tattered pillow case. “That’s a bit of Our Lady’s veil. Took me a bit of trading, but I got it.”
“That’s an interesting cross you’ve got there.”
“Very fine work.” It was a metal cross with inset stones of dubious quality. “Pass the pepper?”
I gave him the pepper.
“You’re a pretty well-to-do fellow to be with a group like this,” he said at length. “First time?”
“No, I’ve been before.”
The Pardoner pointed with the leg bone at Chaucer, who was laughing with his mouth full as he talked with Harry Bailey, the Host. “You know him?”
I replied that I did.
“Thinks he’s a writer. Never did hear of a writer who looked like he does.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Urp! Excuse me. Pass the bread?”
I gave him the bread.
“See, what I mean is that writers are supposed to be slight folk and monks. Well, not all of them. Most, though. Most that I’ve met. Some of the greats, too. But him – ” Here he pointed at Chaucer with the denuded swan leg bone again. “Now, he looks like an adventurer or knight or something. Asked me a lot of questions. Didn’t approve too much of me making a little bit of money on the side (not for me, of course; my mum’s a bit getting on, you know) from talking to the groundling parsons.” He drank wine until his fair face flushed red. “But he’s still a decent one.”
“Pass the salt?”
“Hunh?” The Pardoner looked around. “Where is it?”
“Over there.”
“Where?” After a moment he passed me the salt dish back, grumbling under his breath.
From Deptford, we went to Greenwich, where I ended up sitting next to Chaucer under a shield in “The Dirk,” a tavern of much renown. He was taking advantage of the table to write down the Reeve’s Tale and was having difficulty in the flickering candlelight. He finally put down his quill, called, “Wine!” and scratched his thinning black hair with his stubby fingers.
“Having difficulty?” I asked. “Is it hard to write?”
He looked at me consideri
ngly. “No-o-o,” he admitted at last. “It’s not overly hard, if one has plot and notions of life. The difficulty lies in how the writer develops what he sees. Much as a silversmith bends and shapes his metals, the writer must bend and shape his story. The more intricately the smithy works his silver, the more beautiful the final pattern will likely be. The same with a story, if the writer doesn’t forget his objective and instead seeks to orgy with his intricacies.”
“What story are you working on now?”
He smiled and drank some wine, patting the serving girl on the rump as she left with his coins, and said, “I’m still at work on this pilgrimmage of ours. Oh, what a cross section of life it is! And free tales for the taking! What more could a writer want?” His dark eyes glowed and his battered cheeks were ruddily radiant. “Each person is unique, individual, yet together they blend into a tapestry of life, a rich, flowing cloth that may fray at the edges and get holed in the middle, but still loses none of its splendor. And each thread is complete with ideas and quirks of its own. When all work together as well as they do, I at times look around me with awe and see that someone much greater than any man is the master weaver here. Yes, I weave words into patterns, but I am clumsy compared with Christ, who weaves men.” He grinned, showing his yellowed teeth, and drank some more wine.
“Well spoken, lad, well spoken!” said the Monk, who had popped up beside us. He wandered off then, having said his piece.
“All I hear about you,” I said to Chaucer. “Is what people tell me of you.”
He bowed his head and shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, I am a modest man.” He looked up at me keenly. “I try, I hope, not to judge people too harshly (for I love them too much to do so) and therefore I try not to boast too much, lest I be judged harshly myself. ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ is my usual motto.”
“I understand.”
“I wager you do. ’Tis a shame you won’t be along all the way to Canterbury. Is it terribly pressing business you have in Cornwall?”
“One could say that.”
Chaucer grinned at me again, his eyes sparkling in happy jesting. He said: “Tell me, is it something close to your heart?”
“It is near there.”
“If I acquired the Glocestershire Ecclesiast, could I read of it?”
“I would rather hope not.”
“Perhaps ’tis something of a moderately sinful nature?”
“Only moderately so. I am not a sinful man.”
“Ah! So you boast of non-sinfulness? A sin, boasting is.”
“I do not so much boast as to state a plain fact.”
“Such a proper fellow you are!”
“Is there anything wrong with that?”
“No, of course not.” He rubbed his slight potbelly (he looked a bit like Harry Bailley sometimes, as far as stomachs went) and looked at me, pensively scratching his beard. “Still, one should be cautious of love.”
As I did not see it wise to correct him, I said nothing, merely nodding as he continued, sounding very sage. “As they say (though I wonder if they are right – and who are they anyway but socialites?), love cannot exist in a marriage unless it is love of a midnight assignator in clammy halls.” His eyes fixed on mine. “It’s not that, is it?”
“No, my wife is long dead.”
“Ah!” Chaucer lowered his chin until his beard touched his soiled tunic.
“She was hit by a horse on the way to an alchemist.”
He squinted up at me. “An – an alchemist?”
I was puzzled. “Yes, an alchemist, in search of the Philosopher Stone (or something silly like that, she said), who she had given money to in order to get the secret for making silver.”
“I once knew an alchemist,” said Chaucer, emphasizing “alchemist” in the same way one might say “dead chimney rat” or “three day old dead cow corpse.”
“More wine!” I called.
“His name wasn’t Bugger – though it should have been – but I’ll call him that. He was a filthy, cheating, lying bastard, this man Bugger. Tricked mm – uhh, tricked a priest I once knew. Convinced him (he was too learnedly pious to think such a foul deed would ever befall him) that a magic powder would turn one substance (I forget which one – thank you for this wine! – but it doesn’t matter) into silver.” Chaucer took a deep drink from the fresh goblet of wine. “Anyway, the bastard Bugger pulled some fancy sleight of hand on the poor priest and replaced one substance with another. Further, he would place a charcoal with silver filings in it over the crucible, so of course silver ran out of it. Completely fooled this priest – who had even been so kind as to lend the scoundrel money – and sold useless powder to him for forty pounds. Forty pounds!” He pounded his goblet on the scarred wood table for extra emphasis, splashing wine drops. “Forty pounds! The thieving wretch!” He took a hearty swig. “I hope the Lord God pulls His protection from over that bastard Bugger. Scoundrel! Cheat! He was much like all the alchemists! You can smell them for many miles (the stink of insidious potions hangs over them like flies round a horse’s ass), and they all blame one another when a scheme goes wrong because they seek the impossible! You cannot turn lead to gold or silver, nor can you ever discover the Philosopher Stone they talk about! So they cheat the masses (who, never expecting to be deceived, are that much simpler to do so to) and extort forty pounds – forty hard earned pounds, several years of pay for monk or priest – from kind folk easily tricked.” He twisted a sour face. “A curse upon them! Foul deceivers!”
“Hear, hear,” I said, for I was never one to disagree with those who I thought were correct. Actually, I was not known for disagreeing with anyone, being of a kind and easy going nature.
His eyes fixed on me again, the chuckle in their glittering depths present once more. “But about this trip to Cornwall…”
“’Tis a small excursion.”
“Beware of love is what they say. Love is at once the most beautiful of absolute disasters, I hear. It is a pain that is as much desired as it is bemoaned. It is to be pursued, yet never betrayed. I hear.”
“Are you married?”
Chaucer drank some wine. “Once, yes… I was happy, I think. But she, too, is now dust.”
“You were in love, though?”
He regarded me seriously once more, then said earnestly, “My friend, let me give you some advice I have picked up. Love and marriage, as I see them, are compatible only if the lover remains as his wife’s servant after the marriage act. At least, in private.”
“That… is good advice.”
He shrugged easily. “It is easy to give, at least as easy to give as it is hard to take.”
“Well, anyway, it is not marriage.”
“Oh, then love is permissible. But be honorable, at least as honorable as you have been on this pilgrammage.”
“Of course.”
Chaucer punched me lightly on the arm. “Then I forsee a future far into the future for you.”
“And one for you.”
“Many thanks. Shall we repast?”
“Indeed.”
So we did, upon the finest of pork and tender goose. Chaucer livened the evening with witty stories of his forays to the Continent, and he ate an amazing amount of food. Yet despite his appetite, he was always painstaking in being mannerly, eating his food gracefully and sipping small sips of ruby wine.
The next day, as the pilgrims arose and prepared to ride the dusty road to Rochester, I searched out a few of my favorites and bade them farewell, explaining that I must depart for Cornwall. When I got to Chaucer, he nodded warmly, said goodbye and asked me to look him up if I ever rode to London past Parliament. The last I saw of him, he was writing under a tree, still looking serious, a medium-height man with slight paunch, sitting crosslegged and thoughtfully tugging on his curly beard.
Of course, by December of that year, he had lost all of his titles (I looked him up: Chaucer was Knight of the Shire, Justice of the Peace in County Kent, amongst others) after his
patron, John of Gaunt, left for the Continent. I suppose it was then that Chaucer had the time to write the Tales of Canterbury – he was always so busy doing things, experiencing life to write about it, that he normally never had time – and when John of Gaunt returned the following year, Chaucer was reinstated, now with a literary feather in his cap.
I saw him just last month, while in London, and we went to the Tabard, where tubby Bailey feasted us royally. Chaucer told me that the Prioress (who I must have missed farewells with) had wondered where I had gone. “I told her you had gone to meet some highway robbers in Cornwall,” he said (we were both sillied with wine). “She thought that was nice.”
I don’t know how he found out (or if he was jesting me); but then, Cornwall is another tale for a later date.
Leopold LaPied 21 April 1390
[Original signed: Leopold LaPied / Dated: 21 April 1390]
SOURCES:
1. Chaucer, Geoffrey, “The Canterbury Tales”
a. Penguin Classics, trans. Nevill Coghill, pub. 1952
b. Skeat Edition, edited by Rev. Walter W. Skeat
c. English Literature (700-1600), edited by Samuel Beckoff (trans. Nevill Coghill)
2. Huyghe, Rene, “Larousse Encyclopedia of Byzantine and Medieval Art”
3. Power, Eileen, “Medieval People”
AFTERWORD sources:
1. Chaffurin, Louis, “English-French/French-English Larousse Dictionary”
2. Bergman, Peter M., “Concise Dictionary of 26 Languages”
COVER illustration:
William Blake: Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims, Oct. 1810 (modified)