by John Gardner
If he was not a page but a yeoman, or valettus, what was the nature of Chaucer’s work for the countess’s household? His status among yeomen was relatively low, since his wages were unimpressive. He was well below Edmund Rose, who’d been in the countess’s service as valettus since at least September 1352, when the lady of Clare gave him a present, and below Reginald Pierpont, in service at least since May 1354, and below John Hinton, to whom the countess showed greater largess. And there were still others above him, as well as some below him (the countess’s pages). Among the servants highest above him—such things counted a good deal in a medieval house—was the countess’s personal damoiselle, Philippa Pan’, of whom more soon. (The countess must have had other ladies-in-waiting at this time, perhaps including Alice Dawtrey, who received an annuity in 1359 as one of the countess’s domicelle, but the record does not mention them.)
Given his place in the scheme of the house, Chaucer must have been essentially an assistant to superiors, in his daytime labors. In the evening, when courtiers were expected to entertain with music, poetry, or conversation on noble and interesting subjects, he was presumably much what he would prove years later, deferential, not quick to speak, though the cleverest in the room. Indeed, at least during his first few weeks or perhaps even months in the countess’s retinue, he probably kept his talents to himself, for the simple reason that they were not what was required, not useful. He was not of noble blood, not one of those young gentlemen who, instead of attending a grammar school and proceeding to a university, served as pages and then squires in the halls or castles of the nobility, receiving there prolonged instruction in chivalry—training designed to fit the noble youth to become a worthy knight, a just and prudent master, and a sensible manager of an estate. The nobleman’s son was assigned to one responsible position after another, as assistant to the butler, assistant to the pantryman, and so on, and he received, besides, direct instruction in reading and writing, singing, playing musical instruments, dancing, horsemanship, chess, the usages of courtesy, and the chivalric conception of duty. It was this sort of youth that was expected to entertain the company in the evening, this sort of youth—not merely an elevated vintner’s son—that Chaucer describes in his portrait of the Squire in the Canterbury Tales:
Syngynge he was, or floytynge, al the day;
He was as fresh as is the month of May.
Short was his gownë, with slevës longe and wydë
Wel koude he sitte on hors and fair¨ ryd’e
He koudë songës make and wel enditë, [Joust and also dance,
Juste and eek daunce, and weel purtreye and writë. and draw well (?), and write]
But in the close quarters of a fourteenth-century noble household, it was difficult to keep real talent down, especially in the household of the favorite, pampered son of Queen Philippa, a truly splendid lady one of whose many admirable qualities was her lively delight in poetic ability, whatever its credentials.
Whether or not he wrote for Lionel and his wife, Chaucer did undoubtedly compose songs at this period, probably love songs and probably, some of them, salacious ones. It was the standard game in the English minor courts (as well as in the king’s). And as an admirer of the French court poet Machault—a major influence in the surviving early poems—he could hardly help being not simply a poet but a song writer, since in Machault’s theory music was more basic than language.
Not everything in a medieval court like Elizabeth’s was elegant service or entertainment. Chaucer was expected to continue his studies—mainly the arts, also French and Latin literature and language, which were supposed to help make him a refined and useful servant. There was also, probably, for a servant like Geoffrey, the endless drudgery of record-keeping and letter-copying. He would have finished his lower-level schooling at about the age of sixteen (1356 or earlier) and would have acquired in the process skills not to be dismissed lightly in the countess’s household. Since royal-house patronage seems to have helped support his later education, and since in maturity he served the English crown in three main capacities—as a favored court poet and “reader,” as foreign ambassador, and as high-ranking accountant or financially responsible overseer (while managing the customs, borrowing for the king, and serving as clerk of the king’s works and later as subforester)—it seems reasonable to hazard that Chaucer served the countess primarily as a scrivener and/or keeper of accounts. If he did in fact amuse the company with poems and songs, no evidence survives.
How Chaucer got his position with the countess is also anybody’s guess. The countess, for what it may be worth, was a granddaughter of blind Henry, earl of Lancaster, under whom Chaucer’s father fought, along with Thomas Heyroun, in the rising against Mortimer, and that may have helped, since no one got a job in the great minor courts without influence. But as we’ve seen, both Chaucer’s father and mother had at least some access to Edward III’s court, hence indirect access to the court of Prince Lionel and his wife.
Like other great courts, the court of Prince Lionel and the countess of Ulster was forever on the move, and young Chaucer, as a member of the household, moved with it. They went from castle to castle, or manor to manor, in the usual way of medieval royalty, spreading from place to place the otherwise intolerable burden of their numerous retinue, who had to be fed on local produce since there were in those days no trucks, no trains; and behind them, wherever they went, groaned their endless string of baggage carts—furniture, tapestries, candlesticks, jewelry, hunting equipment, pots and pans. In April 1356, Countess Elizabeth was in London; later she was in Southampton, then Reading, then Stratford-le-Bow. In the spring of 1357, she was in London again, for the luxurious festival of St. George at Windsor Castle. For Pentecost she was at Woodstock, for Christmas she was at Hatfield, for Epiphany she was at Bristol.
In all these places, Chaucer participated in celebrations of a sort we moderns never see, though occasionally we may glean some hint of them in movies. On holy days, in the castles of the mighty, the long hours of work and prayer and discipline that generally characterized life in the Middle Ages gave way to resplendent show, gorgeous dress, and dazzling entertainment. We have from the period several descriptions of the holy day feasts, enough to show clearly that John Massey’s description in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is as close to reportage as to fiction. (Because the dialect is a difficult one, I give a modernized version.)
All these were seated on the dais and served with distinction,
And down below many another knight ate at the sideboards.
And quickly the first course comes in, with a clarion of trumpets,
Hung brightly with many a blazing banderole,
And now the kettledrums barked, and the brilliant pipes
Warbled wildly and richly, awakening echoes
That lifted high every heart by their heavenly sound.
Then in flooded wonderful cates, the finest of foods,
Mountains of splendid meats, such a marvel of dishes
It was hard to find places to place there, in front of the people,
The vessels of silver that held all the various stews on hand.
Soon each to suit his wishes,
Turned gladly, gay of mind,
For every two, twelve dishes,
Cold beer and sparkling wine.
If we can trust the testimony of the poetry and chronicles, guests began arriving days before the holiday, with their numerous servants and lavish contributions to the castle’s festivities—foods, decorations, masks, skilled performers, including dwarfs, perhaps acrobats, and magicians. The men went off on hunts, not solely for entertainment but also to provide game meats; the women, highborn ladies and their well-born servants, helped prepare for the long, spectacular party on the holiday evening, which, when it came, came like an explosion of Chinese fireworks: music and ring-dancing, poetry, feasting, perhaps a masque or, between courses, a series of illusions of the sort brought back to England by crusaders who’d encountered them in the magi
c-loving East. In the Franklin’s Tale Chaucer describes such illusions, or magical “Interludes,” and we know by account books and by other evidence that such remarkable illusions were actually attempted. The Franklin tells the Pilgrims:
For ofte at feestës have I wel herd seyë
That tragetours, withinne an hallë largë, [actors, illusionists]
Have maad come in a water and a bargë,
And in the hallë rowen up and doun.
Somtyme hath semëd come a grym leoun;
And somtymë flourës sprynge as in a medë; [meadow]
Somtyme a vyne, and grapës white and redë;
Somtyme a castel, al of lym and stoon;
And whan hem lykëd, voyded it anon—
Thus semëd it to every mannës sightë.
Chaucer writes later in the same tale of even more amazing interludes, the feats performed by a great magician for his supper guest:
He shewëd hym, er he wentë to sopeer,
Forestës, parkës ful of wildë deer;
Ther saugh he hertës with hir hornës hyë,
The grettestë that evere werë seyn with yë.
He saugh of hem an hondred slayn with houndës,
And somme with arwës blede of bittre woundës.
He saugh, whan voyded werë thisë wildë deer,
Thise fauconers upon a fair ryver,
That with hir haukës han the heron slayn.
Tho saugh he knyghtës justyng in a playn;
And after this he didë hym swich pleasauncë,
That he hym shewëd his lady on a dauncë,
On which hymself he dauncëd, as hym thoughtë.
And whan this maister that this magyk wroughtë,
Saugh it was tyme, he clapte his handës two,
And farewel! al oure revel was ago.
Interludes like these, or like the seeming interlude when the stranger visits in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, magnify actual interludes to pure fiction; but they undoubtedly communicate the tone of those occasions Chaucer took part in as a member of the countess’s household staff, and convey the ideal of breathtaking spectacle for which the illusionists labored.
In all probability Chaucer also took part in the countess’s preparations for the betrothal of her infant daughter Philippa to Edmund Mortimer, son of the infamous Sir Roger, lover of Edward II’s queen, Isabella. (King Edward III with typical “gentilesse” had refused to punish the son for the father’s crimes.) Chaucer may have been present, too, at the funeral of Queen Isabella, in London on November 27, 1358, a rather eerie affair in that no one had heard of the queen in years, not since her confinement to her castle when she’d gone mad, yet now here she lay, surrounded by gloomy ceremony, as if summoned back out of the past to be given due burial. He may have been present at the Smithfield tournaments where King Edward and his cousin Henry Lancaster displayed their amazing skill—a tournament for which Countess Elizabeth had tapestried cushions prepared; and he may have been with the countess when she visited the Tower of London for a look at the lions. But most important, in the long run, was his trip to Hatfield for the Christmas holidays, in 1357, where he met the young man who would be his lifelong friend and advocate, Prince Lionel’s younger brother, John of Gaunt. (Gaunt, then earl of Richmond, was apparently at Hatfield for at least part of the celebration. The countess gave two of his attendants Christmas gifts of money.)
The seventeen-year-old Gaunt was no doubt already an impressive figure and had almost certainly developed already his aloof, distant manner. His servants had the look of men proud of their good fortune in being servants to such a prince; had the look, like the servants of the king himself, of men who would die for their master without an instant’s hesitation. Though Gaunt was a man of medium stature, he had, by all reports, an air of great confidence—what his enemies would call arrogance. He was the family intellectual, though what he thought of Geoffrey Chaucer, when the two first met, is impossible to say. Gaunt had of course grown up with poets, including the great French poet Jean Froissart, ever-faithful attendant to Gaunt’s mother, Queen Philippa; but unlike his older brother Prince Lionel, Gaunt for the most part inclined to friendship with philosophers, theologians, and political theorists rather than with men who thought up rhymes or painted pictures. Nevertheless, whatever they may have thought of one another when they first met, Gaunt and Chaucer were in time to become fast friends.
Chaucer probably served the court of Lionel and Elizabeth for about three years (some Chaucerians think longer). He must have met at this time all the royal family and many of the great men who served them, poets and painters, statesmen, businessmen. To a vintner’s son they must have seemed awesome creatures. Their manors, with their gardens, lakes, and parks, gave a man an idea of what Paradise must look like (Chaucer’s poetry repeatedly makes use of such settings in this way). Their feasts and tournaments, above all their entertainments, were more spectacular than almost anything modern man has seen. It was a great age for spectacular display. Even the mystery pageants, which scholars until recently have tended to imagine as small-time and shoddy, were by the fifteenth century, and probably as early as Chaucer’s time, more grand than nearly anything available to us today. These were biblical plays put on by local guilds every Corpus Christi Day in every important town in England, beginning early in the morning and lasting until after dark (in some towns they may have run two full days). They were usually presented, in Chaucer’s time, from large, two- or three-storey pageant wagons, but occasionally done in fields or from enormous, complicated stages which were equipped, at least in places like fifteenth-century Wakefield, with wind machines, secret passages, devices for raising small groups of actors to heaven on invisible wires, and props for creating, among other things, a gruesomely realistic Crucifixion, in which real blood (goat’s blood) came gushing from Christ’s wounds.3 It was all wonderful theater, now deeply affecting, now sweetly touching, now bawdily comic—as when some pretty fellow like squeamish Absalon, in the Miller’s Tale, put on the ridiculous, overreaching ways of a pretender to the throne of Christ himself and “pleyeth Herodës on a scaffold hyë.” Prince Lionel and the countess watched the pageant wagons come clumsily rolling into position for performance—and then afterward roll on, lurching and swaying, toward their further stations—from a costly, elevated box with a blinding-bright awning which bore their coats of arms, a box nestled among many such boxes, brightly painted, aflutter with streamers, constructed wherever there was a park or widening of the street that might serve as a playing station. Chaucer, as one of his employers’ lesser yeomen, must have watched from the street or from low bleachers, craning to see, since he was not very tall, or perhaps jumping for a look, like the people in the back of the crowd in his House of Fame:
And whan they were alle on an hepë,
Tho behyndë begunne up lepë,
And clamben up on other fastë,
And up the nose and yën kastë, [eyes]
And troden fast on others helës, [heels]
And stampen as men doon aftir eles. [eels]
But the courtly masques—stately dumb shows, long playlets, or sequential tableaus honoring courtly ideals or saints for whom aristocrats had a special regard (St. George, patron saint and spectral model of chivalry, St. Lucy, patroness of light, St. Cecilia, patroness of music)—made even the mystery pageants seem country trifles. There were astonishing mechanical horses (perhaps real horses inside, though only in the dreams of kings were there flying horses, like the one in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale);4 there were seeming forests filled with birds, descents of the angelic Host, frightening dances of witches and wild animals, and much more. Just the masks for the guests who took part in the dancing which concluded one popular form of the masque could cost a small fortune, we know from Edward’s account books—masks of, for instance, lions, elephants, bat-eared men, and satyrs. The feasts on these occasions, too, were spectacular, not only for the wealth and variety of food and drink provided but also for the art th
at went into their presentation. The table was made a great landscape of food, with forests of parsley and watercress, lakes and rivers with bridges and tiny horsemen, and castles made out of “clean white paper,” sometimes set afire in the darkened room before the feasting began. In a country where starvation was never far off for the lower classes, no wonder if preachers and popular poets occasionally howled “Wickedness!”, wringing their fingers.
But the people whom Chaucer met in these courts outshone everything around them, as all the poets of the age agree. Imagine kettledrums and long, straight trumpets, servants in livery—the flashy uniforms of their various employers—ladies in high hats with trailing veils, stately gentlemen attired like peacocks (no straw on the floor here—we’ve entered the world of flagstone and beautifully made tiles like those in Troilus and Criseyde), and booming from the tapestried stone walls, echoing down from the six by six rafters made of oak-tree hearts, an oceanic roar of music and laughter.