by John Gardner
(1) that Chaucer never expressed contentment with his married life or his love life—quite the contrary; (2) that if he really married Philippa at Gaunt’s behest in 1366, he went into the arrangement with his eyes open, and had no cause to feel deceived; (3) that he was well remunerated; and (4) that he may actually have regarded it as a high honor to be so closely connected with the royal house of England, and the kingdom’s greatest nobleman. Alice Perrers’ husband accepted with excellent grace his wife’s role as mistress to the king, along with the incidental perquisites to himself; and many a subsequent husband of the royal mistress in France and England has managed to view a similar situation with philosophic aplomb.20
Another mainly emotional objection is that it seems to us offensive that Gaunt, even in that age, should be making love to two of Sir Paon Roet’s daughters simultaneously. Professor Williams’ answer is that Gaunt wasn’t. By a careful examination of the dates involved, he gets Thomas conceived and Philippa paid off (the annuity grant of August 1372) before Gaunt’s affair with Katherine began, so that the pension to Philippa “may have been granted at the behest of Katherine, and to please her; or it may have been granted as a kind of peace offering from Gaunt because he had deserted Philippa for her sister.”21 The argument, though tenable, may seem a trifle weak, resting as it does on our desire to believe that Gaunt failed to notice for several years the beautiful woman in his household whom he would later keep as mistress for decades and ultimately marry. Katherine had been in the Gaunt household at least since 1369,22 and had probably served for some while by then, whereas it was only after Queen Philippa’s death that Philippa Chaucer was officially transferred to the Gaunt retinue—though Gaunt and Philippa had known each other, and had perhaps been lovers (as we’ve seen) earlier. Although it’s conceivable that Gaunt made no move toward Katherine in all that time, despite her proximity and golden-haired beauty, or that Katherine, from regard for her sister, rebuffed him, it is not much more than conceivable. Gaunt was in England from November 1369, shortly after Blanche’s death, to June 1370, when he left for France and Spain; and he returned to England in November 1371. If he really did love first Philippa and only later Katherine, as we hope, he was—and they were—lucky. From the medieval point of view, it was incest either way.
J. M. Manly raised one important objection to Krauss’s argument, that Gaunt’s marrying Katherine after he had had carnal relations with her sister would have violated canon law; hence Philippa can never have been Gaunt’s mistress. Williams has tried to prove that Manly was mistaken about canon law.23 Perhaps a safer argument—supported by what we know of Gaunt’s agreement with Wyclif, especially with regard to civil and canon law—would be an assertion that Gaunt didn’t give a damn about canon law.
But let us return to the troublesome fact that, if it is true that Thomas Chaucer was really Gaunt’s son, and true that Chaucer and Gaunt were good friends, then Chaucer’s marriage was, at least from a modern point of view, strange. He was married to Philippa by 1366; sometime between 1369 and the spring of 1372, Gaunt begot Thomas on Chaucer’s wife. We can blink Chaucer’s marrying his friend’s cast-off mistress, but why did he let the affair drag on? One natural reaction is to scoff at the whole idea, as B. J. Whiting does, alluding ironically to Chaucer’s “pretty role as a contented cuckold.” Another equally natural reaction is Williams’ assertion that Chaucer felt no pain in the matter, since he didn’t really like his wife.
That notion, far from original with Williams, has taken a strange hold on Chaucer biography. The only evidence comes, naturally, from Chaucer’s verse, especially the House of Fame, wherein Chaucer speaks of worshipping at the shrine of St. Leonard (patron saint of prisoners and henpecked husbands, among other things), and later tells how, fallen into a state of suspended animation in the claws of a soaring eagle, he is awakened, or indeed brought back to life, by an eagle’s imperious cry of “Awak[e]!” which is spoken
Ryght in the samë vois and stevenë [sound or pitch]
That useth oon I koudë nevenë; [name]
And with that vois, soth for to seyn,
My myndë cam to me ageyn,
For hyt was goodly seyd to me,
So nas hyt never wont to be.
Pointing out that the eagle wakes Chaucer in the voice of Philippa, but more kindly than Philippa, critics have repeatedly drawn the conclusion that Philippa really was, in Chaucer’s view, a shrew. They add Chaucer’s assertions in the Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, Parliament of Birds, Troilus and Criseyde, and so on, that he knows nothing of love, and conclude that his marriage was a disaster. For instance, J. W. Hales, after reviewing the literary evidence, says, “It seems impossible to put a pleasant construction on these pages. It is incredible that they have no personal significance. The conclusion clearly is that Chaucer was not happy in his matrimonial relations.”
One dissenter from this view is T. R. Lounsbury, who writes, on the passage just quoted:
The lines are unmistakably pure banter—banter doubtless understood at the time.…To attach a serious meaning to [them] would render it necessary for us to revise our whole conception of the poet’s character. From the little we know of his life and from the great deal we find in his writings, we recognize him plainly as a man of the world in the best sense of that much-abused phrase. He had all that tendency to self-revelation in unimportant matters and to reticence in important ones which distinguish men of his kind. We can be certain that he was not one to wear his heart upon his sleeve, not one to take the world into his confidence in things wherein it had no concern, or to parade before it his domestic grievances, if any he had.24
Two further points might be made. First, if the lines do refer to Philippa (and that seems the easiest reading) they say, for all their teasing, that her voice has roused Chaucer from a deathlike state. Since the whole poem parodies Dante’s Comedy, wherein Dante is elevated by the love of Beatrice, Chaucer’s lines suggest, delightfully and it may be truly, that the everyday love of a wife can also save the soul. The idea that in a woman’s love, as in Christ’s, a man can be resurrected is a commonplace of love-religion poetry, including that of Chaucer. For instance, he has the Black Knight say in the Book of the Duchess, “As helpe me God I was as blyve / Reysed, as fro deth to lyve…” This idea that married love is as beneficial as courtly love turns out to be one of the consistent idiosyncrasies in Chaucer’s verse. Chaucer repeatedly celebrated the love of man and wife and suggested the analogy between love of this kind and that between God and man, that is, Christ the Bridegroom and his Church, and he frequently compared wedded happiness with happiness in heaven. In the Man of Law’s Tale, for instance, we find:
And swich a blisse is ther bitwix hem two
That, savë the joye that lasteth everemo,
Ther is noon lyk that any creaturë
Hath seyn or shal, whil that the world may durë. [endure]
The most fortunate kind of married love and the love of God are compared, too, in the Franklin’s Tale. In this marriage, where each party has renounced tyranny over the other, love is “patient,” like that of the mightiest of all lovers, God:
Love is a thing as any spirit free.
Wommen, of kyndë, desiren libertee, [nature]
And nat to been constreynëd as a thral;
And so doon men, if I sooth seyen shal.
Looke who that is moost pacient in lovë,
He is at his advantage al abovë.
Though comic and ironic, Chaucer’s jibe at Philippa in the House of Fame carries the usual love-religion comparison of woman’s elevating love and God’s love.
The second point which I think should be made is that neither Chaucer’s repeated claims that he knows nothing about love nor his “obsessive” concern with faithless wives can fairly be read as evidence that he was unhappy with his wife. The claim that he knows nothing about love, as I’ve suggested already, has the ring of an in-joke. As for Chaucer’s fascination with unfaithful wives, it was s
tock material for the poets of his day, including sober Gower. What sets Chaucer apart is his insistent defense of unfaithful women. Surely the following is not mocking or ironic:
But trewëly, the storië telleth us,
Ther madë nevere woman moorë wo
Than she, whan that she falsëd Troilus.
She seyde, “Allas! for now is clene ago
My name of trouthe in love, for everemo!
For I have falsëd oon the gentilestë
That evere was, and oon the worthiestë!”
When Chaucer speaks of men who try to “cage” their wives or daughters (in the Miller’s Tale, the Reeve’s Tale, the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the Merchant’s Tale, and the Manciple’s Tale), he always comes down on the side of the wife and against the jealous male. If the gossip is right and Chaucer’s wife was for a time Gaunt’s mistress, Chaucer was equally sympathetic in real life. He and Philippa were frequently apart, usually when Chaucer was away on business, perhaps sometimes for other reasons we do not know; but apparently they also spent a good deal of time together, right to the end of Philippa’s life, as they need not have done judging by other marriages we know to have been contracted for the sake of appearances in that century.
So the marriage was perhaps odd, but nothing urgently suggests that it was loveless. A thoroughgoing Freudian slightly in his cups might argue that Chaucer’s consistent defense of faithless women, his idealization of married life, and his insistence that a wife should be allowed to roam freely, are all indications of repression and desperate neurotic facade. But Chaucer’s poetry has the unmistakable ring of good health. Perhaps one of the best things that happened to him in the 1360’s was that by a wild stroke of luck—which secured him the lifelong gratitude, friendship, and patronage of the most powerful baron in England—he fell into marriage with a rich and beautiful heiress whom he had known and liked for years and whom he liked well enough now, or generously enough, that he would not cage her like a bird, though he felt the need, from time to time, to defend his point of view, slyly glancing around the audience, because they knew his situation but were hardly in much of a position to judge him since they too, most of them, had their vulnerable points, as Chaucer knew:
For O thyng, sirës, saufly dar I seyë,
That freendës everych oother moot obeyë,
If they wol longe holden compaignyë.
Love wol nat been constreynëd by maistryë.
Whan maistrië comth, the God of Love anon
Beteth his wyngës, and farëwel, he is gon!
This is not to say, necessarily, that the marriage of Geoffrey and Philippa was absolute bliss, like the pure-fiction marriages he’d created for the Black Knight and Lady White, or Alla and Custance. He may perhaps sometimes have been uncomfortably aware of his lower station, for instance when they visited the great Swynford estate. Chaucer knew Philippa’s relatives were in no rational sense his betters. By Christian doctrine, all people had pretty much an equal claim to true “gentilessë.” So Chaucer’s character the old hag would argue with comic long-windedness, in the tale of the Wife of Bath, telling her young knight that it’s better to be married to a woman old and foul but virtuous than to a beautiful, faithless woman:
“But, for ye speken of swich gentillessë
As is descended out of old richessë, [wealth]
That therforë sholden ye be gentil men,
Swich arrogance is nat worth an hen.…
Crist wolë we clayme of hym oure gentillessë,
Nat of oure eldres for hire old richessë.
For thogh they yeve us al hir heritagë,
For which we claymë to been of heigh paragë, [lineage]
Yet may they nat biquethë, for no thyng, [bequeath]
To noon of us hir vertuous lyvyng,
That made hem gentil men ycalled be,
And bad us folwen hem in swich degree.”
But all that was mere talk, as the canny hag knew. Philippa’s kinsmen might perhaps speak no Latin (such knowledge was relatively uncommon among rural aristocrats), but their power and wealth, their ancient pedigree made a difference only a fool could pretend not to notice. There was a line, a barrier that closed him out, and though jealousy and envy were laughable to Chaucer—he’d mocked them many times—his poetry shows that he understood such emotions well. He would set down jealousy with deadly accuracy in Troilus and Criseyde, and because of his knowledge of how jealousy felt he would be able to inject authentic pain and anger into one beautiful conventional lyric on the subject of unfaithfulness:
Madamë, for your newefangelnessë,
Many a servaunt have ye put out of gracë.
I takë my leve of your unstedfastnessë,
For wel I wot, whyl ye have lyvës spacë,
Ye can not lovë ful half yeer in a placë,
To newë thing your lust is ay so kenë;
In stede of blew, thus may ye were al grenë.
Right as a mirour nothing may enpressë,
But, lightly as it cometh, so mot it pacë,
So fareth your love, your werkës bereth witnessë.
Ther is no feith that may your herte enbracë;
But, as a wedercok, that turneth his facë
With every wind, ye fare, and that is senë;
In stede of blew, thus may ye were al grenë.
Ye might be shryned, for your brotelnessë,
Bet than Dalyda, Creseyde or Candacë; [fickleness, or breakableness]
For ever in chaunging stant your sikernessë; [surety]
That tachë may no wight fro your herte aracë.
If ye lese oon, ye can wel tweyn purchacë; [blemish…erase]
Al light for somer, ye woot wel what I menë:
In stede of blew, thus may ye were al grenë.
We cannot know what lady he wrote this lyric for. There is even some doubt, certain scholars think, whether the poem is by Chaucer; but it would not, perhaps, be unduly surprising to learn that he wrote it, in an angry moment, to Philippa herself.
Yet whatever its oddities, the Chaucers’ marriage was probably not an especially bad one. They stayed together, with only occasional interruptions which may have had nothing to do with how they felt; they seem to have been comfortable with the same friends; they raised children. Indeed, there is so much good said of marriage in Chaucer’s poetry, and there are so many signs of his subtle understanding of how married men and women feel and behave toward each other, that one is inclined to believe theirs must have been an excellent marriage, that sometimes Chaucer lay at night with Philippa’s head against his shoulder, listening to her breathing and the breathing of the children—Elizabeth and little Thomas, later little Lewis—and thought, half-smiling in the room’s complete darkness, how strange and unpredictable are the ways of this world, and felt the emotion he’d give later to Troilus, a wish that all lovers might fare as well as he, a prayer, almost, that would surface out of memory and slip into the Knight’s Tale:
…God, that al this wydë world hath wroght,
Sende hym his love that hath it deere aboght!
* * *
*Oriental medicine, more inscrutably, invented yoga, do-in, dietary balance of sodium and potassium—basis of the electrical charge in cells—acupuncture, moxaburning, and so on, which are essentially systems for altering the body’s electromagnetic fields in accordance with a theory of the balance of yin and yang forces in the universe.6
* He also sent to Oxford both his son Henry Beaufort (his son by Katherine Swynford) and his grandson Henry (King Henry V, son of Gaunt’s son by Blanche of Lancaster, Henry Hereford, later King Henry IV).
Five: Significant Moments and Influences: Pedro the Cruel, Two Deaths, that Shameless Woman and Wanton Harlot Alice Perrers, and Italian Artistic Humanism (1367-1373)
WHEN GEOFFREY AND PHILIPPA CHAUCER were just beginning their married life together, in 1367, the Black Prince was at war in Spain, enforcing the foreign policy Chaucer had had a hand in working out the year befo
re. The immediate significance of the war was the English government’s wish to keep the French from control of the Castilian navy, tipping the balance against England in Edward III’s war with France; but in the long view, the Spanish troubles with which England involved herself in the late 1360’s are perhaps chiefly interesting as an instance of that conflict which was beginning to crop up here and there over the length and breadth of western Christendom, the conflict that would bring out the best and worst in Chaucer’s later friend and patron King Richard II, ultimately leading to Richard’s deposition and murder—the conflict, that is, of limited versus absolute monarchy, magnates versus king.
The Spanish troubles came about, briefly, as follows. When the plague of 1350 killed Alfonso XI, king of Castile—the rich Spanish peninsula kingdom of mountains and wheatfields and the innumerable castles that gave the place its name—Alfonso left behind him five bastard children by his favorite mistress, Doña Leonor de Guzmán, and one legitimate son, the man whom Chaucer would address as “O noble, O worthy Petro, glorie of Spayne,” remembered by history as Pedro the Cruel. Alfonso had been strong. Though his forbears had left him a weak throne and a strife-torn kingdom, he’d been able to impose some order on the anarchic nobility, had brought his towns back to prosperity, and by long, fierce struggle had beaten back the Moors, recapturing the provinces of Granada and Morocco. But his death reawakened the old factionalism, the old lawlessness and oppression by noblemen and prelates, and his illegitimate line, guided and encouraged by Doña Leonor, stood as a powerful threat to the legitimate, so that Pedro had his hands full maintaining his authority against treason and revolt. Like many absolute monarchs of the period, Pedro looked for inspiration, on the one hand, to renascent Roman political theory, which was now being much discussed throughout Europe, offering, as it did, a creditable alternative to the theory that temporal power derived from spiritual authority, that is, from the Pope; and he looked, on the other hand, to the living model of successful medieval absolutism as practiced by Moorish princes. Neither Roman theory nor Moorish practice, as Pedro understood them, made high moral demands on the monarch. Power and authority were his by right, and were the sole basis of happiness in the state. And so, to end her dissentious influence on her children and his magnates, Pedro murdered—or perhaps his mother and favorite counsellor murdered—his father’s mistress, Doña Leonor, and the result was the beginning of as ugly a blood feud as history records.