Читать книгу The Story of London - Henry B. Wheatley - Страница 8

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HAVING considered some of the chief conditions of life in a walled town, and the manners of the inhabitants, we can now proceed to look at old London through the eyes of the great English poets of the later mediæval period, to whom we are so much indebted for the insight they give us into the habits of a long-dead past.

That wonderful book, Piers Plowman, not only brings before us in the most vivid fashion the life of the fourteenth century, but opens out to us the thoughts and hopes of the leaders of men. One of the most striking passages contains a description of the interior of a beerhouse in the reign of Edward III., with the company assembled therein.[54] This is a scene common to the whole country, but London places are also frequently mentioned in Piers Plowman.

The author, William Langland, called ‘Long Will,’ probably from his tallness, was an inhabitant of London, but he has little to say in its favour. He wrote: ‘I have lived long in London, but have never found charity; all whom I have seen are covetous.’[55]

Prof. Skeat says: ‘One great merit of the poem is, that it chiefly exhibits London life and London opinions, which are surely of more interest to us than those of Worcestershire. He does but mention Malvern three times, and those three passages may be found within the compass of the first eight passus of Text A. But how numerous are his allusions to London! He not only speaks of it several times, but he frequently mentions the Law Courts of Westminster; he was familiar with Cornhill, East Cheap, Cock Lane in Smithfield,[56] Shoreditch, Garlickhithe, Stratford, Tyburn and Southwark, all of which he mentions in an offhand manner. He mentions no river but the Thames, which is with him simply synonymous with river; for in one passage he speaks of two men thrown into the Thames, and in another he says that rich men are wont to give presents to the rich, which is as superfluous as if one should fill a tun with water from a fresh river and then pour it into the Thames to render it wetter. To remember the London origin of a large portion of the poem is the true key to the right understanding of it.’[57]

M. Jusserand, in his interesting study of Piers Plowman, says of Langland: ‘He tells us what he has seen and nothing else; his sole guide is the light that shines over the town where Truth is imprisoned.’ He continues: ‘It clears the darkness of the London lanes, where, under the pent-roof of their shops, the merchants make Gyle, disguised as an apprentice, sell their adulterated wares; it brightens the hovel in Cornhill where the poet lodges his emaciated body; it throws its rays on the scared faces of sinners for whom the hour of punishment has rung. We have here a whole gallery of portraits which stand out in an extraordinary manner.’

M. Jusserand takes a somewhat unfavourable view of Langland’s character. He says that the poet ‘blames those who go to London and sing for souls, yet he confesses that he does the same. He blames people of a wandering habit, yet he is a wanderer; he heaps scorn on the men who seek for invitations at the houses of the great, yet he does so; he condemns “tho that feynen here folis” (Bk. x. 38), and he assumes the appearance of a “fole”; he hates lazy people, “lorels,” “lolleres,” yet he lives himself as a lorel, a loller, a “spille-tyme”;

‘ “and lovede wel fare,

And no dede to do bote drynke and to slepe.” ’ (C. vi. 8).

The satirist and the censor cannot always be consistent, and without deciding upon the character of Langland, gratitude to him causes us to forgive his inconsistencies, and makes us more inclined to agree with the high estimate of Professor Skeat, rather than with the condemnation of Mons. Jusserand.[58]

Langland was taken by the leaders of the Peasants’ Rising as the great prophet of their movement, but he himself stood outside the political circle. He complained of the evils that were everywhere rampant, but he did not wish to set himself against the Government; as Dr. Skeat says: ‘His Richard the Redeles is a tender and touching remonstrance to the King, Richard II.’

Thomas Hoccleve and John Gower were Londoners—the former a clerk in the Privy Seal Office and the latter probably a city merchant.

Hoccleve is supposed to have taken his name from the village of Hockliffe, Bedfordshire, on the Roman Road, 4½ miles south of Woburn, and 3½ east of Leighton Buzzard. He intended at first to become a priest, but instead he entered the Privy Seal Office in 1308, when he was nineteen or twenty years of age. He complained of the drudgery of copying, and seems to have been always ready to shirk his work. Dr. Furnivall’s side-notes to the autobiographical portion of the Regement of Princes show what the complaints are like: ‘A copier must always work mind, eye and hand together. He can’t talk to other folk, or sing, but must give all his wits to his work. Workmen talk, sing, and lark. We labour in silence, stoop and stare on the sheepskin. Our copying hurts our stomachs, our backs and our eyes. Anyone who has copied for twenty years like I have suffers for it in every bit of his body. It’s nearly done for me. Had I always lived in poverty, I shouldn’t feel it so much now, but the change is strange. God keep me from poverty. I’d sooner die than live miserably.’

As there were many copyists employed in London, we must hope that they were not all so weary of their work as the poet was.

He lived at Chester Inn, which stood on part of the site of the present Somerset House.

‘At Chestre ynne, right fast be the Stronde.’

His daily occupation took him to Westminster, where the Privy Seal Office was situated, and as the Strand was but a poor road we may suppose that he went from home to office in a boat. He went frequently to Paul’s Head Tavern, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where he made love to the waitresses and others. He also belonged to a dining club, called the Temple Club, ‘the court of good company.’ Often after dinner, instead of going back to the office, he took his pleasure on the Thames, being flattered by the watermen, who fought amongst themselves for his patronage, and called him master, because he paid them well.

He was a good Churchman, and denounced the Lollard Rising in St. Giles’s Fields in January 1414 in good set terms.

Hoccleve was not a very lively poet, and he always seems to have been in want of money. He enjoyed the early part of his life, but when he married and the pinch of poverty came upon him he was very dejected. In spite of his faults we cannot but esteem him, and feel that he has a claim on our gratitude because he was devoted to Chaucer, and was the cause of our possessing the best portrait there is of the poet. Hoccleve was near Chaucer in his last days. He could easily pass from Westminster Palace to the garden of the Chapel of St. Mary. Dr. Furnivall suggests that he was with Chaucer when the great poet died there.[59]

Dr. G. C. Macaulay, in the Introduction to his valuable and exhaustive edition of Gower’s Complete Works, says that the poet speaks with special respect of the estate of merchants, which seems to suggest that it was as a merchant he made the money which he spent in buying his land, and this inference is supported by the manner in which he speaks of ‘our city,’ and by the fact that it is with members of the merchant class that he seems to be most in personal communication. Dr. Macaulay supposes Gower to have been a dealer in wool, with the natural dislike of the Londoner for foreigners. The jealousy of the Lombards which he expresses has every appearance of being a prejudice connected with rivalry in commerce. ‘I see Lombards come,’ he says, ‘in poor attire as servants, and before a year has passed they have gained so much by deceit and conspiracy that they dress more nobly than the burgesses of our city.’[60]

John Gower at one time lived at Southwark, and in St. Saviour’s Church his tomb still stands. One day, in the year 1390, when he had taken boat on the Thames, he accidentally met the King (Richard II.) in his tapestried barge. The river was the silent highway for all Londoners, also the royal road from Westminster to the Tower, and from thence to Greenwich. Brilliant scenes were to be seen on the river, which joined all parts of the town in one. Here all classes were brought together—the gentry and the working-classes—and Court pageants were constantly being enacted.

When Richard saw Gower he commanded him to come into the royal barge, and then charged him to write some new thing which he might read. The poet obeyed the command, and produced the Confessio Amantis, with a Prologue, in which occur these lines:—