Correspondence

1150.  EBB to Benjamin Robert Haydon

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 320–323.

[London]

Saturday. [11] Feb. 1843. [1]

My dear friend,

Old Winstanley who writes of the poets, says of Gower [2] —“He was buried at St Mary Overies at Southwark, on the north side of the said church in the chapel of St John ....… He lieth under a tomb of stone, with his image also of stone over him, the haire of his heade auburn, long to his shoulders but curling up, and a smalle forked bearde, .. [3] like a coronet of four roses; an habit of purple damasked down to his feet, a collar of esses of gold [4] about his neck which being proper to places of Judicature makes some think he was a judge in his old age.” His English poem, the only work by which he is known, is the ‘Confessio amantis’ consisting of various tales told with simplicity & some grace & tenderness– If it were not that the sound of Chaucer’s music puts out his, we should run more eagerly to praise him. Chaucer calls him ‘the morall Gower’ in one place, & says “fye” to his “cursed stories” in another [5] —but on the ground of delicacy the poets may stand side by side as in your balcony– I wish I could send you the ‘Confessio amantis’—I have read it but do not possess it—& have been waiting for some time until a black letter copy shall fall within reach of my hands–

Sir Samuel Meyrick is so high an authority upon all matters of antiquity that I am half afraid of expressing to you my very large doubt upon his view of Chaucer’s age. [6] Leland has been convicted of making the poet too young [7] —and the general inference of the critics goes with the testimony of the monument erected to him by Brigham in 1555 according to the previous testimony of his disciple the poet Occleve [8] —& this testimony states the period of his death as October 1400– Now that he died an old man, is evident from his writings and if he was 40 in 1386 he cd have been only 54 in 1400, which is by no means old– Moreover Gower at the close of his ‘Confessio amantis’ represents Venus as desiring Chaucer

 

‘To putte an ende of alle his work

As one who is my oldë clerk’– [9]

After which, Chaucer, so far from putting an end to his work, wrote the ‘Canterbury Tales’ his greatest production in order to prove what the “oldë clerke” could do–

I do not wish to involve you in a controversy, my dear Mr Haydon—and a few years, more or less, will make no great difference to your picture– My own creed is that Chaucer was born somewhere about 1328, [10] —which wd bring him nearly to thirty when your French King was brought into London on the white horse “with very rich furniture” [11] —& that Gower was not much .. not by many years .. his senior. John of Gaunt [12] & Chaucer were fast friends.

I send you my Black letter Chaucer, [13] & also Mr Horne’s edition of a modernized selection in which Mr Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, & others less worthy, were fellow-workers. If you look to the ‘Prologue’ as it is called, of ‘Sir Thopas’, page 109, you will find Chaucer’s description of his own “elvish countenance”– [14] There is a picture of him at Oxford—but that is drawn I believe from a portrait in certain MSS belonging to the Marquis of Stafford– Do you know him? [15] Ah! if you had access to those!!

There is a great deal more to say—& yet, perhaps, nothing which is likely to be of use to you. Is Sir Samuel Meyrick’s tradition of a signature a proof that the poet did not choose to be old? Certainly, I always did fancy that he quarrelled with Gower for calling him an “old clerk”.! I always fancied so—& said so in the Athenæum once! [16] It wd be curious if we cd prove that. But perhaps this is simply a ladylike notion of mine—& high treason against my Master–

Thank you for your kindness about the frescos—for all your kindness—& of course I say ‘yes’ to the portfolios, & will tell Mr Kenyon–

Ever yours

EBB–

Is ‘St Mary Overies at Southwark’ the same as St Savior’s at Southwark? [17] Perhaps so– You will deserve well of yr country if you force her to honor her poets. You shall have the plaster bust on monday– [18]

Publication: EBB-BRH, pp. 31–34.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Date based on letter 1149, to which this letter is a response.

2. William Winstanley (1628?–98) published Lives of the Most Famous English Poets in 1687. His description of Gower’s effigy occurs at pp. 20–21.

3. EBB here omitted Gower’s phrase “on his head a Chaplet.”

4. A collar of “esses” with a swan appendage was the badge of Henry IV.

5. These expressions occur in Troilus and Cressyde (V, 1856–57) and The Canterbury Tales (“Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale,” 80).

6. See letter 1149.

7. John Leland (1506?–52) gave details of Chaucer’s life in his Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, published posthumously in 1709. Winstanley said Chaucer “had lived about seventy two years,” quoting Leland as his principal authority (op. cit., p. 26), thus placing Chaucer’s birth in 1328.

8. In 1555, Nicholas Brigham (d. 1558) caused Chaucer’s bones to be moved to a marble tomb in the south transept of Westminster Abbey, giving the date of Chaucer’s death as 25 October 1400. Thomas Occleve or Hoccleve (1370?–1450?), poet and clerk in the Privy Seal Office, knew Chaucer and included a portrait of him in De Regimine Principum (1411–12). When Chaucer died, Hoccleve is thought to have been with him.

9. Lines 2953–54.

10. This was the date given by Thomas Speght, who edited Chaucer’s works in 1598; he cited no authority, and Chaucer is now believed to have been born ca. 1340 (DNB).

11. This phrase occurs in Froissart’s description of the entry into London of the Black Prince and his captive (The Cronycles of Englande, Fraunce, Spayne … and Other Places Adjoynynge, trans. John Bourchier, 1523–25, ch. 164).

12. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster (1340–99), was the fourth son of Edward III. In 1357, Chaucer was employed as a page in the household of Gaunt’s elder brother, the Duke of Clarence; this may have led to the friendship EBB ascribes to them. One of Chaucer’s earliest extant poems is “The Boke of the Duchesse,” written on the death of John of Gaunt’s first wife.

13. The 1602 edition by Speght, now at ABL (see Reconstruction, A629).

14. The Canterbury Tales, line 13.

15. George Granville Leveson-Gower (1758–1833), 2nd Marquis of Stafford and 1st Duke of Sutherland, was a patron of the arts and collector. However, the Oxford portrait (used as the frontispiece in William Godwin’s The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, 1803) was not copied from the one in his possession. The Marquis was known to Haydon, who had often studied in the picture gallery of Stafford’s London house. (See Martha Hale Shackford, Letters from Elizabeth Barrett to B.R. Haydon, 1939, pp. 60–61.)

16. In one of her articles on The Book of the Poets (The Athenæum, no. 762, 4 June 1842, p. 499).

17. See letter 1147, note 4.

18. i.e., the bust of Chaucer, mentioned in letter 1142.

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