Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/166

 But drede the not to come into this place, For this writinge ys nothing ment be the, Ne be noon but he Loves servant be; For thou of love hast lost thy taste, y geese, As seke man hath of swete and bitternesse.

The date of this poem is unknown. A recent theory places it as late as 1381. This is, we think, too late. But it is generally agreed that it was not written till after 1373—that it certainly belongs to the italianised period. In the ‘Troylus and Cryseyde’ we also hear the cry of one crossed in love. Even more suggestive of failure and rejection is the picture he so fully draws of himself in the ‘House of Fame,' which there is very good reason for believing was written after 1374, and by Professor ten Brink is assigned to 1384. It is the picture of a heavy-laden person who tries to forget his cares in excessive application to ‘business’ and studies, not forgetting the pleasures of the table. He was certainly married when he wrote this. All the passage (Book ii. 1–152) should be carefully read. His dramatic power is so largely developed in his third period that personal allusions are much rarer, and can be much less positively asserted. But the bitter remarks one or two husbands—e.g. the Host and the Merchant—make about their wives naturally recur to everyone's mind in this connection. And the significance of his ‘envoy' to the Clerk’s Tale cannot be ignored. It is written in a spirit of the fiercest sarcasm, which renders it unique in Chaucer's poetry. He exhorts ‘noble wyves ful of heigh prudence’ not to let humility nail their tongues, to imitate Echo that keeps no silence, to ever ‘clap’ like mills, to make their husbands ‘care and weep and wring and waille.’

It seems impossible to put a pleasant construction on these passages. It is incredible that they have no personal significance. 'The conclusion clearly is that Chaucer was not happy in his matrimonial relations. It is a fact, that while Chaucer was domiciled, as we shall see, at Aldgate, his wife was in attendance upon the Lady Constance, John of Gaunt's second wife. Of course such an arrangement does not necessarily prove there was any discord between them, but certainly it does not discourage the idea. And unless the passage in the ‘Boke of the Duchesse’ refers to his wife and some estrangement between him and her, we must suppose that Chaucer was for many years possessed with a great passion for some other lady—a passion not merely conventional—and that when he was certainly married, he spoke of himself as hopeless of bliss because in that grand passion he had met with no success.

It has been doubted whether Thomas Chaucer [q. v.] was the poet’s son. This question is, as it happens, closely connected with the question whether the maiden name of Chaucer’s wife was Roet. On the tomb of Thomas Chaucer at Ewelme occur repeatedly the arms of Roet —viz. gules three Catherine wheels or. Thomas Chaucer also at one time used the arms Per pale argent and gules, a bend counterchanged. This is proved from a drawing of his seal to be found in the Cottonian MS. Julius C. vii. f. 153 (see an accurate copy of it given by in Aldine edition, i. 45 n.), and from an impression of it attached to a deed preserved among the ‘Miscellanea of the Queen's Remembrancer of the Exchequer’ (see Archæologia, xxxiv. 42). Now these arms are found on the poet's tomb at Westminster. ‘In front,’ writes Nicolas, ‘are three panelled divisions of starred quatrefoils, containing shields with the arms of Chaucer—viz. Per ale argent and gales, a bend counterchanged; and the same arms also occur in an oblong compartment at the back of the recess,’ &c. Speght too accepts these as Chaucer's arms. ‘It may be,’ he says, ‘that it were no absurdity to think (nay, it seemeth likely, Chaucer’s skill in geometry considered) that he took the grounds and reason of these arms out of Euclid, the 27th and 28th proposition of the first book, and some perchance are of that opinion whose skill therein is comparable to the best.’ ‘But Thomas Fuller,' remarks Professor Morley (English Writers, ii. part i. p. 1–14, 1867), ‘left us word that “some more wits have made it the dashing of white and red wine (the parents of our ordinary claret, as nicking his father’s profession.” The truth may have been spoken in that jest. Arms were not granted to merchants till the reign of Henry VI. But long before that time wealthy merchants of the middle ages bore their trade-marks upon their shields’ (Fuller is wrong, however, for, strangely enough, it appears that the coat of Chaucer's father was quite different: it was ermine on a chief three birds’ heads issuant—see Mr. Walford D. Selby's communication to the Academy for 13 Oct. 1877.) We have then proof of some connection between the Roets and Thomas Chaucer, as he uses the Roet arms, and proof of some connection between Thomas Chaucer and Geoffrey, as they use the same arms. It is odd, to be sure, that these latter arms do not occur on the tomb at Ewelme, but Thomas Chaucer did use them elsewhere. These proved connections obviously countenance a belief in what indeed no one used to doubt—viz. that the poet married a Roet, and that Thomas was the first fruit of the union. This relationship is further confirmed by the recently