Castle of Falaise where William the Conqueror was born
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From Trails of the Troubadours, by Ramon de Loi [pseud. Raymond de Loy Jameson], Illustrated by Giovanni Petrina, New York: The Century Co., 1926; pp. 47-76.
TRAILS OF THE TROUBADOURS
by Raimon de Loi
Castle of Falaise where William the Conqueror was born
BIOGRAPHERS who have treated the rather fluid and peripatetic life of Bernard de Ventadour have tried to infuse it with the wine of romance. The romance they choose is of the wrong vintage. It is the kind the late Lord Tennyson brewed to beguile the long evenings of a widowed queen. It is a syrupy draft. Men and women a thousand years ago are supposed to be something less, or, if you prefer, more, than men and women to-day. Bernard and his fellow-wanderers under the blue sky are supposed to have been high-souled English gentlemen whose arms were strengthened by the purity of their hearts. By committing wholesale murder, they extricated medieval flappers from situations in which these flappers should never have become involved. After having perpetrated this rather brutal heroic, these gentry, we are told wandered in virginal and unchaperoned innocence through the forest, pausing on occasion to inquire from simple-minded peasants whether there were, in the neighborhood, knights who required murdering, while the pure maidens they collected jogged along behind on demure white asses.
That a certain amount of this kind of romance is extracted [50] from the popular novels of the twelfth century written by Bernard’s friends and contemporaries does not make it of value as data for the reconstruction of the social and moral history of the time. For popular novels of the twelfth century, like popular novels of the twentieth, picture a world as we would like to have it rather than a world as it actually was, is, or will be. Galahad, Lancelot, and Tristan were literary myths created for the entertainment of the medieval flapper. Arthur was a stupid and complaisant husband, and Guinevere a thoroughly immoral woman. This immorality and this complaisance were justified by various literary devices, some of them credible and some of them incredible; and out of the hard facts of life was woven a soft tissue. The authors of these novels presented certain universal problems and by their skill seemed to justify certain actions which then as now were recognized as wrong. Thus the reader is permitted to sin vicariously, and art, holding the mirror up to nature, shows nature inverted. Though good little girls may dream about being bad and bad little girls dream about being good, it is the dream which is preserved in the novels. The girls themselves are, unfortunately, dead. It is because scholars are pleased to ignore this truism that, looking at life as it boils about them, they insist that knee-length skirts cover less than waist-line morals and that the prevalence of divorce proves the substitution of individual passion for domestic patience. As they contemplate the aspirations toward a better life incorporated in the popular novels of the Middle Ages, they insist that since the Middle Ages were romantic, they must also have been pure.
[51]As a matter of fact, the real men and women were much the same as we are: they knew what they would have liked to do if conditions had been different than they must have been and had they as individuals been different than they were. But this knowledge did not prevent them from carrying on the necessary and more or less unpleasant business of life; therefore Eleanor, the eternal and protean female, offered a poisoned bowl to one Rosamond Clifford whose youthful intimacy with King Henry II of England, Eleanor’s husband, was apt to prove annoying; and Bernard the poet seduced the wife of his patron, Ebles II of Ventadour.
There was scandal in the Château de Ventadour, but had not one of the participants been destined to write the best poetry Europe had heard in a thousand years, scandal in Ventadour — where there was always more or less scandal — would have been quite unimportant. Ventadour a small heap of stones on a small hill some three miles from Egletons, a village of less than two thousand souls, which itself is from two to four hours distant from Brive if you travel by what is euphemistically called a train and somewhat nearer if you walk. But when one has reached Brive, one is still several hours from Périgueux, which most tourists consider a bit of virginal and untouched France. Thus in order to reach Ventadour, where there was a nasty scandal in 1152, the tourist must go beyond the farthest known, there to find a small heap of stones not nearly so picturesque as the ruins left by the lesser men of a lesser age.
[52]But the stones remember. Ventadour was at one time an important château. It witnessed siege; it housed passion; it was taken once by treachery and twice by assault; it was, in 1145, the home of Agnes de Montluçon, the very young bride of Ebles II of Ventadour. When she came to be mistress of the château she may have been thirteen or fourteen years old and an accomplished woman. Her husband Ebles, somewhat older, and in some respects the mirror of fashion, was one of those fine fighting barons of the Middle Ages who would knock you down in a tournament in the morning and take away your horse and armor, write a delicate and sophisticated love poem to your wife in the afternoon, lay siege to a castle at night, and, if the castle were weak enough to yield, slaughter the defenders, but return home in time to sing an aubade to your wife or the wife of somebody else before sunrise and early mass. He was a fine cultured gentleman, was Ebles II, but somewhat too old for Agnes. He seems to have permitted her to play about with his gifted friend, a lad called Bernard, the son of a smith, one of the lowest servants in the château.
The processes whereby an obscure youth came to be one of the members of the household of a great lord may be conjectured. The château of those days was a comparatively small place, surrounded by a wall and occupied by the lord, his lady, and the members of their household. Most of the things that one ate or wore or used were produced on the grounds. Although the population of the château may not have been larger than two or three hundred, these two or three hundred people lived together with a certain intimacy. There must have been a considerable [53] amount of fraternizing between the lord and his servants; and although the lord probably insisted on absolute obedience — his was the power of life and death — he must from sheer boredom have permitted liberties and friendships. In the main street of the château and the village which grew up around it, tongues must have clacked and gossip spread. One could be dignified and distant with one’s servants in the city, where one’s servants had proper distraction; to be dignified or distant in the small world of the château, where the increasing size of one’s belt was an event known not only to the tailor and his wife but to all his acquaintances. and where a smile at a peasant’s daughter was magnified to a grin, to a leer, to a kiss, to — what you will, must have been difficult.
Nor is there any evidence that the country gentry insisted particularly upon the forms of subserviency; the substance was enough. The lord ruled by right of ability rather than by right of inheritance, and if he were too weak to hold both the land and the respect of his followers, an upstart, a stronger man would take them away. For these great lords were realists; they took what they could lay hands on to build up a duchy, a family, or a kingdom. Justification could come later; justification was the business of the scribes, the poets, the monks. But since a failure could not afford to pay the scribes, the great thing was to be successful; and to be successful, one needed shrewdness, ruthlessness, and an ability to discount the manner for the man.
In some way the ability to write poetry possessed by this youngster Bernard was brought to the attention of Ebles II of Ventadour, who, being a man of fashion and aware of [54] the value of a poet, may have thought that since his estate could produce good wine and a fair number of fighting-men, it might also produce a poet or two. The boy must have been clever and is said to have been handsome. How close this friendship was, or when it began, I do not know. Bernard seems to have been made a member of the family, and he may have traveled with his master to Poitiers and Toulouse and Bordeaux. He may even have known William IX of Aquitaine, the earliest of the troubadours, and have learned from him much about the art and business of poetry. Although Ebles engaged in an occasional war to keep his weapons bright and clean, there were no great maneuvers to engage his attention at that time. Life was gay, frank, and sophisticated; and this gaiety, frankness, and sophistication are shown in Bernard’s philosophy, which he stated in a single sentence: “That man is dead who does not feel in his heart the sweet savor of love; and he who lives without love is merely an irritation to his friend.” The society that produced not one but several men of this creed is not the “society of barbarians who posed as civilized people,” in the unhappy phrase which Mr. Van Loon uses to characterize the people of this time. It may have been a decadent, a cruel, an immoral society; but it was not a barbarous society; for a barbarous people do not devote their lives consciously to the pleasures of love or produce a subtle and philosophical lyric poetry. If a man’s civilization be determined by what he understands rather than by what he wears, the civilization was in many respects in advance of the civilization of the nineteenth.
Bernard represents the first phase of troubadourism, the [55] phase in which the poets and their subjects regarded love realistically. The time was to come when men writing about love would be thinking of something else entirely. The concept of love in the next century was to become pale and philosophical and the technique of love “scientific.” In the thirteenth century love was theoretically vicarious. The lover was to obtain complete emotional satisfaction in looking at his lady. The scandals of that century demonstrate, nevertheless, that the machinery of love was not entirely worn out. For Bernard, love was an intense physical passion with certain delicious emotional and psychical concomitants. It transformed the landscape and gave purpose and direction to life. Life without love was as unnatural and unhealthy as life without war or wine or those other amenities that civilization has made necessary to us.
Bernard’s philosophy of love may at times threaten the sanctity of the home and hearth, and some may hold that Ebles was ill advised to permit his young wife to play about with a gifted poet. The inevitable occurred; although Ebles, the heavy husband, occupied with his own and more important matters, may not have observed its precise development. Bernard’s early poems to Agnes were the conventional compliments of the time. The compliments became less conventional, the avowals less discreet, and when the humility of the suppliant gave way before the arrogance and exultation of the victor, tongues clacked and there was scandal in Ventadour. If you repeat often enough, and with enough variation, the phrase, “I love you,” to a girl who is cultivated and charming and perhaps beautiful, you [56] may find in the end that sentence has become a sentiment and the sentiment a passion. And if the girl has been married to a man old enough to be her father at a time when girls of the twentieth century are still playing with dolls, the girl might believe that you actually did love her and might actually love you. These were the sinister chances that poets had to take.
Ebles seems to have been irritated, but his irritation was directed against his wife rather than against her lover. He would have been in his rights as they were defined at that barbarous time, and, I am told, they are still defined in this civilized twentieth century, had he killed Bernard. Instead of doing this he spanked his wife and sent her to bed without supper. Nor was the spanking theoretical; it was an actual spanking of his wife, the vicomtesse de Ventadour, who had so far forgotten herself as to grant favours to a poet. The spanking of the vicomtesse requires explanation. Ebles knew and Agnes should have known that the job of the poet was to make love and make it exquisitely. If he were exquisite enough, the lady, her husband, and the poet would all profit. The lady would become famous throughout the land and be boosted into the position of social leader. In an age when there were no social columns in the newspapers, no descriptions of entertainments or illustrated supplements, ladies expected poets to act as publicity agents. As songs about them spread throughout the land and their fame increased, important gentlemen would be attracted to their courts. They and their husbands and the poets would increase in power and wealth. This was an accepted and recognized fact. It was [57] further admitted that since a poet needed a certain amount of fuel to keep his ardor at white heat, a certain amount was granted. It is, however, a law of all societies, written in red letters in all books of etiquette of all time, that a vicomtesse, if she be not respectable, must, at least, be discreet; or if she be indiscreet, that she choose as her companion a prince sufficiently powerful to protect her against the not unnatural chagrin of her husband. There were cases, as we shall see later, where this law was observed with a minute scrupulosity. When the poet says, “I have loved you since the day we first played together as children, and each day of the year my love for you has redoubled” — which Bernard actually did say to Agnes — the lady has no business believing him, even though she may feel a reciprocal passion. Bernard was in the right, as Ebles and all the world knew. He was doing his job, and Agnes was in the wrong. It was a hard world and a real world, and a man took what he could get.
Thus was the vicomtesse de Ventadour, the beautiful but indiscreet inspiration of a rising poet, spanked and locked up in her room. In parting, Bernard said: “Lady, when my eyes behold you no longer, remember that my heart is always near you. When your husband beats your body, do not let him beat your heart. If he humiliates you, take care that you humiliate him too. See that you do not return him good for evil. . . .”
Thus Bernard de Ventadour bade farewell to the first mistress of his heart, the one who according to some biographers [58] retained the first place in his affections throughout his long career. For be it known that Bernard is supposed to have been absolutely faithful to at least three women at the same time. Biographers seem to argue that since he said he was faithful and is too nice a boy to tell a lie, therefore he must be faithful, which is as pleasant a way of looking at life as any I can imagine. When he set out to seek his fortune in the early spring of 1152, he turned north toward Poitiers and that other subject of much gossip who, too, was faithful in her fashion, Eleanor of Aquitaine, recently queen of France and now about to become queen of England. He traveled to Limoges, Bellac, and Chauvigny. A broad highway to-day follows the approximate course that he must have taken, although his actual trail diverges from it in some places, and to find it one needs a stout pair of boots and a stout heart.
His first stop was probably Egletons, a village owned by the counts of Ventadour. In the twelfth century the citizens of this village built themselves walls strong enough to stand for several thousands of years; and although the fashion has somewhat changed in walled cities, one can still climb the grassy steps to the portion which girds the western side of the town and look out over the barren country toward the Monts de Monédières.
From here Bernard went northwest through a stony and hilly country to St.-Yrieix-le-Déjalât, an old monastic village which has forgotten its past and is hopeless of its future, a village which was begun by a cluster of houses around the old abbey of St. Yrieix — as the people of that country mispronounce the good name of Aredius the saint — [59] and which never grew up. Then he crossed the mountains to reach the Vézère River, and on the river, with wall and gates and ruined castle and old houses, the village of Treignac. And as he crossed the low hills which are called mountains, he cursed and detested them.
One must distinguish in the works of these poets between a true and sincere love of spring in particular and a rather cold indifference towards nature in general. If one lived all winter in a castle, which is to say a stone house built on a hill open to the fiercest blasts and the most penetrating cold winds and heated by a large though inadequate fire built in one end of a very large and high room, one would have reason to rejoice at the return of the flowers in the spring. And if one traveled afoot or a-horseback three or four times across the continent of Europe, one could have reason to curse the mountains. The love of external nature, the love of the wild and desert places, is a bad habit like industrialism and democracy bequeathed to us by the sentimental nineteenth century. Even our recent ancestors of the eighteenth century had great difficulty in explaining why God let mountains grow over an otherwise pleasant landscape. For these, as for the people of the Middle Ages, the proper interest of mankind was man; and it was considered a proof of great holiness when a religiously minded person went out from the cities and the fraternity of his fellows there to live by meditation. For the common man, the house was merely a place to sleep, and the streets and the market-places, peopled by other interesting and gossipy common men, the places to live. The gentry of this period spent most of their time in the great hall of [60] the castle, surrounded by a mob of undisciplined friends, dogs, servants, hangers-on, clerics, and men-at-arms. There was no privacy in the Middle Ages, nor did most people desire privacy. They enjoyed having people around them and hated loneliness. They hated the mountains and the deserts which were tiresome and difficult to cross, and they loved cities where one might gossip and play politics. Their admiration for the hermits who renounced the world and the fellowship of men was in part an admiration for people who demonstrated by their renunciation that they were possessed of a stronger will than the Middle Ages or the modern ages in general can boast of. The twelfth century loved men and was indifferent to mankind.
Beyond Treignac there is a small wood which is called a forest, and beyond that Mont Gargan Barnagaud and St.-Germain-les-Belles and St.-Bonnet-la-Rix and Châteauneuf and Limoges, which Bernard’s successor, the powerful Bertrand de Born, was to visit some thirty years later on business connected with this same Eleanor whom Bernard de Ventadour was setting out hopefully to serve.
I do not know what road Bernard followed from Limoges to Bellac, for the old itineraries are silent, and there are no streams to give the clue. I suspect that it was the long road west of the present highway that slips through Nieu and Blond and châteaux of doubtful interest. I do know that on the spring evening when I followed this trail the sky suddenly became verdigris and a cold wind blew down in my face from the northwest and the rain was spray and the trees beat the air and the cattle in the fields went galloping with a strange excitement toward home. It was [61] one of those magic storms in which, as described by medieval novelists, the knight strays into a forest for shelter and, following some strange decoy, is led into the presence of that curious lady who can make a hundred years seem as one short night. Scientists, acquainted only with her unlovely sister who can make one short evening seem like a hundred years, regard her as a superstition. It transformed the rather pretty landscape into a thing of beauty and reconstructed for me the city of Bellac, which, on a hill dominating the Vincou and surrounded by an amphitheater of hills, once stood a long siege. First there was a Roman fort. The fort was transformed into a château, and around the château, seeking protection and profit, there grew a large village, then a small city.
The château where Bernard stayed has been torn down, but it was a very old building when he arrived. It had been built originally by Boson le Vieux three hundred years earlier, when Boson, by his craft, gained for himself the kingdom of the Provence. But Boson had enemies, and one of these was his sometime friend, the king of France, who set out to break him. Boson retired with Ermengarde, his wife, to the château, and the armies of France gave it siege. The siege lasted for several years. That means, of course, that for several years the hostile army was more or less in evidence about the place. The inmates of the castle seem to have able to go and come much as they pleased, but they were never able to go far away or take a large number of men or leave the place entirely undefended. Boson grew weary of the siege, and so did the king of France. They both set out for other worlds to [62] conquer. The king left Boson’s brother in charge of the siege, and Boson left his wife in charge of the castle. She held out for two years against her importunate brother-in-law and then surrendered to him. Bosom paid her ransom and freed her from imprisonment when he remembered it. We in the twentieth century have become legally minded and we talk a great deal of nonsense about women’s rights and fail to distinguish between the rights of women and the right women; for the right women of all ages and in all societies seem to have been able to exercise their precious personalities in any way they pleased.
From Bellac the old trail follows the highroad to Poitiers as far as the Pont St.-Martin across the Gartempe, where it branches. If either of the branches were in the Middle Ages the more important, it was probably the one leading through Theix, which contains, for those who are interested, the ruins of four châteaux. Beyond Theix the trail loses itself again, but the road of the Middle Ages was probably one of those that followed the Gartempe northward to Montmorillon, whose château and fortifications were destroyed shortly after Bernard’s visit and rebuilt to be destroyed a second time. There still remain some old churches and a curious twelfth-century tower which was, perhaps, once used as a kitchen. Here again is a main modern road which leads directly to Poitiers, but the Middle Ages, being more accustomed to travel than we, probably followed its course only as far as Lussac-les-Châteaux, where it meets another river, this time the Vienne.
At Vienne, Bernard probably turned north to Chauvigny, which huddles about a ruined donjon-keep and a church [63] on the cliffs. At Chauvigny, if you are of a trusting spirit, you may find the ruins of five châteaux. If you are cynical, however, you may conclude that the small heap of stones about the donjon is not a château but what the masons forgot to pick up when they did their last job in that part of the town several centuries ago. But whether there were four or five châteaux at Chauvigny was of little concern to Bernard, for there was only one château in the town when he reached it, if indeed he ever did. There were many lords and ladies along the way in those days who would welcome a clever poet, and he may have turned off at a dozen points and taken a dozen short cuts.
Bernard probably never traveled more than a day at a time, and if the master or the mistress of the castle were pleasant, he probably spent several days or a week or two with them. If there were neither castle nor monastery near where he would spend the night, he took his chances at an inn; and if the innkeeper was fairly honest, Bernard, like the rest of us, might count himself fortunate. For the innkeepers of those days have bequeathed some of their intention though little of their skill to their descendants and practised methods of robbery which were less subtle but more efficient than those practised to-day.
There were two main rooms in these inns: one room was for eating, and here everybody ate from a large table; and the other was for sleeping, and here everybody slept, men and women together. In the winter when it was cold, the windows were kept tightly closed, and people slept without undressing; in the summer when it was hot, the windows were kept closed just the same, but everybody slept [64] in the nude. A hundred years later a particularly modest lady was commended for waiting until the light was put out before she undressed; such modesty was remarkable. These people thought that love was one thing and nakedness another. When you entered the castle as a visitor, your host showed you to your room and ordered a bath for you. The tubs and water would be brought in, and a maid-servant would stand near to help you off with your clothes and to rub your back. Sir Percival, one of the Arthurian knights protested against this and was laughed at for his crudeness. The twelfth century thought that we were all God’s creatures together and there was nothing more immoral about a naked body than about a naked face. Bernard and his colleagues the troubadours were the first who, for purely practical reasons, introduced the distinction between love and lust, a distinction which remained largely theoretical until some time later, when nature, striving always to model itself upon art, made it a reality.
At Chauvigny Bernard probably turned west to Poitiers, unless he followed the Vienne northwest to Châtellerault where it meets the Clain and then returned southwest along this river to Poitiers. This, however, is improbable.
That Bernard, having fallen into disfavor with the lord of Ventadour, should have turned at once to the court of the most powerful princess in western Europe is significant and, when properly understood, may explain a great many things about Bernard, about the poets, and about the Middle Ages. To-day, should a rising young poet suddenly attach himself to the household of one of the powerful [65] industrial princesses, his action would be regarded by an amazed society as somewhat presumptuous; for this amazed and highly civilized society believes that people of wealth have no responsibility toward people of talent, and since people of wealth have little interest in the arts, their responsibility toward artists, one must admit, should be somewhat limited.
In the Middle Ages, however, no one would have thought it presumptuous for Bernard to attach himself to Eleanor, and that for two reasons. The great ones of those days were really interested in poetry. Strange as it may seem, these people actually enjoyed hearing a good poem produced with skill, finesse, and subtlety as much as we enjoy a game of bridge or golf. In those barbarous days, a poet was something more than a sportsman and something less than a god He occupied the position in middle air which at present is held by that strange creature called the super-journalist who can ruin a reputation by a misplaced comma and whose power over his audience and function in society are similar to the power and function of the medieval poet. There is, however, this difference, that the art of the journalist is exercised on less personal material. When the journalists of the twentieth century have all been forgotten — even the greatest, and some of them are very great indeed — Bernard de Ventadour’s cry in a morning song to Agnes, “O God, that dawn should come so soon,” will still have the power to thrill the pure and virtuous. This universal interest in poetry may have assured Bernard that he would be given a hearing, and, if his poetry pleased, that he might find employment either in the household of Eleanor herself [66] or in the household of one of the great lords who congregated about her.
Moreover Bernard may have known Eleanor. His master, Ebles of Ventadour, was a friend of her father, William X, and a protegé of her grandfather, the earliest troubadour. During Ebles’s, Bernard’s, and Eleanor’s peregrinations through southern France, they may have met on this or that occasion and exchanged compliments. Further, though Bernard was a plebeian by birth, he was a poet by profession and a gentleman by training. The poems he had already written, which had been picked up and sung by more than one wandering minstrel, had already served to make him and Agnes de Montluçon known, though perhaps not famous, as social figures. Eleanor and her courtiers certainly knew Ebles, and if they did not know Agnes, they certainly knew her family. Since Bernard was certainly not in disgrace — what gentleman either medieval or modern could refuse to kiss the vicomtesse de Ventadour if she requested it, she being very young and very charming? — there could be no reason why both her friends and Ebles’s friends should refuse to welcome a poet of known ability whose broken heart was waiting to be mended should it find a patron both charming and generous.
This patron it found in Eleanor, whose heart was made of unbreakable material, and whose generosity to the poets her colleagues — she herself was a poet of no mean achievements — was proverbial. She had recently undergone a rather trying experience. Her last husband, King Louis of France, was making difficulties over her proposed marriage to young Henry, duke of Anjou; and Henry, who [67] was willing enough to marry her, was busy making war in the north. A few weeks after Bernard’s arrival in Poitiers she succeeded in marrying young Henry in Bordeaux — from Poitiers to Bordeaux and back was a good two weeks’ journey in those days — and during the next year and half, Henry having already taken for himself the duchy of Normandy and formulated serious expectations towards the scepter of England by means of a strong army provided by Eleanor and liberal bribes also provided by her, she was to await the fruition of her husband’s plans at Caen, which is the first important stop between Cherbourg and Paris and across the bay from the modern city of Le Havre.
When Eleanor held her Norman court in the great château at Caen, on the high hill above the church of St.-Pierre, now replaced by a structure of the thirteenth century, it was in all probability the gayest court in western Europe. Students of that fashionable young exquisite, Abelard, were down from Paris. They practically denied the existence of sin and tried to prove that the world we live in and the God that made it were good, gay, and happy. And Eleanor thought that although she did not know a great deal about God, the world was a pretty fair world and she would be glad enough to see somebody abolish sin. She knew that she seemed to get into trouble as the sparks fly upward, and yet she did not think she had ever done anything which anybody could say was really wrong
The château had been built by Eleanor’s great-grandfather-in-law, William the Bastard, called by an English [68] text-book that “great good man, William the Conqueror,” who, with an army led by a poet, put the English to flight at Hastings. He and his wife Matilda built the other two most interesting buildings at Caen, the Abbaye-aux-Hommes and the Abbaye-aux-Dames, and, desiring to keep the good monks and nuns out of temptation, built the two abbeys at opposite ends of the town. These buildings had been erected as expiations for sin. William and Matilda were cousins and had married without the sanction of the church. The churchmen and perhaps God were somewhat appeased by the dedication to them — and Him — of these two pretentious foundations. They had also been erected as thank-offerings for sinners. William had been successful, beyond the wildest dreams of the most fortunate brigand, in his project of stealing England, and, by creating a comparatively stable government which the English did not desire, in assisting the progress of civilization.
William was buried with some difficulty in the Abbaye-aux-Hommes. He died in Rouen, the traditional capital of Normandy. As soon as he was dead, his court with the cry, “Long live the king,” set out to intrigue for favor with one or more of the princes who hoped to succeed to the throne. The residence was deserted except for the servants, who, following the custom of the time, set out to plunder it of jewels, plate, and furniture. When this was accomplished, they took from the dead king the clothes he was wearing and left him naked on the floor. Later his son Henry found him, and he was transported to Caen for burial. The royal cortège had just reached the church, however, when news arrived that fire had broken out in that [69] quarter of the town and threatened the abbey. The monks, ecclesiastics, and nobles, more concerned with the preservation of the abbey than with the routine of burial, left the dead king in the middle of the road until the fire had been extinguished, when the business of interment was resumed. The body was taken to the altar of the church, and the priests began to read the service. Then there was another uproar. This time it was caused by Anselm Fitzarthur, who forbade the interment. “This spot,” he said, “was the site of my father’s house, which this dead duke took violently from him, and here, upon part of my inheritance, founded this church. This ground I therefore challenge; and I charge ye all, as ye shall answer for it at the great and dreadful day of judgment, that ye lay not the bones of the despoiler on the hearth of my fathers.” William’s sons, who were probably less concerned with the justice of the claim than with pacifying the Normans whom they hoped to make their subjects, bargained with Fitzarthur, while the priests waited with the service, and finally agreed to pay him a hundred pounds, which, in those days, was a fabulous sum of money for a piece of land. In the meantime the workmen removed boards which had been placed over the grave, and the funeral party was assailed with such a stench that the service was mumbled over and hurried through in any way so that the king could be rolled in his grave and covered up as soon as possible.
That had happened in 1090. Since then Caen had been increasing in power and in wealth and in importance. By 1154 these events had been forgotten, and Eleanor was having a gay time in the château, and well she deserved it. [70] It was to be the last of those gay times which made her famous as the queen of the troubadours. The next years brought a change. The fogs were to subdue her; the coldness of the English atmosphere was to restrain her impulses. She was to learn how difficult it is to dissipate in England with a running nose and to be gay in a strange language. Many children were to appear and at brief intervals. Henry’s dominant will was to put hers into hibernation, a hibernation that would last twenty years, from which it was to emerge strangely different from what it had been but still formidable.
At Eleanor’s court in Caen one might have met the youth and beauty of the world. Everybody of importance was there except the young king, now arrived at the mature age of twenty-one, busy in the northwest with a small revolution. Students from the north, poets from the south, lords and squires, ladies and knights and statesmen speaking a strange medley of Romance languages and dialects, all were gathered of an afternoon in the great hall of the château on the hill with the city clustering around its feet and the cathedral spire half-way between it and the earth beneath. There must have been intrigue, bold words, hilarious voices, and above it all, a musician singing the latest song of Bernard de Ventadour, a song which sounded over the multitude, a song which said only half of what it meant, which struggled with the accompaniment, too loud by far, and which quarreled with the din of the room, a clear-voiced song with the refrain:
She in this world whom I love most . . .
With all my heart and in good faith . . .
[71]May she hear and grant my prayers,
May she receive and remember my words;
If one can die of too much love
I shall die . . .
For in my heart I bear for her
A love so true, such perfect love,
That other love compared to it
Is false and base. . . .
This song or one like it was certainly sung at that court, and Bernard, standing perhaps a little away from the crowd where he might catch the queen’s eye, may have made clear to her that this was his homage, and the queen, flattered, may have said, “You will sing that for us again in England”; to which Bernard, since the southern Frenchman of those days regarded England as a wild country inhabited only by barbarians and not fit for civilized people, may have muttered, “God save my soul.”
All the world that counted knew in the early fall of 1154 that one of two important events was about to happen in the history of England: either King Stephen would be deposed, or he would die. As death was the less humiliating, he died; and young Henry, who in two years had risen from the inconspicuous duchy of Anjou to become the ruler of the largest territory held by a single man in western Europe, made great preparations to take his queen, her infant son, courtiers and poets, and who knows how many scullions, ladies, servants, dogs, lords, and what not to England for the coronation.
Channel crossings in those days were much as they are now, only somewhat worse. The short crossings between [72] Calais and Dover were not feasible. To reach Calais a long and tedious overland journey through hostile or doubtful territory would have been necessary. The favorite crossing was either from Honfleur at the mouth of the Seine or from Barfleur near Cherbourg. One went in a Norman ship, that is to say, in a boat about twice as large as a Newfoundland dory, but, even so, small and very much at the mercy of the wind. A lucky crossing would require no more than fourteen hours, but if the crossing were unlucky, one might be tossed about for a day or two.
At one end of the boat was a cabin, richly wainscoted for the royal party. The masts and the sails were bravely decorated with pennants and medallions. “When the horses were in the ship,” says a chronicler, speaking of another embarkation, “our master mariner called to his seamen who stood in the prow and said, ‘Are you ready?’ and they answered ‘Aye, sir — let the clerks and priests come forward!’ As soon as these had come forward he called to them, ‘Sing for God’s sake!’ and they all with one voice chanted. . . .
“Then he called to his seamen, ‘Unfurl the sails for God’s sake!’ and they did so.
“In a short space the wind had filled our sails and borne us out of sight of land, so that we saw naught save sky and water, and every hour the wind carried us farther from the land where we were born. And these things I tell you that you may understand how foolhardy is that man who dares, having other’s chattels in his possession, or being in mortal sin, to place himself in such peril, seeing that, when you lie down to sleep at night on shipboard, you lie down not [73] knowing whether, in the morning, you may find yourself at the bottom of the sea. . . .”
They had to wait an entire month before they dared even to embark, for, as all the world knows, October and November are the worst of all the bad months of the year to cross to England. And when they finally did venture forth, the wind so separated the fleet of thirty-six ships that when they arrived at the English coast, the party had to wait several days until everybody could be collected again.
There were, of course, the usual deck sports: flirting, drinking, gaming, and intriguing. Many years before, the famous White Ship containing Henry of Anjou’s uncle had sailed from Barfleur at night, and all the passengers and crew were so hilariously intoxicated that the ship was sunk and all were lost. There were investigations, and had there been a “Times” there would have been letters in it, and new regulations were passed; but human nature being what it is, people persisted in distracting themselves as best they might on the long crossing. In Eleanor’s party, too, there must have been gaiety — or as much gaiety as the rough weather permitted. The only lines in Bernard’s writing which seem to refer to the crossing relate that this poem “has been written far beyond the lands of Normandy on the deep and wild ocean. Although I am far distant from my lady, she draws me to her as a lover draws his mistress . . . May God protect her!”
Henry and Eleanor received at Winchester the homage of the southern lords of England and then proceeded to Westminster, where “they were blessed to king.” It was a gorgeous coronation. Eleanor, fresh from Paris and beyond, [74] displayed to the natives the latest fashions in silks, brocades, and underwear. She had relieved the Saracens and Constantinopolitans of a great portion of their silks and had these made up in novel styles. In the Middle Ages it was customary for a lady to have in a lifetime no more than two or three dresses, and these were passed on as heirlooms from mother to daughter. The amount of linen a lady had was directly proportionate to her lineage. As the line grew longer and the blood grew thinner, the wardrobes grew fatter. The following incident, which occurred some fifty years later, is illustrative. Joinville, the friend of St. Louis of France, is speaking:
The king came down after dinner [he says] into the court below the chapel, and was talking at the entrance of the door to the Count of Brittany, the father of the Count that now is — whom may God preserve! — when Master Robert of Sorbonne came to fetch me thither, and took me by the skirt of my mantle and led me to the king; and all the other knights came after us. Then I said to Master Robert, “Master Robert, what do you want with me?” He said, “I wish to ask you whether, if the king were seated in this court, and you were to seat yourself on his bench, and at a higher place than he, ought you to be greatly blamed?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Then are you to be blamed when you go more nobly appareled than the king, for you dress yourself in fur and green cloth and the king does not do so.” And I replied, “Master Robert, saving your grace, I do nothing blameworthy when I clothe myself in green cloth and fur, for this cloth was left to me by my father and mother. But you are to blame, for you are the son of a common man and a common woman, and you have abandoned the vesture worn by your father and mother, and wear richer woolen cloth than the king himself.” Then I took the skirt of his surcoat and the surcoat of the king and said, “See if I am not speaking sooth.”
[75]The wealth of the Orient which flowed into Europe as a result of the Crusades — an interesting commercial enterprise wherein man’s original love of God was modified somewhat by a greed for wealth — was bringing about a great sartorial as well as a tonsorial change. Eleanor and Henry were among the early fruits of this change. At her coronation, Eleanor wore a wimple or close veil running over her head and fastening beneath her chin. Around this was a circlet of gems. Her dress was a kirtle or close gown gathered at the throat. Over this was a pelisson or loose outer robe of brocaded silk lined with ermine; Westminster, where the coronation was solemnized, was an unheated building. The brocaded sleeves of this pelisson were very large and showed the beautiful lawn of the tight sleeves underneath. Her husband wore mustaches but had no beard and an Angevin doublet or short coat which the English, in those days somewhat provincial, thought ridiculous. His dalmatic or outer robe was of rich brocade covered with gold embroidery. The ecclesiastics, too, wore robes of cloth of gold, silk, and brocade.
Thus here in the old Westminster was crowned this boy of twenty-one, who knew not a word of English but by bribes, theft, threat, and promise had made himself the legal master of a territory stretching from Scotland to Spain. Beside him was the queen he had stolen — a poet, we are told, though not an authentic work of hers exists — and in her train was at least one and perhaps many another poet from southern France.
Bernard de Ventadour stayed with Eleanor for four years, and for two of these, he says, he wrote not a single poem.
