The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (31 page)

To the Right Honourable Lord Henry Wriothesley,
Earl of Southampton, and Baron of Tichfield.

I
NGENUOUS
¹
honourable lord, I know not what blind custom methodical antiquity hath thrust upon us, to dedicate such books as we publish to one great man or other. In which respect, lest any man should challenge these my papers as goods uncustomed, and so extend upon them as forfeit to contempt, to the seal of your excellent censure, lo here I present them to be seen and allowed. Prize them as high or as low as you list: if you set any price on them, I hold my labour well satisfied. Long have I desired to approve my wit unto you. My reverent dutiful thoughts (even from their infancy) have been retainers to your glory. Now at last I have enforced an opportunity to plead my devoted mind.

All that in this fantastical treatise I can promise, is some reasonable conveyance of history, and variety of mirth. By divers of my good friends have I been dealt with to employ my dull pen in this kind, it being a clean different vein from other my former courses of writing. How well or ill I have done in it, I am ignorant (the eye that sees round about itself sees not into itself): only your Honour's applauding encouragement hath power to make me arrogant. Incomprehensible is the heighth of your spirit, both in heroical resolution and matters of conceit.
²
Unreprievably perisheth that book whatsoever to waste paper, which on the diamond
rock of your judgment disasterly chanceth to be shipwrecked. A dear lover and cherisher you are, as well of the lovers of poets themselves. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe myself, though now and then I speak English; that small brain I have, to no further use I convert, save to be kind to my friends and fatal to my enemies. A new brain, a new wit, a new style, a new soul will I get me, to canonize your name to posterity, if in this my first attempt I be not taxed of presumption.

Of your gracious favour I despair not, for I am not altogether Fame's outcast. This handful of leaves I offer to your view, to the leaves on trees I compare, which, as they cannot grow of themselves except they have some branches or boughs to cleave to, and with whose juice and sap they be evermore recreated and nourished, so, except these unpolished leaves of mine have some branch of nobility whereon to depend and cleave, and with the vigorous nutriment of whose authorized commendation they may be continually fostered and refreshed, never will they grow to the world's good liking, but forthwith fade and die on the first hour of their birth. Your Lordship is the large-spreading branch of renown, from whence these my idle leaves seek to derive their whole nourishing: it resteth you either scornfully shake them off, as worm-eaten and worthless, or in pity preserve them and cherish them for some little summer fruit you hope to find amongst them.

Your Honour's in all humble service:

THO: NASHE
.

THE INTRODUCTION TO THE DAPPER
MONSIEUR PAGES OF THE COURT

Gallant squires, have amongst you! At mumchance
³
I mean not, for so I might chance come to short commons, but at
novus, nova, novum
,
⁴
which is in English, ‘news of the maker'. A proper fellow page of yours, called Jack Wilton,
by me commends him unto you, and hath bequeathed for waste paper here amongst you certain pages of his misfortunes. In any case keep them preciously as a privy token of his good will towards you. If there be some better than other, he craves you would honour them in their death so much as to dry and kindle tobacco with them. For a need he permits you to wrap velvet pantofles in them also, so they be not woe-begone at the heels, or weather-beaten, like a black head with grey hairs, or mangy at the toes, like an ape about the mouth. But as you love good fellowship and ames-ace,
⁵
rather turn them to stop mustard pots than the grocers should have one patch of them to wrap mace
⁶
in: a strong, hot, costly spice it is, which above all things he hates. To any use about meat or drink put them to and spare not, for they cannot do their country better service. Printers are mad whoresons; allow them some of them for napkins.

Just a little nearer to the matter and the purpose. Memorandum: every one of you after the perusing of this pamphlet is to provide him a case of poniards, that if you come in company with any man which shall dispraise it or speak against it, you may straight cry ‘
Sic respondeo
,' and give him the stockado. It stands not with your honours, I assure ye, to have a gentleman and a page abused in his absence. Secondly, whereas you were wont to swear men on a pantofle
⁷
to be true to your puissant order, you shall swear them on nothing but this chronicle of the King of Pages henceforward. Thirdly, it shall be lawful for any whatsoever to play with false dice in a corner on the cover of this foresaid Acts and Monuments. None of the fraternity of the minorites shall refuse it for a pawn in the times of famine and necessity. Every stationer's stall they pass by, whether by day or by night, they shall put off their hats to and make a low leg in regard their grand printed Capitano is there entombed. It shall be flat treason for any of this fore-mentioned
catalogue of the point-trussers once to name him within forty foot of an alehouse; marry, the tavern is honourable. Many special grave articles more had I to give you in charge, which your Wisdoms waiting together at the bottom of the Great Chamber stairs, or sitting in a porch (your parliament house), may better consider of than I can deliver. Only let this suffice for a taste to the text and a bit to pull on a good wit with, as a rasher on the coals is to pull on a cup of wine.

Hey-pass, come aloft! Every man of you take your places, and hear Jack Wilton tell his own tale.

THE UNFORTUNATE TRAVELLER

About that time that the terror of the world and fever quartane of the French, Henry the Eight (the only true subject of chronicles), advanced his standard against the two hundred and fifty towers of Turney and Turwin,
⁸
and had the Emperor and all the nobility of Flanders, Holland and Brabant as mercenary attendants on his full-sailed fortune, I, Jack Wilton, a gentleman at least, was a certain kind of an appendix or page, belonging or appertaining in or unto the confines of the English Court; where what my credit was, a number of my creditors that I cozened can testify.
Coelum petimus stultitia
⁹
: which of us all is not a sinner? Be it known to as many as will pay money enough to peruse my story, that I followed the Court or the camp, or the camp and the Court, when Turwin lost her maidenhead and opened her gates to more than Jane Trosse
¹⁰
did. There did I (soft, let me drink before I go any further) reign sole King of the Cans and Black-jacks, Prince of the Pigmies, County Palatine of Clean Straw and Provant, and, to conclude, Lord High Regent of Rashers of the Coals and Red-herring Cobs.
¹¹
Paulô maiora canamus
.
¹²
Well, to
the purpose. What stratagemical acts and monuments do you think an ingenious infant of my years might enact? You will say, it were sufficient if he slur a die,
¹³
pawn his master to the utmost penny, and minister the oath of the pantofle artificially. These are signs of good education, I must confess, and arguments of ‘In grace and virtue' to proceed. Oh, but
Aliquid latet quod non patet
;
¹⁴
there's a further path I must trace.

Examples confirm: list, lordings, to my proceedings.

Whosoever is acquainted with the state of a camp understands that in it be many quarters, and yet not so many as on London Bridge. In those quarters are many companies: ‘much company, much knavery', as true as that old adage, ‘much courtesy, much subtlety'. Those companies, like a great deal of corn, do yield some chaff: the corn are cormorants, the chaff are good fellows which are quickly blown to nothing with bearing a light heart in a light purse. Amongst this chaff was I winnowing my wits to live merrily, and by my troth so I did. The Prince could but command men spend their blood in his service; I could make them spend all the money they had for my pleasure. But poverty in the end parts friends. Though I was prince of their purses, and exacted of my unthrift subjects as much liquid allegiance as any keisar in the world could do, yet where it is not to be had, the king must lose his right. Want cannot be withstood; men can do no more than they can do. What remained then but the fox's case must help when the lion's skin is out at the elbows.

There was a lord in the camp. Let him be a Lord of Misrule if you will, for he kept a plain alehouse without welt or guard of any ivy-bush,
¹⁵
and sold cider and cheese by pint and by pound to all that came (at the very name of cider I can but sigh, there is so much of it in Rhenish wine
nowadays). Well,
Tendit ad sydera virtus
:
¹⁶
there's great virtue belongs, I can tell you, to a cup of cider, and very good men have sold it, and at sea it is
Aqua coelestis
.
¹⁷
But that's neither here nor there: if it had no other patron but this peer of quart pots to authorize it, it were sufficient. This great lord, this worthy lord, this noble lord, thought no scorn (Lord have mercy upon us) to have his great velvet breeches larded with the droppings of this dainty liquor; and yet he was an old servitor, a cavalier of an ancient house, as might appear by the arms of his ancestors, drawn very amiably in chalk on the inside of his tent door.

He and no other was the man I chose out to damn with a lewd moneyless device. For, coming to him on a day as he was counting his barrels and setting the price in chalk on the head of them, I did my duty very devoutly, and told his aley Honour I had matters of some secrecy to impart unto him, if it pleased him to grant me private audience. ‘With me, young Wilton,' quod he; ‘marry, and shalt! Bring us a pint of cider of a fresh tap into The Three Cups herewash the pot.' So into a back room he led me, where, after he had spit on his finger and picked off two or three motes
¹⁸
off his old moth-eaten velvet cap, and sponged and wrung all the rheumatic drivel from his ill-favoured goat's-beard, he bad me declare my mind, and thereupon he drank to me on the same. I up with a long circumstance, alias a cunning shift of the seventeens, and discoursed unto him what entire affection I had borne him time out mind, partly for the high descent and lineage from whence he sprung, and partly for the tender care and provident respect he had of poor soldiers; that, whereas the vastity of that place (which afforded them no indifferent supply of drink or of victuals) might humble them to some extremity and so weaken their hands, he vouchsafed in his own person to be a victualler to the camp (a rare example of magnificence and honourable courtesy), and diligently provided that without
far travel every man might for his money have cider and cheese his bellyful. Nor did he sell his cheese by the way
¹⁹
only, or his cider by the great, but abased himself with his own hands to take a shoemaker's knife (a homely instrument for such a high personage to touch) and cut it out equally, like a true justiciary, in little pennyworths, that it would do a man good for to look upon. So likewise of his cider, the poor man might have his moderate draught of it (as there is a moderation in all things) as well for his doit
²⁰
or his dandiprat
²¹
as the rich man for his half-souse or his denier. ‘Not so much,' quoth I, ‘but this tapster's linen apron which you wear to protect your apparel from the imperfections of the spigot, most amply bewrays your lowly mind. I speak it with tears: too few noblemen have we that will drink in linen aprons. Why, you are every child's fellow. Any man that comes under the name of a soldier and a good fellow, you will sit and bear company to the last pot; yea, and you take in as good part of the homely phrase of “Mine host, here's to you” as if one saluted you by all the titles of your barony. These considerations, I say, which the world suffers to slip by in the channel of forgetfulness, have moved me, in ardent zeal of your welfare, to forewarn you of some dangers that have beset you and your barrels.'

At the name of dangers he start up, and bounced with his fist on the board so hard that his tapster overhearing him cried ‘Anon, anon, sir, by and by', and came and made a low leg and asked him what he lacked. He was ready to have stricken his tapster for interrupting him in attention of this his so much desired relation, but for fear of displeasing me he moderated his fury, and, only sending for the other fresh pint, willed him look to the bar and come when he is called, with a devil's name. Well, at his earnest importunity, after I had moistened my lips to make my lie run glib to his journey's end, forward I went as followeth.

‘It chanced me the other night, amongst other pages, to attend where the King with his lords and many chief leaders sat in council. There, amongst sundry serious matters that were debated, and intelligences from the enemy given up, it was privily imformed (no villains to these privy informers!) that you, even you that I now speak to, had… . Oh, would I had no tongue to tell the rest! By this drink, it grieves me so I am not able to repeat it…'

‘Now was my drunken lord ready to hang himself for the end of the full point; and over my neck he throws himself very lubberly, and entreated me, as I was a proper young gentleman and ever looked for pleasure at his hands, soon to rid him out of this hell of suspense, and resolve him of the rest. Then fell he on his knees, wrung his hands, and I think on my conscience wept out all the cider that he had drunk in a week before. To move me to have pity on him, he rose and put his rusty ring on my finger, gave me his greasy purse with that single money that was in it, promised to make me his heir, and a thousand more favours, if I would expire the misery of his unspeakable tormenting uncertainty. I, being by nature inclined to Mercy (for indeed I knew two or three good wenches of that name), bad him harden his ears and not make his eyes abortive before their time, and he should have the inside of my breast turned outward, hear such a tale as would tempt the utmost strength of life to attend it, and not die in the midst of it.