fulselden

Suche kynde of delicate Cloothe of golde.

In which I slander and woobify a perfectly good sixteenth-century scholar. Francis Thynne, I am so sorry, dude.

ETA: And of course the actual bits of Thynne I use that are in for-real sixteenth-century syntax and stuff aren't mine: check out www.gutenberg.org/files/29261/29261-h/29261-h.htm. for his fairly epic scholarly snit. Though naturally my random forgery accusation here is COMPLETELY UNFOUNDED. Man, I have no idea how people write real person fic about people in bands or politicians or whatever (that is a thing, right?). I feel so guilty! Sorry, Francis! You were a pretty interesting guy, what with the youthful interest in alchemy and the contributions to later editions of Holinshed and generally being an antiquarian who would probably have been better off being born like a century later (he died 1608).

Suche kynde of delicate Cloothe of golde.

Ne howe the lyche wake was holde
All that nyght, ne howe the grekes play
The wake playes, kepe I nat to say.

Chaucer, ‘the Knyghtes tale’

The workes of Geffray Chaucer newlye printed, ed. William Thynne (London: 1542), fol. xi^r.

Francis Thynne has the taste of tallow on his tongue, the thick fattiness from the edge of a pie’s coffin, eaten cold. Light comes across the slabby pale oak of the table at him, clear and yellow as it never is in the City to the south. He stubs his pen into the bottom of the inkpot and writes.

Although this whiche I here write ys not nowe upon selfe will or fond conceyte to wrangle for one asses shadowe, or to seke a knott in a rushe, but in frendlye sorte to bringe truthe to lighte, a thinge whiche I wolde desire others to use towardes mee in whatsoeuer shall fall oute of my penne.

No, his sentences will be as sweet and apt as anyone could ask for, sitting here in the wet dusty air of his Clerkenwell study, doing better work here then any of the old Hospitallers had in their Priory across the fields. At least Elizabeth is no longer here to clatter and bang around the house, shouting at the maidservant, leaving dry little lists of household expenses for him to find. He hooks a finger into the pie coffin, but all it comes up with is whitish grease. It catches the late afternoon light, gold, a surer metamorphosis than all his alchemical workings had brought him in his youth, as sure as the gritty, sticking pain in his joints that comes on worse and worse, these days. They say it is like the stone, communicated from father to son in the seed.

Fermentacione you expounde Dawbinge, whiche cannott anye way be metaphoricallye so vsed in Chaucer, althoughe yt sholde be improperlye or harsely applied. For fermentacione ys a peculier terme of Alchymye, deduced from the bakers fermente or levyne. And therefore the Chimicall philosophers defyne the fermente to bee anima, the sowle or lyfe, of the philosophers stoone.

The ferment which he can fancy now as a spreading, growing stuff, like barm on thick new beer, pushing up inside his knee joint and inside his ankles, its gross bubbles freezing and sharpening into fresh bolts of pain in the winter mornings. Thomas Speght does not understand the matter he is butchering.

Autenticke you expounde to be antiquytye.

Thomas Speght knows nothing of authority or antiquity, it is clear. O, Speght has a prefatory letter that parrots Horace, words falling like leaves, like fruit budding and ripening and rotting, but he has let Chaucer fall through his fingers, tarnishing his father’s work. Daubing it over.

I maye seme to gather, that you imagine greate imperfectione in my fathers editione, whiche peraduenture maye move others to saye (as some unadvisedlye have sayed) that my father had wronged Chaucer.

He remembers his father, or it may be the memory of a memory, two long-boned hands lifting him up, a pursy, solemn face peering at him. His father says something, but his mother or some other woman is chattering behind him. He can’t make out his father's words before his feet touch the ground again and he is led away.

yt must needes gather corruptione, passinge throughe so manye handes, as the water dothe the further yt runnethe from the pure founteyne.

Like the holy well here, gummed up with filth, its stonework crumbling. He himself possesses his father’s disposition. Scholarly. Phlegmatic, perhaps melancholy. His life’s work is proof enough.

the ernest desire and love my father hadde to have Chaucers woorkes rightlye published

For succeeding ages, for the glory and perfection of the true Church and the king and of the English tongue,

he further had comissione to serche all the libraries of England for Chaucers works, so that oute of all the Abbies of this Realme (whiche reserved anye monumentes thereof) he was fully furnished with multitude of Bookes.

There had been no choice but to sell them. His debt had been in the hundreds, not the tens, of pounds. Learned men understand the value of such manuscripts in these new days. They will be preserved.

one coppye of some parte of his woorkes came to his handes subscribed in diuers places withe “examinatur Chaucer.”

Though one could put no faith in signatures of that kind. They had added so much to the price, many men would have been tempted to insert them.

This tale when kinge henrye the eighte had redde, he called my father unto hym saying Williame Thynne I dobte this will not be allowed, for I suspecte the Byshoppes will call the in questione for yt, to whome my father, beinge in great fauore with his prince, (as manye yet lyvinge canne testyfye,) sayed yf your grace be not offended, I hoope to be protected by you, whereuppon the kinge bydd hym goo his waye and feare not.

Though never his father, Chief Clerk of the King’s Kitchen, Master of the King’s Household, a loyal reformer, rewarded, preserved. Skelton had written his gibes at that fat maiden Wolsey in the house at Erith where Francis had been born, so his mother had said. A testament to bravery as well as favour. He wipes his pen, his fingers, on the pie-wrapping. Some ballad pamphlet, a boggle-eyed devil coming up through the floor, the paper clear and stiff as horn with old fat.

and that Englande had before and since the conqueste the arte to compose suche kynde of delicate Cloothe of golde as Europe had not the lyke

Erith is lost to him, and so are the grey domes of Longleat. Family houses. He has the gossips of Clerkenwell at his door, stamping through the December ice, bringing him milk whose top layer will lift off in a perfect circle, pure and white.

fforthlye Oundye and Crispe is by you expounded slyked and curled, whiche sence althoughe yt may beare after some sorte; yet the proprytye of the true sence of oundye (beinge an especiall terme appropriate to the arte of Heraldye) dothe signifye wavinge or movinge, as the water dothe; being called vndye, of Latyne vnda for water, for so her haire was oundye, that is, layed in rooles vppone and downe, lyke waves of water when they are styrred with the winde, and not slyked or playne, etc.

Likely enough the old holy well is frozen over by now, ice sealing off its grey sludgy depths as neatly as a skin of wax over fruit preserve. He will finish with his friend Thomas Speght, and he will tell him that his purpose is to perfect his father’s work himself, later, given life and time. God willing. He will walk to the well, and remember a memory that is not his, of Elizabeth (the name, it may be, of Chaucer’s wife as well), her hair unpinned, rolling down in the summer light, transfigured, wavy, gold. The soul or life. It is an inheritance of sorts.