The Book of the Knight of the Tower/Editor's Note
EDITORIAL NOTE.
THE BOOKE WHICHE THE KNYGHT OF THE TOURE MADE TO THE ENSEYGNEMENT & TECHING OF HIS DOUGHTERS.
This was the title given by the English printer Caxton to his translation of a French book which was written in 1371-2 by the Chevalier Geoffroy de La Tour Landry, for the double purpose of teaching his daughters to read, and of instructing them in the manners and virtues proper to gentlewomen. This book contained 149 chapters, made up of stories and moral examples drawn from various sources, such as chronicles, legendary history, and the Bible, as well as from contemporary gossip and the author's own experiences.
To judge by the number of French MS. copies extant, this work became a great favourite in its own country, but only two English versions are known; one, in MS., by an anonymous translator, temp. Henry VI, and one by William Caxton, published at his press at Westminster in 1484. The latter was the first printed edition of the Knight's book, as in France it did not attain to type till 1514, although a German edition was produced in 1493.
The earlier English version, which is preferred to Caxton's for its superior literary merit, was edited in 1868 by Mr. T. Wright, F.S.A., for the Early English Text Society. The MS. being imperfect, the editor supplied the missing passages with extracts from Caxton's rendering. "With this trifling exception, if exception it can be considered, Caxton's KNIGHT OF THE TOWER, as it is usually called, has never been reproduced, and therefore the following selections, comprising a little more than half of the whole book, will be new to the great majority of readers, since the extreme rarity of the Caxton original renders it practically inaccessible to all but a very few. The present reprint is from one of the two copies in the British Museum.
The Knight's prologue sets forth how he came to compose the book for the instruction of his little girls, and now he employed "two preestes and two clerkes that he hadde" to collect the materials. He began to write in rhyme, but abandoned rhyme for prose almost immediately. Caxton's translation came into being at the desire of an English matron, whose name is not recorded, who so highly approved of the book that she wished her daughters to have the benefit of a version in their own language, and requested Caxton to furnish it. Caxton himself endorses this lady's good opinion of the work in the warmest terms, and " fo as moche as this book is necessary to euery gentilwoman, of what estate she be," he advises "euery gentilman or woman, hauyng such children, desyryng them to be vertuously broujt forth, to gete and haue this book, to thende that they may lerne hou they oujt to gouerne them vertuously in this present lyf by whiche they may the better and hastlyer come to worship and good renommee."
It may be assumed that the English MS. copy already extant was unknown to Caxton, as to the lady, or he would probably not have set himself the unnecessary task of making a new one, especially as he is obliged to apologise for his unskilfulness in the French language. Moreover, despite the number of translations he made, he was not over-skilled in English either, as he acknowledges in his prologue to another book, where he speaks of the "symplenes & vnperfightness that I had ... in frenshe and in englissh, for in france was I neuer, and was born & lerned myn englissh in kente in the weeld, where I doubte not is spoken as brode and rude englissh as is in ony place of englond." It will be noticed, in these pages, that Caxton's sentences sometimes halt, or are dislocated by a misreading, or perhaps by a too faithful following of a faulty original, while easily-recognised French words frequently occur and testify to the provenance of the book, just as the source of his REYNARD THE FOX stands revealed by the Dutch and Low German forms which he often transfers without translating. No attempt to correct Caxton's text has been made here, except in the case of the most obvious misprints.
The chapters are not all of the same quality, but many will be found highly quaint and amusing, while the language in which they are clothed, though not archaic enough to embarrass the modern reader, is sufficiently old-fashioned to lend them additional colour. They give many peeps into the domestic life of the later middle ages, and glimpses of it simplicity, its piety, its supertitions, its virtues and its vices. The feminine iconoclast of to-day will note that the Knight of the Tower takes for granted, without stooping to argument, the superiority of spear over spindle and gather that then, as now, the sexes consisted of the fair and the unfair, though she will also observe that in a few follies and weaknesses not yet quite obsolete, such as an extravagant love of finery, or the inability to keep a secret, some old-fashioned women still resemble their mediaeval ancestresses. Of the Knight's actual ideas as to the position of women, however, we could judge more justly after a perusal of the book which he made for his sons, but unfortunately this has not survived. It is possible that he over-coloured such parts of his pictures as he wished to impress most forcibly on the minds of his sons and daughters respectively, and the sons' book may have leaned in the opposite direction. But more probably it did not.
The ethical standard of the book frequently falls somewhat low, inasmuch as it makes expediency and the hope of material reward to loom very large on the moral horizon. On the whole, it is uncertain that readers of to-day will share the high opinion of this work which was held byCaxton and the English matron but whether or no, they will find, after sifting its precepts, stated and implied, a large residue which will remain good and wholesome to time, notwithstanding that they come to us all from another country and another age. Perhaps the only salient point in which the literature that the Knight of the Tower thought fit for his daughters differs from that which would be set before young gentlewomen of to-day, lies in its outspokenness, which sometimes amounts, according to modern notions, to obscenity. But this will be seen to be a difference in manner rather than in essence; it was characteristic of the period; and though to us it appears a strange feature in a book intended for young women, it is one of which mediaeval readers would be perfectly unconscious.
As has been stated above, the present volume reproduces slightly more than half of Caxton's version of the Knight's book, and while omitting the coarser and the more tedious chapters, comprises all which is best adapted to reproduction in a popular form. Each chapter included is given verbatim, without any omissions, the spelling is faithfully reproduced, and only the punctuation, which in the original is very haphazard, has been revised. The glossary has been made as full as possible, though in consulting it allowance should be made for the variability of Caxton's spelling. The use of u for v, the occasional substitution of ȝ for gh (as myȝt for myght), and here and there the elision of a consonant as indicated by a line over the preceding vowel (as trāslate for translate), are peculiarities which need only passing mention.
Caxton's KNIGHT OF THE TOWER had no pictures, and the present is the first illustrated English edition of this quaint and little-known book.