When Knighthood Was in Flower Page 3

  When Knighthood Was in Flower....

  _The Caskodens_

  We Caskodens take great pride in our ancestry. Some persons, I know,hold all that to be totally un-Solomonlike and the height of vanity,but they, usually, have no ancestors of whom to be proud. The man whodoes not know who his great-grandfather was, naturally enough wouldnot care what he was. The Caskodens have pride of ancestry becausethey know both who and what.

  Even admitting that it is vanity at all, it is an impersonal sort offailing, which, like the excessive love of country, leans virtueward;for the man who fears to disgrace his ancestors is certainly lesslikely to disgrace himself. Of course there are a great many excellentpersons who can go no farther back than father and mother, who,doubtless, eat and drink and sleep as well, and love as happily, as ifthey could trace an unbroken lineage clear back to Adam or Noah, orsomebody of that sort. Nevertheless, we Caskodens are proud of ourancestry, and expect to remain so to the end of the chapter,regardless of whom it pleases or displeases.

  We have a right to be proud, for there is an unbroken male line fromWilliam the Conqueror down to the present time. In this lineal listare fourteen Barons--the title lapsed when Charles I fell--twelveKnights of the Garter and forty-seven Knights of the Bath and otherorders. A Caskoden distinguished himself by gallant service under theGreat Norman and was given rich English lands and a fair Saxon bride,albeit an unwilling one, as his reward. With this fair, unwillingSaxon bride and her long plait of yellow hair goes a very pretty,pathetic story, which I may tell you at some future time if you takekindly to this. A Caskoden was seneschal to William Rufus, and sat atthe rich, half barbaric banquets in the first Great Hall. Stillanother was one of the doughty barons who wrested from John the GreatCharter, England's declaration of independence; another was high inthe councils of Henry V. I have omitted one whom I should not fail tomention: Adjodika Caskoden, who was a member of the Dunce Parliamentof Henry IV, so called because there were no lawyers in it.

  It is true that in the time of Edward IV a Caskoden did stoop totrade, but it was trade of the most dignified, honorable sort; he wasa goldsmith, and his guild, as you know, were the bankers andinternational clearance house for people, king and nobles. Besides, itis stated on good authority that there was a great scandal wherein thegoldsmith's wife was mixed up in an intrigue with the noble KingEdward; so we learn that even in trade the Caskodens were of honorableposition and basked in the smile of their prince. As for myself, I amnot one of those who object so much to trade; and I think itcontemptible in a man to screw his nose all out of place sneering atit, while enjoying every luxury of life from its profits.

  This goldsmith was shrewd enough to turn what some persons might callhis ill fortune, in one way, into gain in another. He was one of thosehappily constituted, thrifty philosophers who hold that evenmisfortune should not be wasted, and that no evil is so great but thealchemy of common sense can transmute some part of it into good. So hecoined the smiles which the king shed upon his wife--he beingpowerless to prevent, for Edward smiled where he listed, and listednearly everywhere--into nobles, crowns and pounds sterling, and left aglorious fortune to his son and to his son's son, unto about thefourth generation, which was a ripe old age for a fortune, I think.How few of them live beyond the second, and fewer still beyond thethird! It was during the third generation of this fortune that theevents of the following history occurred.

  Now, it has been the custom of the Caskodens for centuries to keep arecord of events, as they have happened, both private and public. Someare in the form of diaries and journals like those of Pepys andEvelyn; others in letters like the Pastons'; others again in verse andsong like Chaucer's and the Water Poet's; and still others in themore pretentious form of memoir and chronicle. These records we alwayshave kept jealously within our family, thinking it vulgar, like thePastons, to submit our private affairs to public gaze.

  There can, however, be no reason why those parts treating solely ofoutside matters should be so carefully guarded, and I have determinedto choose for publication such portions as do not divulge familysecrets nor skeletons, and which really redound to family honor.

  For this occasion I have selected from the memoir of my worthyancestor and namesake, Sir Edwin Caskoden--grandson of the goldsmith,and Master of the Dance to Henry VIII--the story of Charles Brandonand Mary Tudor, sister to the king.

  This story is so well known to the student of English history that Ifear its repetition will lack that zest which attends the developmentof an unforeseen denouement. But it is of so great interest, and is sofull, in its sweet, fierce manifestation, of the one thing insolubleby time, Love, that I will nevertheless rewrite it from old SirEdwin's memoir. Not so much as an historical narrative, although Ifear a little history will creep in, despite me, but simply as apicture of that olden long ago, which, try as we will to put aside thehazy, many-folded curtain of time, still retains its shadowy lack ofsharp detail, toning down and mellowing the hard aspect of reallife--harder and more unromantic even than our own--into the blendingsoftness of an exquisite mirage.

  I might give you the exact words in which Sir Edwin wrote, and shallnow and then quote from contemporaneous chronicles in the language ofhis time, but should I so write at all, I fear the pleasure of perusalwould but poorly pay for the trouble, as the English of the Bluff Kingis almost a foreign tongue to us. I shall, therefore, with a fewexceptions, give Sir Edwin's memoir in words, spelling and idiom whichhis rollicking little old shade will probably repudiate as none of hiswhatsoever. So, if you happen to find sixteenth century thoughthob-nobbing in the same sentence with nineteenth century English, benot disturbed; I did it. If the little old fellow grows grandiloquentor garrulous at times--_he_ did that. If you find him growingsuper-sentimental, remember that sentimentalism was the life-breath ofchivalry, just then approaching its absurdest climax in the bombasticconscientiousness of Bayard and the whole mental atmosphere laden withits pompous nonsense.