ii or iii short poll-axes
Paston Letters. Selected and edited by Norman Davis. (O.U.P., 12s. 6d.)
BEDEVILLED by the academic exigencieS of Hist. Hons. and Eng. Lit.. the Paston Letters are known to generations of students either as a stage in the development of English prose or as a source for the ambuscades, affrays, riots,, robberies and broils of the fifteenth century. h is a cruel fate and they deserve better; this new selection, which includes about one-tenth of the surviving documents; can perform a real service if it persuades us to look at them again with a .fresh eye for what they are, outside the categories and classifications of litera- ture and history. It is true that selection can falsify, if it picks out only the 'star' items; it is true that We must see the individuals in the round, balanc- ing one activity against the other, if we are to see them as they were. But most people, I think, will agree that Mr. Davis,has enabled us to do this. His selection, in fa.t, is biilt round the figure of Margaret Paston, who married John Paston abOut 1440 and died in .1484; and her personality, her care for the interests of her husband and her relations with her sons and daughters, lend cohesion to the whole.
What is remarkable is the way the different per- sonalities stamp themselves on the letters, par- ticularly the differences between John Paston 1, the father, and his two sons, John H and John Ill. What is remarkable, secondly, is how we see their characters developing over the years, particularly that of Margaret herself. She appears first, ironic and tender, in her first pregnancy, 'so fat that I
may not be girt in no barre of no girdle,' telling her husband that 'you have left me such a remem- brance that makyth me to think upon you both day and night, when I would sleep.' Seven years later, she is the housewife and property manager, advising her husband 'to get some cross-bows' and `ii or iii short poll-axes' to defend his home, and to buy cloth `to maken of your children's gowns' —a remarkably capable and businesslike woman, but the magic has vanished. Later still, she is the widow, admonishing her unbusinesslike eldest son, `the best chooser of a gentlewoman that I know,' whose interest was Ovid's De Arte Amandi. But John Paston 11 also changed under the blows of adversity, and a few years later confessed : 'my mind is now not most upon books.' In fact, money or lack of money is the burden of his later letters, which reveal to us a saddened, disillusioned man, the middle-aged fldneur losing face and confi- dence.
Beyond all doubt, property is the prevailing interest; but property then was life and blood, mixed up in the family and children, not a separate interest shut away in the office. Property impinges everywhere, not lease in dowries and marriage- settlements. And yet humanity pokes out, some- times unexpectedly, as when Margaret in her old age comes to the rescue when her younger son'S marriage to Margery Brews looks like falling through for default of £120, and it is the human relationships which are the distinctive feature. We think of the age as a period of `matches'; but not one of the matches so carefully contrived seems devoid of love. Margaret Paston treated her daughters cruelly—one was refused permission to `speak with no man, howsoever come' and was `beaten once in the week or twice'—when they refused to marry as • she wished. But Margery Paston, refused admittance to her mother's house, because she had betrothed herself to the bailiff, and cajoled and browbeaten by the bishop of Norwich, boldly told the prelate that, rather than I renounce her plighted word, 'if those words made it not sure, she would make it sure before she went thence, for she said she thought in her conscience she was bound, whatsoever the words were.' The singular thing is that she prevailed, just as Margery Brews prevailed over all the difficulties about dowries.
There is 'no use of the pen to convey any of the million shades of endearment and intimacy which have filled so many English letters since,' was Virginia Woolf's verdict on the Ninon Letters. But what of Margery Brews's two valentines to John Paston the Younger? And what of Richard Calle's passionate letter to Margery Paston, after two years when they had been kept apart? This life we lead now is neither pleasure to God nor to the world,' wrote Calle : `me seemeth it is a thousand years ago since that I spoke with you.' And Margery Brews, embroiled in the hard bar- gaining surrounding her marriage and her heart `full heavy,' protests to Paston that If that you had not half the livelihood that you have . . I would not foresake you.' The prose may be `simple,' as the experts say; but the sentiments are authentic, and the people live, and what more can we ask of any collection of letters at any period? The, family unit stood firm, the social background shaped their lives; but it did not submerge thetn as human beings. That is why their letters are
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