Fulfild of thought and besy hevinesse; For bothe I hadde thing which that I nolde,[13] And eek I ne hadde that thing that I wolde,
and commentators have leaped to the conclusion that he is here referring to his wife and a lady of high rank for whom he sighed in vain. In the same way when, in the _Book of the Duchesse_, he speaks of having suffered for eight years from a sickness which one physician alone can cure, this is taken as an unmistakable reference to the same unrequited passion. But we have nothing to show that in these passages Chaucer is revealing his actual feelings. To be crossed in love is proper to every poet, and if his wife might have been justly annoyed when in 1382--at least sixteen years after his marriage--he wrote
... I knowe not love in dede Ne wot how that he quyteth folk hir hyre,[14]
"Rosemounde"--if she had any real existence--can hardly have felt complimented by the affection of a poet who told her--and the world at large--
Nas never pyk walwed in galauntyne As I in love am walwed and y-wounde.[15]
We know nothing of his children, except that in 1391 he wrote a treatise on the astrolabe for his little son Lewis, then ten years of age. Gascoigne, a generation after Chaucer's death, speaks of Thomas Chaucer, a well-known man of wealth and position in the early fifteenth century, more than once Speaker of the House of Commons, as Geoffrey's son, but no mention is made of him by Chaucer himself or by any of his contemporaries or immediate successors. John of Gaunt paid a considerable sum of money to place a certain Elizabeth Chaucer in the nunnery of Barking in 1381, but she is usually considered to have been the poet's sister.
In 1367 Chaucer himself was granted a pension of twenty marks a year for life, in recognition of his services, and in 1368 (or, according to Mr. G. C. Coulton, 1372) he was promoted to be an Esquire of the royal household. The duties of an esquire seem better suited to a poet than those of a valet: "These Esquires of houshold of old be accustumed winter & summer in afternoons & in eunings to drawe to Lordes Chambres within Court, there to keep honest company after there Cunninge, in talking of Cronicles of Kinges & of others pollicies, & in pipeing or harpinge, songinges or other actes marcealls, to helpe to occupie the Court, & accompanie estraingers till the time require of departing."