What had this girl to play off against such
dangers?
Orr - Famous Affinities of History, Romacen of Devotion
He ill-treated Heloise, and, furthermore,
he forbade Abelard to visit her. The girl, therefore, again left her
uncle's house and betook herself to a convent just outside of Paris,
where she assumed the habit of a nun as a disguise. There Abelard
continued from time to time to meet her.
When Fulbert heard of this he put his own interpretation on it. He
believed that Abelard intended to ignore the marriage altogether, and
that possibly he might even marry some other woman. In any case, he now
hated Abelard with all his heart; and he resolved to take a fearful and
unnatural vengeance which would at once prevent his enemy from making
any other marriage, while at the same time it would debar him from
ecclesiastical preferment.
To carry out his plot Fulbert first bribed a man who was the
body-servant of Abelard, watching at the door of his room each night.
Then he hired the services of four ruffians. After Abelard had retired
and was deep in slumber the treacherous valet unbarred the door. The
hirelings of Fulbert entered and fell upon the sleeping man. Three of
them bound him fast, while the fourth, with a razor, inflicted on him
the most shameful mutilation that is possible. Then, extinguishing
the lights, the wretches slunk away and were lost in darkness, leaving
behind their victim bound to his couch, uttering cries of torment and
bathed in his own blood.
It is a shocking story, and yet it is intensely characteristic of the
lawless and barbarous era in which it happened. Early the next morning
the news flew rapidly through Paris. The city hummed like a bee-hive.
Citizens and students and ecclesiastics poured into the street and
surrounded the house of Abelard.
"Almost the entire city," says Fulques, as quoted by McCabe, "went
clamoring toward his house. Women wept as if each one had lost her
husband. "
Unmanned though he was, Abelard still retained enough of the spirit of
his time to seek vengeance. He, in his turn, employed ruffians whom he
set upon the track of those who had assaulted him. The treacherous valet
and one of Fulbert's hirelings were run down, seized, and mutilated
precisely as Abelard had been; and their eyes were blinded. A third was
lodged in prison. Fulbert himself was accused before one of the Church
courts, which alone had power to punish an ecclesiastic, and all his
goods were confiscated.
But, meantime, how did it fare with Heloise? Her grief was greater than
his own, while her love and her devotion were absolutely undiminished.
But Abelard now showed a selfishness--and indeed, a meanness--far beyond
any that he had before exhibited. Heloise could no more be his wife.
He made it plain that he put no trust in her fidelity. He was unwilling
that she should live in the world while he could not; and so he told
her sternly that she must take the veil and bury herself for ever in a
nunnery.
The pain and shame which she experienced at this came wholly from the
fact that evidently Abelard did not trust her. Long afterward she wrote:
God knows I should not have hesitated, at your command, to precede or to
follow you to hell itself!
It was his distrust that cut her to the heart. Still, her love for him
was so intense that she obeyed his order. Soon after she took the vows;
and in the convent chapel, shaken with sobs, she knelt before the altar
and assumed the veil of a cloistered nun. Abelard himself put on the
black tunic of a Benedictine monk and entered the Abbey of St. Denis.
It is unnecessary here to follow out all the details of the lives of
Abelard and Heloise after this heart-rendering scene. Abelard
passed through many years of strife and disappointment, and even of
humiliation; for on one occasion, just as he had silenced Guillaume
de Champeaux, so he himself was silenced and put to rout by Bernard of
Clairvaux--"a frail, tense, absorbed, dominant little man, whose face
was white and worn with suffering," but in whose eyes there was a
light of supreme strength. Bernard represented pure faith, as Abelard
represented pure reason; and the two men met before a great council to
match their respective powers.
Bernard, with fiery eloquence, brought a charge of heresy against
Abelard in an oration which was like a charge of cavalry. When he had
concluded Abelard rose with an ashen face, stammered out a few words,
and sat down. He was condemned by the council, and his works were
ordered to be burned.
All his later life was one of misfortune, of humiliation, and even of
personal danger. The reckless monks whom he tried to rule rose fiercely
against him. His life was threatened. He betook himself to a desolate
and lonely place, where he built for himself a hut of reeds and rushes,
hoping to spend his final years in meditation. But there were many who
had not forgotten his ability as a teacher. These flocked by hundreds
to the desert place where he abode. His hut was surrounded by tents and
rude hovels, built by his scholars for their shelter.
Thus Abelard resumed his teaching, though in a very different frame of
mind. In time he built a structure of wood and stone, which he called
the Paraclete, some remains of which can still be seen.
All this time no word had passed between him and Heloise. But presently
Abelard wrote and gave to the world a curious and exceedingly frank
book, which he called The Story of My Misfortunes. A copy of it reached
the hands of Heloise, and she at once sent to Abelard the first of a
series of letters which have remained unique in the literature of love.
Ten years had passed, and yet the woman's heart was as faithful and as
full of yearning as on the day when the two had parted. It has been
said that the letters are not genuine, and they must be read with this
assertion in mind; yet it is difficult to believe that any one save
Heloise herself could have flung a human soul into such frankly
passionate utterances, or that any imitator could have done the work.
In her first letter, which was sent to Abelard written upon parchment,
she said:
At thy command I would change, not merely my costume, but my very soul,
so entirely art thou the sole possessor of my body and my spirit. Never,
God is my witness, never have I sought anything in thee but thyself;
I have sought thee, and not thy gifts. I have not looked to the
marriage-bond or dowry.
She begged him to write to her, and to lead her to God, as once he had
led her into the mysteries of pleasure. Abelard answered in a letter,
friendly to be sure, but formal--the letter of a priest to a cloistered
nun. The opening words of it are characteristic of the whole:
To Heloise, his sister in Christ, from Abelard, her brother in Him.
The letter was a long one, but throughout the whole of it the writer's
tone was cold and prudent. Its very coldness roused her soul to a
passionate revolt. Her second letter bursts forth in a sort of anguish:
How hast thou been able to frame such thoughts, dearest? How hast thou
found words to convey them? Oh, if I dared but call God cruel to me!
Oh, most wretched of all creatures that I am! So sweet did I find the
pleasures of our loving days that I cannot bring myself to reject
them or to banish them from my memory. Wheresoever I go, they thrust
themselves upon my vision, and rekindle the old desire.
But Abelard knew only too well that not in this life could there be
anything save spiritual love between himself and Heloise. He wrote to
her again and again, always in the same remote and unimpassioned way.
He tells her about the history of monasticism, and discusses with her
matters of theology and ethics; but he never writes one word to feed
the flame that is consuming her. The woman understood at last; and by
degrees her letters became as calm as his--suffused, however, with a
tenderness and feeling which showed that in her heart of hearts she was
still entirely given to him.
After some years Abelard left his dwelling at the Paraclete, and there
was founded there a religious house of which Heloise became the abbess.
All the world respected her for her sweetness, her wisdom, and the
purity of her character. She made friends as easily as Abelard made
enemies. Even Bernard, who had overthrown her husband, sought out
Heloise to ask for her advice and counsel.
Abelard died while on his way to Rome, whither he was journeying
in order to undergo a penalty; and his body was brought back to the
Paraclete, where it was entombed. Over it for twenty-two years Heloise
watched with tender care; and when she died, her body was laid beside
that of her lover.
To-day their bones are mingled as she would have desired them to be
mingled. The stones of their tomb in the great cemetery of Pere Lachaise
were brought from the ruins of the Paraclete, and above the sarcophagus
are two recumbent figures, the whole being the work of the artist
Alexandra Lenoir, who died in 1836. The figure representing Heloise
is not, however, an authentic likeness. The model for it was a lady
belonging to a noble family of France, and the figure itself was brought
to Pere Lachaise from the ancient College de Beauvais.
The letters of Heloise have been read and imitated throughout the whole
of the last nine centuries. Some have found in them the utterances of
a woman whose love of love was greater than her love of God and whose
intensity of passion nothing could subdue; and so these have condemned
her. But others, like Chateaubriand, have more truly seen in them a pure
and noble spirit to whom fate had been very cruel; and who was, after
all, writing to the man who had been her lawful husband.
Some of the most famous imitations of her letters are those in the
ancient poem entitled, "The Romance of the Rose," written by Jean de
Meung, in the thirteenth century; and in modern times her first letter
was paraphrased by Alexander Pope, and in French by Colardeau. There
exist in English half a dozen translations of them, with Abelard's
replies. It is interesting to remember that practically all the other
writings of Abelard remained unpublished and unedited until a very
recent period. He was a remarkable figure as a philosopher and scholar;
but the world cares for him only because he was loved by Heloise.
QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE EARL OF LEICESTER
History has many romantic stories to tell of the part which women
have played in determining the destinies of nations. Sometimes it is
a woman's beauty that causes the shifting of a province. Again it is
another woman's rich possessions that incite invasion and lead to bloody
wars. Marriages or dowries, or the refusal of marriages and the lack
of dowries, inheritance through an heiress, the failure of a male
succession--in these and in many other ways women have set their mark
indelibly upon the trend of history.
However, if we look over these different events we shall find that it
is not so much the mere longing for a woman--the desire to have her as a
queen--that has seriously affected the annals of any nation. Kings, like
ordinary men, have paid their suit and then have ridden away repulsed,
yet not seriously dejected. Most royal marriages are made either to
secure the succession to a throne by a legitimate line of heirs or else
to unite adjoining states and make a powerful kingdom out of two that
are less powerful. But, as a rule, kings have found greater delight in
some sheltered bower remote from courts than in the castled halls and
well-cared-for nooks where their own wives and children have been reared
with all the appurtenances of legitimacy.
There are not many stories that hang persistently about the love-making
of a single woman. In the case of one or another we may find an episode
or two--something dashing, something spirited or striking, something
brilliant and exhilarating, or something sad. But for a woman's whole
life to be spent in courtship that meant nothing and that was only a
clever aid to diplomacy--this is surely an unusual and really wonderful
thing.
It is the more unusual because the woman herself was not intended by
nature to be wasted upon the cold and cheerless sport of chancellors
and counselors and men who had no thought of her except to use her as
a pawn. She was hot-blooded, descended from a fiery race, and one whose
temper was quick to leap into the passion of a man.
In studying this phase of the long and interesting life of Elizabeth of
England we must notice several important facts. In the first place,
she gave herself, above all else, to the maintenance of England--not an
England that would be half Spanish or half French, or even partly Dutch
and Flemish, but the Merry England of tradition--the England that was
one and undivided, with its growing freedom of thought, its bows and
bills, its nut-brown ale, its sturdy yeomen, and its loyalty to crown
and Parliament. She once said, almost as in an agony:
"I love England more than anything! "
And one may really hold that this was true.
For England she schemed and planned. For England she gave up many of her
royal rights. For England she descended into depths of treachery. For
England she left herself on record as an arrant liar, false, perjured,
yet successful; and because of her success for England's sake her
countrymen will hold her in high remembrance, since her scheming and her
falsehood are the offenses that one pardons most readily in a woman.
In the second place, it must be remembered that Elizabeth's courtships
and pretended love-makings were almost always a part of her diplomacy.
When not a part of her diplomacy they were a mere appendage to her
vanity. To seem to be the flower of the English people, and to be
surrounded by the noblest, the bravest, and the most handsome cavaliers,
not only of her own kingdom, but of others--this was, indeed, a choice
morsel of which she was fond of tasting, even though it meant nothing
beyond the moment.
Finally, though at times she could be very cold, and though she made
herself still colder in order that she might play fast and loose with
foreign suitors who played fast and loose with her--the King of
Spain, the Duc d'Alencon, brother of the French king, with an Austrian
archduke, with a magnificent barbarian prince of Muscovy, with Eric of
Sweden, or any other Scandinavian suitor--she felt a woman's need for
some nearer and more tender association to which she might give freer
play and in which she might feel those deeper emotions without the
danger that arises when love is mingled with diplomacy.
Let us first consider a picture of the woman as she really was in order
that we may understand her triple nature--consummate mistress of every
art that statesmen know, and using at every moment her person as a lure;
a vain-glorious queen who seemed to be the prey of boundless vanity;
and, lastly, a woman who had all a woman's passion, and who could cast
suddenly aside the check and balance which restrained her before the
public gaze and could allow herself to give full play to the emotion
that she inherited from the king, her father, who was himself a marvel
of fire and impetuosity. That the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne
Boleyn should be a gentle, timid maiden would be to make heredity a
farce.
Elizabeth was about twenty-five years of age when she ascended the
throne of England. It is odd that the date of her birth cannot be given
with precision. The intrigues and disturbances of the English court,
and the fact that she was a princess, made her birth a matter of less
account than if there had been no male heir to the throne. At any rate,
when she ascended it, after the deaths of her brother, King Edward
VI. , and her sister, Queen Mary, she was a woman well trained both in
intellect and in physical development.
Mr. Martin Hume, who loves to dwell upon the later years of Queen
Elizabeth, speaks rather bitterly of her as a "painted old harridan";
and such she may well have seemed when, at nearly seventy years of age,
she leered and grinned a sort of skeleton smile at the handsome young
courtiers who pretended to see in her the queen of beauty and to be
dying for love of her.
Yet, in her earlier years, when she was young and strong and impetuous,
she deserved far different words than these. The portrait of her by
Zucchero, which now hangs in Hampton Court, depicts her when she must
have been of more than middle age; and still the face is one of beauty,
though it be a strange and almost artificial beauty--one that draws,
attracts, and, perhaps, lures you on against your will.
It is interesting to compare this painting with the frank word-picture
of a certain German agent who was sent to England by his emperor, and
who seems to have been greatly fascinated by Queen Elizabeth. She was at
that time in the prime of her beauty and her power. Her complexion was
of that peculiar transparency which is seen only in the face of golden
blondes. Her figure was fine and graceful, and her wit an accomplishment
that would have made a woman of any rank or time remarkable. The German
envoy says:
She lives a life of such magnificence and feasting as can hardly be
imagined, and occupies a great portion of her time with balls, banquets,
hunting, and similar amusements, with the utmost possible display, but
nevertheless she insists upon far greater respect being shown her than
was exacted by Queen Mary. She summons Parliament, but lets them know
that her orders must be obeyed in any case.
If any one will look at the painting by Zucchero he will see how much is
made of Elizabeth's hands--a distinctive feature quite as noble with the
Tudors as is the "Hapsburg lip" among the descendants of the house of
Austria. These were ungloved, and were very long and white, and she
looked at them and played with them a great deal; and, indeed,
they justified the admiration with which they were regarded by her
flatterers.
Such was the personal appearance of Elizabeth. When a young girl, we
have still more favorable opinions of her that were written by those who
had occasion to be near her. Not only do they record swift glimpses of
her person, but sometimes in a word or two they give an insight into
certain traits of mind which came out prominently in her later years.
It may, perhaps, be well to view her as a woman before we regard her
more fully as a queen. It has been said that Elizabeth inherited many
of the traits of her father--the boldness of spirit, the rapidity of
decision, and, at the same time, the fox-like craft which often showed
itself when it was least expected.
Henry had also, as is well known, a love of the other sex, which has
made his reign memorable. And yet it must be noted that while he loved
much, it was not loose love. Many a king of England, from Henry II. to
Charles II. , has offended far more than Henry VIII. Where Henry loved,
he married; and it was the unfortunate result of these royal marriages
that has made him seem unduly fond of women. If, however, we examine
each one of the separate espousals we shall find that he did not enter
into it lightly, and that he broke it off unwillingly. His ardent
temperament, therefore, was checked by a certain rational or
conventional propriety, so that he was by no means a loose liver, as
many would make him out to be.
We must remember this when we recall the charges that have been made
against Elizabeth, and the strange stories that were told of her
tricks--by no means seemly tricks--which she used to play with her
guardian, Lord Thomas Seymour. The antics she performed with him in her
dressing-room were made the subject of an official inquiry; yet it came
out that while Elizabeth was less than sixteen, and Lord Thomas was very
much her senior, his wife was with him on his visits to the chamber of
the princess.
Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife were also sent to question her,
Tyrwhitt had a keen mind and one well trained to cope with any other's
wit in this sort of cross-examination. Elizabeth was only a girl of
fifteen, yet she was a match for the accomplished courtier in diplomacy
and quick retort. He was sent down to worm out of her everything that
she knew. Threats and flattery and forged letters and false confessions
were tried on her; but they were tried in vain. She would tell nothing
of importance. She denied everything. She sulked, she cried, she availed
herself of a woman's favorite defense in suddenly attacking those who
had attacked her. She brought counter charges against Tyrwhitt, and put
her enemies on their own defense. Not a compromising word could they
wring out of her.
She bitterly complained of the imprisonment of her governess, Mrs.
Ashley, and cried out:
"I have not so behaved that you need put more mistresses upon me! "
Altogether, she was too much for Sir Robert, and he was wise enough to
recognize her cleverness.
"She hath a very good wit," said he, shrewdly; "and nothing is to be
gotten of her except by great policy. " And he added: "If I had to say
my fancy, I think it more meet that she should have two governesses than
one. "
Mr. Hume notes the fact that after the two servants of the princess had
been examined and had told nothing very serious they found that they
had been wise in remaining friends of the royal girl. No sooner had
Elizabeth become queen than she knighted the man Parry and made him
treasurer of the household, while Mrs. Ashley, the governess, was
treated with great consideration. Thus, very naturally, Mr. Hume says:
"They had probably kept back far more than they told. "
Even Tyrwhitt believed that there was a secret compact between them, for
he said, quaintly: "They all sing one song, and she hath set the note
for them. "
Soon after this her brother Edward's death brought to the throne her
elder sister, Mary, who has harshly become known as Bloody Mary. During
this time Elizabeth put aside her boldness, and became apparently a shy
and simple-minded virgin. Surrounded on every side by those who sought
to trap her, there was nothing in her bearing to make her seem the head
of a party or the young chief of a faction. Nothing could exceed her in
meekness. She spoke of her sister in the humblest terms. She exhibited
no signs of the Tudor animation that was in reality so strong a part of
her character.
But, coming to the throne, she threw away her modesty and brawled and
rioted with very little self-restraint. The people as a whole found
little fault with her. She reminded them of her father, the bluff King
Hal; and even those who criticized her did so only partially. They
thought much better of her than they had of her saturnine sister, the
first Queen Mary.
The life of Elizabeth has been very oddly misunderstood, not so much for
the facts in it as for the manner in which these have been arranged and
the relation which they have to one another. We ought to recollect that
this woman did not live in a restricted sphere, that her life was not
a short one, and that it was crowded with incidents and full of vivid
color. Some think of her as living for a short period of time and speak
of the great historical characters who surrounded her as belonging to a
single epoch. To them she has one set of suitors all the time--the Duc
d'Alencon, the King of Denmark's brother, the Prince of Sweden, the
russian potentate, the archduke sending her sweet messages from
Austria, the melancholy King of Spain, together with a number of her
own brilliant Englishmen--Sir William Pickering, Sir Robert Dudley, Lord
Darnley, the Earl of Essex, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh.
Of course, as a matter of fact, Elizabeth lived for nearly seventy
years--almost three-quarters of a century--and in that long time there
came and went both men and women, those whom she had used and cast
aside, with others whom she had also treated with gratitude, and who had
died gladly serving her. But through it all there was a continual change
in her environment, though not in her. The young soldier went to the
battle-field and died; the wise counselor gave her his advice, and
she either took it or cared nothing for it. She herself was a curious
blending of forwardness and folly, of wisdom and wantonness, of
frivolity and unbridled fancy. But through it all she loved her people,
even though she often cheated them and made them pay her taxes in the
harsh old way that prevailed before there was any right save the king's
will.
At the same time, this was only by fits and starts, and on the whole
she served them well. Therefore, to most of them she was always the good
Queen Bess. What mattered it to the ditcher and yeoman, far from the
court, that the queen was said to dance in her nightdress and to swear
like a trooper?
It was, indeed, largely from these rustic sources that such stories were
scattered throughout England. Peasants thought them picturesque. More
to the point with them were peace and prosperity throughout the country,
the fact that law was administered with honesty and justice, and that
England was safe from her deadly enemies--the swarthy Spaniards and the
scheming French.
But, as I said, we must remember always that the Elizabeth of one period
was not the Elizabeth of another, and that the England of one period
was not the England of another. As one thinks of it, there is something
wonderful in the almost star-like way in which this girl flitted
unharmed through a thousand perils. Her own countrymen were at first
divided against her; a score of greedy, avaricious suitors sought her
destruction, or at least her hand to lead her to destruction; all the
great powers of the Continent were either demanding an alliance with
England or threatening to dash England down amid their own dissensions.
What had this girl to play off against such dangers? Only an undaunted
spirit, a scheming mind that knew no scruples, and finally her own
person and the fact that she was a woman, and, therefore, might give
herself in marriage and become the mother of a race of kings.
It was this last weapon, the weapon of her sex, that proved, perhaps,
the most powerful of all. By promising a marriage or by denying it, or
by neither promising nor denying but withholding it, she gave forth a
thousand wily intimations which kept those who surrounded her at bay
until she had made still another deft and skilful combination, escaping
like some startled creature to a new place of safety.
In 1583, when she was fifty years of age, she had reached a point when
her courtships and her pretended love-making were no longer necessary.
She had played Sweden against Denmark, and France against Spain, and the
Austrian archduke against the others, and many suitors in her own land
against the different factions which they headed. She might have sat
herself down to rest; for she could feel that her wisdom had led her
up into a high place, whence she might look down in peace and with
assurance of the tranquillity that she had won. Not yet had the great
Armada rolled and thundered toward the English shores. But she was
certain that her land was secure, compact, and safe.
It remains to see what were those amatory relations which she may be
said to have sincerely held. She had played at love-making with foreign
princes, because it was wise and, for the moment, best. She had played
with Englishmen of rank who aspired to her hand, because in that way she
might conciliate, at one time her Catholic and at another her Protestant
subjects. But what of the real and inward feeling of her heart, when she
was not thinking of political problems or the necessities of state!
This is an interesting question. One may at least seek the answer,
hoping thereby to solve one of the most interesting phases of this
perplexing and most remarkable woman.
It must be remembered that it was not a question of whether Elizabeth
desired marriage. She may have done so as involving a brilliant stroke
of policy. In this sense she may have wished to marry one of the two
French princes who were among her suitors. But even here she hesitated,
and her Parliament disapproved; for by this time England had become
largely Protestant. Again, had she married a French prince and had
children, England might have become an appanage of France.
There is no particular evidence that she had any feeling at all for her
Flemish, Austrian, or Russian suitors, while the Swede's pretensions
were the laughing-stock of the English court. So we may set aside this
question of marriage as having nothing to do with her emotional life.
She did desire a son, as was shown by her passionate outcry when she
compared herself with Mary of Scotland.
"The Queen of Scots has a bonny son, while I am but a barren stock! "
She was too wise to wed a subject; though, had she married at all, her
choice would doubtless have been an Englishman. In this respect, as in
so many others, she was like her father, who chose his numerous wives,
with the exception of the first, from among the English ladies of
the court; just as the showy Edward IV. was happy in marrying "Dame
Elizabeth Woodville. " But what a king may do is by no means so easy for
a queen; and a husband is almost certain to assume an authority which
makes him unpopular with the subjects of his wife.
Hence, as said above, we must consider not so much whom she would have
liked to marry, but rather to whom her love went out spontaneously, and
not as a part of that amatory play which amused her from the time when
she frisked with Seymour down to the very last days, when she could no
longer move about, but when she still dabbled her cheeks with rouge and
powder and set her skeleton face amid a forest of ruffs.
There were many whom she cared for after a fashion. She would not let
Sir Walter Raleigh visit her American colonies, because she could not
bear to have him so long away from her. She had great moments of passion
for the Earl of Essex, though in the end she signed his death-warrant
because he was as dominant in spirit as the queen herself.
Readers of Sir Walter Scott's wonderfully picturesque novel, Kenilworth,
will note how he throws the strongest light upon Elizabeth's affection
for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Scott's historical instinct is
united here with a vein of psychology which goes deeper than is usual
with him. We see Elizabeth trying hard to share her favor equally
between two nobles; but the Earl of Essex fails to please her because he
lacked those exquisite manners which made Leicester so great a favorite
with the fastidious queen.
Then, too, the story of Leicester's marriage with Amy Robsart is
something more than a myth, based upon an obscure legend and an ancient
ballad. The earl had had such a wife, and there were sinister stories
about the manner of her death. But it is Scott who invents the
villainous Varney and the bulldog Anthony Foster; just as he brought
the whole episode into the foreground and made it occur at a period much
later than was historically true. Still, Scott felt--and he was imbued
with the spirit and knowledge of that time--a strong conviction that
Elizabeth loved Leicester as she really loved no one else.
There is one interesting fact which goes far to convince us. Just as
her father was, in a way, polygamous, so Elizabeth was even more truly
polyandrous. It was inevitable that she should surround herself with
attractive men, whose love-locks she would caress and whose flatteries
she would greedily accept. To the outward eye there was very little
difference in her treatment of the handsome and daring nobles of her
court; yet a historian of her time makes one very shrewd remark when
he says: "To every one she gave some power at times--to all save
Leicester. "
Cecil and Walsingham in counsel and Essex and Raleigh in the field might
have their own way at times, and even share the sovereign's power, but
to Leicester she intrusted no high commands and no important mission.
Why so? Simply because she loved him more than any of the rest; and,
knowing this, she knew that if besides her love she granted him any
measure of control or power, then she would be but half a queen and
would be led either to marry him or else to let him sway her as he
would.
For the reason given, one may say with confidence that, while
Elizabeth's light loves were fleeting, she gave a deep affection to
this handsome, bold, and brilliant Englishman and cherished him in a far
different way from any of the others. This was as near as she ever came
to marriage, and it was this love at least which makes Shakespeare's
famous line as false as it is beautiful, when he describes "the imperial
votaress" as passing by "in maiden meditation, fancy free. "
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND LORD BOTHWELL
Mary Stuart and Cleopatra are the two women who have most attracted the
fancy of poets, dramatists, novelists, and painters, from their own time
down to the present day.
In some respects there is a certain likeness in their careers. Each
was queen of a nation whose affairs were entangled with those of a much
greater one. Each sought for her own ideal of love until she found it.
Each won that love recklessly, almost madly. Each, in its attainment,
fell from power and fortune. Each died before her natural life was
ended. One caused the man she loved to cast away the sovereignty of
a mighty state. The other lost her own crown in order that she might
achieve the whole desire of her heart.
There is still another parallel which may be found. Each of these women
was reputed to be exquisitely beautiful; yet each fell short of beauty's
highest standards. They are alike remembered in song and story because
of qualities that are far more powerful than any physical charm can be.
They impressed the imagination of their own contemporaries just as they
had impressed the imagination of all succeeding ages, by reason of a
strange and irresistible fascination which no one could explain, but
which very few could experience and resist.
Mary Stuart was born six days before her father's death, and when the
kingdom which was her heritage seemed to be almost in its death-throes.
James V. of Scotland, half Stuart and half Tudor, was no ordinary
monarch. As a mere boy he had burst the bonds with which a regency had
bound him, and he had ruled the wild Scotland of the sixteenth century.
He was brave and crafty, keen in statesmanship, and dissolute in
pleasure.
His first wife had given him no heirs; so at her death he sought out
a princess whom he pursued all the more ardently because she was also
courted by the burly Henry VIII. of England. This girl was Marie of
Lorraine, daughter of the Duc de Guise. She was fit to be the mother of
a lion's brood, for she was above six feet in height and of proportions
so ample as to excite the admiration of the royal voluptuary who sat
upon the throne of England.
"I am big," said he, "and I want a wife who is as big as I am. "
But James of Scotland wooed in person, and not by embassies, and he
triumphantly carried off his strapping princess. Henry of England gnawed
his beard in vain; and, though in time he found consolation in another
woman's arms, he viewed James not only as a public but as a private
enemy.
There was war between the two countries. First the Scots repelled an
English army; but soon they were themselves disgracefully defeated at
Solway Moss by a force much their inferior in numbers. The shame of it
broke King James's heart. As he was galloping from the battle-field the
news was brought him that his wife had given birth to a daughter.
He took little notice of the message; and in a few days he had died,
moaning with his last breath the mysterious words:
"It came with a lass--with a lass it will go! "
The child who was born at this ill-omened crisis was Mary Stuart, who
within a week became, in her own right, Queen of Scotland. Her mother
acted as regent of the kingdom. Henry of England demanded that the
infant girl should be betrothed to his young son, Prince Edward, who
afterward reigned as Edward VI. , though he died while still a boy. The
proposal was rejected, and the war between England and Scotland went on
its bloody course; but meanwhile the little queen was sent to France,
her mother's home, so that she might be trained in accomplishments which
were rare in Scotland.
In France she grew up at the court of Catherine de' Medici, that
imperious intriguer whose splendid surroundings were tainted with the
corruption which she had brought from her native Italy. It was, indeed,
a singular training-school for a girl of Mary Stuart's character. She
saw about her a superficial chivalry and a most profound depravity.
Poets like Ronsard graced the life of the court with exquisite verse.
Troubadours and minstrels sang sweet music there. There were fetes and
tournaments and gallantry of bearing; yet, on the other hand, there was
every possible refinement and variety of vice. Men were slain before
the eyes of the queen herself. The talk of the court was of intrigue and
lust and evil things which often verged on crime. Catherine de' Medici
herself kept her nominal husband at arm's-length; and in order to
maintain her grasp on France she connived at the corruption of her own
children, three of whom were destined in their turn to sit upon the
throne.
Mary Stuart grew up in these surroundings until she was sixteen, eating
the fruit which gave a knowledge of both good and evil. Her intelligence
was very great. She quickly learned Italian, French, and Latin. She was
a daring horsewoman. She was a poet and an artist even in her teens. She
was also a keen judge of human motives, for those early years of hers
had forced her into a womanhood that was premature but wonderful. It had
been proposed that she should marry the eldest son of Catherine, so
that in time the kingdom of Scotland and that of France might be united,
while if Elizabeth of England were to die unmarried her realm also would
fall to this pair of children.
And so Mary, at sixteen, wedded the Dauphin Francis, who was a year her
junior. The prince was a wretched, whimpering little creature, with a
cankered body and a blighted soul. Marriage with such a husband seemed
absurd. It never was a marriage in reality. The sickly child would cry
all night, for he suffered from abscesses in his ears, and his manhood
had been prematurely taken from him. Nevertheless, within a twelvemonth
the French king died and Mary Stuart was Queen of France as well as of
Scotland, hampered only by her nominal obedience to the sick boy whom
she openly despised. At seventeen she showed herself a master spirit.
She held her own against the ambitious Catherine de' Medici, whom she
contemptuously nicknamed "the apothecary's daughter. " For the brief
period of a year she was actually the ruler of France; but then her
husband died and she was left a widow, restless, ambitious, and yet no
longer having any of the power she loved.
Mary Stuart at this time had become a woman whose fascination was
exerted over all who knew her. She was very tall and very slim, with
chestnut hair, "like a flower of the heat, both lax and delicate. " Her
skin was fair and pale, so clear and so transparent as to make the story
plausible that when she drank from a flask of wine, the red liquid could
be seen passing down her slender throat.
Yet with all this she was not fine in texture, but hardy as a man. She
could endure immense fatigue without yielding to it. Her supple form had
the strength of steel. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes that showed
her to be brimful of an almost fierce vitality. Young as she was,
she was the mistress of a thousand arts, and she exhaled a sort of
atmosphere that turned the heads of men. The Stuart blood made her
impatient of control, careless of state, and easy-mannered. The French
and the Tudor strain gave her vivacity. She could be submissive in
appearance while still persisting in her aims. She could be languorous
and seductive while cold within. Again, she could assume the haughtiness
which belonged to one who was twice a queen.
Two motives swayed her, and they fought together for supremacy. One was
the love of power, and the other was the love of love. The first was
natural to a girl who was a sovereign in her own right. The second was
inherited, and was then forced into a rank luxuriance by the sort
of life that she had seen about her. At eighteen she was a strangely
amorous creature, given to fondling and kissing every one about her,
with slight discrimination. From her sense of touch she received
emotions that were almost necessary to her existence. With her slender,
graceful hands she was always stroking the face of some favorite--it
might be only the face of a child, or it might be the face of some
courtier or poet, or one of the four Marys whose names are linked with
hers--Mary Livingstone, Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, and Mary Seton, the
last of whom remained with her royal mistress until her death.
But one must not be too censorious in thinking of Mary Stuart. She was
surrounded everywhere by enemies. During her stay in France she was
hated by the faction of Catherine de' Medici. When she returned to
Scotland she was hated because of her religion by the Protestant lords.
Her every action was set forth in the worst possible light. The most
sinister meaning was given to everything she said or did. In truth, we
must reject almost all the stories which accuse her of anything more
than a certain levity of conduct.
She was not a woman to yield herself in love's last surrender unless her
intellect and heart alike had been made captive. She would listen to the
passionate outpourings of poets and courtiers, and she would plunge her
eyes into theirs, and let her hair just touch their faces, and give them
her white hands to kiss--but that was all. Even in this she was only
following the fashion of the court where she was bred, and she was
not unlike her royal relative, Elizabeth of England, who had the same
external amorousness coupled with the same internal self-control.
Mary Stuart's love life makes a piteous story, for it is the life of one
who was ever seeking--seeking for the man to whom she could look up, who
could be strong and brave and ardent like herself, and at the same time
be more powerful and more steadfast even than she herself in mind and
thought. Whatever may be said of her, and howsoever the facts may be
colored by partisans, this royal girl, stung though she was by passion
and goaded by desire, cared nothing for any man who could not match her
in body and mind and spirit all at once.
It was in her early widowhood that she first met the man, and when their
union came it brought ruin on them both. In France there came to her
one day one of her own subjects, the Earl of Bothwell. He was but a few
years older than she, and in his presence for the first time she
felt, in her own despite, that profoundly moving, indescribable, and
never-to-be-forgotten thrill which shakes a woman to the very center of
her being, since it is the recognition of a complete affinity.
Lord Bothwell, like Queen Mary, has been terribly maligned. Unlike her,
he has found only a few defenders. Maurice Hewlett has drawn a picture
of him more favorable than many, and yet it is a picture that repels.
Bothwell, says he, was of a type esteemed by those who pronounce vice
to be their virtue. He was "a galliard, flushed with rich blood,
broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt that
the world, rejoicing to hear it, thought all must be well wherever
he might be. He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, and kept brave
company bravely. His high color, while it betokened high feeding, got
him the credit of good health. His little eyes twinkled so merrily that
you did not see they were like a pig's, sly and greedy at once, and
bloodshot. His tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung, a chin jutting and
dangerous. His mouth had a cruel twist; but his laughing hid that too.
The bridge of his nose had been broken; few observed it, or guessed
at the brawl which must have given it to him. Frankness was his great
charm, careless ease in high places. "
And so, when Mary Stuart first met him in her eighteenth year, Lord
Bothwell made her think as she had never thought of any other man, and
as she was not to think of any other man again. She grew to look eagerly
for the frank mockery "in those twinkling eyes, in that quick mouth";
and to wonder whether it was with him always--asleep, at prayers,
fighting, furious, or in love.
Something more, however, must be said of Bothwell. He was undoubtedly a
roisterer, but he was very much a man. He made easy love to women. His
sword leaped quickly from its sheath. He could fight, and he could also
think. He was no brawling ruffian, no ordinary rake. Remembering what
Scotland was in those days, Bothwell might well seem in reality a
princely figure. He knew Italian; he was at home in French; he could
write fluent Latin. He was a collector of books and a reader of them
also. He was perhaps the only Scottish noble of his time who had a
book-plate of his own. Here is something more than a mere reveler. Here
is a man of varied accomplishments and of a complex character.
Though he stayed but a short time near the queen in France, he kindled
her imagination, so that when she seriously thought of men she thought
of Bothwell. And yet all the time she was fondling the young pages in
her retinue and kissing her maids of honor with her scarlet lips, and
lying on their knees, while poets like Ronsard and Chastelard wrote
ardent love sonnets to her and sighed and pined for something more than
the privilege of kissing her two dainty hands.
In 1561, less than a year after her widowhood, Mary set sail for
Scotland, never to return. The great high-decked ships which escorted
her sailed into the harbor of Leith, and she pressed on to Edinburgh. A
depressing change indeed from the sunny terraces and fields of France!
In her own realm were fog and rain and only a hut to shelter her upon
her landing. When she reached her capital there were few welcoming
cheers; but as she rode over the cobblestones to Holyrood, the squalid
wynds vomited forth great mobs of hard-featured, grim-visaged men and
women who stared with curiosity and a half-contempt at the girl queen
and her retinue of foreigners.
The Scots were Protestants of the most dour sort, and they distrusted
their new ruler because of her religion and because she loved to
surround herself with dainty things and bright colors and exotic
elegance. They feared lest she should try to repeal the law of
Scotland's Parliament which had made the country Protestant.
The very indifference of her subjects stirred up the nobler part of
Mary's nature. For a time she was indeed a queen. She governed wisely.
She respected the religious rights of her Protestant subjects. She
strove to bring order out of the chaos into which her country had
fallen. And she met with some success. The time came when her people
cheered her as she rode among them. Her subtle fascination was her
greatest source of strength. Even John Knox, that iron-visaged,
stentorian preacher, fell for a time under the charm of her presence.
She met him frankly and pleaded with him as a woman, instead of
commanding him as a queen. The surly ranter became softened for a time,
and, though he spoke of her to others as "Honeypot," he ruled his tongue
in public. She had offers of marriage from Austrian and Spanish princes.
The new King of France, her brother-in-law, would perhaps have wedded
her. It mattered little to Mary that Elizabeth of England was hostile.
She felt that she was strong enough to hold her own and govern Scotland.
But who could govern a country such as Scotland was? It was a land of
broils and feuds, of clan enmities and fierce vendettas. Its nobles were
half barbarous, and they fought and slashed at one another with drawn
dirks almost in the presence of the queen herself. No matter whom she
favored, there rose up a swarm of enemies. Here was a Corsica of the
north, more savage and untamed than even the other Corsica.
In her perplexity Mary felt a woman's need of some man on whom she
would have the right to lean, and whom she could make king consort.
She thought that she had found him in the person of her cousin, Lord
Darnley, a Catholic, and by his upbringing half an Englishman. Darnley
came to Scotland, and for the moment Mary fancied that she had forgotten
Bothwell.
he forbade Abelard to visit her. The girl, therefore, again left her
uncle's house and betook herself to a convent just outside of Paris,
where she assumed the habit of a nun as a disguise. There Abelard
continued from time to time to meet her.
When Fulbert heard of this he put his own interpretation on it. He
believed that Abelard intended to ignore the marriage altogether, and
that possibly he might even marry some other woman. In any case, he now
hated Abelard with all his heart; and he resolved to take a fearful and
unnatural vengeance which would at once prevent his enemy from making
any other marriage, while at the same time it would debar him from
ecclesiastical preferment.
To carry out his plot Fulbert first bribed a man who was the
body-servant of Abelard, watching at the door of his room each night.
Then he hired the services of four ruffians. After Abelard had retired
and was deep in slumber the treacherous valet unbarred the door. The
hirelings of Fulbert entered and fell upon the sleeping man. Three of
them bound him fast, while the fourth, with a razor, inflicted on him
the most shameful mutilation that is possible. Then, extinguishing
the lights, the wretches slunk away and were lost in darkness, leaving
behind their victim bound to his couch, uttering cries of torment and
bathed in his own blood.
It is a shocking story, and yet it is intensely characteristic of the
lawless and barbarous era in which it happened. Early the next morning
the news flew rapidly through Paris. The city hummed like a bee-hive.
Citizens and students and ecclesiastics poured into the street and
surrounded the house of Abelard.
"Almost the entire city," says Fulques, as quoted by McCabe, "went
clamoring toward his house. Women wept as if each one had lost her
husband. "
Unmanned though he was, Abelard still retained enough of the spirit of
his time to seek vengeance. He, in his turn, employed ruffians whom he
set upon the track of those who had assaulted him. The treacherous valet
and one of Fulbert's hirelings were run down, seized, and mutilated
precisely as Abelard had been; and their eyes were blinded. A third was
lodged in prison. Fulbert himself was accused before one of the Church
courts, which alone had power to punish an ecclesiastic, and all his
goods were confiscated.
But, meantime, how did it fare with Heloise? Her grief was greater than
his own, while her love and her devotion were absolutely undiminished.
But Abelard now showed a selfishness--and indeed, a meanness--far beyond
any that he had before exhibited. Heloise could no more be his wife.
He made it plain that he put no trust in her fidelity. He was unwilling
that she should live in the world while he could not; and so he told
her sternly that she must take the veil and bury herself for ever in a
nunnery.
The pain and shame which she experienced at this came wholly from the
fact that evidently Abelard did not trust her. Long afterward she wrote:
God knows I should not have hesitated, at your command, to precede or to
follow you to hell itself!
It was his distrust that cut her to the heart. Still, her love for him
was so intense that she obeyed his order. Soon after she took the vows;
and in the convent chapel, shaken with sobs, she knelt before the altar
and assumed the veil of a cloistered nun. Abelard himself put on the
black tunic of a Benedictine monk and entered the Abbey of St. Denis.
It is unnecessary here to follow out all the details of the lives of
Abelard and Heloise after this heart-rendering scene. Abelard
passed through many years of strife and disappointment, and even of
humiliation; for on one occasion, just as he had silenced Guillaume
de Champeaux, so he himself was silenced and put to rout by Bernard of
Clairvaux--"a frail, tense, absorbed, dominant little man, whose face
was white and worn with suffering," but in whose eyes there was a
light of supreme strength. Bernard represented pure faith, as Abelard
represented pure reason; and the two men met before a great council to
match their respective powers.
Bernard, with fiery eloquence, brought a charge of heresy against
Abelard in an oration which was like a charge of cavalry. When he had
concluded Abelard rose with an ashen face, stammered out a few words,
and sat down. He was condemned by the council, and his works were
ordered to be burned.
All his later life was one of misfortune, of humiliation, and even of
personal danger. The reckless monks whom he tried to rule rose fiercely
against him. His life was threatened. He betook himself to a desolate
and lonely place, where he built for himself a hut of reeds and rushes,
hoping to spend his final years in meditation. But there were many who
had not forgotten his ability as a teacher. These flocked by hundreds
to the desert place where he abode. His hut was surrounded by tents and
rude hovels, built by his scholars for their shelter.
Thus Abelard resumed his teaching, though in a very different frame of
mind. In time he built a structure of wood and stone, which he called
the Paraclete, some remains of which can still be seen.
All this time no word had passed between him and Heloise. But presently
Abelard wrote and gave to the world a curious and exceedingly frank
book, which he called The Story of My Misfortunes. A copy of it reached
the hands of Heloise, and she at once sent to Abelard the first of a
series of letters which have remained unique in the literature of love.
Ten years had passed, and yet the woman's heart was as faithful and as
full of yearning as on the day when the two had parted. It has been
said that the letters are not genuine, and they must be read with this
assertion in mind; yet it is difficult to believe that any one save
Heloise herself could have flung a human soul into such frankly
passionate utterances, or that any imitator could have done the work.
In her first letter, which was sent to Abelard written upon parchment,
she said:
At thy command I would change, not merely my costume, but my very soul,
so entirely art thou the sole possessor of my body and my spirit. Never,
God is my witness, never have I sought anything in thee but thyself;
I have sought thee, and not thy gifts. I have not looked to the
marriage-bond or dowry.
She begged him to write to her, and to lead her to God, as once he had
led her into the mysteries of pleasure. Abelard answered in a letter,
friendly to be sure, but formal--the letter of a priest to a cloistered
nun. The opening words of it are characteristic of the whole:
To Heloise, his sister in Christ, from Abelard, her brother in Him.
The letter was a long one, but throughout the whole of it the writer's
tone was cold and prudent. Its very coldness roused her soul to a
passionate revolt. Her second letter bursts forth in a sort of anguish:
How hast thou been able to frame such thoughts, dearest? How hast thou
found words to convey them? Oh, if I dared but call God cruel to me!
Oh, most wretched of all creatures that I am! So sweet did I find the
pleasures of our loving days that I cannot bring myself to reject
them or to banish them from my memory. Wheresoever I go, they thrust
themselves upon my vision, and rekindle the old desire.
But Abelard knew only too well that not in this life could there be
anything save spiritual love between himself and Heloise. He wrote to
her again and again, always in the same remote and unimpassioned way.
He tells her about the history of monasticism, and discusses with her
matters of theology and ethics; but he never writes one word to feed
the flame that is consuming her. The woman understood at last; and by
degrees her letters became as calm as his--suffused, however, with a
tenderness and feeling which showed that in her heart of hearts she was
still entirely given to him.
After some years Abelard left his dwelling at the Paraclete, and there
was founded there a religious house of which Heloise became the abbess.
All the world respected her for her sweetness, her wisdom, and the
purity of her character. She made friends as easily as Abelard made
enemies. Even Bernard, who had overthrown her husband, sought out
Heloise to ask for her advice and counsel.
Abelard died while on his way to Rome, whither he was journeying
in order to undergo a penalty; and his body was brought back to the
Paraclete, where it was entombed. Over it for twenty-two years Heloise
watched with tender care; and when she died, her body was laid beside
that of her lover.
To-day their bones are mingled as she would have desired them to be
mingled. The stones of their tomb in the great cemetery of Pere Lachaise
were brought from the ruins of the Paraclete, and above the sarcophagus
are two recumbent figures, the whole being the work of the artist
Alexandra Lenoir, who died in 1836. The figure representing Heloise
is not, however, an authentic likeness. The model for it was a lady
belonging to a noble family of France, and the figure itself was brought
to Pere Lachaise from the ancient College de Beauvais.
The letters of Heloise have been read and imitated throughout the whole
of the last nine centuries. Some have found in them the utterances of
a woman whose love of love was greater than her love of God and whose
intensity of passion nothing could subdue; and so these have condemned
her. But others, like Chateaubriand, have more truly seen in them a pure
and noble spirit to whom fate had been very cruel; and who was, after
all, writing to the man who had been her lawful husband.
Some of the most famous imitations of her letters are those in the
ancient poem entitled, "The Romance of the Rose," written by Jean de
Meung, in the thirteenth century; and in modern times her first letter
was paraphrased by Alexander Pope, and in French by Colardeau. There
exist in English half a dozen translations of them, with Abelard's
replies. It is interesting to remember that practically all the other
writings of Abelard remained unpublished and unedited until a very
recent period. He was a remarkable figure as a philosopher and scholar;
but the world cares for him only because he was loved by Heloise.
QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE EARL OF LEICESTER
History has many romantic stories to tell of the part which women
have played in determining the destinies of nations. Sometimes it is
a woman's beauty that causes the shifting of a province. Again it is
another woman's rich possessions that incite invasion and lead to bloody
wars. Marriages or dowries, or the refusal of marriages and the lack
of dowries, inheritance through an heiress, the failure of a male
succession--in these and in many other ways women have set their mark
indelibly upon the trend of history.
However, if we look over these different events we shall find that it
is not so much the mere longing for a woman--the desire to have her as a
queen--that has seriously affected the annals of any nation. Kings, like
ordinary men, have paid their suit and then have ridden away repulsed,
yet not seriously dejected. Most royal marriages are made either to
secure the succession to a throne by a legitimate line of heirs or else
to unite adjoining states and make a powerful kingdom out of two that
are less powerful. But, as a rule, kings have found greater delight in
some sheltered bower remote from courts than in the castled halls and
well-cared-for nooks where their own wives and children have been reared
with all the appurtenances of legitimacy.
There are not many stories that hang persistently about the love-making
of a single woman. In the case of one or another we may find an episode
or two--something dashing, something spirited or striking, something
brilliant and exhilarating, or something sad. But for a woman's whole
life to be spent in courtship that meant nothing and that was only a
clever aid to diplomacy--this is surely an unusual and really wonderful
thing.
It is the more unusual because the woman herself was not intended by
nature to be wasted upon the cold and cheerless sport of chancellors
and counselors and men who had no thought of her except to use her as
a pawn. She was hot-blooded, descended from a fiery race, and one whose
temper was quick to leap into the passion of a man.
In studying this phase of the long and interesting life of Elizabeth of
England we must notice several important facts. In the first place,
she gave herself, above all else, to the maintenance of England--not an
England that would be half Spanish or half French, or even partly Dutch
and Flemish, but the Merry England of tradition--the England that was
one and undivided, with its growing freedom of thought, its bows and
bills, its nut-brown ale, its sturdy yeomen, and its loyalty to crown
and Parliament. She once said, almost as in an agony:
"I love England more than anything! "
And one may really hold that this was true.
For England she schemed and planned. For England she gave up many of her
royal rights. For England she descended into depths of treachery. For
England she left herself on record as an arrant liar, false, perjured,
yet successful; and because of her success for England's sake her
countrymen will hold her in high remembrance, since her scheming and her
falsehood are the offenses that one pardons most readily in a woman.
In the second place, it must be remembered that Elizabeth's courtships
and pretended love-makings were almost always a part of her diplomacy.
When not a part of her diplomacy they were a mere appendage to her
vanity. To seem to be the flower of the English people, and to be
surrounded by the noblest, the bravest, and the most handsome cavaliers,
not only of her own kingdom, but of others--this was, indeed, a choice
morsel of which she was fond of tasting, even though it meant nothing
beyond the moment.
Finally, though at times she could be very cold, and though she made
herself still colder in order that she might play fast and loose with
foreign suitors who played fast and loose with her--the King of
Spain, the Duc d'Alencon, brother of the French king, with an Austrian
archduke, with a magnificent barbarian prince of Muscovy, with Eric of
Sweden, or any other Scandinavian suitor--she felt a woman's need for
some nearer and more tender association to which she might give freer
play and in which she might feel those deeper emotions without the
danger that arises when love is mingled with diplomacy.
Let us first consider a picture of the woman as she really was in order
that we may understand her triple nature--consummate mistress of every
art that statesmen know, and using at every moment her person as a lure;
a vain-glorious queen who seemed to be the prey of boundless vanity;
and, lastly, a woman who had all a woman's passion, and who could cast
suddenly aside the check and balance which restrained her before the
public gaze and could allow herself to give full play to the emotion
that she inherited from the king, her father, who was himself a marvel
of fire and impetuosity. That the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne
Boleyn should be a gentle, timid maiden would be to make heredity a
farce.
Elizabeth was about twenty-five years of age when she ascended the
throne of England. It is odd that the date of her birth cannot be given
with precision. The intrigues and disturbances of the English court,
and the fact that she was a princess, made her birth a matter of less
account than if there had been no male heir to the throne. At any rate,
when she ascended it, after the deaths of her brother, King Edward
VI. , and her sister, Queen Mary, she was a woman well trained both in
intellect and in physical development.
Mr. Martin Hume, who loves to dwell upon the later years of Queen
Elizabeth, speaks rather bitterly of her as a "painted old harridan";
and such she may well have seemed when, at nearly seventy years of age,
she leered and grinned a sort of skeleton smile at the handsome young
courtiers who pretended to see in her the queen of beauty and to be
dying for love of her.
Yet, in her earlier years, when she was young and strong and impetuous,
she deserved far different words than these. The portrait of her by
Zucchero, which now hangs in Hampton Court, depicts her when she must
have been of more than middle age; and still the face is one of beauty,
though it be a strange and almost artificial beauty--one that draws,
attracts, and, perhaps, lures you on against your will.
It is interesting to compare this painting with the frank word-picture
of a certain German agent who was sent to England by his emperor, and
who seems to have been greatly fascinated by Queen Elizabeth. She was at
that time in the prime of her beauty and her power. Her complexion was
of that peculiar transparency which is seen only in the face of golden
blondes. Her figure was fine and graceful, and her wit an accomplishment
that would have made a woman of any rank or time remarkable. The German
envoy says:
She lives a life of such magnificence and feasting as can hardly be
imagined, and occupies a great portion of her time with balls, banquets,
hunting, and similar amusements, with the utmost possible display, but
nevertheless she insists upon far greater respect being shown her than
was exacted by Queen Mary. She summons Parliament, but lets them know
that her orders must be obeyed in any case.
If any one will look at the painting by Zucchero he will see how much is
made of Elizabeth's hands--a distinctive feature quite as noble with the
Tudors as is the "Hapsburg lip" among the descendants of the house of
Austria. These were ungloved, and were very long and white, and she
looked at them and played with them a great deal; and, indeed,
they justified the admiration with which they were regarded by her
flatterers.
Such was the personal appearance of Elizabeth. When a young girl, we
have still more favorable opinions of her that were written by those who
had occasion to be near her. Not only do they record swift glimpses of
her person, but sometimes in a word or two they give an insight into
certain traits of mind which came out prominently in her later years.
It may, perhaps, be well to view her as a woman before we regard her
more fully as a queen. It has been said that Elizabeth inherited many
of the traits of her father--the boldness of spirit, the rapidity of
decision, and, at the same time, the fox-like craft which often showed
itself when it was least expected.
Henry had also, as is well known, a love of the other sex, which has
made his reign memorable. And yet it must be noted that while he loved
much, it was not loose love. Many a king of England, from Henry II. to
Charles II. , has offended far more than Henry VIII. Where Henry loved,
he married; and it was the unfortunate result of these royal marriages
that has made him seem unduly fond of women. If, however, we examine
each one of the separate espousals we shall find that he did not enter
into it lightly, and that he broke it off unwillingly. His ardent
temperament, therefore, was checked by a certain rational or
conventional propriety, so that he was by no means a loose liver, as
many would make him out to be.
We must remember this when we recall the charges that have been made
against Elizabeth, and the strange stories that were told of her
tricks--by no means seemly tricks--which she used to play with her
guardian, Lord Thomas Seymour. The antics she performed with him in her
dressing-room were made the subject of an official inquiry; yet it came
out that while Elizabeth was less than sixteen, and Lord Thomas was very
much her senior, his wife was with him on his visits to the chamber of
the princess.
Sir Robert Tyrwhitt and his wife were also sent to question her,
Tyrwhitt had a keen mind and one well trained to cope with any other's
wit in this sort of cross-examination. Elizabeth was only a girl of
fifteen, yet she was a match for the accomplished courtier in diplomacy
and quick retort. He was sent down to worm out of her everything that
she knew. Threats and flattery and forged letters and false confessions
were tried on her; but they were tried in vain. She would tell nothing
of importance. She denied everything. She sulked, she cried, she availed
herself of a woman's favorite defense in suddenly attacking those who
had attacked her. She brought counter charges against Tyrwhitt, and put
her enemies on their own defense. Not a compromising word could they
wring out of her.
She bitterly complained of the imprisonment of her governess, Mrs.
Ashley, and cried out:
"I have not so behaved that you need put more mistresses upon me! "
Altogether, she was too much for Sir Robert, and he was wise enough to
recognize her cleverness.
"She hath a very good wit," said he, shrewdly; "and nothing is to be
gotten of her except by great policy. " And he added: "If I had to say
my fancy, I think it more meet that she should have two governesses than
one. "
Mr. Hume notes the fact that after the two servants of the princess had
been examined and had told nothing very serious they found that they
had been wise in remaining friends of the royal girl. No sooner had
Elizabeth become queen than she knighted the man Parry and made him
treasurer of the household, while Mrs. Ashley, the governess, was
treated with great consideration. Thus, very naturally, Mr. Hume says:
"They had probably kept back far more than they told. "
Even Tyrwhitt believed that there was a secret compact between them, for
he said, quaintly: "They all sing one song, and she hath set the note
for them. "
Soon after this her brother Edward's death brought to the throne her
elder sister, Mary, who has harshly become known as Bloody Mary. During
this time Elizabeth put aside her boldness, and became apparently a shy
and simple-minded virgin. Surrounded on every side by those who sought
to trap her, there was nothing in her bearing to make her seem the head
of a party or the young chief of a faction. Nothing could exceed her in
meekness. She spoke of her sister in the humblest terms. She exhibited
no signs of the Tudor animation that was in reality so strong a part of
her character.
But, coming to the throne, she threw away her modesty and brawled and
rioted with very little self-restraint. The people as a whole found
little fault with her. She reminded them of her father, the bluff King
Hal; and even those who criticized her did so only partially. They
thought much better of her than they had of her saturnine sister, the
first Queen Mary.
The life of Elizabeth has been very oddly misunderstood, not so much for
the facts in it as for the manner in which these have been arranged and
the relation which they have to one another. We ought to recollect that
this woman did not live in a restricted sphere, that her life was not
a short one, and that it was crowded with incidents and full of vivid
color. Some think of her as living for a short period of time and speak
of the great historical characters who surrounded her as belonging to a
single epoch. To them she has one set of suitors all the time--the Duc
d'Alencon, the King of Denmark's brother, the Prince of Sweden, the
russian potentate, the archduke sending her sweet messages from
Austria, the melancholy King of Spain, together with a number of her
own brilliant Englishmen--Sir William Pickering, Sir Robert Dudley, Lord
Darnley, the Earl of Essex, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh.
Of course, as a matter of fact, Elizabeth lived for nearly seventy
years--almost three-quarters of a century--and in that long time there
came and went both men and women, those whom she had used and cast
aside, with others whom she had also treated with gratitude, and who had
died gladly serving her. But through it all there was a continual change
in her environment, though not in her. The young soldier went to the
battle-field and died; the wise counselor gave her his advice, and
she either took it or cared nothing for it. She herself was a curious
blending of forwardness and folly, of wisdom and wantonness, of
frivolity and unbridled fancy. But through it all she loved her people,
even though she often cheated them and made them pay her taxes in the
harsh old way that prevailed before there was any right save the king's
will.
At the same time, this was only by fits and starts, and on the whole
she served them well. Therefore, to most of them she was always the good
Queen Bess. What mattered it to the ditcher and yeoman, far from the
court, that the queen was said to dance in her nightdress and to swear
like a trooper?
It was, indeed, largely from these rustic sources that such stories were
scattered throughout England. Peasants thought them picturesque. More
to the point with them were peace and prosperity throughout the country,
the fact that law was administered with honesty and justice, and that
England was safe from her deadly enemies--the swarthy Spaniards and the
scheming French.
But, as I said, we must remember always that the Elizabeth of one period
was not the Elizabeth of another, and that the England of one period
was not the England of another. As one thinks of it, there is something
wonderful in the almost star-like way in which this girl flitted
unharmed through a thousand perils. Her own countrymen were at first
divided against her; a score of greedy, avaricious suitors sought her
destruction, or at least her hand to lead her to destruction; all the
great powers of the Continent were either demanding an alliance with
England or threatening to dash England down amid their own dissensions.
What had this girl to play off against such dangers? Only an undaunted
spirit, a scheming mind that knew no scruples, and finally her own
person and the fact that she was a woman, and, therefore, might give
herself in marriage and become the mother of a race of kings.
It was this last weapon, the weapon of her sex, that proved, perhaps,
the most powerful of all. By promising a marriage or by denying it, or
by neither promising nor denying but withholding it, she gave forth a
thousand wily intimations which kept those who surrounded her at bay
until she had made still another deft and skilful combination, escaping
like some startled creature to a new place of safety.
In 1583, when she was fifty years of age, she had reached a point when
her courtships and her pretended love-making were no longer necessary.
She had played Sweden against Denmark, and France against Spain, and the
Austrian archduke against the others, and many suitors in her own land
against the different factions which they headed. She might have sat
herself down to rest; for she could feel that her wisdom had led her
up into a high place, whence she might look down in peace and with
assurance of the tranquillity that she had won. Not yet had the great
Armada rolled and thundered toward the English shores. But she was
certain that her land was secure, compact, and safe.
It remains to see what were those amatory relations which she may be
said to have sincerely held. She had played at love-making with foreign
princes, because it was wise and, for the moment, best. She had played
with Englishmen of rank who aspired to her hand, because in that way she
might conciliate, at one time her Catholic and at another her Protestant
subjects. But what of the real and inward feeling of her heart, when she
was not thinking of political problems or the necessities of state!
This is an interesting question. One may at least seek the answer,
hoping thereby to solve one of the most interesting phases of this
perplexing and most remarkable woman.
It must be remembered that it was not a question of whether Elizabeth
desired marriage. She may have done so as involving a brilliant stroke
of policy. In this sense she may have wished to marry one of the two
French princes who were among her suitors. But even here she hesitated,
and her Parliament disapproved; for by this time England had become
largely Protestant. Again, had she married a French prince and had
children, England might have become an appanage of France.
There is no particular evidence that she had any feeling at all for her
Flemish, Austrian, or Russian suitors, while the Swede's pretensions
were the laughing-stock of the English court. So we may set aside this
question of marriage as having nothing to do with her emotional life.
She did desire a son, as was shown by her passionate outcry when she
compared herself with Mary of Scotland.
"The Queen of Scots has a bonny son, while I am but a barren stock! "
She was too wise to wed a subject; though, had she married at all, her
choice would doubtless have been an Englishman. In this respect, as in
so many others, she was like her father, who chose his numerous wives,
with the exception of the first, from among the English ladies of
the court; just as the showy Edward IV. was happy in marrying "Dame
Elizabeth Woodville. " But what a king may do is by no means so easy for
a queen; and a husband is almost certain to assume an authority which
makes him unpopular with the subjects of his wife.
Hence, as said above, we must consider not so much whom she would have
liked to marry, but rather to whom her love went out spontaneously, and
not as a part of that amatory play which amused her from the time when
she frisked with Seymour down to the very last days, when she could no
longer move about, but when she still dabbled her cheeks with rouge and
powder and set her skeleton face amid a forest of ruffs.
There were many whom she cared for after a fashion. She would not let
Sir Walter Raleigh visit her American colonies, because she could not
bear to have him so long away from her. She had great moments of passion
for the Earl of Essex, though in the end she signed his death-warrant
because he was as dominant in spirit as the queen herself.
Readers of Sir Walter Scott's wonderfully picturesque novel, Kenilworth,
will note how he throws the strongest light upon Elizabeth's affection
for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Scott's historical instinct is
united here with a vein of psychology which goes deeper than is usual
with him. We see Elizabeth trying hard to share her favor equally
between two nobles; but the Earl of Essex fails to please her because he
lacked those exquisite manners which made Leicester so great a favorite
with the fastidious queen.
Then, too, the story of Leicester's marriage with Amy Robsart is
something more than a myth, based upon an obscure legend and an ancient
ballad. The earl had had such a wife, and there were sinister stories
about the manner of her death. But it is Scott who invents the
villainous Varney and the bulldog Anthony Foster; just as he brought
the whole episode into the foreground and made it occur at a period much
later than was historically true. Still, Scott felt--and he was imbued
with the spirit and knowledge of that time--a strong conviction that
Elizabeth loved Leicester as she really loved no one else.
There is one interesting fact which goes far to convince us. Just as
her father was, in a way, polygamous, so Elizabeth was even more truly
polyandrous. It was inevitable that she should surround herself with
attractive men, whose love-locks she would caress and whose flatteries
she would greedily accept. To the outward eye there was very little
difference in her treatment of the handsome and daring nobles of her
court; yet a historian of her time makes one very shrewd remark when
he says: "To every one she gave some power at times--to all save
Leicester. "
Cecil and Walsingham in counsel and Essex and Raleigh in the field might
have their own way at times, and even share the sovereign's power, but
to Leicester she intrusted no high commands and no important mission.
Why so? Simply because she loved him more than any of the rest; and,
knowing this, she knew that if besides her love she granted him any
measure of control or power, then she would be but half a queen and
would be led either to marry him or else to let him sway her as he
would.
For the reason given, one may say with confidence that, while
Elizabeth's light loves were fleeting, she gave a deep affection to
this handsome, bold, and brilliant Englishman and cherished him in a far
different way from any of the others. This was as near as she ever came
to marriage, and it was this love at least which makes Shakespeare's
famous line as false as it is beautiful, when he describes "the imperial
votaress" as passing by "in maiden meditation, fancy free. "
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND LORD BOTHWELL
Mary Stuart and Cleopatra are the two women who have most attracted the
fancy of poets, dramatists, novelists, and painters, from their own time
down to the present day.
In some respects there is a certain likeness in their careers. Each
was queen of a nation whose affairs were entangled with those of a much
greater one. Each sought for her own ideal of love until she found it.
Each won that love recklessly, almost madly. Each, in its attainment,
fell from power and fortune. Each died before her natural life was
ended. One caused the man she loved to cast away the sovereignty of
a mighty state. The other lost her own crown in order that she might
achieve the whole desire of her heart.
There is still another parallel which may be found. Each of these women
was reputed to be exquisitely beautiful; yet each fell short of beauty's
highest standards. They are alike remembered in song and story because
of qualities that are far more powerful than any physical charm can be.
They impressed the imagination of their own contemporaries just as they
had impressed the imagination of all succeeding ages, by reason of a
strange and irresistible fascination which no one could explain, but
which very few could experience and resist.
Mary Stuart was born six days before her father's death, and when the
kingdom which was her heritage seemed to be almost in its death-throes.
James V. of Scotland, half Stuart and half Tudor, was no ordinary
monarch. As a mere boy he had burst the bonds with which a regency had
bound him, and he had ruled the wild Scotland of the sixteenth century.
He was brave and crafty, keen in statesmanship, and dissolute in
pleasure.
His first wife had given him no heirs; so at her death he sought out
a princess whom he pursued all the more ardently because she was also
courted by the burly Henry VIII. of England. This girl was Marie of
Lorraine, daughter of the Duc de Guise. She was fit to be the mother of
a lion's brood, for she was above six feet in height and of proportions
so ample as to excite the admiration of the royal voluptuary who sat
upon the throne of England.
"I am big," said he, "and I want a wife who is as big as I am. "
But James of Scotland wooed in person, and not by embassies, and he
triumphantly carried off his strapping princess. Henry of England gnawed
his beard in vain; and, though in time he found consolation in another
woman's arms, he viewed James not only as a public but as a private
enemy.
There was war between the two countries. First the Scots repelled an
English army; but soon they were themselves disgracefully defeated at
Solway Moss by a force much their inferior in numbers. The shame of it
broke King James's heart. As he was galloping from the battle-field the
news was brought him that his wife had given birth to a daughter.
He took little notice of the message; and in a few days he had died,
moaning with his last breath the mysterious words:
"It came with a lass--with a lass it will go! "
The child who was born at this ill-omened crisis was Mary Stuart, who
within a week became, in her own right, Queen of Scotland. Her mother
acted as regent of the kingdom. Henry of England demanded that the
infant girl should be betrothed to his young son, Prince Edward, who
afterward reigned as Edward VI. , though he died while still a boy. The
proposal was rejected, and the war between England and Scotland went on
its bloody course; but meanwhile the little queen was sent to France,
her mother's home, so that she might be trained in accomplishments which
were rare in Scotland.
In France she grew up at the court of Catherine de' Medici, that
imperious intriguer whose splendid surroundings were tainted with the
corruption which she had brought from her native Italy. It was, indeed,
a singular training-school for a girl of Mary Stuart's character. She
saw about her a superficial chivalry and a most profound depravity.
Poets like Ronsard graced the life of the court with exquisite verse.
Troubadours and minstrels sang sweet music there. There were fetes and
tournaments and gallantry of bearing; yet, on the other hand, there was
every possible refinement and variety of vice. Men were slain before
the eyes of the queen herself. The talk of the court was of intrigue and
lust and evil things which often verged on crime. Catherine de' Medici
herself kept her nominal husband at arm's-length; and in order to
maintain her grasp on France she connived at the corruption of her own
children, three of whom were destined in their turn to sit upon the
throne.
Mary Stuart grew up in these surroundings until she was sixteen, eating
the fruit which gave a knowledge of both good and evil. Her intelligence
was very great. She quickly learned Italian, French, and Latin. She was
a daring horsewoman. She was a poet and an artist even in her teens. She
was also a keen judge of human motives, for those early years of hers
had forced her into a womanhood that was premature but wonderful. It had
been proposed that she should marry the eldest son of Catherine, so
that in time the kingdom of Scotland and that of France might be united,
while if Elizabeth of England were to die unmarried her realm also would
fall to this pair of children.
And so Mary, at sixteen, wedded the Dauphin Francis, who was a year her
junior. The prince was a wretched, whimpering little creature, with a
cankered body and a blighted soul. Marriage with such a husband seemed
absurd. It never was a marriage in reality. The sickly child would cry
all night, for he suffered from abscesses in his ears, and his manhood
had been prematurely taken from him. Nevertheless, within a twelvemonth
the French king died and Mary Stuart was Queen of France as well as of
Scotland, hampered only by her nominal obedience to the sick boy whom
she openly despised. At seventeen she showed herself a master spirit.
She held her own against the ambitious Catherine de' Medici, whom she
contemptuously nicknamed "the apothecary's daughter. " For the brief
period of a year she was actually the ruler of France; but then her
husband died and she was left a widow, restless, ambitious, and yet no
longer having any of the power she loved.
Mary Stuart at this time had become a woman whose fascination was
exerted over all who knew her. She was very tall and very slim, with
chestnut hair, "like a flower of the heat, both lax and delicate. " Her
skin was fair and pale, so clear and so transparent as to make the story
plausible that when she drank from a flask of wine, the red liquid could
be seen passing down her slender throat.
Yet with all this she was not fine in texture, but hardy as a man. She
could endure immense fatigue without yielding to it. Her supple form had
the strength of steel. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes that showed
her to be brimful of an almost fierce vitality. Young as she was,
she was the mistress of a thousand arts, and she exhaled a sort of
atmosphere that turned the heads of men. The Stuart blood made her
impatient of control, careless of state, and easy-mannered. The French
and the Tudor strain gave her vivacity. She could be submissive in
appearance while still persisting in her aims. She could be languorous
and seductive while cold within. Again, she could assume the haughtiness
which belonged to one who was twice a queen.
Two motives swayed her, and they fought together for supremacy. One was
the love of power, and the other was the love of love. The first was
natural to a girl who was a sovereign in her own right. The second was
inherited, and was then forced into a rank luxuriance by the sort
of life that she had seen about her. At eighteen she was a strangely
amorous creature, given to fondling and kissing every one about her,
with slight discrimination. From her sense of touch she received
emotions that were almost necessary to her existence. With her slender,
graceful hands she was always stroking the face of some favorite--it
might be only the face of a child, or it might be the face of some
courtier or poet, or one of the four Marys whose names are linked with
hers--Mary Livingstone, Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, and Mary Seton, the
last of whom remained with her royal mistress until her death.
But one must not be too censorious in thinking of Mary Stuart. She was
surrounded everywhere by enemies. During her stay in France she was
hated by the faction of Catherine de' Medici. When she returned to
Scotland she was hated because of her religion by the Protestant lords.
Her every action was set forth in the worst possible light. The most
sinister meaning was given to everything she said or did. In truth, we
must reject almost all the stories which accuse her of anything more
than a certain levity of conduct.
She was not a woman to yield herself in love's last surrender unless her
intellect and heart alike had been made captive. She would listen to the
passionate outpourings of poets and courtiers, and she would plunge her
eyes into theirs, and let her hair just touch their faces, and give them
her white hands to kiss--but that was all. Even in this she was only
following the fashion of the court where she was bred, and she was
not unlike her royal relative, Elizabeth of England, who had the same
external amorousness coupled with the same internal self-control.
Mary Stuart's love life makes a piteous story, for it is the life of one
who was ever seeking--seeking for the man to whom she could look up, who
could be strong and brave and ardent like herself, and at the same time
be more powerful and more steadfast even than she herself in mind and
thought. Whatever may be said of her, and howsoever the facts may be
colored by partisans, this royal girl, stung though she was by passion
and goaded by desire, cared nothing for any man who could not match her
in body and mind and spirit all at once.
It was in her early widowhood that she first met the man, and when their
union came it brought ruin on them both. In France there came to her
one day one of her own subjects, the Earl of Bothwell. He was but a few
years older than she, and in his presence for the first time she
felt, in her own despite, that profoundly moving, indescribable, and
never-to-be-forgotten thrill which shakes a woman to the very center of
her being, since it is the recognition of a complete affinity.
Lord Bothwell, like Queen Mary, has been terribly maligned. Unlike her,
he has found only a few defenders. Maurice Hewlett has drawn a picture
of him more favorable than many, and yet it is a picture that repels.
Bothwell, says he, was of a type esteemed by those who pronounce vice
to be their virtue. He was "a galliard, flushed with rich blood,
broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt that
the world, rejoicing to hear it, thought all must be well wherever
he might be. He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, and kept brave
company bravely. His high color, while it betokened high feeding, got
him the credit of good health. His little eyes twinkled so merrily that
you did not see they were like a pig's, sly and greedy at once, and
bloodshot. His tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung, a chin jutting and
dangerous. His mouth had a cruel twist; but his laughing hid that too.
The bridge of his nose had been broken; few observed it, or guessed
at the brawl which must have given it to him. Frankness was his great
charm, careless ease in high places. "
And so, when Mary Stuart first met him in her eighteenth year, Lord
Bothwell made her think as she had never thought of any other man, and
as she was not to think of any other man again. She grew to look eagerly
for the frank mockery "in those twinkling eyes, in that quick mouth";
and to wonder whether it was with him always--asleep, at prayers,
fighting, furious, or in love.
Something more, however, must be said of Bothwell. He was undoubtedly a
roisterer, but he was very much a man. He made easy love to women. His
sword leaped quickly from its sheath. He could fight, and he could also
think. He was no brawling ruffian, no ordinary rake. Remembering what
Scotland was in those days, Bothwell might well seem in reality a
princely figure. He knew Italian; he was at home in French; he could
write fluent Latin. He was a collector of books and a reader of them
also. He was perhaps the only Scottish noble of his time who had a
book-plate of his own. Here is something more than a mere reveler. Here
is a man of varied accomplishments and of a complex character.
Though he stayed but a short time near the queen in France, he kindled
her imagination, so that when she seriously thought of men she thought
of Bothwell. And yet all the time she was fondling the young pages in
her retinue and kissing her maids of honor with her scarlet lips, and
lying on their knees, while poets like Ronsard and Chastelard wrote
ardent love sonnets to her and sighed and pined for something more than
the privilege of kissing her two dainty hands.
In 1561, less than a year after her widowhood, Mary set sail for
Scotland, never to return. The great high-decked ships which escorted
her sailed into the harbor of Leith, and she pressed on to Edinburgh. A
depressing change indeed from the sunny terraces and fields of France!
In her own realm were fog and rain and only a hut to shelter her upon
her landing. When she reached her capital there were few welcoming
cheers; but as she rode over the cobblestones to Holyrood, the squalid
wynds vomited forth great mobs of hard-featured, grim-visaged men and
women who stared with curiosity and a half-contempt at the girl queen
and her retinue of foreigners.
The Scots were Protestants of the most dour sort, and they distrusted
their new ruler because of her religion and because she loved to
surround herself with dainty things and bright colors and exotic
elegance. They feared lest she should try to repeal the law of
Scotland's Parliament which had made the country Protestant.
The very indifference of her subjects stirred up the nobler part of
Mary's nature. For a time she was indeed a queen. She governed wisely.
She respected the religious rights of her Protestant subjects. She
strove to bring order out of the chaos into which her country had
fallen. And she met with some success. The time came when her people
cheered her as she rode among them. Her subtle fascination was her
greatest source of strength. Even John Knox, that iron-visaged,
stentorian preacher, fell for a time under the charm of her presence.
She met him frankly and pleaded with him as a woman, instead of
commanding him as a queen. The surly ranter became softened for a time,
and, though he spoke of her to others as "Honeypot," he ruled his tongue
in public. She had offers of marriage from Austrian and Spanish princes.
The new King of France, her brother-in-law, would perhaps have wedded
her. It mattered little to Mary that Elizabeth of England was hostile.
She felt that she was strong enough to hold her own and govern Scotland.
But who could govern a country such as Scotland was? It was a land of
broils and feuds, of clan enmities and fierce vendettas. Its nobles were
half barbarous, and they fought and slashed at one another with drawn
dirks almost in the presence of the queen herself. No matter whom she
favored, there rose up a swarm of enemies. Here was a Corsica of the
north, more savage and untamed than even the other Corsica.
In her perplexity Mary felt a woman's need of some man on whom she
would have the right to lean, and whom she could make king consort.
She thought that she had found him in the person of her cousin, Lord
Darnley, a Catholic, and by his upbringing half an Englishman. Darnley
came to Scotland, and for the moment Mary fancied that she had forgotten
Bothwell.
