The following extract seems to show that she had a yearning for something better in the midst of this idle dissipation – though the terms in which she expresses herself are far from commendable: “I wish I could be religious. I plague La Moresse – the abbé – about it every day. I belong at present neither to God nor devil; and I find this condition very uncomfortable; though, between you and me, I think it the most natural in the world. One does not belong to the devil, because one fears God, and has at bottom a principle of religion; but then, on the other hand, one does not belong to God, because his laws appear hard, and self-denial is not pleasant. Hence the great number of the lukewarm, which does not surprise me at all; I enter perfectly into their reasons; only God, you know, hates them, and that must not be. But there lies the difficulty. Why must I torment you with these rhapsodies? My dear child, I ask your pardon, as they say in these parts. I rattle on in your company, and forget every thing else in the pleasure of it. Don’t make me any answer. Send me only news of your health, with a spice of what you feel at Grignan, that I may know you are happy; that is all. Love me. We have turned the phrase into ridicule; but it is natural; it is good.”
Perhaps she was led into these reflections by her admiration for the beautiful Duchess de Longueville, who, from having been “the greatest of sinners, became the greatest of saints:” a princess of the blood royal, – a leader in all the dissolute scenes which characterized the wars of the Fronde, – she voluntarily retired to a convent, where she practised all those austerities, by which the pious Catholic believed he might atone for past transgressions. Of the sincerity of her conversion she gave repeated testimonies, and Madame de Sévigné ever speaks of her with the greatest veneration and respect. That she had too much good practical sense to be deceived by those who sought by the excitement of religious rites to make up for the loss of the excitements of pleasure, or who assumed the garb of religion in mere compliance with the fashion which prevailed at court, under the rule of Madame de Maintenon, is apparent from the light tone of the following passage: “Madame de T. wears no rouge, and hides her person, instead of displaying it. Under this disguise it is difficult to know her again. I was sitting next her at dinner the other day, and a servant brought her a glass of vin de liqueur; she turned to me, and said, ‘This man does not know that I am dévote.’ This made us all laugh, and she spoke very naturally of her changes, and of her good intentions. She now minds what she says of her neighbors, and stops short in her recitals, with a scream at her bad habits. There are bets made that Madame d’H. will not be dévote within a year, and that she will resume her rouge. This rouge is the law and the prophets, and on this rouge turns the whole of the Christian religion.”
Tested by the morality of our day, Madame de Sévigné could not claim a very exalted character: yet we are bound to mention one trait, which honorably distinguishes her from her contemporaries. Louis XIV., for the purpose of reducing the power of his nobles, systematically encouraged them in the most boundless extravagance, of which he himself set them the example. The natural consequence followed; they became inextricably involved in debts, with so little idea of ever paying them, that the conduct of the Cardinal de Retz, who sought to atone for early excesses by retiring to the country, and husbanding his resources for this purpose, excited universal wonder, and was too extraordinary to be generally credited. Madame de Sévigné fully appreciated the propriety of this conduct of De Retz, and bestows upon it many commendations. When such were the sentiments of her mother, it is not a little surprising to hear of a poor milliner, whose necessities compelled her to undertake a journey of five hundred miles, from Paris to Provence, to collect a debt from Madame de Grignan, being dismissed without her money, and being told in substance, if not in words, that she might thank her good fortune that she did not make her exit through the window – a summary mode of cancelling debts, often threatened, if not executed, when creditors were importunate. Nor were Madame de Sévigné’s mere professions. The occasion arose which tried her principles. The extravagance of her husband left her with estates encumbered with debts; the education and maintenance of her children were expensive; her son’s commission in the army was purchased at a high price; her rents were not paid with punctuality, and she was obliged to remit large debts to her tenants. From all these causes, she found herself, at the age of fifty-eight, involved in debts, which nothing but a retirement from Paris, and the practice of a rigid economy, would enable her to pay. She did not hesitate to withdraw herself from her beloved society in Paris, and to retire to “The Rocks.” The sacrifice was rendered more complete by the fact that her daughter was at that time residing at Paris. Her absence was felt bitterly by her friends, and she was at once mortified and gratified by the offer of a loan of money to facilitate her return. Madame de la Fayette wrote to make her the proposition: “You must not, my dear, at any price whatever, pass the winter in Brittany. You are old; ‘The Rocks’ are thickly wooded; colds will destroy you; you will get weary; your mind will become sad, and lose its tone: this is certain; and all the business in the world is nothing in comparison. Do not speak of money nor of debts;” and then follows the proposal. Madame de Sévigné declined the offer, being unwilling to incur the obligation. Conceived with all possible kindness, there was a sting in the letter which Madame de Sévigné confesses to her daughter, that she felt. “You were, then, struck by Madame de la Fayette’s expression mingled with so much kindness. Although I never allow myself to forget this truth, I confess I was quite surprised; for as yet I feel no decay to remind me of it. However, I often reflect and calculate, and find the conditions on which we enjoy life very hard. It seems to me that I was dragged, in spite of myself, to the fatal term when one must suffer old age. I see it – am there. I should at least like to go no farther in the road of decrepitude, pain, loss of memory, and disfigurement, which are at hand to injure me. I hear a voice that says, ‘Even against your will you must go on; or, if you, refuse, you must die;’ which is another necessity from which nature shrinks. Such is the fate of those who go a little too far. What is their resource? To think of the will of God, and the universal law; and so restore reason to its place, and be patient. Be you, then, patient, my dear child, and let not your affection soften into such tears as reason must condemn.”
As Madame de Sévigné would not return to Paris, her friends heard with pleasure that she had resolved to go to Grignan, the residence of her daughter in Provence. Here the greater part of her remaining life was spent, and the correspondence with her daughter entirely ceases from this time. Madame de Sévigné died, after a sudden and short illness, in April, 1696, at the age of seventy.
It may gratify some to know that the letters of Madame de Sévigné were apparently written in haste, beginning the writing on the second page of the paper, continuing to the third and fourth, and returning to the first: she used neither sand nor blotting-paper. Speaking to her daughter, Madame de S. says, “The princess is always saying that she is going to write to you; she mends her pens; for her writing is a great affair, and her letters a sort of embroidery; not done in a moment. We should never finish, were we to make fine twists and twirls to our D’s and L’s;” in allusion to the German and Italian fashion of the day of making ornaments with their pens, called lacs d’amour. The letters were sealed on both sides, and a piece of white floss silk fastened it entirely round.
Of the English admirers of Madame de Sévigné, the most distinguished and the most warm in the expression of their admiration are Horace Walpole and Sir James Mackintosh, men of totally opposite turns of mind; the former a professed wit, and himself a letter-writer, the latter a grave lawyer and statesman. We conclude this memoir by giving the character of Madame de Sévigné as drawn by the latter. “The great charm of her character seems to me a natural virtue. In what she does, as well as in what she says, she is unforced and unstudied; nobody, I think, had so much morality without constraint, and played so much with amiable feelings without falling into vice. Her ingenious, lively, social disposition gave the direction to her mental power. She has so filled my heart with affectionate interest in her as a living friend, that I can scarcely bring myself to think of her as a writer, or as having a style; but she has become a celebrated, perhaps an immortal writer, without expecting it: she is the only classical writer who never conceived the possibility of acquiring fame. Without a great force of style, she could not have communicated those feelings. In what does that talent consist? It seems mainly to consist in the power of working bold metaphors, and unexpected turns of expression, out of the most familiar part of conversational language.”
MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS
In December, 1542, Mary Stuart, daughter of James V. of Scotland, then seven days old, succeeded to the throne of a kingdom rent by religious and political factions, and suffering from the consequences of a disastrous war with England.
The union of Scotland to England had ever been a favorite project with English sovereigns, and the present seemed to Henry VIII. a favorable opportunity for peaceably effecting it. He lost no time, therefore, in proposing a match between the infant queen and his own son, Edward. His proposal found little favor; the haughty nobles could not endure to see their country become a mere province of England; and the queen mother and her religious advisers feared for the security of the Catholic religion. Henry might, however, have ultimately succeeded, had he acted with prudence. But he sought to terrify the Scots into submission; and those who succeeded to the government of England upon his death, which happened soon after, persisted in the same policy. An army was sent into Scotland, to ravage the country and pillage the towns and villages. This mode of wooing did not suit the temper of the Scots; and an end was soon put to all hopes by the negotiation of a marriage treaty between the queen and Francis, the infant dauphin of France. In pursuance of this treaty, Mary, then in her sixth year, was sent to France to be educated. She was at first placed in a convent with the king’s daughters, where she made a rapid progress in all the accomplishments they attempted to teach her. Here her enthusiastic disposition was so strongly impressed with religious feelings, and she evinced such a fondness for a cloistered life, that it was thought proper to remove her to the gayer scenes of the court – a change which cost her torrents of tears. The fashion for learning prevailed at this time, and Mary profited by it. Her instructors were the most eminent men of the time; Buchanan taught her Latin; Pasquier instructed her in history; Ronsard, the most famous of the early French poets, cultivated her taste for poetry: they found her not only a willing but an able pupil. Other accomplishments were not neglected; she sung, and played on the lute and the virginals; she rode on horseback fearlessly, yet with feminine grace; her dancing was always admired; and we are assured that in the Spanish minuet she was equalled only by her aunt, the beautiful Anne of Este, and no lady of the court could eclipse her in a galliarde. Her beauty and the charming expression of her countenance were such, that, as a contemporary asserts, “no one could look upon her without loving her.” When her mother came over to visit her in 1550, she burst into tears of joy, and congratulated herself on her daughter’s capacity and loveliness. Soon after Mary’s marriage to Francis, in 1558, Elizabeth ascended the English throne; the pope, and the French and Spanish courts, refused to acknowledge her; and Mary, undisputably the next heir, was compelled by the commands of her father-in-law to assume the title and arms of queen of England – a measure of unforeseen but fatal consequences to her, as it added fresh fuel to the fires of envy, jealousy, and hatred, which the personal advantages of Mary had already excited in the bosom of her vain and vindictive rival.
In 1558, Francis and Mary were crowned king and queen of France. Francis survived this event but a few months. He was far inferior to his wife, both in personal and mental accomplishments; he was of sickly constitution, and very reserved; but he had an affectionate and kind disposition. He was not a man to call forth the deepest and most passionate feelings of such a heart as Mary’s; but she ever treated him with tenderness and most respectful attention. She is described by an eye-witness as a “sorrowful widow,” and lamented her husband sincerely.
The happiness of Mary’s life was now at an end. She was a stranger in the land of which she had so recently been crowned queen. In the queen mother, the ambitious Catherine de Medicis, who now ruled France in the name of her son Charles IX., Mary had an inveterate foe. In the reign of Francis they had been rivals for power, when the charms of the wife had triumphed over the authority of the mother. There was another wound which had long rankled in the vindictive bosom of Catherine. In the artlessness of youth, Mary had once boasted of her own descent from a “hundred kings,” which was supposed to reflect on the mercantile lineage of the daughter of the Medicis. She now took her revenge. By the most studied slights she sought to mortify Mary, who first retired to Rheims. Here she was waited on by a deputation from her own nobles, who invited her, in terms which amounted to a command, to return to her native country.
A new cause of difficulty now occurred between Mary and Elizabeth. The heads of the reformed religious party in Scotland, called the “Lords of the Congregation,” had negotiated a treaty with Elizabeth, one of the terms of which was a renunciation, on the part of Mary, of all claims to the crown of England forever. This Mary refused to ratify, and replied to the crafty ministers of her rival with a spirit, intelligence, and firmness, extraordinary in a girl of eighteen. At the same time, she was courteous and gentle, and apologized for the assumption of the title and arms of queen of England, which, at the death of her husband, she had renounced. Attempts had been made to excite the fears of her Protestant subjects, which she thus set at rest: “I will be plain with you; the religion I profess I take to be the most acceptable to God; and indeed I neither know nor desire any other. I have been brought up in this religion, and who might credit me in any thing if I should show myself light in this case? I am none of those who change their religion every year; but I mean to constrain none of my subjects, though I could wish they were all as I am; and I trust they shall have no support to constrain me.”
Having at length resolved to return home, Mary sent to demand of Elizabeth a free passage; it was a mere point of courtesy and etiquette, but it was refused. The English ambassador sought in vain to justify his mistress’s conduct; it arose from exasperated jealousy, and was inexcusable and mean, as well as discourteous.
It was with grief almost amounting to despair that Mary left the scenes of her early attachments, and of all her pleasures. Accustomed to the refinement of the court of France, she reflected with a degree of horror on the barbarism of her own country, and the turbulence of the people. She stood upon the deck of the vessel which bore her, gazing through her tears on the receding shores. “Farewell, France!” she would exclaim from time to time; “farewell, beloved country, which I shall never more behold!” When night came on, she caused a bed to be spread on the deck, and wept herself to sleep.
By the favor of a thick fog, Mary escaped the fleet which Elizabeth had sent out to intercept her, and landed at Leith. With sensations of terror and sadness she entered her capital; and they may well be excused. The poverty of the country formed a striking contrast with the fertile plains of France. The weather was wet and “dolorous;” and a serenade of bagpipes, with which the populace hailed her, seems to have greatly disconcerted her polished attendants. But Mary herself took every thing in good part, and, after a while, she so far recovered her gayety, that the masques and dancing, the “fiddling” and “uncomely skipping,” gave great offence to John Knox and the rest of the grave reformers, who inveighed against such practices from the pulpit; and the former, with a violence and rudeness altogether unmanly, personally upbraided her, so as to make her weep. In one brought up in “joyousness,” such austerity could not fail to excite disgust, and a stronger clinging to the more kind and genial doctrines of her own faith. But she made no retaliation; she sought, on the contrary, to win the affection of all her subjects, and to introduce happiness and prosperity, as well as a more refined civilization, into her country. Her life for a few years was tranquil. She gave four or five hours every day to state affairs; she was wont to have her embroidery frame placed in the room where the council met, and while she plied the needle, she joined in the discussions, displaying in her own opinions and suggestions a vigor of mind and quickness which astonished the statesmen around her. At other times she applied to study. She brought a great many books with her to Scotland, and the first artificial globes that had ever been seen there. She was fond of music, and maintained a band of minstrels. Her other amusements were hawking, hunting, dancing, and walking in the open air. She was fond of gardening; she had brought from France a little sycamore plant, which she planted in the gardens of Holyrood, and tended with care; and from this parent stem arose the beautiful groves which are now met with in Scotland. She excelled at the game of chess, and delighted in the allegorical representations, so much in fashion in her day, by the name of “masques.”
Though Mary could not but feel some resentment at the injurious treatment which she received from Elizabeth, yet she sought to conciliate her, and there was a great exhibition of courtesy and compliment, and “sisterly” affection, between them. Mary even consulted Elizabeth about her marriage. But that sovereign, with a littleness almost inconceivable, could not bear that others should enjoy any happiness of which she herself was debarred, and her own subjects could in no way more surely incur her displeasure than by marriage. She now sought to delay that of Mary. She proposed to her a most unworthy match, and, when this, as it was intended it should be, was rejected, offered objections to all which were proposed by Mary.
At length, the suggestions of a powerful party seconding his own ambitious wishes, Henry Darnley entered the lists to obtain her favor. He was possessed of every external accomplishment, being remarkably tall, handsome, agreeable, and “well instructed in all comely exercises.” His mother, “a very wise and discreet matron,” Rizzio, and others, familiar with the queen’s tastes, instructed him in the best methods of being agreeable to her. He affected a great degree of refinement, and a fondness for music and poetry. The queen, deceived and captivated, made choice of him for her husband – a choice which at the time seemed most proper and eligible; for he was a Protestant, and next heir, after herself, to the English throne. They were married in 1565. For a short time Mary thought herself happy. In the first effusions of her passion, she lavished upon her husband every mark of love, and of distinction, even to conferring upon him the title of king of Scotland. But her tenderness and attentions were all thrown away, and, instead of respect and gratitude, she met with brutality and insolence. Violent, fickle, insolent, ungrateful, and addicted to the lowest pleasures, he was incapable of all true sentiments of love and tenderness. Love, for a time, blinded Mary’s reason, and she made excuses for his faults; but, as his true temper and character became more known to her, she treated him with more reserve, and refused some of his unreasonable demands. Irritated, Darnley sought for some one in the confidence of the queen upon whom he might wreak his vengeance.
There was at the court a young Italian, named Rizzio, who has already been mentioned as forwarding Darnley’s suit. He had come to Scotland in the train of the ambassador of Savoy: the three pages, or songsters, who used to sing trios before Mary, wanted a bass, and Rizzio was appointed. Being not only a scientific musician, but a good penman, well acquainted with French and Italian, supple and intelligent, Rizzio contrived to make himself generally useful, and was, in 1564, appointed French secretary to the queen. Some designing nobles, jealous of the favor enjoyed by this foreigner, and likewise desirous of effecting a permanent breach between Darnley and the queen, persuaded him that Rizzio was the author of the queen’s displeasure, and engaged him in a plot to murder him, which was thus carried into execution. As Mary was sitting at supper, attended by Rizzio, and a few other of the officials of her court, Darnley entered by a private passage which communicated directly with his own apartments, and, casting his arms fondly round her waist, seated himself by her side. A minute had scarcely elapsed, when Ruthven, in complete armor, rushed in. He had just risen from a sick bed; his features were sunken, his voice hollow, and his whole appearance haggard and terrible. Mary started up in affright, and bade him begone; but ere the words were uttered, torches gleamed in the outer room, a confused noise of voices and weapons was heard, and the other conspirators rushed in. Ruthven now drew his dagger, and calling out that their business was with Rizzio, endeavored to seize him; while this miserable victim, springing behind the queen, clung by her gown, and besought her protection. All was now uproar and confusion; the tables and lights were thrown down. Mary earnestly entreated them to have mercy, but in vain. Whilst one of the band held a pistol to her breast, the victim, already wounded and bleeding, was torn from her knees, and dragged through her bed-chamber to the door of the presence chamber, where he was finally despatched. Fifty-six wounds were found in the body, and the king’s dagger was left sticking in it, to show, as was afterwards alleged, that he had sanctioned the murder. Ruthven, faint from sickness, and reeking from the scene of blood, staggered into the queen’s cabinet, where Mary still stood distracted, and in terror of her life. Here he threw himself upon a seat, called for a cup of wine, and plunged a new dagger into the heart of the queen, by declaring that her husband had advised the whole. Mary was kept the whole night locked up, alone, in the room in which this terrible scene had been enacted. The next day Darnley visited her, and she, ignorant of the extent of his guilt, employed all her eloquence to induce him to desert the desperate men with whom he was leagued. He consented, and they fled together to Dunbar.
A new actor must now be brought upon the stage – the ambitious, dissolute, and daring Bothwell. He was the head of one of the most ancient and powerful families in the kingdom, and, in all the plots and intrigues, he had ever remained faithful to the interests of the queen; it was natural, therefore, that he should stand high in her favor. It was chiefly through his active exertions that she now effected her escape; and she soon found herself at the head of a body of men, chiefly his clansmen, sufficiently powerful to bring the murderers of Rizzio to punishment. It is a striking instance of her clemency, that only two persons were executed for this crime.
Three months after the murder, she gave birth to a son, afterwards James I. of England; at whose christening Elizabeth stood godmother, notwithstanding her envious and repining exclamation, that “the queen of Scots should be mother of a fair son, while she was only a barren stock.” Even this joyous event could not dispel the melancholy of Mary, who now suffered so much from the conduct of Darnley as often to be seen in tears, and was frequently heard to wish herself dead. The lords of her council urged a divorce, but she would not listen to this. “I will that you do nothing,” said she, “by which any spot may be laid on my honor or conscience; but wait till God, of his goodness, shall put a remedy to it.” Finding the queen immovable on this point, Bothwell, who had now conceived the ambitious project of succeeding to his place, resolved to murder Darnley, who was just recovering from the smallpox, and was lodged, for the benefit of fresh air, at a house called the Kirk-of-field, near Edinburgh. His illness and lonely situation touched the tender heart of Mary. She visited him constantly, and bestowed on him the kindest attentions. She brought her band of musicians to amuse him. She seldom left him during the day, and usually passed the night in the house. But on Sunday, the 9th of February, on taking leave of him for the night, she went to the palace of Holyrood, to be present at the marriage of two of her servants. While engaged in these festivities, the house in which her husband slept was blown up, and his lifeless body was found in a garden at some distance. Every thing pointed to Bothwell as the author of this crime; but he, after a trial had before a jury composed of the first noblemen of the kingdom, was acquitted.
Bothwell’s next object was to marry the queen; and the steps he took for this purpose were too extraordinary, and apparently unnecessary, to have had her connivance. We are told that, as she was returning to Edinburgh, she was met by Bothwell at the head of a large body of retainers, who forcibly dispersed her small retinue, and carried her to Dunbar Castle. He then procured the signatures of a large number of the most distinguished of the nobles and ecclesiastics to a bond recommending him to the queen as a most fit and proper husband, and binding themselves to consider as a common enemy whoever should oppose the marriage. Armed with this document, strengthened by a vote of the council, Bothwell brought the queen to Edinburgh, and there the marriage was solemnized.
The month which Mary passed with Bothwell after the marriage, was the most miserable of her miserable life. He treated her with such indignity, that a day did not pass in which “he did not cause her to shed abundance of salt tears.” Those very lords, who had recommended the marriage, now made it a pretext for rebellion. Both parties took up arms, and met at Carberry Hill. Mary here adopted an unexpected and decisive step. She offered to the rebels to dismiss Bothwell, and place herself in their hands, if they would be answerable for her safety, and return to their allegiance. Her terms were accepted; Bothwell was persuaded by her to leave the field. They never met again; and thus in less than a month this union was virtually ended.
Mary was soon committed as a prisoner to Lochleven Castle, a fortress in the midst of a lake, to the immediate custody of Lady Margaret Douglas, a woman of harsh and unfeeling temper, and who had personal motives for irritation against her. Cut off from all intercourse with those in whom she had confidence, and harassed by daily ill usage, her enemies trusted that her spirit would at length be broken, and that she would submit to any terms which should promise relief. Accordingly, after some weeks, she was visited by a deputation of the rebels, who demanded her signature to a paper declaring her own incapacity to govern, and abdicating the throne in favor of her son. Upon her refusal to make this humiliating declaration, Lindsay, the fiercest of the confederates, rudely seized her hand with his own gauntleted palm, and, with threats of instant death in case of non-compliance, compelled her to set her signature to the deed; she, in a paroxysm of tears, calling on all present to witness that she did so through her fear for her life, and therefore that the act was not valid.
Bothwell, meanwhile, after wandering from place to place, now lurking among his vassals, now seeking refuge with his friends, at length fled, with a single ship, towards Norway. Falling in with a vessel of that country, richly laden, he attacked it, but was himself taken, and carried to Norway, where for ten years he languished in captivity; till, by melancholy and despair deprived of reason, unpitied and unassisted, he ended his wretched life in a dungeon. A declaration addressed to the king of Denmark, in which he gives a succinct account of all the transactions in which he was engaged in Scotland, is yet preserved in the library of the king of Sweden. In it he completely exonerates Mary from having the slightest concern in the murder of Darnley; and again, before his death, when confessing his own share in it, he solemnly acquits her of all pre-knowledge of the crime.
Mary now, in her distress, found assistance from an unexpected quarter. Her misfortunes, and gentle resignation under them, excited the pity and sympathy of the little William Douglas, a boy of fifteen, a son of her jailer; and he resolved to undertake her deliverance. The first attempt failed. The queen had succeeded in leaving the castle in the disguise of a laundress, and was already seated in the boat, to cross the lake, when she betrayed herself by raising her hand. The beauty and extreme whiteness of that hand discovered her at once, and she was carried back to her chamber in tears and bitterness of heart. The next attempt was more successful, and she reached Hamilton in safety. Many nobles of the highest distinction hastened to offer their support, and, in three days after leaving Lochleven, she was at the head of six thousand men, devoted to her cause.