by Lyndon Orr
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND LORD BOTHWELL
Mary Stuart and Cleopatra are the two women who have most attracted thefancy of poets, dramatists, novelists, and painters, from their own timedown to the present day.
In some respects there is a certain likeness in their careers. Eachwas queen of a nation whose affairs were entangled with those of a muchgreater 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 wasended. One caused the man she loved to cast away the sovereignty ofa mighty state. The other lost her own crown in order that she mightachieve the whole desire of her heart.
There is still another parallel which may be found. Each of these womenwas reputed to be exquisitely beautiful; yet each fell short of beauty'shighest standards. They are alike remembered in song and story becauseof qualities that are far more powerful than any physical charm can be.They impressed the imagination of their own contemporaries just as theyhad impressed the imagination of all succeeding ages, by reason of astrange and irresistible fascination which no one could explain, butwhich very few could experience and resist.
Mary Stuart was born six days before her father's death, and when thekingdom which was her heritage seemed to be almost in its death-throes.James V. of Scotland, half Stuart and half Tudor, was no ordinarymonarch. As a mere boy he had burst the bonds with which a regency hadbound him, and he had ruled the wild Scotland of the sixteenth century.He was brave and crafty, keen in statesmanship, and dissolute inpleasure.
His first wife had given him no heirs; so at her death he sought outa princess whom he pursued all the more ardently because she was alsocourted by the burly Henry VIII. of England. This girl was Marie ofLorraine, daughter of the Duc de Guise. She was fit to be the mother ofa lion's brood, for she was above six feet in height and of proportionsso ample as to excite the admiration of the royal voluptuary who satupon 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 hetriumphantly carried off his strapping princess. Henry of England gnawedhis beard in vain; and, though in time he found consolation in anotherwoman's arms, he viewed James not only as a public but as a privateenemy.
There was war between the two countries. First the Scots repelled anEnglish army; but soon they were themselves disgracefully defeated atSolway Moss by a force much their inferior in numbers. The shame of itbroke King James's heart. As he was galloping from the battle-field thenews 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, whowithin a week became, in her own right, Queen of Scotland. Her motheracted as regent of the kingdom. Henry of England demanded that theinfant girl should be betrothed to his young son, Prince Edward, whoafterward reigned as Edward VI., though he died while still a boy. Theproposal was rejected, and the war between England and Scotland went onits bloody course; but meanwhile the little queen was sent to France,her mother's home, so that she might be trained in accomplishments whichwere rare in Scotland.
In France she grew up at the court of Catherine de' Medici, thatimperious intriguer whose splendid surroundings were tainted with thecorruption which she had brought from her native Italy. It was, indeed,a singular training-school for a girl of Mary Stuart's character. Shesaw 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 andtournaments and gallantry of bearing; yet, on the other hand, there wasevery possible refinement and variety of vice. Men were slain beforethe eyes of the queen herself. The talk of the court was of intrigue andlust and evil things which often verged on crime. Catherine de' Mediciherself kept her nominal husband at arm's-length; and in order tomaintain her grasp on France she connived at the corruption of her ownchildren, three of whom were destined in their turn to sit upon thethrone.
Mary Stuart grew up in these surroundings until she was sixteen, eatingthe fruit which gave a knowledge of both good and evil. Her intelligencewas very great. She quickly learned Italian, French, and Latin. She wasa daring horsewoman. She was a poet and an artist even in her teens. Shewas also a keen judge of human motives, for those early years of hershad forced her into a womanhood that was premature but wonderful. It hadbeen proposed that she should marry the eldest son of Catherine, sothat 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 wouldfall to this pair of children.
And so Mary, at sixteen, wedded the Dauphin Francis, who was a year herjunior. The prince was a wretched, whimpering little creature, with acankered body and a blighted soul. Marriage with such a husband seemedabsurd. It never was a marriage in reality. The sickly child would cryall night, for he suffered from abscesses in his ears, and his manhoodhad been prematurely taken from him. Nevertheless, within a twelvemonththe French king died and Mary Stuart was Queen of France as well as ofScotland, hampered only by her nominal obedience to the sick boy whomshe openly despised. At seventeen she showed herself a master spirit.She held her own against the ambitious Catherine de' Medici, whom shecontemptuously nicknamed "the apothecary's daughter." For the briefperiod of a year she was actually the ruler of France; but then herhusband died and she was left a widow, restless, ambitious, and yet nolonger having any of the power she loved.
Mary Stuart at this time had become a woman whose fascination wasexerted over all who knew her. She was very tall and very slim, withchestnut hair, "like a flower of the heat, both lax and delicate." Herskin was fair and pale, so clear and so transparent as to make the storyplausible that when she drank from a flask of wine, the red liquid couldbe seen passing down her slender throat.
Yet with all this she was not fine in texture, but hardy as a man. Shecould endure immense fatigue without yielding to it. Her supple form hadthe strength of steel. There was a gleam in her hazel eyes that showedher 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 ofatmosphere that turned the heads of men. The Stuart blood made herimpatient of control, careless of state, and easy-mannered. The Frenchand the Tudor strain gave her vivacity. She could be submissive inappearance while still persisting in her aims. She could be languorousand seductive while cold within. Again, she could assume the haughtinesswhich belonged to one who was twice a queen.
Two motives swayed her, and they fought together for supremacy. One wasthe love of power, and the other was the love of love. The first wasnatural to a girl who was a sovereign in her own right. The second wasinherited, and was then forced into a rank luxuriance by the sortof life that she had seen about her. At eighteen she was a strangelyamorous creature, given to fondling and kissing every one about her,with slight discrimination. From her sense of touch she receivedemotions that were almost necessary to her existence. With her slender,graceful hands she was always stroking the face of some favorite--itmight be only the face of a child, or it might be the face of somecourtier or poet, or one of the four Marys whose names are linked withhers--Mary Livingstone, Mary Fleming, Mary Beaton, and Mary Seton, thelast of whom remained with her royal mistress until her death.
But one must not be too censorious in thinking of Mary Stuart. She wassurrounded everywhere by enemies. During her stay in France she washated by the faction of Catherine de' Medici. When she returned toScotland she was hated because of her religion by the Protestant lords.Her every action was set forth in the worst possible light. The mostsinister meaning was given to everything she said or did. In truth, wemust reject almost all the stories which accuse her of anything morethan a certain levity of conduct.
She was not a woman to yield herself in love's last surrender unless herintellect and heart alike had been made captive. She would listen to thepassionate outpourings of poets and courtiers, and she would plunge hereyes into theirs, and let her hair just touch their faces, and give themher white hands to kiss--but that was all. Even in this she was onlyfollowing the fashion of the court where she was bred, and she wasnot unlike her royal relative, Elizabeth of England, who had the sameexternal amorousness coupled with the same internal self-control.
Mary Stuart's love life makes a piteous story, for it is the life of onewho was ever seeking--seeking for the man to whom she could look up, whocould be strong and brave and ardent like herself, and at the same timebe more powerful and more steadfast even than she herself in mind andthought. Whatever may be said of her, and howsoever the facts may becolored by partisans, this royal girl, stung though she was by passionand goaded by desire, cared nothing for any man who could not match herin body and mind and spirit all at once.
It was in her early widowhood that she first met the man, and when theirunion came it brought ruin on them both. In France there came to herone day one of her own subjects, the Earl of Bothwell. He was but a fewyears older than she, and in his presence for the first time shefelt, in her own despite, that profoundly moving, indescribable, andnever-to-be-forgotten thrill which shakes a woman to the very center ofher 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 pictureof 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 viceto be their virtue. He was "a galliard, flushed with rich blood,broad-shouldered, square-jawed, with a laugh so happy and so prompt thatthe world, rejoicing to hear it, thought all must be well whereverhe might be. He wore brave clothes, sat a brave horse, and kept bravecompany bravely. His high color, while it betokened high feeding, gothim the credit of good health. His little eyes twinkled so merrily thatyou did not see they were like a pig's, sly and greedy at once, andbloodshot. His tawny beard concealed a jaw underhung, a chin jutting anddangerous. His mouth had a cruel twist; but his laughing hid that too.The bridge of his nose had been broken; few observed it, or guessedat the brawl which must have given it to him. Frankness was his greatcharm, careless ease in high places."
And so, when Mary Stuart first met him in her eighteenth year, LordBothwell made her think as she had never thought of any other man, andas she was not to think of any other man again. She grew to look eagerlyfor 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 aroisterer, but he was very much a man. He made easy love to women. Hissword leaped quickly from its sheath. He could fight, and he could alsothink. He was no brawling ruffian, no ordinary rake. Remembering whatScotland was in those days, Bothwell might well seem in reality aprincely figure. He knew Italian; he was at home in French; he couldwrite fluent Latin. He was a collector of books and a reader of themalso. He was perhaps the only Scottish noble of his time who had abook-plate of his own. Here is something more than a mere reveler. Hereis a man of varied accomplishments and of a complex character.
Though he stayed but a short time near the queen in France, he kindledher imagination, so that when she seriously thought of men she thoughtof Bothwell. And yet all the time she was fondling the young pages inher retinue and kissing her maids of honor with her scarlet lips, andlying on their knees, while poets like Ronsard and Chastelard wroteardent love sonnets to her and sighed and pined for something more thanthe privilege of kissing her two dainty hands.
In 1561, less than a year after her widowhood, Mary set sail forScotland, never to return. The great high-decked ships which escortedher sailed into the harbor of Leith, and she pressed on to Edinburgh. Adepressing 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 uponher landing. When she reached her capital there were few welcomingcheers; but as she rode over the cobblestones to Holyrood, the squalidwynds vomited forth great mobs of hard-featured, grim-visaged men andwomen who stared with curiosity and a half-contempt at the girl queenand her retinue of foreigners.
The Scots were Protestants of the most dour sort, and they distrustedtheir new ruler because of her religion and because she loved tosurround herself with dainty things and bright colors and exoticelegance. They feared lest she should try to repeal the law ofScotland's Parliament which had made the country Protestant.
The very indifference of her subjects stirred up the nobler part ofMary's nature. For a time she was indeed a queen. She governed wisely.She respected the religious rights of her Protestant subjects. Shestrove to bring order out of the chaos into which her country hadfallen. And she met with some success. The time came when her peoplecheered her as she rode among them. Her subtle fascination was hergreatest 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 ofcommanding 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 tonguein public. She had offers of marriage from Austrian and Spanish princes.The new King of France, her brother-in-law, would perhaps have weddedher. 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 ofbroils and feuds, of clan enmities and fierce vendettas. Its nobles werehalf barbarous, and they fought and slashed at one another with drawndirks almost in the presence of the queen herself. No matter whom shefavored, there rose up a swarm of enemies. Here was a Corsica of thenorth, more savage and untamed than even the other Corsica.
In her perplexity Mary felt a woman's need of some man on whom shewould 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, LordDarnley, a Catholic, and by his upbringing half an Englishman. Darnleycame to Scotland, and for the moment Mary fancied that she had forgottenBothwell. Here again she was in love with love, and she idealized theman who came to give it to her. Darnley seemed, indeed, well worthy tobe loved, for he was tall and handsome, appearing well on horseback andhaving some of the accomplishments which Mary valued.
It was a hasty wooing, and the queen herself was first of all the wooer.Her quick imagination saw in Darnley traits and gifts of which he reallyhad no share. Therefore, the marriage was soon concluded, and Scotlandhad two sovereigns, King Henry and Queen Mary. So sure was Mary of herindifference to Bothwell that she urged the earl to marry, and he didmarry a girl of the great house of Gordon.
Mary's self-suggested love for Darnley was extinguished almost onher wedding-night. The man was a drunkard who came into her presencebefuddled and almost bestial. He had no brains. His vanity was enormous.He loved no one but himself, and least of all this queen, whom heregarded as having thrown herself at his empty head.
The first-fruits of the marriage were uprisings among the Protestantlords. Mary then showed herself a heroic queen. At the head of amotley band of soldiery who came at her call--half-clad, uncouth, andsavage--she rode into the west, sleeping at night upon the bare ground,sharing the camp food, dressed in plain tartan, but swift and fierceas any eagle. Her spirit ran like fire through the veins of those whofollowed her. She crushed the insurrection, scattered its leaders, andreturned in triumph to her capital.
Now she was really queen, but here came in the other motive which wasinterwoven in her character. She had shown herself a man in courage.Should she not have the pleasures of a woman? To her court in Holyroodcame Bothwell once again, and this time Mary knew that he was all theworld to her. Darnley had
shrunk from the hardships of battle. He wassteeped in low intrigues. He roused the constant irritation of the queenby his folly and utter lack of sense and decency. Mary felt she owed himnothing, but she forgot that she owed much to herself.
Her old amorous ways came back to her, and she relapsed into the joys ofsense. The scandal-mongers of the capital saw a lover in every manwith whom she talked. She did, in fact, set convention at defiance. Shedressed in men's clothing. She showed what the unemotional Scots thoughtto be unseemly levity. The French poet, Chastelard, misled by herexternal signs of favor, believed himself to be her choice. At the endof one mad revel he was found secreted beneath her bed, and was drivenout by force. A second time he ventured to secrete himself within thecovers of the bed. Then he was dragged forth, imprisoned, and condemnedto death. He met his fate without a murmur, save at the last when hestood upon the scaffold and, gazing toward the palace, cried in French:
"Oh, cruel queen! I die for you!"
Another favorite, the Italian, David Rizzio, or Riccio, in like mannerwrote love verses to the queen, and she replied to them in kind; butthere is no evidence that she valued him save for his ability, whichwas very great. She made him her foreign secretary, and the man whom hesupplanted worked on the jealousy of Darnley; so that one night, whileMary and Rizzio were at dinner in a small private chamber, Darnley andthe others broke in upon her. Darnley held her by the waist while Rizziowas stabbed before her eyes with a cruelty the greater because the queenwas soon to become a mother.
From that moment she hated Darnley as one would hate a snake. Shetolerated him only that he might acknowledge her child as his son. Thischild was the future James VI. of Scotland and James I. of England. Itis recorded of him that never throughout his life could he bear to lookupon drawn steel.
After this Mary summoned Bothwell again and again. It was revealed toher as in a blaze of light that, after all, he was the one and onlyman who could be everything to her. His frankness, his cynicism, hismockery, his carelessness, his courage, and the power of his mindmatched her moods completely. She threw away all semblance ofconcealment. She ignored the fact that he had married at her wish. Shewas queen. She desired him. She must have him at any cost.
"Though I lose Scotland and England both," she cried in a passion ofabandonment, "I shall have him for my own!"
Bothwell, in his turn, was nothing loath, and they leaped at each otherlike two flames.
It was then that Mary wrote those letters which were afterwarddiscovered in a casket and which were used against her when she was ontrial for her life. These so-called Casket Letters, though we havenot now the originals, are among the most extraordinary letters everwritten. All shame, all hesitation, all innocence, are flung away inthem. The writer is so fired with passion that each sentence is likea cry to a lover in the dark. As De Peyster says: "In them the animalinstincts override and spur and lash the pen." Mary was committing topaper the frenzied madness of a woman consumed to her very marrow by thescorching blaze of unendurable desire.
Events moved quickly. Darnley, convalescent from an attack of smallpox,was mysteriously destroyed by an explosion of gunpowder. Bothwell wasdivorced from his young wife on curious grounds. A dispensation allowedMary to wed a Protestant, and she married Bothwell three months afterDarnley's death.
Here one sees the consummation of what had begun many years beforein France. From the moment that she and Bothwell met, their union wasinevitable. Seas could not sunder them. Other loves and other fancieswere as nothing to them. Even the bonds of marriage were burst asunderso that these two fiery, panting souls could meet.
It was the irony of fate that when they had so met it was only to beparted. Mary's subjects, outraged by her conduct, rose against her. Asshe passed through the streets of Edinburgh the women hurled afterher indecent names. Great banners were raised with execrable daubsrepresenting the murdered Darnley. The short and dreadful monosyllablewhich is familiar to us in the pages of the Bible was hurled after herwherever she went.
With Bothwell by her side she led a wild and ragged horde of followersagainst the rebellious nobles, whose forces met her at Carberry Hill.Her motley followers melted away, and Mary surrendered to the hostilechieftains, who took her to the castle at Lochleven. There she becamethe mother of twins--a fact that is seldom mentioned by historians.These children were the fruit of her union with Bothwell. From this timeforth she cared but little for herself, and she signed, without greatreluctance, a document by which she abdicated in favor of her infantson.
Even in this place of imprisonment, however, her fascination had powerto charm. Among those who guarded her, two of the Douglas family--GeorgeDouglas and William Douglas--for love of her, effected her escape. Thefirst attempt failed. Mary, disguised as a laundress, was betrayed bythe delicacy of her hands. But a second attempt was successful. Thequeen passed through a postern gate and made her way to the lake, whereGeorge Douglas met her with a boat. Crossing the lake, fifty horsemenunder Lord Claude Hamilton gave her their escort and bore her away insafety.
But Mary was sick of Scotland, for Bothwell could not be there. Shehad tasted all the bitterness of life, and for a few months all thesweetness; but she would have no more of this rough and barbarouscountry. Of her own free will she crossed the Solway into England, tofind herself at once a prisoner.
Never again did she set eyes on Bothwell. After the battle of CarberryHill he escaped to the north, gathered some ships together, and preyedupon English merchantmen, very much as a pirate might have done. Erelong, however, when he had learned of Mary's fate, he set sail forNorway. King Frederick of Denmark made him a prisoner of state. He wasnot confined within prison walls, however, but was allowed to hunt andride in the vicinity of Malmo Castle and of Dragsholm. It is probably inMalmo Castle that he died. In 1858 a coffin which was thought to bethe coffin of the earl was opened, and a Danish artist sketched thehead--which corresponds quite well with the other portraits of theill-fated Scottish noble.
It is a sad story. Had Mary been less ambitious when she first metBothwell, or had he been a little bolder, they might have reignedtogether and lived out their lives in the plenitude of that great lovewhich held them both in thrall. But a queen is not as other women; andshe found too late that the teaching of her heart was, after all, thetruest teaching. She went to her death as Bothwell went to his, alone,in a strange, unfriendly land.
Yet, even this, perhaps, was better so. It has at least touched boththeir lives with pathos and has made the name of Mary Stuart one to beremembered throughout all the ages.