Great Ralegh. Hugh De Sélincourt

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СКАЧАТЬ meanness, her avarice, her treachery, her wantonness, and what not—that the whole picture of the woman who was learned enough to speak in public impromptu in Latin and could converse in many languages, of the woman who was great enough to cause her own worship to be the fashion, and the sincere fashion, of the woman who was sufficiently beautiful and sufficiently distinguished to shine like a diamond on the forehead of that resplendent age—is almost lost to view, so clouded with the dust of detraction has that picture become.

      She was the very epitome of the time. All the brutality and energy and brilliance of that brutal, vital age found their counterpart in her. And she was a woman, a fitting contemporary of Catherine de Medicis. But she was too much a politician to be a good woman; and too much a woman to be a good politician.

      To all the power which a beautiful woman, and a woman strong in body and intellect and passion, always has possessed and always will possess, she added the prestige of being Queen of England. Whereas the passions of her father threw Europe into confusion, the love affairs of Elizabeth, less impetuously managed, often held the balance between nations and brought every royal prince to England as suitor for her hand, and the great English courtiers scowled or laughed at them, but were kept in allegiance by their sovereign.

      Wit, birth, and bearing found favour in her sight. There was no room at her Court for a fool. She loved wit as she loved splendour.

      The Queen had heard of Humfrey Gilbert's nephew from Humfrey Gilbert's aunt, one of her intimate attendant women; and when Ralegh first came into notice by his exploits in Ireland, she was inclined to favour him. She was interested in his career, as a letter bears witness in which she writes, " … for that our pleasure is to have our Servaunt Walter Rawley treyned some longer tyme in that our realme for his better experience in Martiall affaires, and for the special care we have to doe him good in respect of his kyndred that have served us some of them (as you knowe) neer aboute our Parson: theise are to require youe that the leading of the said bande may be committed to the said Rawley."

      Many stories are extant about his first meeting with Elizabeth. Truth hides in all of them. Some say that the Queen was present when Lord Grey de Wilton and young Ralegh were put face to face in a council chamber before Lord Burghley, and that she was struck by the power and skill with which he made good his case, proving the lack of judgment Lord Grey had shown in conducting the affairs of the war. Old Thomas Fuller, that worthiest of his own worthies (he had an eye for romantic effect, steadfast as he was for truth in matters of importance), relates that "Her Majesty, meeting with a plashy place, made some scruple to go on; when Ralegh (dressed in the gay and genteel habit of those times) presently cast off and spread his new plush cloak on the ground, whereon the Queen trod gently over, rewarding him afterwards with many suits for his so free and seasonable tender of so fair a footcloth. Thus an advantageous admission into the notice of a prince is more than half a degree to preferment." Industrious Fuller does not leave it at that; he proceeds to tell how Ralegh wrote on a window in the Queen's presence,

      "Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,"

      and how the Queen added with more grace than rhythm,

      "If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all."

      Ralegh's heart did not fail him. He became the Queen's lover; and his influence over the Queen was so recognized that Tarleton, the famous comedian, dared, during a performance, to add point to the words, "See, the knave commands the queen," by stretching out his hand towards Ralegh, who stood by the Queen. And Elizabeth, it is recorded, frowned. Swift was his ascent to fortune, came the first step how it may.

      Elizabeth was too clever to try to lay aside her sex, though she was a skilful markswoman, an able horse-woman. Even her staid Archbishop Whitgift she used to tease, saying (as Isaac Walton gravely records as a fair testimony of her piety) that "she would never eat flesh in Lent without obtaining a License from her little black husband: and that she pitied him because she trusted him."

      She was so born a Queen that she was able to do and say the most dangerous things without losing her distinction, or lessening her dignity.

      And it is small wonder in those days when in England the whole force of the Renaissance turned as it were to a rapture of patriotism that such a Queen should be the visible emblem of the country, and be herself worshipped. Men might rave at her whims, they were driven frantic by them, but in their hearts they cherished her as Queen of themselves and Queen of their country. Fortunately for herself, and fortunately for England, her intellect mastered her passions, though that does not prove that she was passionless: far from it. There is nothing to justify that last scandal of a moral age which would damn her as a feelingless flirt. Lord Bacon, the wise Baron of Verulam, summed the matter up pithily, attaching its right value to the question, which, after all, is a paltry one, when, in writing on the Fortunate Memory, he says: "She suffered herself to be honoured and carressed and celebrated and extolled with the name of Love; and wished it, and continued it beyond the suitability of her age. If you take these things more softly, they may not even be without some admiration, because such things are commonly found in our fabulous narratives of a Queen in the Islands of Bliss, with her hall and her institutes, who receives the administrations of Love, but prohibits its licentiousness. If you judge them more severely, still they have this admirable circumstance, that gratifications of this sort did not much hurt her reputation, and not at all her majesty; nor ever relaxed her government, nor were any notable impediment to her State affairs." And it must be remembered that the times were neither fastidious nor gentle, and that when Bacon says licentiousness (lasciviam is the Latin word he uses) he meant licentiousness. Elizabeth was too sane, and too clever, and too busy to have time to be licentious: just as she could not have retained her control over men and control over herself, seen in the adroit way in which she managed the foreign princes, if she had remained what is called pure.

      Masterly was her knowledge and treatment of men. Roughly speaking, they were divided into two classes; those whom she liked, and those whom she valued: but she kept them all imperiously to her will. The great Burghley was her man of business; he and his son Robert Cecil were her chief statesmen, and well she knew their value: capricious and exacting as she might be, she respected their advice and gave way to it. "Burghley," wrote Leicester, at the height of his arrogant power, "could do more with her in an hour than others in seven years." And he wrote concerning some political business. Never, when Leicester had most influence with the Queen, did she ever allow him to control her political actions, or in any way to supplant Cecil.

      Robert Dudley, born about the year 1532, made Earl of Leicester in 1564, enjoyed the Queen's good-will more continuously and more to his advantage than any other of her lovers. He was regarded as the chief man in England by the ambassadors of foreign princes: he was for a long time the most magnificent. But Elizabeth kept always to her maxim, that England should be a country with one mistress and no master; much to Leicester's displeasure. His desire was to be master. He suggests a comparison with Milton's Satan, "better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heav'n," when he tried, and tried with conspicuous ill-success, to become King of the Netherlands. By the old nobility, staunch Sussex and proud Norfolk, he was hated. With the Duke of Norfolk, he on one occasion came to blows, when, during a game of tennis, of which the Queen was a spectator, he snatched her pocket-hand-kerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. They thought him saucy and overweening. To the Queen his insolence was not unpleasant. Cecil disliked him (he does not appear a man to hate any one) and judiciously draws up papers contrasting Leicester and other suitors, especially the Archduke Charles, much to Leicester's disadvantage. But for all his glitter and influence, he was hated by the English people. His name had an ill sound ever since the untoward death of his wife, Amy Robsart. Though the pamphlet Leicester's Commonwealth is wholly unreliable, which among other slanders, states that the Lady Amy was actually murdered at his command, it is most probable that she committed suicide through misery at her neglect. Well enough men knew what was meant when the husband in the Yorkshire Tragedy says, after he has thrown his wife down and slain her:

      "The СКАЧАТЬ