LETTER VIII (III IN HENDERSON)
There are differences of opinion as to the date of this curious Letter, and as to its place in the series. The contemporary transcript, made probably for the Commissioners on December 9, 1568, is in the Record Office. I translate the Letter afresh, since it must be read before any inference as to its date and importance can be drawn.
‘Sir,--If regret for your absence, the pain caused by your forgetfulness, and by fear of the danger which every one predicts to your beloved person, can console me, I leave it to you to judge; considering the ill fortune which my cruel fate and constant trouble have promised me, in the sequel of sorrows and terrors recent and long passed; all which you well know. But, in spite of all, I will not accuse you either of your scant remembrance or scant care, and still less of your broken promise, or of the coldness of your letters, I being so much your own that what pleases you pleases me. And my thoughts are so eagerly subject to yours that I am fain to suppose that whatsoever comes from you arises not from any of the aforesaid causes, but from such as are just and reasonable, and desired by myself. Which is the final order that you have promised me to take for the safety[369] and honourable service of the sole support of my life, for whom alone I wish to preserve it, and without which I desire only instant death. And to show you how humbly I submit me to your commands, I send you, by Paris, in sign of homage, the ornament’ (her hair) ‘of the head, the guide of the other members, thereby signifying that, in investing you with the spoil of what is principal, the rest must be subject to you with the heart’s consent. In place of which heart, since I have already abandoned it to you, I send you a sepulchre, of hard stone, painted black, _semé_ with tears and bones.[370] I compare it to my heart, which, like it, is graven into a secure tomb or receptacle of your commands, and specially of your name and memory, which are therein enclosed, like my hair in the ring. Never shall they issue forth till death lets you make a trophy of my bones, even as the ring is full of them’ (_i.e._ in enamel), ‘in proof that you have made entire conquest of me, and of my heart, to such a point that I leave you my bones in memory of your victory, and of my happy and willing defeat, to be better employed than I deserve. The enamel round the ring is black, to symbolise the constancy of her who sends it. The tears are numberless as are my fears of your displeasure, my tears for your absence, and for my regret not to be yours, to outward view, as I am, without weakness of heart or soul.
‘And reasonably so, were my merits greater than those of the most perfect of women, and such as I desire to be. And I shall take pains to imitate such merits, to be worthily employed under your dominion. Receive this then, my only good, in as kind part as with extreme joy I have received your marriage’ (apparently, from what follows, a contract of marriage or a ring of betrothal), ‘which never shall leave my bosom till our bodies are publicly wedded, as a token of all that I hope or desire of happiness in this world. Now fearing, my heart, to weary you as much in the reading as I take pleasure in the writing, I shall end, after kissing your hands, with as great love as I pray God (O thou, the only prop of my life!) to make your life long and happy, and to give me your good grace, the only good thing which I desire, and to which I tend. I have shown what I have learned to this bearer, to whom I remit myself, knowing the credit that you give him, as does she who wishes to be ever your humble and obedient loyal wife, and only lover, who for ever vows wholly to you her heart and body changelessly, as to him whom I make possessor of my heart which, you may be assured, will never change till death, for never shall weal or woe estrange it.’
The absurd affectation of style in this Letter, so different from the plain manner of Letters I. and II., may be a poetical effort by Mary, or may be a forger’s idea of how a queen in love ought to write. In the latter case, to vary the manner so much from that of the earlier Letters, was a bold experiment and a needless.
Mary, to be brief, sends to Bothwell a symbolic mourning ring, enclosing her hair. It is enamelled in black, with tears and bones. Such a ring is given by a girl to her lover, as a parting token, in the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ (xxvi.), a ring _d’or, esmailée de larmes noires_.[371] She promises always to keep the ‘marriage’ (that is the contract of marriage, or can it be a ring typical of marriage?) in her bosom, till the actual wedding in public. Now she had a sentimental habit of wearing love tokens ‘in her bosom.’ She writes to Norfolk from Coventry (December, 1569), ‘I took the diamant from my Lord Boyd, which I shall keep unseene about my neck till I give it agayn to the owner of it and of me both.’[372]
As to the Contract of Marriage (if Mary wore that in her bosom[373]), two alleged contracts were produced for the prosecution. One was a ‘contract or promise of marriage’ by Mary to Bothwell, in the Italic hand, and in French; the hand was said to be Mary’s own. It was undated, and a memorandum in the ‘Detection’ says, ‘Though some words therein seme to the contrary, yet is on credible groundes supposed to have been made and written by her befoir the death of her husband.’ The document explicitly mentions that ‘God has taken’ Darnley. The document, or jewel, treasured by Mary would, of course, be Bothwell’s solemn promise, or token of promise, the counterpart of hers to him, published in Buchanan.[374]
Now there also existed a contract, said to be in Huntly’s hand, and signed by Mary and Bothwell, of date April 5 (at Seton), 1567. But this contract speaks of the process of divorce ‘intentit’ between Bothwell and his ‘pretensit spouse.’ Now that suit, on April 5, was not yet before the Court (though some documents had been put in), nor did Lady Bothwell move in the case till after Mary’s abduction.
If Mary kept _this_ contract, and if it be correctly dated, then Letter VIII. is not of January-February, but of April, 1567.
If Mary regarded herself as now privately married, this pose would explain the phrase ‘your brother-in-law _that was_,’ in Letter VIII. But this is stretching possibilities.
Mr. Hosack has argued that the Letter just translated was really written to Darnley, between whom and Mary some private preliminary ceremony of marriage was said to have passed. In that case the words _par Paris_, ‘I send you by Paris, &c.,’ are a forged interpolation, as Paris was not in Mary’s service till January, 1567. The opening sentence about the danger which, as every one thinks, menaces her correspondent, might refer to Darnley. But the tone of remonstrance against indifference, suspicion, and violated promises, is the tone of almost all the Casket Letters, and does not apply to Darnley--before his public marriage.
As to the ‘heart in a ring,’ Mary, as Laing notes, had written to Elizabeth ‘Je vous envoye mon cœur en bague.’ The phrase in the Letter, _seul soutien de ma vie_, also occurs in one of the Casket Sonnets.
To what known or alleged circumstances in Mary’s relations with Bothwell can this Letter refer? The alternatives are (1) either to her receipt of Bothwell’s answer to Letter II., which Paris (on our scheme of dates) gave to Mary on January 25, at Glasgow; (2) to the moment of her stay at Callendar, where she arrived, with Darnley, on January 27, taking him on January 28 to Linlithgow, whence, on January 29, ‘she wraytt to Bothwell.’ She had learned at Linlithgow, on January 28, by Hob Ormistoun, that Bothwell was on his way from Liddesdale.[375] Or (3) does the letter refer to Monday, April 21, when she was at Stirling till Wednesday, April 23, when she went to Linlithgow, Bothwell being ‘at Haltoun hard by,’ and carrying her off on April 24?[376]
Taking first (1)--we find Mary acknowledging in this letter the receipt of Bothwell’s ‘marriage.’ If this is a contract, did Bothwell send it in the letter which, according to Paris, he wrote on January 24, accompanying it with a diamond? ‘Tell the Queen,’ said Bothwell, ‘that I send her this diamond, which you are to carry, and that if I had my heart I would send it willingly, but I have it not.’ The diamond, a ring probably, might be referred to in Bothwell’s letter as a marriage or betrothal ring (French, _union_). In return Mary would send her mourning ring; ‘the stone I compare to my heart.’
This looks well, but how could Mary, who, _ex hypothesi_, had just received a ring, a promise or contract of marriage, and a loving message, complain, as she does, of ‘the coldness of your letters,’ ‘your violated promise,’ ‘your forgetfulness,’ ‘your want of care for me’? Danger to Bothwell, in Liddesdale, she might fear, but these other complaints are absolutely inconsistent with the theory that Bothwell had just sent a letter, a ring, a promise of marriage, and a loving verbal message. We must therefore dismiss hypothesis 1.
(2) Did Mary send this Letter on January 29 from Linlithgow? She had no neglect to complain of _there_; for, according to her accusers, she was met by Hob Ormistoun, with a letter or message. Paris says this was at Callendar, where she slept on January 27.[377] In that case Bothwell was yet more prompt. Again, Mary had now no fear of danger to Bothwell’s person, as she had just learned that Bothwell had left perilous Liddesdale. Here, once more, there is no room, reason, or ground for her complaints. Again, in the Letter she says that she sends the mourning ring ‘by Paris.’ But, if we are to believe Paris, she did not do so. He gave her Bothwell’s letter, received from Bothwell’s messenger, at Callendar, January 27. She answered it at bedtime, gave it to Paris to be given to Bothwell’s messenger, enclosing a ring, and the messenger carried ring and letter to Bothwell. She could not write, ‘I have sent you by Paris’ the ring, if she did nothing of the sort. Later, according to Paris, she did send him, with the bracelets, from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, where he met Bothwell, just mounting to ride and join Mary and Darnley on their return. The Letter, then, does not fit the circumstances of one written either at Callendar, January 27 (Paris), or at Linlithgow, January 29 (‘Cecil’s Journal’).
(3) That the ring, and the lamentations, were carried, by Paris, from Linlithgow to the neighbouring house of Haltoun, where Bothwell lay, on the night of April 23, the night before he bore Mary off to Dunbar, is not credible. Nothing indicates her receipt of token or contract of marriage at that date. The danger to Bothwell was infinitesimal. He was not neglecting Mary, he was close to her, and only waiting for daylight to carry her off. He wrote in reply, Paris says, and verbally promised to meet her, ‘on the road, at the bridge.’[378]
To a man who was thus doing his best to please her, a man whom she was to meet next day, Mary could not be writing long, affected complaints and lamentations. She would write, if at all, on details of the business on hand. No ring was carried by Paris, according to his own deposition.
Thus the contents of the Letter do not fit into any recorded or alleged juncture in Mary’s relations with Bothwell, after January 21, 1567, when Paris (whom the Letter mentions) first entered her service. Laing places the Letter last in the series, and supposes that the ring and letter were sent from Linlithgow, to Bothwell hard by (at Haltoun), the night before the ‘ravishment.’ But he does not make it plain that the contents of the Letter are really consistent with its supposed occasion.[379] When was Bothwell absent from Mary, cold, forgetful, and in danger, between the return from Glasgow, and the abduction? The Letter does not help the case of the prosecution.
We have exhausted the three conceivable alternatives as to the date, occasion, and circumstances of this Letter. Its contents fit none of these dates and occasions. Mr. Froude adds a fourth alternative. This Letter ‘was written just before the marriage’[380] when Bothwell (whose absence is complained of) was never out of Mary’s company.
There is not, in short, an obvious place for this Letter in the recorded circumstances of Mary’s history, though the lack of obviousness may arise from our ignorance of facts.
XVI
_THE CASKET SONNETS_
When the ‘Detection’ of Buchanan was first published, La Mothe Fénelon, French ambassador in England, writing to Charles IX., described the Sonnets as the worst, or most compromising, of all the evidence. They never allude to Darnley, and must have been written after his death. As is well known, Brantôme says that such of Mary’s verses as he had seen were entirely unlike the Casket Sonnets, which are ‘too rude and unpolished to be hers.’ Ronsard, he adds, was of the same opinion. Both men had seen verses written hastily by Mary, and still ‘unpolished,’ whether by her, or by Ronsard, who may have aided her, as Voltaire aided Frederick the Great. Both critics were, of course, prejudiced in favour of the beautiful Queen. Both were good judges, but neither had ever seen 160 lines of sonnet sequence written by her under the stress of a great passion, and amidst the toils of travel, of business, of intense anxiety, all in the space of two days, April 21 to April 23.
That the most fervent and hurried sonneteer should write eleven sonnets in such time and circumstances is hard to believe, but we must allow for Mary’s sleepless nights, which she may have beguiled by versifying. It is known that a distinguished historian is occupied with a critical edition of these Sonnets. We may await his decision as to their relations with the few surviving poems of the Queen. My own comparison of these does not convince me that the favoured rhymes are especially characteristic of Mary. The topics of the Casket Sonnets, the author’s inability to remove the suspicions of the jealous Bothwell; her protestations of submission; her record of her sacrifices for him; her rather mean jealousy of Lady Bothwell, are also the frequent topics of the Casket Letters. The very phrases are occasionally the same: so much so as to suggest the suspicion that the Letters may have been modelled on the Sonnets, or the Sonnets on the Letters. If there be anything in this, the Sonnets are probably the real originals. Nothing is less likely than that a forger would think of such a task as forging verses by Mary: nor do we know any one among her enemies who could have produced the verses even if he had the will. To suspect Buchanan is grotesque. On the theory of a literary contest between Mary and Lady Bothwell for Bothwell’s affections, something is to be said in the following chapter. Meanwhile, I am obliged to share the opinion of La Mothe Fénelon, that, as proof of Mary’s passion for Bothwell, the Sonnets are stronger evidence than the Letters, and much less open to suspicion than some parts of the Letters.
XVII
_CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE LETTERS AND THE POSSIBLE FORGERS_
A few words must be said as to a now obsolete difficulty, the question as to the language in which the Letters were originally written. That question need not be mooted: it is settled by Mr. Henderson’s ‘Casket Letters.’ The original language of the epistles was French.
I. The epistles shown at Westminster were certainly in French, which was not (except in the first one or two sentences) the French later published by the Huguenots. _That_ French was translated from the Latin, which was translated from the Scots, which was translated from the original French. Voluminous linguistic criticisms by Goodall, Hosack, Skelton, and others have ceased, therefore, to be in point.
II. Many phrases, whether as mirrored in the Scots and English translations, or as extant in contemporary copies of the original French, can be paralleled from authentic letters of Mary’s. Bresslau proved this easily, but it was no less easily proved that many of the phrases were conventional, and could be paralleled from the correspondence of Catherine de’ Medici and other contemporary ladies. A forger would have ample opportunities of knowing Mary’s phrasing and orthography. It would be easy for me to write a letter reproducing the phrasing and orthography, which is very distinctive, of Pickle the Spy. No argument against forgery can be based on imitations of peculiarities of phrase and spelling which the hypothetical forger was sure to know and reproduce.
But phrasing and spelling are not to be confounded with tone and style. Now the Letters, in tone, show considerable unity, except at one point. Throughout Mary is urging and spurring an indifferent half-hearted wooer to commit an abominable crime, and another treasonable act, her abduction. Really, to judge from the Letters, we might suppose Bothwell to be almost as indifferent and reluctant as Field-Marshal Keith was, when the Czarina Elizabeth offered him her hand. Keith put his foot down firmly, and refused, but the Bothwell who hesitated was lost. It is Mary who gives him no rest till he carries her off: we must blame Bothwell for not arranging the scheme before parting from Mary in Edinburgh; to be sure, Buchanan declares in his History that the scheme _was_ arranged. In short, we become almost sorry for Bothwell, who had a lovely royal bride thrust on him against his will, and only ruined himself out of reluctance to disoblige a lady. It is the old Irish tale of Diarmaid and Grainne over again.
But, on the other hand, Letter II. represents Mary as tortured by remorse and regret. Only to please Bothwell would she act as she does. Her heart bleeds at it. We must suppose that she not only grew accustomed to the situation, but revelled in it, and insisted on an abduction, which even Lethington could only explain by her knowledge of the _apices juris_, the sublimities of Scots law. A pardon for the abduction would, in Scots law, cover the murder.
Such is the chief difference in tone. In style, though the fact seems to have been little if at all noticed, there are two distinct species. There is the simple natural style of Letters I., II., and the rest, and there is the alembicated, tormented, precious, and affected style of Letters VIII. (III.) and IV. Have we any other examples, from Mary’s hand, of the obscure affectations of VIII. (III.) and IV.? Letter VIII., while it contains phrases which recur in the Casket ‘Sonnets,’ is really more contorted and _symboliste_ in manner than the verses. These ‘fond ballads’ contain, not infrequently, the same sentiments as the Letters, whether the Letters be in the direct or in the affected style. Thus, in Letter II., where Lady Bothwell and Mary’s jealousy of her are the theme, we read ‘Se not hir’ (Lady Bothwell) ‘quhais feinzeit teiris should not be sa mekle praisit or estemit as the trew and faithful travellis quhilk I sustene for to merite her place.’ Compare Sonnets ii. iii.:
Brief je feray de ma foy telle preuve, Qu’il cognoistra sans faulte ma constance, Non par mes pleurs ou fainte obeyssance Comme autres font, mais par divers espreuve.
In both passages the writer contrasts the ‘feigned tears,’ ‘feigned obedience’ of Bothwell’s wife with her own practical proofs of devotion: in the Sonnet using ‘them’ for ‘her’ as in Letter IV.
A possible, but unexpected explanation of the extraordinary diversity of the two styles, I proceed to give. We have briefly discussed the Sonnets, which (despite the opinion of Ronsard) carry a strong appearance of authenticity, though whether their repetitions of the matter and phrasing of the Letters be in favour of the hypothesis that _both_ are authentic might be argued variously. Now from the Sonnets it appears that Lady Bothwell was endeavouring to secure her bridegroom’s heart in a rather unlooked-for manner: namely, by writing to him elaborately literary love letters in the artificial style of the age of the Pleiad. As the Sonnets say, she wooes him ‘par les escriptz tout fardez de sçavoir.’ But Mary maintains that Lady Bothwell is a mere plagiarist. Her ingenious letters, treasured by Bothwell, and the cause of his preference for her, are
empruntés de quelque autheur luisant!
We have already tried to show that Bothwell was not the mere ‘brave stupid strong-handed Border noble,’ ‘the rough ignorant moss-trooper,’ but a man of taste and culture. If the Sonnets be genuine, there was actually a contest in literary excellence between Bothwell’s wife and his royal mistress. This queer rivalry would account for the style of Letter VIII., in which Mary labours to prove to Bothwell, as it were, that she is as capable as his wife of writing a fashionable, contorted, literary style, if she chooses: in poetry, too, if she likes. We naturally feel sorry for a man of action who received, at a moment when decisive action was needful, such an epistle as Letter VIII., and we naturally suppose that he never read it, but tossed it into the Casket with an explosion of profane words. But it is just conceivable that Bothwell had a taste for the ‘precious,’ and that, to gratify this taste, and eclipse Lady Bothwell, Mary occasionally wrote in the manner of Letter VIII. or quoted Jason, Medea, and Creusa.
This hypothesis, far-fetched as it may seem, at all events is naturally suggested by Sonnet VI. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that a dexterous forger would sit down to elaborate, whether from genuine materials or not, anything so much out of keeping with his Letter II. as is his Letter VIII. Yet Letter VIII., as we saw, cannot be connected with any known moment of the intrigue.
While the Letters thus vary in style, in tone of sentiment they are all uniform, except Letter II. We are to believe that the forger deliberately laid down a theory of this strange wooing. The Queen throughout is much more the pursuer than the pursued. Bothwell is cold, careless, breaks promises, is contemptuously negligent, does not write, is suspicious, prefers his wedded wife to his mistress. Contemporary gossip averred that this, in fact, was his attitude. Thus, after Mary had been sent to Loch Leven, Lethington told du Croc that ‘Bothwell had written several times to his first wife, Lady Bothwell, since he lay with the Queen, and in his letters assured Lady Bothwell that he regarded her as his wife, and the Queen as his concubine.’ Lethington reported this to Mary herself, who discredited the fact, but Lethington relied on the evidence of Bothwell’s letters.[381] How could he know anything about them? The belief in Bothwell’s preference of his wife was general, and, doubtless, it may be urged that this explains the line taken by the forger.
The passion, in the Letters, is all on the side of Mary. By her eternal protests of entire submission she recalls to us at once her eager service to Darnley in the first days of their marriage, and her constant promises of implicit obedience to Norfolk. To Norfolk, as to Bothwell (we have already shown), she expresses her hope that ‘you will mistrust me no more.’[382] ‘If you be in the wrong I will submit me to you for so writing, and ax your pardon thereof.’ She will beg pardon, even if Norfolk is in the wrong! Precisely in the same tone does Mary (in Letter VIII.), after complaining of Bothwell’s forgetfulness, say, ‘But in spite of all I will not accuse you, either of your scant remembrance or scant care, and still less of your broken promise, seeing that what pleases you pleases me.’
This woman, whose pride is said to be in contradiction with her submission, as expressed in the Casket Letters, writes even to Elizabeth, ‘Je me sousmetray à vos commandemants.’[383] In Letter VIII. Bothwell is congratulated on ‘votre victoire et mon agreable perte.’ To Elizabeth Mary writes ‘Vous aurés fayt une profitable conqueste de moy.’
That any forger should have known Mary so well as to place her, imaginatively, as regarded Bothwell, in the very attitude which we see that, on occasion, she chose later to adopt in fact, as regarded Norfolk, is perhaps beyond belief. It may be urged that she probably, in early days, wrote to Darnley in this very tone, that Darnley’s papers would fall into his father’s hands, and that Lennox would hand them over as materials to the forger. But ‘it is to consider too curiously to consider thus.’
Such are the arguments, for the defence and the attack, which may be drawn from internal evidence of style. To myself this testimony seems rather in favour of the authenticity of considerable and compromising portions of the papers.