1. Page scan source:
https://books.google.com/books?id=RKhEAAAAYAAJ
(The University of Virginia)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
Darnley
or,
The Field of the Cloth of Gold, Vol. 6
Darnley.
_By_
G. P. R. JAMES
LONDON
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE
AND SONS LIMITED
MDCCCCIII.
_The Introduction is written by_ LAURIE MAGNUS, M.A.: _the Title-page
is designed by_ IVOR I. J. SYMES.
INTRODUCTION.
George Payne Rainsford James, Historiographer Royal to King William
IV., was born in London in the first year of the nineteenth century,
and died at Venice in 1860. His comparatively short life was
exceptionally full and active. He was historian, politician and
traveller, the reputed author of upwards of a hundred novels, the
compiler and editor of nearly half as many volumes of letters,
memoirs, and biographies, a poet and a pamphleteer, and, during the
last ten years of his life, British Consul successively in
Massachusetts, Norfolk (Virginia), and Venice. He was on terms of
friendship with most of the eminent men of his day. Scott, on whose
style he founded his own, encouraged him to persevere in his career as
a novelist; Washington Irving admired him, and Walter Savage Landor
composed an epitaph to his memory. He achieved the distinction of
being twice burlesqued by Thackeray, and two columns are devoted to an
account of him in the new "Dictionary of National Biography." Each
generation follows its own gods, and G. P. R. James was, perhaps, too
prolific an author to maintain the popularity which made him "in some
ways the most successful novelist of his time." But his work bears
selection and revival. It possesses the qualities of seriousness and
interest; his best historical novels are faithful in setting and free
in movement. His narrative is clear, his history conscientious, and
his plots are well-conceived. English learning and literature are
enriched by the work of this writer, who made vivid every epoch in the
world's history by the charm of his romance.
The parodists of G. P. R. James have been quick to remark the sameness
of his openings. He has established a kind of 'James-gambit' in
historical fiction, and the present romance is no exception to the
rule. Once more the irrepressible horseman is riding along the
inevitable road, and once more the first chapter is devoted to a
careful description of the traveller's accoutrements--material and
moral. It is not inappropriately, therefore, that James selected as
his motto for this chapter Dryden's conventional lines,
"In this King Arthur's reign,
A lusty knight was pricking o'er the plain."
Donne, Cowley, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Shakespeare, these are the authors
to whom James has chiefly gone for his poetical headings to the
chapters of this novel. The feature is a rare one in his works, nor
can it truthfully be said that the literary flavour thus imparted is
maintained by the text of the book. There is more familiarity, more
banality, in its style than is common in James's writings. It is odd,
for instance, to read the first paragraph of Chapter XVII.--"Oh, the
man in the moon! the man in the moon! What a prodigious sackful
of good resolutions you must have, all broken through the middle
...."--immediately after a solemn quotation from _Macbeth_; and a yet
more flagrant example occurs at the beginning of Chapter XXXIX., where
a couplet from Shakespeare is again used to usher in the following
triumph of bathos: "And where was Osborne Darnley all this while? Wait
a little, dearly-beloved, and you shall hear more." It should be added
that the first sentence is not an intentional pentameter. But, however
severely the shortcomings of style may be criticised in a writer who
'broke the record' for rapidity of production, James hardly ever fails
to tell a good story, with plenty of adventure and accuracy of
learning. "Darnley" does not fall behind the rest in these respects.
The date is fixed in the first line, as well as in the sub-title, and
the gorgeous festivities of Midsummer, 1520, as well as the character
of King Henry VIII., are admirably conceived and described. The
original picture of the scene in the Field near Calais, which is
preserved at Hampton Court, should be visited by readers of this
volume. Those curious in bibliography, by the way, will discover on
page 372 a notable instance of want of skill in the abridgment of
"Darnley" by James or his editors.
DARNLEY.
CHAPTER I.
In this King Arthur's reign,
A lusty knight was pricking o'er the plain.--Dryden.
On the morning of the 24th day of March, 1520, a traveller was seen
riding in the small, rugged cross-road which, traversing the eastern
part of Kent, formed the immediate communication between Wye[1] and
Canterbury. Far be it from me to insinuate that this road pursued
anything like a direct course from the one place to the other: on the
contrary, it seemed, like a serpent, to get on only by twisting; and
yet truly, as its track now lies pictured on the old county map before
me, I can discover no possible reason for its various contortions,
inasmuch as they avoid neither ascents nor descents, but proceed alike
over rough and smooth, hill and dale, appearing only to wind about for
the sake of variety. I can conceive the engineer who planned it
laughing in his sleeve at the consummate meanderings which he
compelled his travellers to undergo. However, as at the time I speak
of this was the only road through that part of the country, every
traveller was obliged to content himself with it, such as it was,
notwithstanding both its circumvolutions and its ruggedness.
Indeed, the horseman and his beast, who on the afore-mentioned morning
journeyed on together towards Canterbury, were apparently well
calculated to encounter what the profane vulgar call the ups and downs
of life; for never a stouter cavalier mounted horse, and never a
stouter horse was mounted by cavalier; and there was something in the
strong, quadrate form of each, in the bold, free movement of every
limb, and in the firm, martial regularity of their pace, which spoke a
habitual consciousness of tried and unfailing power.
The rider was a man of about five or six-and-twenty, perhaps not so
old; but the hardy exposed life which had dyed his florid cheek with a
tinge of deep brown, had given also to his figure that look of set,
mature strength which is not usually concomitant with youth. But
strength with him had nothing of ungracefulness, for the very vigour
of his limbs gave them ease of motion. Yet there was something more in
his aspect and in his carriage than can rightly be attributed to the
grace induced by habits of martial exercise, or to the dignity derived
from consciousness of skill or valour: there was that sort of innate
nobility of look which we are often weakly inclined to combine in our
minds with nobility of station, and that peculiar sort of grace which
is a gift, not an acquirement.
To paint him to the mind's eye were very difficult, though to describe
him were very easy; for though I were to say that he was a tall, fair
man, with the old Saxon blood shining out in his deep blue eye, and in
his full, short upper lip, from which the light brown moustache turned
off in a sweep, exposing its fine arching line; though I were to speak
of the manly beauty of his features, rendered scarcely less by a deep
scar upon his forehead; or were I to detail, with the accuracy of a
sculptor, the elegant proportion of every limb, I might, indeed,
communicate to the mind of the reader the idea of a much more handsome
man than he really was; but I should fail to invest the image with
that spirit of gracefulness which, however combined with outward form,
seems to radiate from within, which must live to be perfect, and must
be seen to be understood.
His apparel was not such as his bearing seemed to warrant: though
good, it was not costly, and though not faded, it certainly was not
new. Nor was the fashion of it entirely English: the gray cloth
doublet slashed with black, as well as the falling ruff round his
neck, were decidedly Flemish; and his hose of dark stuff might
probably have been pronounced foreign by the connoisseurs of the day,
although the variety of modes then used amongst our change-loving
nation justified a man in choosing the fashion of his breeches from
any extreme, whether from the fathomless profundity of a Dutchman's
ninth pair, or from the close-fitting garment of the Italian sworder.
The traveller's hose approached more towards the latter fashion, and
served to show off the fair proportions of his limbs without
straitening him by too great tightness, while his wide boots of
untanned leather, pushed down to the ankle, evinced that he did not
consider his journey likely to prove long, or, at least, very
fatiguing.
In those days, when, as old Holinshed assures us, it was not safe to
ride unarmed, even upon the most frequented road, a small bridle path,
such as that which the traveller pursued, was not likely to afford
much greater security. However, he did not appear to have furnished
himself with more than the complement of offensive arms usually worn
by every one above the rank of a simple yeoman; namely, the long,
straight, double-edged sword, which, thrust through a broad buff belt,
hung perpendicularly down his thigh, with the hilt shaped in form of a
cross, without any farther guard for the hand; while in the girdle
appeared a small dagger, which served also as a knife: added to these
was a dag or pistol, which, though small, considering the dimensions
of the arms then used, would have caused any horse-pistol of the
present day to blush at its own insignificance.
In point of defensive armour, he carried none, except a steel cap,
which hung at his saddle-bow, while its place on his head was supplied
by a Genoa bonnet of black velvet, round which his rich chesnut hair
curled in thick profusion.
Here have I bestowed more than a page and a half upon the description
of a man's dress and demeanour, which, under most circumstances, I
should consider a scandalous and illegitimate waste of time, paper,
and attention; but, in truth, I would fain, in the present instance,
that my reader should see my traveller before his mind's eye, exactly
as his picture represents him, pricking along the road on his strong
black horse, with his chest borne forward, his heel depressed, his
person erect, and his whole figure expressing corporeal ease and
power.
Very different, however, were his mental sensations, if one might
believe the knitted look of thought that sat upon his full, broad
brow, and the lines that early care seemed to have busily traced upon
the cheek of youth. Deep meditation, at all events, was the companion
of his way; for, confident in the surefootedness of his steed, he took
no care to hold his bridle in hand, but suffered himself to be borne
forward almost unconsciously, fixing his gaze upon the line of light
that hung above the edge of the hill before him, as if there he spied
some object of deep interest, yet, at the same time, with that fixed
intensity which told that, whilst the eye thus occupied itself, the
mind was far otherwise employed.
It was a shrewd March morning, and the part of the road at which the
traveller had now arrived opened out upon a wide wild common, whereon
the keen north-west blast had full room to exercise itself
unrestrained. On the one side the country sloped rapidly down from the
road, exposing an extensive view of some fine level plains,
distributed into fields, and scattered with a multitude of hamlets and
villages; the early smoke rising from the chimneys of which, caught by
the wind, mingled with the vapour from a sluggish river in the bottom,
and, drifting over the scene, gave a thousand different aspects to the
landscape as it passed. On the other hand, the common rose against the
sky in a wide sloping upland, naked, desolate, and unbroken, except
where a clump of stunted oaks raised their bare heads out of an old
gravel-pit by the road-side, or where a group of dark pines broke the
distant line of the ground. The road which the traveller had hitherto
pursued proceeded still along the side of the hill, but, branching off
to the left, was seen another rugged, gravelly path winding over the
common.
At the spot where these two divaricated, the horseman stopped, as if
uncertain of his farther route, and looking for some one to direct him
on his way. But he looked in vain; no trace of human habitation was to
be seen, nor any indication of man's proximity, except such as could
be gathered from the presence of a solitary duck, which seemed to be
passing its anchoritish hours in fishing for the tadpoles that
inhabited a little pond by the road-side.
The traveller paused, undetermined on which of the two roads to turn
his horse, when suddenly a loud scream met his ear, and, instantly
setting spurs to his horse, he galloped towards the quarter from
whence the sound seemed to proceed. Without waiting to pursue the
windings of the little path, in a moment he had cleared the upland,
towards the spot where he had beheld the pines, and, instead of
finding that the country beyond, as one might have imagined from the
view below, fell into another deep valley on that side, he perceived
that the common continued to extend for some way over an uninterrupted
flat, terminated by some wide plantations at a great distance.
In advance, sheltered by a high bank and the group of pines above
mentioned, appeared a solitary cottage formed of wood and mud. It may
be well supposed that its architecture was not very perfect, nor its
construction of the most refined taste; but yet there seemed some
attempt at decoration in the rude trellis that surrounded the doorway,
and in the neat cutting of the thatch which covered it from the and
weather. As the traveller rode towards it the scream was reiterated,
now, guided by his ear, he proceeded direct towards a little
garden, which had been borrowed from the common, and enclosed with a
mud wall. The door of this enclosure stood open, and at once admitted
the stranger into the interior, where he beheld--what shall be
detailed in the following chapter.