explanations. Vasari says of him: "The Italians cannot be sufficiently
thankful to Bembo for having not only purified their language from the
rust of ages, but given it such regularity and clearness that it has
become what we see." Few men have known a life of more sustained
triumph. At the time of his friendship with Lucrezia he was young--a
good-looking man of about twenty-eight--but already he had attained a
widespread appreciation.
He was not the only clever man in the duchess's society at Ferrara;
the traditions of the house were intellectual. Lucrezia, at last, had
fallen into excellent hands, and was being formed in the best school
possible. Men, notable not only for genius, but for serious qualities
of temperament, educated her by companionship. Bembo, Castiglione,
Aldo Manuce, were all men who thought with some profundity and
breadth. Ariosto, from 1503 in the service of Hippolyte D'Este, was
another man of genius she must have known intimately, and among minor
intellects the two Strozzi poets, as well as Tebaldeo and Callagnini,
sang her praises from personal acquaintance.
It was not altogether, however, an easy-minded society. Alphonso,
though he mixed little with his wife's _entourage_, formed a
constantly dangerous background to it. His suspicions were always
alert. The murder of the poet Strozzi is put down to him, and in 1505
Tebaldeo wrote to Isabella: "This duke hates me, though I do not know
why, and it is not safe for me to stay in the town." Even Bembo, in
his relations to his friend, had to be girded with the uttermost
caution, and finally for him also it became unadvisable to remain
longer in Ferrara. With his going one of the most delicate affections
of Lucrezia's life fell to pieces. And yet not altogether; Bembo,
though he took mistresses he loved to distraction, continued for
fifteen years to correspond with his Ferrarese duchess. Unless their
friendship had been very real and very rich in sincerities, it would
have crumbled into nothingness within a year.
Lucrezia's intimacy with Castiglione was a slighter affair. He had no
importance in her life, save as being among those who helped to give
her culture. That she should have known him is interesting, however,
because in his great book Castiglione expressed with a limpid
particularity the Renaissance ideal of womanhood. On the whole it was
an unimaginative conception--at least expressed as Castiglione
expressed it. For no book ever avoided more completely than "The
Courtier" any obliqueness or any individual frankness of idiosyncrasy.
Tact, according to Castiglione, was the essential mainspring of
feminine fascination--tact and the art of conversation. One wise point
he insisted upon--suavity. That, he said, should be inseparable from
every woman's society. The remark lingers in the memory,--suavity, a
soft and soothing composure, having so nearly passed out of even the
conception of good manners. Scandals, especially of her own sex, it
was unpardonable for a woman either to utter or to attend to. Dancing
and other accomplishments he urged as a necessary part of education;
but, on the other hand, he did not encourage naturalness. He wrote:
"When she cometh to dance or to show any kind of music, she ought to
be brought to it with suffering herself somewhat to be prayed, and
with a certain bashfulness that may declare the noble shamefastness
that is contrary to headiness." The early Victorian code of good
manners was therefore only a return to a former fashion, and a fashion
instigated by men and not by women at all.
Castiglione wrote at length upon the question of dress. Here his
common sense is unimpeachable: "Women ought to have a judgment to know
what manner of garments set her out best, and be most fit for the
exercise she intendeth to undertake at that instant, and with them
array herself." He urged keenly that lean and fat should pay attention
to their peculiarities. Every woman, he insisted, ought to do all in
her power to keep herself "cleanly and handsome."
Upon the subject of morality, Castiglione possessed no grave feelings.
He advocated virtue, but not because conduct is vital, far-reaching,
touching momentarily the character and fate of so many besides the
doer, but almost entirely on account of the greater safety attaching
to circumspection. Intrigue involved so many dangers. Consequently, he
urged women "to be heedful, and remember that men with less jeopardy
show to be in love than women." He begged a woman to "give her lover
nothing but her mind when either hatred of her husband or the love he
beareth to others inclineth her to love." Words were so much vapour,
but a definite action was perilously apt to produce definite
consequences. Husbands had a knack of revenging in their own wives
what they asked from the wives of others.
A quaint and almost subtle stipulation ends the list. The perfect
lady, according to Castiglione, "must not only be learned, but able to
devise sports and pastimes." All active brains need rest. The
desirable woman should know, in consequence, how to relax the tension
of absorbing thoughts, as well as how to tender the encouragement of
sympathy. Health demands some intervals for relaxation and
foolishness.
Castiglione himself married a child called Ippolyta Torelli, whose
life was tragically brief. As a husband, nothing is known of him
except that he was a good deal away from home. His wife wrote _one_
exquisite letter--one loves her because of it--and that is practically
all that remains of their domestic existence. The note was written
just before her death, which took place through the birth of her third
child. She lay in bed, and put on paper--
"My dear Husband,
"I have given birth to a little girl, which I do not think you
will be displeased to hear. I have suffered this time much more
than before, and I have had three bad bouts of fever. But now I
am better, and hope to suffer no more pain. I will not write
more to you lest I overtax my strength. But with all my heart I
commend myself to your lordship.
"In Mantua, the 20th of August, 1520.
"Your wife, who is a little weary with pain."
The caressing prettiness of the last phrase is like the feel of a
tired child's hand slipped into one's own. Castiglione felt her death
acutely, and wrote that he never dreamt his wife, whom he referred to
with great tenderness, would have died before him, and all he now
prayed for was that the Almighty might not leave him long before he
followed her.
Lucrezia needed friends at Ferrara. Her life was one almost without
respite from harassments, internal troubles and political insecurity
being always present. Plague and famine devastated the well-being of
the duchy. Twice Lucrezia was left in charge of a famine-stricken
district, and twice proved herself capable, resourceful,
self-forgetting. On the first occasion she was ill, but,
notwithstanding, absolutely refused to leave the town as ordered by
the doctors. She worked for the unhappy people starving about her, in
a flaming rush of pity. Jews and Christians were alike to Lucrezia;
her protection of Jews was strenuous in a period when the mere name
roused men's ferocity. That her heart throbbed in response to the
right instincts is proved by the whole compassionate fabric of her
later life. Any human being, intuitively conscious that pain equalizes
all things, cannot be encased in the callousness of the really bad or
cold nature. During all the years Lucrezia lived in Ferrara her care
for charitable institutions was personal and active.
And it should be remembered that philanthropy had not yet become a
fashionable occupation; sympathy of attitude by those in high places
was still unusual and undemanded. The management of the few existing
charitable houses during the Renaissance was deplorable. But Alphonso
and Lucrezia not only built a new and improved hospital for infectious
diseases, but took, besides, sufficient personal interest in its
patients to dismiss a man for neglecting the invalids entrusted to his
care.
This phase of Lucrezia's life ought to be dwelt upon at length. It
lifts her from a flighty extravagance and immorality into positive
goodness of behaviour. Depth she probably had not--deep, brooding
persons are not necessary in great abundance--and the woman who left
her only child, the son of the murdered Don Alphonso, could not have
been fiercely tenacious of heart. In all Lucrezia's life, in fact,
this is the worst incident--this abandonment of her baby. So much was
thrust upon her; this surrender itself was so to a certain extent. But
not the manner of it, the effortless blitheness, the impulsive
acquiescence. It is this one revealing episode that chiefly keeps her
from the region of supremely wronged and tragic persons.
In 1507 her brother Cæsar died. Alphonso was away at the time, fighting
with Louis XII. A letter, despatched at once, told him how she took the
news. According to the writer, "she showed great grief, but with
constancy and without tears." This phrase "without tears" carries a
certain poignant implication. Surely the hearer was at last sinking
through shallowness to find some deep places in her nature. Shallowness
can always shed tears. Had Lucrezia even been indifferent to Cæsar's
death--and indifference is the least likely sensation--shallowness
would have dropped a few tears of excitement, silliness, shock. There
is a moving weariness of grief in any tearless conduct.
Isabella D'Este, who was with her at the time, wrote as well. She said
that Lucrezia "immediately went to the monastery of the Corpo di
Cristo, to offer up prayers for his soul. At the monastery she
remained for two nights, and having left it, she found herself so much
indisposed that her physician, for security, insisted on her keeping
her bed, to which she is still confined."
Lucrezia had several children after her third marriage, and in the
year following Cæsar's death she gave birth to the desired heir,
Ercole, afterwards to marry the poor, cheerless Renée of France. But
she had been a delicate, frail creature all her life, and when, in
1519, she gave birth to a dead child, the case immediately became
hopeless. As a Roman Catholic, she was told at once how near Death
loomed, though the information seems a cruel thing to give to any
person not yet old enough to have wearied of existence. But Lucrezia,
who had never yet made a fuss about anything, did not make a fuss over
the last great unpleasantness of all. This composure at dying touches
all her past serenity with something almost effulgent. It makes her
suddenly full of strange wisdom and singular comprehensions; as if
unconsciously she understood the real value of individual mortality,
and knew it just sweet enough for smiles and laughter, but at the same
time too slight, unstable, and finite for great commotions or
disturbances.
Having been told that she could not live any longer, and seeing
Alphonso suddenly attentive, the exhausted woman wasted no strength
contesting the unalterable, but simply lay quietly in her bed and
tried to think of God, the Virgin, and the world beyond. A few days
before her death she wrote to Pope Leo X. Her letter is sedateness
itself and courage. Nothing was further from its utterance than
discomposure or demur. If forlornness reached her at leaving the
lovely homeliness of mortal life, she was too magnanimously courteous
to burden another person with a private sorrow. She wrote--
"Most Holy Father and Worshipful Lord,
"With all reverence I kiss your Holiness's feet, and humbly
commend myself to your good will. Having been in great pain for
more than two months, early on the morning of the 14th day of
the present month, according to the will of God, I gave birth to
a little daughter. I hoped then to get alleviation from my
sufferings, but the contrary took place, and I have to pay my
debt to nature. And through the grace of God I am conscious that
the end of my life is near, and that in a few hours, having
received the holy sacraments of the Church, I shall have passed
away. And having came to this state, as a Christian, although a
sinner, I beseech your Holiness in your goodness to give me from
the heavenly treasures spiritual consolation and your holy
benediction for my soul. This I most devoutly pray for, and to
your great mercy I commit my husband and my children, who are
all faithful servants of your Holiness.
"In Ferrara, the 22nd of June, 1519, at the fourteenth hour.
"Your Holiness's humble servant,
"Lucrezia da Este."
No braver letter, nor one more touching in its noble staidness of
expression, was ever written by a woman, knowing that in a few hours
life would have ceased for her. Two days after writing it she died,
and Alphonso wrote after her death that it was hard to face the loss
of so sweet a companion, the gentleness of her conduct having made the
bond between them a very close and tender one. No single individual
can possess the whole round of virtues--a fact too often ignored in
current judgment of character--but every writer lingered upon
Lucrezia's gentleness. There is no more winning thing than a gentle
woman. Persistent gentleness not only excludes harsh thoughts, but is
a force constantly wooing men out of turbulent bitterness and acrimony
of spirit.
Alphonso fainted at his wife's funeral, and nothing could protest more
eloquently against assertions of her wickedness. Grim men of
Alphonso's fibre do not, after nine years of marriage, faint for a
woman who has not known how to bring to life the softer undergrowths
of character. Lucrezia must have possessed a more than normal degree
of conciliatory seduction. And she charms still, in spite of much
calumniating gossip, not only because she expressed undeviatingly the
heartening value of good cheer, and set so fine an example of how to
discard bad yesterdays, but to a certain extent because, as far as one
knows, she babbled nothing for biographers to seize upon, and so left
herself perpetually among the engrossing enigmas of European history.
MARGARET D'ANGOULÊME
1492-1549
The Renaissance in France has not the same degree of charm as the
Renaissance in Italy. It misses the radiance and the sense of open-air
sweetness that clings to the original movement. The women of the
Italian Renaissance were constantly adventuring into the country; the
enchantment of the climate lingers in all recollections of them. The
Renaissance in France conveys a different impression--one colder, more
troubled, more half-hearted. The large frescoed palaces, with their
adorable colonnades, are gone, and the sensation given is of a
bleaker, darker, and more housed existence. The entranced
light-heartedness of the Italian period did not travel into France.
When the Renaissance came into that country the Reformation came too,
and the labours of the Sorbonne robbed it of the youth and
irresponsibility that made the other so vital and complete. The
Italian Renaissance breathed out the exultation of adolescence; the
French, the reflectiveness of maturity.
Of the French Renaissance, Margaret D'Angoulême is the central female
figure. She was born on April 11, 1492, when her mother, Louise de
Savoie, was only fifteen. Louise had been a poor relation at court
before she married, and her aunt, Anne of Beaujeu, had arranged her
marriage. Louise de Savoie was among the women who had not been given
a fair start in life. The bridegroom, Charles D'Angoulême, had already
an attachment; he loved greatly a certain Jeanne de Polignac. He did
his best not to marry Louise, and so remain unharassed in the service
of his lady friend. But Anne de Beaujeu was very masterful, and
Charles surrendered through necessity. He married Louise, then a child
of twelve, and made Jeanne de Polignac one of her ladies-in-waiting.
When Louise was fifteen, Margaret was born, and two years afterwards,
Francis--"My Cæsar, my lord"--came into the world. A year later
Louise's husband died. She mentions the fact in her journal without
expressions of regret. Not but that she had been happy enough in his
lifetime. Charles, absorbed by his own love affairs, allowed his wife
moderate freedom to indulge in hers. But his death made such
amusements less anxious and more easy. The complaisance of husbands
has always an element of uncertainty.
There was another trait in Louise's character to which her husband's
death gave fuller scope--her ardent maternal instincts. The quality of
her love for her children was vehement, jealous, and primitive.
Margaret, as a result of this, became educated in an atmosphere
unusual at that period. An indulged tenderness steeped her juvenile
days in pleasantness. There were no severities at Cognac. Of Francis,
Louise made an idol, but Margaret, though trained from the days she
could lisp to worship this idol along with her mother, was also
herself a treasured person. The glow of these early days left their
influence upon her for a lifetime. She never shook off the warmliness
of heart all her upbringing had encouraged.
Upon Louise's widowhood, Louis XII. was for a short time very kind to
her and to her children. This mood suddenly changed--in a few days, it
is said--and a certain Jean de St. Gelais, a friend of Louise's, is
credited with having caused the alteration. Louise was ordered to
retire to the castle of Blois, and there was talk of taking the
children away from her. In the end, the Marechale de Gie, whose tragic
downfall has been told in the life of Anne, was given practical
control of her household. His first act--presumably under Louis's
orders--consisted in the dismissal of St. Gelais. It was this action
which Louise is supposed never to have forgiven. De Gie became her
most devoted supporter; all his interests were on the same side as
hers, all his aims were to place Francis subsequently upon the throne
of France. But when the catastrophe of Anne's luggage occurred, Louise
flung the weight of her evidence remorselessly against him, and lied
with a sinister heartiness.
At Blois, Margaret was brought up with boys. A number of _pages
d'honneur_ were being educated with the heir-presumptive. Margaret
grew to know at an early age a good deal about the temperaments of the
other sex, and a good deal about flirtation. At nine years old she
went through her first love affairs. No wonder that later she knew, as
Brantome put it, more about the art of pleasing (_galanterie_) than
her daily bread.
The playfellow to whom Margaret lost her childish heart was the
fascinating Gaston de Foix, but there were several others among her
brother's pages who were momentous in her after existence. There was,
for instance, Charles de Montpensier, afterwards Connétable de
Bourbon, whom Louise de Savoie, by unduly persecuting--it is said
because he refused to marry her--drove to the side of Charles V. Of
this Connétable, Henry VIII. of England made a shrewd observation when
he saw him at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. "If he was a subject of
mine," he said, "he would not keep his head." There was also, among
the pages at Blois, Anne de Montmorency, for whom Margaret's
friendship continued long after both were grown up. He owed his
subsequent position in a large measure to her assistance, but desirous
of possessing the supreme influence over Francis himself, he grew to
hate the woman who also possessed so much. The unworthy termination of
the friendship began in the light-hearted childhood at Blois--it was
Montmorency who made the famous remark to Francis: "If your majesty
wants to rid the country of heretics, you must begin with your own
sister"--which was among the sharpest disillusions of Margaret's
existence.
[Illustration: HEAD OF GASTON DE FOIX
_Alinari_]
But as a child her affection for Montmorency was as nothing to the
adoration she felt for the gentle, endearing Gaston, who could do
everything well, and whose manners won people's hearts perpetually.
Unfortunately, at ten Margaret was marriageable, and she had no sooner
reached that age than Louis XII. tried to arrange a marriage for her
with the English Prince of Wales--afterwards Henry VIII. Happily,
Henry wanted some one nearer the throne than a cousin, and the little
group at Blois remained unbroken. But the question of marriage was
always in the air--the sense that the enfolded home life might cease
at any moment could never be entirely shaken off. Later, Margaret
narrowly escaped another English husband. Henry VII., then an old
widower, wanted a second wife. He made a formal proposal for Louise.
She refused point-blank, and the ambassador then asked for the
daughter. This was accepted, and arrangements were in progress, when
Margaret herself suddenly set everybody agape by declining an old and
decrepid husband. The marriage came to nothing, though probably not
because of the small girl's protest; there were political reasons
against it as well.
Meanwhile, Margaret's childish lover, Gaston, had left the château at
Blois. The modest-mannered boy, known familiarly as "the Dove," had
gone to take up a man's business, leaving his little weeping friend
behind him. But Margaret had grown by now into an interesting-looking
girl. Her face, at the age of sixteen, must have been singularly
arresting. She had the charm that is rarest of all--the charm of
strangeness. Her appearance was not like other people's. The portrait
of her, painted when she was about twenty, leading Francis to the
crucified Christ, is full of subtleties. The face is round, with the
sweet fulness of young things, but the chin is tiny, lovable,
incongruous--the chin of soft assents and surrenders. The nose is
long, the over-long nose of Francis I.; the mouth deliciously curved
and tender. All the lower half of the face expresses a desire for
gentle pleasures and soft and caressing habits. But the eyes belong to
a different temperament. They gaze out of the happy face with
unexpected wistfulness and mysticism. Their expression is almost
tired, as if so many difficult matters had vexed their understanding
that they were weary before their time. The preoccupied eyes, the
love-needing chin, the long, cold nose, and the charming outline of
the head, make an extraordinary combination.
Every contemporary writer agreed that Margaret had the gift of
fascination, and she had also in youth the kind of looks that linger
in the imagination. It is, consequently, not surprising that while she
sighed for the absent Gaston, some one else should have sighed for
her. This second love affair is one of the interesting experiences of
Margaret's life; it is rich in information about Margaret, about
Louise, about the habits and customs of Margaret's times. Using
fictitious names, she tells it herself, as well as her early affection
for Gaston, in the "Heptameron." Bonnivet was a lieutenant when he
first saw Margaret, and he fell in love with her immediately.
Immediately also he set himself to try and arouse a corresponding
emotion. She was a princess, and he was a simple gentleman of good
family; marriage was out of the question. But one could live without
marriage, and Bonnivet set to work instantly to realize a plan by
which he could remain permanently near his enticing lady. There was a
rich and ugly heiress who lived close to the castle of Amboise, and
whose parents belonged to the royal circle. Bonnivet made love to her
and married her. To further facilitate his own reception at the
castle, his brother about this time received a post in Louise's
household. Bonnivet then saw Margaret constantly. The girl considered
herself forlorn. Her round blue eyes were plaintive under their first
experience of a heartache. Bonnivet, fascinating and determined,
became her friend. She confided to him all her innocent little
love-story. He took the part of sympathizer. Margaret could never hate
any one who liked her, and she was at the age when to be loved easily
stirs a vague and evanescent fluttering.