Those who are acquainted with Brantôme's delightful collection of
biographical sketches of Illustrious Ladies, will remember that one of
the most noteworthy of them is devoted to Marie Stuart. In it, amongst
many other interesting details, he states that the Queen used to compose
verses, and that he had seen some "that were fine and well done, and in
no wise similar to those which have been laid to her account, on the
subject of her love for the Earl of Bothwell, and which are too coarse
and ill-polished to have been of her making". In another passage he says
that Mary "made a song herself upon her sorrows"; and he quotes it.[106]
For close on two centuries and a half the "_Chanson de Marie Stuart_",
as given by him, has been reproduced in biographies of the Queen of
Scots, and has found its way into numberless albums and anthologies.
That it should have been accepted without hesitation on Brantôme's
authority is hardly surprising. Of those who have written from personal
acquaintance with Mary, few were in a better position than was the
French chronicler to know the truth about her. He remembered her from
her very childhood. He was familiar with all the circumstances of her
training and education at Saint-Germain. He had witnessed the precocious
development of the talents which excited the admiration of the courtiers
that gathered about Henry II and Catharine de' Medici. He did not lose
sight of her when, at a later date, her marriage with the heir to the
crown of France gave her a household of her own in the stately residence
of Villers-Côterets. He witnessed the enthusiasm which greeted her as
Queen-Consort, as well as the deep and universal sympathy which her
early bereavement called forth; and when the "White Queen", the dowager
of seventeen, left the country of her affection to undertake the heavy
task of governing her northern kingdom, he was amongst those who
accompanied her on her fateful journey. In the circumstances, it did not
occur, even to those who, knowing Brantôme's character, might feel that
much allowance was to be made for the conventional enthusiasm of the
courtier, to suspect that any of his statements concerning Mary Stuart
was to be rejected as wholly devoid of foundation. And yet, we are in a
position to prove that, in one instance, he asserted what he knew to be
false; and we shall follow that up by producing the strongest evidence
in support of the further charge that he was guilty of a literary
forgery.
In his sketch of Mary Stuart, Brantôme does not place her "Song" where
it would most naturally be looked for, that is, immediately after the
passage in which he refers to her poetical talent. He introduces it
clumsily, and in a way which, though perhaps not sufficient of itself to
justify suspicion, is, at least, calculated to strengthen it when once
it has been aroused. He begins by giving a description of the Queen, as
she appeared in her white widow's weeds. "It was", he says, "a beautiful
sight to see her, for the whiteness of her face vied for pre-eminence
with the whiteness of her veil. But, in the end, it was the artificial
whiteness of her veil that had to yield, and the snow of her fair
complexion effaced the other. And so there was written at Court a song
about her in her mourning garments. It was thus:" and here the anonymous
poem is quoted. It consists of two stanzas, each containing six short
lines. They depict the Goddess of Beauty, attired in white, wandering
about, with the shaft of her inhuman son in her hand, whilst Cupid
himself is fluttering over her, with the bandage, which he has removed
from his eyes, doing duty as a funereal veil on which are inscribed the
words: "Mourir ou estre pris". These verses, in which it is difficult to
discover any special application to the widowed Queen, are followed,
though not immediately, by a reference to her bereavement: "Hers was a
happiness of short duration, and one which evil fortune might well have
respected on this occasion; but, spiteful as she is, she would not be
deterred from thus cruelly treating the Princess, who herself composed
the following song on her loss and affliction". The poem thus attributed
to Mary is then brought in. It consists of the eleven well-known
stanzas, and begins with the line "En mon triste et doux chant"--"In my
sad and sweet strains". Nobody ever thought of questioning its
genuineness. The obviously fragmentary nature of the first poem, and the
similarity of rhythm and metre in both did not suggest the possibility
of a connection between them. Nor did it appear to be incongruous and in
bad taste that, if the Queen undertook to write her own elegy, she
should begin by praising its sweetness. A comparatively recent
discovery, however, has placed it beyond doubt that Brantôme wittingly
foisted on his readers verses which he very well knew had not been
written by Mary Stuart.
Some years ago, whilst hunting through the dusty shelves of an old
bookshop at Périgueux, Dr. E. Galy chanced upon a manuscript collection
of poems of the sixteenth century. The gilt-edged and leather-bound
folio was found to consist of two distinct parts. The first contained,
together with a few anonymous poems, extracts from the works of Clément
Marot, Pierre de Ronsard, and other writers of the period. The second,
and, from the literary point of view, more interesting section was made
up of a number of poems, chiefly sonnets, composed by Brantôme, and
bearing the general title: _Recueil d'aulcunes rymes de mes Jeunes
Amours que j'ay d'aultres fois composées telles quelles_, that is,
"Collection of Certain Rhymes of my early loves, which I formerly
composed, such as they are". This portion of the manuscript was
published for private circulation, by the fortunate finder, to whose
kindness we were indebted for a copy of the first edition of the
hitherto unsuspected poetical works of Pierre de Bourdeille, Lord Abbot
of Brantôme, Baron of Richemont.[107]
In the first division of the collection a very interesting discovery was
made. It was found to contain both the anonymous "Song" composed "at
Court", in honour of Mary Stuart, and the "Song" attributed to the Queen
herself. The two poems, it was now seen, were not originally distinct,
the anonymous verses being merely an introduction to the longer "Song",
and joined to it by three stanzas, which are neither quoted nor alluded
to in Brantôme's sketch of Mary. In its new form, and as it was
published in a very limited edition of one hundred copies by Dr. Galy,
the _Chanson pour la Royne d'Ecosse portant le dueil_,[108] is by no
means a masterpiece. It has, however, the merit of composing an
harmonious whole. The "Complaint" is preceded by an introduction which,
both as regards its length and the train of thought running through it,
is not out of keeping with the subject. It is followed by a concluding
stanza, which, though not absolutely necessary, gives fullness and
completeness to the picture called up by the elegy. One advantage which
the new version of the longer song possesses over the old is the
modification of the first jarring line. "En mon triste et doux chant,"
becomes "J'oy son triste et doux chant," that is, "I hear her sad and
sweet strains". This reading adapts itself to the context, and connects
the descriptive stanzas with those of the lament in a simple and natural
manner.
As Dr. Galy pointed out, the new version of the "Song", to which, it
should be stated, no author's name is attached, established, on the
authority of Brantôme himself, that he had attributed to Mary Stuart
verses which he knew were not hers. It did not, however, afford any clue
to the real authorship, and the possibility that the whole poem was of
Brantôme's own composition does not seem to have occurred to Dr. Galy.
That such is the case is our firm belief. A careful comparison of the
anonymous "Chanson" with the various poems avowedly by Brantôme has
revealed such similarity, not only of thought and imagery, but even of
expression, as convinces us that nobody but himself can be the author of
_The Song of Mary Stuart_.
The 102nd sonnet in Brantôme's collection is one which he addressed to
Mlle de Limeuil. Not only is the whole tone of it strikingly similar to
that of the "Song", but it contains passages which cannot be explained
away on the assumption of mere chance resemblance. Thus, in the
thirteenth stanza of the "Song", Mary is represented as seeing her
husband if she happens to look into the water: "Soudain le voy en
l'eau". In the sonnet, Brantôme says; "_Soudain_ il m'advise qu'_en
l'eau je voy_ Limeuil". In the first part of the same stanza, the
mourning Queen is supposed to behold in the clouds the features of her
lost husband. The same idea, expressed in similar language, and with
precisely the same rhymes, occurs in some stanzas which Brantôme
addressed to a lady "Sur un ennuy qui luy survint". The main idea of the
"Song"--that of the sorrowing lady followed by the image of her lost
love, wherever she may wander--recurs repeatedly in the sonnets, of
which, indeed, several may, without exaggeration, be described as mere
expansions of some of the lines in the "Song". Altogether, we have noted
distinct parallelisms to five of the stanzas in the alleged "Chanson".
When it is remembered that, as Brantôme gives it, it consists of no more
than eleven stanzas, the proportion must appear striking. In addition to
this, it must also be noted that, in the eleven stanzas of the lament
itself, there are a number of variants--we have counted nine
altogether--which, not being attributable to inaccurate copying, or
necessary for mere adaptation, testify to a deliberate revision, hardly
likely to have been the work of anyone but the original author. In the
face of such evidence it seems to us that no alternative is left, and
that we must place Brantôme on the same level as Meunier de Querlon, who
published the once popular song, "Adieu, plaisant pays de France," and
attributed it to Mary Stuart, though he was himself the author of it.
Indeed, of the two, Brantôme is the less excusable; for, in his case, it
cannot be pleaded as an extenuating circumstance, as it can in that of
de Querlon, that he subsequently acknowledged his "mystification". In
any case, there seems to be no reasonable doubt that we must diminish by
one the number of poems hitherto believed to have been written by Mary
Stuart.
Though the "Song" can no longer claim the authorship of Mary Stuart, it
still retains some interest by reason of its strange story. To the best
of our knowledge, the original and complete poem, of which, as we have
stated, only 100 copies were published in France, for private
circulation, has never been reproduced in this country. We therefore
append it.