This great queen passionately admired handsome persons, and he was
already far advanced in her favour who approached her with beauty and
grace. She had so unconquerable an aversion for men who had been treated
unfortunately by nature, that she could not endure their presence.
When she issued from her palace, her guards were careful to disperse
from before her eyes hideous and deformed people, the lame, the
hunchbacked, &c.; in a word, all those whose appearance might shock her
fastidious sensations.
"There is this singular and admirable in the conduct of Elizabeth that
she made her pleasures subservient to her policy, and she maintained her
affairs by what in general occasions the ruin of princes. So secret were
her amours, that even to the present day their mysteries cannot be
penetrated; but the utility she drew from them is public, and always
operated for the good of her people. Her lovers were her ministers, and
her ministers were her lovers. Love commanded, love was obeyed; and the
reign of this princess was happy, because it was the reign of _Love_, in
which its chains and its slavery are liked!"
The origin of Raleigh's advancement in the queen's graces was by an act
of gallantry. Raleigh spoiled a new plush cloak, while the queen,
stepping cautiously on this prodigal's footcloth, shot forth a smile, in
which he read promotion. Captain Raleigh soon became Sir Walter, and
rapidly advanced in the queen's favour.
Hume has furnished us with ample proofs of the _passion_ which her
courtiers feigned for her, and it remains a question whether it ever
went further than boisterous or romantic gallantry. The secrecy of her
amours is not so wonderful as it seems, if there were impediments to any
but exterior gallantries. Hume has preserved in his notes a letter
written by Raleigh. It is a perfect amorous composition. After having
exerted his poetic talents to exalt _her charms_ and _his affection_, he
concludes, by comparing her majesty, who was then _sixty_, to Venus and
Diana. Sir Walter was not her only courtier who wrote in this style.
Even in her old age she affected a strange fondness for music and
dancing, with a kind of childish simplicity; her court seemed a court of
love, and she the sovereign. Secretary Cecil, the youngest son of Lord
Burleigh, seems to have perfectly entered into her character. Lady Derby
wore about her neck and in her bosom a portrait; the queen inquired
about it, but her ladyship was anxious to conceal it. The queen insisted
on having it; and discovering it to be the portrait of young Cecil, she
snatched it away, tying it upon her shoe, and walked with it; afterwards
she pinned it on her elbow, and wore it some time there. Secretary Cecil
hearing of this, composed some verses and got them set to music; this
music the queen insisted on hearing. In his verses Cecil said that he
repined not, though her majesty was pleased to grace others; he
contented himself with the favour she had given him by wearing his
portrait on her feet and on her arms! The writer of the letter who
relates this anecdote, adds, "All these things are very secret." In this
manner she contrived to lay the fastest hold on her able servants, and
her servants on her.
Those who are intimately acquainted with the private anecdotes of those
times, know what encouragement this royal coquette gave to most who were
near her person. Dodd, in his Church History, says, that the Earls of
Arran and Arundel, and Sir William Pickering, "were not out of hopes of
gaining Queen Elizabeth's affections in a matrimonial way."
She encouraged every person of eminence: she even went so far, on the
anniversary of her coronation, as publicly to take a ring from her
finger, and put it on the Duke of Aleçnon's hand. She also ranked
amongst her suitors Henry the Third of France, and Henry the Great.
She never forgave Buzenval for ridiculing her bad pronunciation of the
French language; and when Henry IV. sent him over on an embassy, she
would not receive him. So nice was the irritable pride of this great
queen, that she made her private injuries matters of state.
"This queen," writes Du Maurier, in his _Memoires pour servir à
l'Histoire de la Hollande_, "who displayed so many heroic
accomplishments, had this foible, of wishing to be thought beautiful by
all the world. I heard from my father, that at every audience he had
with her majesty, she pulled off her gloves more than a hundred times to
display her hands, which indeed were very beautiful and very white."
A not less curious anecdote relates to the affair of the Duke of Anjou
and our Elizabeth; it is one more proof of her partiality for handsome
men. The writer was Lewis Guyon, a contemporary.
"Francis Duke of Anjou, being desirous of marrying a crowned head,
caused proposals of marriage to be made to Elizabeth, queen of England.
Letters passed betwixt them, and their portraits were exchanged. At
length her majesty informed him, that she would never contract a
marriage with any one who sought her, if she did not first _see his
person_. If he would not come, nothing more should be said on the
subject. This prince, over-pressed by his young friends (who were as
little able of judging as himself), paid no attention to the counsels of
men of maturer judgment. He passed over to England without a splendid
train. The said lady contemplated his _person_: she found him _ugly_,
disfigured by deep sears of the _small-pox_, and that he also had an
_ill-shaped nose_, with _swellings in the neck_! All these were so many
reasons with her, that he could never be admitted into her good graces."
Puttenham, in his very rare book of the "Art of Poesie," p. 248, notices
the grace and majesty of Elizabeth's demeanour: "Her stately manner of
walk, with a certaine granditie rather than gravietie, marching with
leysure, which our sovereign ladye and mistresse is accustomed to doe
generally, unless it be when she walketh apace for her pleasure, or to
catch her a heate in the cold mornings."
By the following extract from a letter from one of her gentlemen, we
discover that her usual habits, though studious, were not of the
gentlest kind, and that the service she exacted from her attendants was
not borne without concealed murmurs. The writer groans in secrecy to his
friend. Sir John Stanhope writes to Sir Robert Cecil in 1598: "I was all
the afternowne with her majestie, _at my booke_; and then thinking to
rest me, went in agayne with your letter. She was pleased with the
Filosofer's stone, and hath ben _all this daye reasonably quyett_. Mr.
Grevell is absent, and I am tyed so as I cannot styrr, but shall be _at
the wourse_ for yt, these two dayes!"[76]
Puttenham, p. 249, has also recorded an honourable anecdote of
Elizabeth, and characteristic of that high majesty which was in her
thoughts, as well as in her actions. When she came to the crown, a
knight of the realm, who had insolently behaved to her when Lady
Elizabeth, fell upon his knees and besought her pardon, expecting to be
sent to the Tower: she replied mildly, "Do you not know that we are
descended of the _lion_, whose nature is not to harme or prey upon the
mouse, or any other such small vermin?"
Queen Elizabeth was taught to write by the celebrated _Roger Ascham_.
Her writing is extremely beautiful and correct, as may be seen by
examining a little manuscript book of prayers, preserved in the British
Museum. I have seen her first writing book, preserved at Oxford in the
Bodleian Library: the gradual improvement in her majesty's handwriting
is very honourable to her diligence; but the most curious thing is the
paper on which she tried her pens; this she usually did by writing the
name of her beloved brother Edward; a proof of the early and ardent
attachment she formed to that amiable prince.
The education of Elizabeth had been severely classical; she thought and
she wrote in all the spirit of the characters of antiquity; and her
speeches and her letters are studded with apophthegms, and a terseness
of ideas and language, that give an exalted idea of her mind. In her
evasive answers to the Commons, in reply to their petitions to her
majesty to marry, she has employed an energetic word: "Were I to tell
you that I do not mean to marry, I might say less than I did intend; and
were I to tell you that I do mean to marry, I might say more than it is
proper for you to know; therefore I give you an _answer_, ANSWERLESS!"