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3. The diphthongs ae and oe are represented by [ae] and [oe].
4. Table of Contents added by Transcriber.
Arabella Stuart
[Frontispiece]
THE WORKS
OF
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.
REVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR,
WITH AN INTRODUCTORY PREFACE.
"D'autres auteurs l'ont encore plus avili, (le roman,) en y mêlant les
tableaux dégoutant du vice; et tandis que le premier avantage des
fictions est de rassembler autour de l'homme tout ce qui, dans la
nature, peut lui servir de leçon ou de modèle, on a imaginé qu'on
tirerait une utilité quelconque des peintures odieuses de mauvaises
m[oe]urs; comme si elles pouvaient jamais laisser le c[oe]ur qui les
repousse, dans une situation aussi pure que le c[oe]ur qui les aurait
toujours ignorées. Mais un roman tel qu'on peut le concevoir, tel que
nous en avons quelques modèles, est une des plus belles productions de
l'esprit humain, une des plus influentes sur la morale des individus,
qui doit former ensuite les m[oe]urs publiques."--MADAME DE STAEL.
_Essai sur les Fictions_.
"Poca favilla gran nomma seconda:
Forse diretro a me, con miglior voci
Si pregherà, perché Cirra risponda."
DANTE. _Paradiso_, Canto I.
VOL. XIX.
ARABELLA STUART.
LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.
STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
M DCCC XLIX.
ARABELLA STUART:
A Romance
FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.
BY
G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.
----------
LONDON:
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO.
STATIONERS' HALL COURT.
M DCCC XLIX.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
Preface.
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.
XV.
XVI.
XVII.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
XXII.
XXIII
XXIV.
XXV.
XXVI.
XXVII.
XXVIII.
XXIX.
XXX.
XXXI.
XXXII.
XXXIII.
XXXIV.
XXXV.
XXXVI.
XXXVII.
XXXVIII.
XXXIX.
XL.
XLI.
XLII.
XLIII.
XLIV.
XLV.
XLVI.
TO REAR-ADMIRAL
SIR GEORGE F. SEYMOUR, C.B. G.C.H.
&c. &c. &c.
-----
MY DEAR SIR,
If the dedication of a work like the present could afford any adequate
expression of high respect and regard, I should feel greater pleasure
than I do in offering you these pages; but such things have become so
common, that, though every one who knows you will understand the
feelings which induce me to present you with this small tribute, yet I
cannot but be aware that it is very little worthy of your acceptance.
You will receive it, however, I know, with the same kindness which you
have frequently displayed towards me, as a mark, however slight, of my
gratitude for the interest you have always shown in myself and my
works, and as a testimony of unfeigned esteem from one, who can fully
appreciate in others higher qualities than he can pretend to himself.
Although I am inclined to believe that the public may judge this one
of the most interesting tales I have written, I can take but little
credit to myself on that account; for all the principal events are so
strictly historical, that little was left to the author but to tell
them as agreeably as he could. The story of the fair and unfortunate
Arabella Stuart is well known to every one at all acquainted with
English history; and has called forth more than one poem of
considerable merit, though, I believe, as yet, has never been made the
foundation of a romance. From that story, as it has been told by
contemporaries, I have had but very little occasion to deviate, merely
supplying a few occasional links to connect it with other events of
the time.
In depicting the characters of the various persons who appear upon the
scene, however, I have had a more difficult task to perform, being
most anxious to represent them as they really were, and not on any
account to distort and caricature them. The rudeness of the age,--the
violent passions that were called into action,--the bold and erratic
disregard which thus reigned of all those principles which have now
been universally recognised for many years, rendered it not easy to
give the appearance of truth and reality to events that did actually
happen, and to personages who have indeed existed; for to the age of
James I. may well be applied the often repeated maxim, that "Truth is
stranger than Fiction."
Difficulties as great, and many others of a different description,
have been overcome in the extraordinary romance called "Ferrers;" but
it is not every one who possesses the powers of vigorous delineation
which have been displayed by the Author of that remarkable work; and I
have been obliged to trust to the reader's knowledge of history, to
justify me in the representation which I have given of characters and
scenes, which might seem overstrained and unnatural, to those who have
been only accustomed to travel over the railroad level of modern
civilization.
The character of James I. himself has been portrayed by Sir Walter
Scott with skill to which I can in no degree pretend--but with a very
lenient hand. He here appears under a more repulsive aspect, as a
cold, brutal, vain, frivolous tyrant. Nevertheless, every act which I
have attributed to him blackens the page of history, with many others,
even more dark and foul, which I have not found necessary to
introduce. Indeed, I would not even add one deed which appeared to me
in the least degree doubtful; for I do believe that we have no right
to charge the memory of the dead with anything that is not absolutely
proved against them. We must remember, that we try them in a court
where they cannot plead, before a jury chosen by ourselves, and
pronounce a sentence against which they can make no appeal: and I
should be as unwilling to add to the load of guilt which weighs down
the reputation of a bad man, as to detract from the high fame and
honour of a great and good one. My conviction, however, is
unalterable, that James I. was at once one of the most cruel tyrants,
and one of the most disgusting men, that ever sat upon a throne.
In the account I have given of Lady Essex, I shall probably be accused
of having drawn an incarnate fiend; but I reply, that I have not done
it. Her character is traced in the same colours by the hand of
History. Fortunately, it so happens that few have ever been like her;
for wickedness is generally a plant of slow growth, and we rarely find
that extreme youth is totally devoid of virtues, though it may be
stained with many vices. Such as I have found her, so have I painted
her; suppressing, indeed, many traits and many actions which were
unfit for the eye of a part, at least, of my readers. Dark as her
character was, however, its introduction into this tale afforded me a
great advantage, by the contrast it presented to that of Arabella
Stuart herself; bringing out the brightness of that sweet lady's mind,
and the gentleness of her heart, in high relief; and I hope and trust,
tending to impress upon the minds of those who peruse these pages, the
excellence of virtue and the deformity of vice.
Upon the character and fate of Sir Thomas Overbury there has always
hung a degree of mystery. I do not know whether these pages may tend
at all to dispel it; but, at all events, I have not written them
without examining minutely into all the facts; and, probably, the
conclusions at which I have arrived are as accurate as those of
others. I must reserve, however, one statement, for which I find no
authority, but which was necessary to the construction of my story,
namely, that which refers to Overbury's proposal of a marriage between
Rochester and the Lady Arabella.
I need not tell one so intimately acquainted with English History as
yourself, that all the other characters here introduced, with one or
two exceptions amongst the inferior personages, are historical; and I
have endeavoured, to the best of my power, to represent them such as
they really were.
Having said thus much, I shall add no more; for, in submitting the
work to you, though I know I shall have an acute judge, yet I shall
have a kind one; and trusting that you will, at all events, derive
some amusement from these pages, I will only further beg you to
believe me,
My dear Sir,
Your most faithful servant,
G. P. R. JAMES.
_The Oaks, near Walmer, Kent_,
1_st December_, 1843.
ARABELLA STUART.
CHAPTER I.
There was a small, old-fashioned, red brick house, situated just upon
the verge of Cambridgeshire, not in the least peculiar in its aspect,
and yet deserving a description. The reader shall know why, before we
have done. As you came along the road from London you descended a
gentle hill, not very long, and yet long enough to form, with an
opposite rise, one of those sweet, calm valleys which are
peculiarly characteristic of the greater part of this country. When
you were at the top of the hill, in looking down over some hedge-rows
and green fields, the first thing your eye lighted upon in the bottom
of the dale was a quick-running stream, which seemed to have a
peculiar art of catching the sunshine wherever it was to be found. Its
course, though almost as rapid as if it had come down from a
mountain,--having had, it is true, a pretty sharp descent about a mile
to the westward,--was nevertheless, at this spot, directed through
soft green meadows, and between flat and even banks. The water was of
some depth also, not less in general than from five to six feet,
though not in most places above four or five yards in width. Where it
crossed the road, however, there being no bridge, and the highway
somewhat raised, it spread itself out into a good broad shallow
stream, which, in the deepest part, only washed your horse's feet a
little above the pastern.
Having carried it thus far, reader, we will leave it, without pursuing
its course on towards the sea, which it reached somehow, and
somewhere, by ways and through channels with which we have nothing to
do.
The eye of the traveller, however, on the London road, in tracing this
stream farther up, came upon a clump of tall old trees disencumbered
of all brushwood, spreading wide at the top, but ungarnished by boughs
or green leaves below, and affording habitation to a multitude of busy
rooks, whose inharmonious voices--when joined together in full chorus,
and heard from a distance--formed a peculiar kind of melody,
connecting itself with many memories in the hearts of almost every
one, and rousing soft and pensive imaginations from its intimate
connexion with those country scenes, and calm pleasures, amongst which
must lie all man's sweetest associations. From the top of the hill on
which we have placed ourselves, a number of chimney tops, somewhat
quaint and fantastic in their forms, appeared to be actually rising
from the very heart of the rookery; but if you stopped to let your
horse drink at the stream in the bottom of the valley, and looked up
its course to the left, you perceived that the house to which those
chimneys belonged, lay at the distance of more than two hundred yards
from the trees, and had a large garden with a long terrace, and a low
wall between it and them.
The mansion was of no great extent, as we have already hinted, and
might belong to a gentleman of limited means, though moving in the
better ranks of life; the windows were principally of that peculiar
form which was first introduced under the Tudors, as the pointed arch
of a preceding epoch began to bow itself down towards the straight
line in which it was extinguished not long after. The whole building
might have risen from the ground somewhat more than half a century
before the period of which we now speak, perhaps in the reign of Mary
Tudor, perhaps in that of her brother Edward; and yet I will not take
upon myself to say that the bloody and ferocious monster, their
father, might not have seen it as he travelled down into
Cambridgeshire. The colouring, indeed, was of that soiled and sombre
hue, which bespoke long acquaintance with the weather; and though
originally the glowing red bricks might have shown as rubicund a face
as any newly painted Dutch house at the side of a canal, they were now
sobered down with age, and grey with the cankering hand of time.
Although the garden was neatly kept, and somewhat prim, according to
the fashion of the day, and a bowling-green just within the terrace
was as trim and neatly shaved as if the scythe passed over it every
morning, nevertheless about the building itself were some signs and
symptoms of decay, the work of neglect, rather than of time. Instead
of neat and orderly pointing, the brickwork displayed, in various
places, many an unstopped joint; and though, doubtless, weather-tight
within, the stone coping was here and there broken, while one or two
of the chimneys, which were gathered into groups of four set
angularly, displayed the want of a brick in various places, which
destroyed their fair proportions, without perhaps affecting their
soundness.
It was in the year 1603, two hundred and forty years ago; reader, a
long time for you and me to look back to, but yet the men and women of
those days were the same creatures that we see moving round us at
present, with this slight difference, that they had been less inured
to restrain their passions, and conceal their feelings, than we are in
a more polished and civilized state of society. Two hundred and forty
years! What a lapse of time it seems; and yet to each of the many
whose lives have filled up the intervening period, their own allotted
portion, when they have looked back from the end of existence to the
beginning, has seemed but a mere point--a moment out of the long
eternity. To each, too, the changes which have taken place, and which
to us in the aggregate appear vast and extraordinary, have been so
slow and gradual, that he has scarcely perceived them, any more than
we notice the alteration which fashion effects in our garments as we
go on from year to year. Customs and manners, indeed, were very
different in those days, though human beings were the same; but we
must not stop to dwell upon minute particulars, or to detail forms and
ceremonies, for it is not so much our object to depict the fashions
and habits of that age, as to sketch a sad and extraordinary part of
its history.
Between six and seven o'clock on an evening in the month of May, while
the sky overhead was just beginning to be tinged with the hues of the
declining sun, and the old trees of the rookery, covered with their
young green leaves, looked almost autumnal in the various tints with
which spring had decked them, a gentleman of fifty-eight or fifty-nine
years of age walked slowly up and down upon the terrace which ran
along before the building. He was upright in figure, well made though
spare in form, rather below than above the middle height, calm and
sedate in his step, thoughtful and perhaps sad in the expression of
his countenance. His hair was quite white, soft, silky, and hanging,
as was then customary, in curls upon his neck. His eyebrows, which
like his hair and beard were colourless, were somewhat bushy and
arched. His mustachios were neatly trimmed, and his beard pointed, not
very long, but yet not cut round, as was the fashion with the younger
men of the day. He was dressed in black velvet, with shoes bearing
large black rosettes, a small hat with a single feather, and had no
ornament whatsoever about his person, unless the buttons of jet which
studded his doublet, and the clasp of the same material which fastened
his short cloak, deserved that name.
He was, indeed, altogether a very grave and serious looking personage,
with much mildness and benevolence as well as sagacity in his
countenance; and yet there was a certain slight turn of the lip, an
occasional twinkle of the eye, and a drawing up of the nostril, which
seemed to indicate the slightest possible touch of a sarcastic spirit,
which had, perhaps, at an earlier period been more unruly, though it
was now chastened by the cares, the sorrows, the anxieties, and the
experience of life.
He walked up and down, then, upon the terrace for some minutes, each
time he turned, whether at the one end or the other, gazing down the
course of the stream between the slopes of the hills towards the spot
where the road from London crossed the valley, and then again bending
his eyes upon the ground in meditation. Occasionally, however, he
would look up to the sky, or down into the bowling-green; and, after
one of the latter contemplations, he descended a flight of four stone
steps which led down to the greensward, with the same calm and sedate
step which had distinguished his promenade above; and taking up the
large, round, wooden ball which lay on the grass, he held it in his
hand for a moment, and then bowled it deliberately at a set of
skittles which had remained standing at the other end of the green.
The ball hit the pin at which it was aimed, which in its fall
overthrew a number of others, while the gentleman whose hand had
despatched the messenger of mischief on its errand, looked on with a
grave smile. There was evidently something more in the expression of
his countenance than mere amusement at seeing the heavy pieces of wood
tumble over one another, and he murmured to himself as he turned
away,----
"Thus it is with human projects--ay, the best intended and most firmly
founded; some accidental stroke overthrows one of our moral ninepins,
and down go the whole nine!"
So saying, he returned to the terrace, and raising his voice he cried,
"Lakyn, Lakyn!" upon which a stout old serving-man, with a badge upon
his arm, came out unbonneted to receive his master's commands.
"Take away those ninepins, Lakyn," said the gentleman, "they have no
business on the bowling-green; and put the bowls, too, under shelter.
It will rain before morning."
"God bless your worship," replied the servant, looking up to the sky,
"you are as weatherwise as a conjuror."
"Or a shepherd," replied the gentleman, resuming his walk; and the old
man proceeded to gather up the implements of the good old game of our
ancestors, muttering to himself, "Who would have thought it would rain
before morning with such a sky as that. He knows more than other men,
that's certain."
While he was busy with the bowls, his master's eye, glancing down
again as before to the spot where the road and the stream met, rested
on the figure of a single horseman coming from the direction of
London.
"There, Lakyn, Lakyn!" he exclaimed; "run in, and never mind the
bowls. Tell Sharpe to go round and take Mr. Seymour's horse at the
garden gate. I will meet him there."
The old man hastened to obey, and, with his usual composed step, Sir
Harry West--for such was the gentleman's name--proceeded from the
terrace, through the garden which we have mentioned, to the angle next
to the rookery, where he waited, leaning upon a little gate, till the
horseman he had seen on the road arrived at the spot. At the same
moment another old servant dressed in grey ran down panting, and
doffing his bonnet to the stranger with lowly reverence, held the
bridle while he dismounted.
The horseman then at a quick pace advanced to the gate, which was by
this time open to receive him, and with a look of glad and well
satisfied reverence kissed the hand of the master of the house. Sir
Harry West, however, threw his arm around him affectionately, and
gazed in his face, saying, "Welcome, my dear William, welcome! So you
are back from Flanders at length. 'Tis eighteen months since I have
seen you."
"'Tis a long time indeed, sir," replied the visitor; "but time has
made no change in you, I am glad to see."
"It has in you, William," answered Sir Harry West; "a great change,
but a good one--though why in our boyhood we should desire man's
estate I know not. 'Tis but a step to the grave. However, you are a
man now both in years and appearance, though you left me but a youth;"
and once more he gazed over the young gentleman's face and form, as we
look at a country we have known in our early years on returning after
a long absence, tracing the changes that have been made therein, and
sometimes perhaps regretting even the improvements.
The countenance and the form that he looked upon were not indeed ill
calculated to bear inspection, being those of an English gentleman of
about one or two and twenty years of age, and of the best class and
character. Now there can be little doubt to any one who has travelled
far and wide over distant lands, that the English people are, on the
whole--with the exception, perhaps, of some small tribes in the Tyrol,
and of one or two districts in Spain, where the Moorish blood has been
mixed with the Gothic--the handsomest race that this quarter of the
world called Europe can produce; and the young stranger was certainly
not inferior to any of his countrymen in personal appearance. He was
tall and evidently powerful in form, though some of the slightness of
youth was still there, and all its graces. His hair was dark brown and
curling in large waves, and his features were as fine as those of any
of the faces that poet, painter, or sculptor have ever dreamed or
portrayed.
There was, moreover, a peculiar expression in his countenance which
struck the eye more than even the beauty of the lines. It was an
expression of depth, of intensity, which sometimes may be seen in very
ugly faces, but which is sure to give them a charm which nothing can
take away. His manner, too, harmonized with the expression, and gave
it force. Before he spoke, especially when, as in the present case, he
was intimate with the person with whom he conversed, he paused for a
single moment, looking at him thoughtfully, as if seeking the spirit
within and addressing himself to it; so that it seemed that there was
a communication established between himself and those he loved
distinct from that of speech.
These things, though they be slight, have a considerable influence on
the intercourse of ordinary life; and as the sum of human existence is
made up of small things, (the greater events being but the accidents,)
all that affects their course has its importance.
Nor is dress, in general, altogether unworthy of attention. Somebody
has called it the habitual expression of a man's mind; and, though I
cannot agree to that definition in the full sense, yet, certainly,
where there is no impediment to his following his own wishes, a man's
dress affords strong indications of his tastes and habits of thought.
That of William Seymour was not studied, but yet it was such as well
became him; there was a certain degree of carelessness about the
slashed doublet, of dark green cloth, showing the white satin with
which it was lined here and there; but yet it fitted well. The cloak
of the same colour, with its edging of gold, was thrown lightly on the
shoulder, and the hat and plume not quite straight upon the head. As
if fond of the same hues, no other colours were used in any part of
his dress, even to the sheath of his sword and dagger, with the
exception of the large riding boots of untanned leather, which were
those commonly worn by all gentlemen in travelling. These of course
bore their own russet hue, and displayed marks of a long ride. The
rest of his dress also was somewhat dusty, for the day had been warm
and dry; and the roads of England were in those times not of the same
firm and solid consistence of which they may boast at present, so that
the garments of the traveller were generally more powdered with sand
in the summer, and more splashed with mud in the winter, though his
horse might display less frequently a pair of broken knees, and his
own head find a softer resting-place if he chanced to meet with a
fall.
Of the conversation which ensued at the garden gate between Sir Harry
West and William Seymour, I shall not stop to give the details.
Suffice it that the words of the traveller merely evinced his
satisfaction at seeing again one who had been the guide of his youth,
under whom he had first tried his arms in Ireland against Tyrone, and
who was, moreover, nearly related to him, being his mother's first
cousin; while those of Sir Harry West displayed little less pleasure
at seeing the boy whom he had educated in the way of honour, than if
he had been his only child. Talking over the events of the last
eighteen months, and mingling their conversation with many a reference
to former years, they passed through the garden and over the terrace
into the house.
There, over pleasant memories, amidst which there was but little to
forget,--for even pains and anxieties, strifes and fatigues, which
pass away, gain through the softening glass of memory a rosy hue,
mellowed yet warm,--they enjoyed an hour of that sweet intercourse
which can only be known to hearts conscious of high and upright
purposes; for the things on which remembrance dare not rest, are only
follies and vices. All accidental sorrows may be dwelt upon with
calmness, or recollected with gratitude to him who sent them; the
sorrows that spring from ourselves preserve their unmitigated
bitterness. But here there were none such to recal; and, though they
spoke of perils, ay, and disasters, of the loss of friends well loved,
of bright expectations disappointed, and of aspirations for their
country's good unfruitful, yet, in that old hall, no self-reproach
mingled with the theme of their discourse; and it was pleasant and
soothing both to the young man and the old.
There we will leave them for a certain time, to return to them ere
long.