On inquiry for the private apartments, I was directed to another Girzy,
who took me up to a suite of rooms appropriated to the use of the Earl
of Breadalbane, and furnished very much like lodgings for a guinea a
week in London.
“And which was Queen Mary’s chamber?”
“Ech! sir! It’s t’ither side. I dinna show that.”
“And what am I brought here for?”
“Ye cam’ yoursell!”
With this wholesome truth, I paid my shilling again, and was handed over
to another woman, who took me into a large hall containing portraits of
Robert Bruce, Baliol, Macbeth, Queen Mary, and some forty other men and
women famous in Scotch story; and nothing is clearer than that one
patient person sat to the painter for the whole. After “doing” these, I
was led with extreme deliberativeness through a suite of unfurnished
rooms, twelve, I think, the only interest of which was their having been
tenanted of late by the royal exile of France. As if anybody would give
a shilling to see where Charles the Tenth slept and breakfasted!
I thanked Heaven that I stumbled next upon the right person, and was
introduced into an ill-lighted room, with one deep window looking upon
the court, and a fireplace like that of a country inn—the state chamber
of the unfortunate Mary. Here was a chair she embroidered—there was a
seat of tarnished velvet, where she sat in state with Darnley—the very
grate in the chimney that she had sat before—the mirror in which her
fairest face had been imaged—the table at which she had worked—the
walls on which her eyes had rested in her gay and her melancholy
hours—all, save the touch and mould of time, as she lived in it and
left it. It was a place for a thousand thoughts.
The woman led on. We entered another room—her chamber. A small, low
bed, with tattered hangings of red and figured silk, tall, ill-shapen
posts, and altogether a paltry look, stood in a room of irregular shape;
and here, in all her peerless beauty, she had slept. A small cabinet, a
closet merely, opened on the right, and in this she was supping with
Rizzio when he was plucked from her and murdered. We went back to the
audience chamber to see the stain of his blood on the floor. She
partitioned it off after his death, not bearing to look upon it.
Again—“poor Mary!”
On the opposite side was a similar closet, which served as her dressing
room, and the small mirror, scarce larger than your hand, which she used
at her toilet. Oh for a magic wand, to wave back, upon that senseless
surface, the visions of beauty it has reflected!