CATHERINE OF BRA.GANcA..* JOHN EVELYN wrote in his Diary for

May 25th and 30th, 1662 :—

"I went this evening to London, in order to our journey to Hampton Court to see the new Queene, who having landed at Portsmouth had been married to the King a weeke before by the Bishop of London. . . . . The Queene ariv'd with a traine of Portuguese ladies in their monstrous fardingals or guard-infantas, their complexions olivader and sufficiently unagreeable. Her Majesty in the same habit, her foretop long and turn'd aside very strangely. She was yet of the handsomest countenance of all the rest, and tho' low of stature pretily shaped, languishing and excellent eyes, her teeth wronging her mouth by sticking a little too far oat; for the rest lovely enough."

This description of Catherine of Braganca is fairly well borne out by Stoop's portrait of her in the National Portrait Gallery, the portrait which when shown to Charles II. made him exclaim "That person cannot be unhandsome!" Though Catherine, who was marriel at twenty-three, must have been at least twenty when that portrait was painted, she looks like an unformed schoolgirl of sixteen. It is an innocent, simple face,—the face of a good, if rather stupid child, with a large lock of hair made into a hideous loop on the forehead, and the rest, brown and plentiful, descending to the shoulders in a stiff curled cascade. Of all the qualities which were needed to make a successful wife of Charles IL and a popular Queen of England, both tasks as difficult as any to be found in Europe, the Princess of that portrait possessed none. This, perhaps, is saying too much ; she had gifts that should have been desirable in any position. She was a good, pure-minded woman, and she had an affectionate, loyal nature, the whole devotion of which was given to Charles Stuart.

But Catherine knew infinitely less of the world and of real life than most young Princesses and noble girls of her day. She was not even educated to take her part in society, far less to be a Queen. Brought up in a convent in Lisbon till she was eighteen, she only left it for an equal seclusion in the Royal palace:—

" A lady of excellent parts, but bred hugely retired," writes Thomas Maynard to the Secretary of State. "She bath hardly been ten times out of the palace in her life. In five years' time she was not out of doors, until she heard of His Majesty's inten- tions to make her Queen of Great Britain, since which she bath been to visit two saints in the city, and very shortly she intends to pay her devotions to some saints in the country."

Mrs. Davidson, Catherine's most sympathetic biographer, expresses astonishment at the "wild stupidity" shown by Catherine's clever and distinguished mother, Queen Luiza, widow of good King Joao IV., and Regent for her miserable son Alfonso VI. The friendship between England and Portugal was one of her chief political objects—she had a really remarkable faith in the future of the Stuart dynasty— and a marringe between Charles and Catherine had been planned by her from their childhood :—

" Instead of the accomplishments which the princesses of other courts in Europe were assiduous in learning—instead of tact and skill and diplomatic manner and a charming address—Catherine had been taught to sing hymns to the Virgin, or to embroider altar-cloths. She was ignorant of courts or courtly intrigues. She knew nothing of men, or their hearts, or habits. She was uninformed of the first steps of the art of charming, in an age when to charm was to have power over the world With a different training, given her natural powers of person and mind, her sweetness and her high standard, she would have made a Queen of England who would have changed the destinies of the Stuarts, and come down to posterity with a name as resplendent as that of Anne or Elizabeth. Another mother, more wise than Queen Luiza, would have armed her child for the life she was bent on securing for her."

When she came to England Catherine could not speak or write either French or English; her only languages were Spanish and Portuguese. Charles, fortunately, could talk Spanish ; but Queen Henrietta Maria could not; and ,thus when her mother-in-law visited England the young Queen could only speak to her through an interpreter. The King's

• Catharine of Braganca Infanta of Portugal and Queen-Consort of England. Hy Lillian Campbell Davidson. With Portraits and illustrations. London: John Murray. [15s. net.] I neglect and the coldness of the Court, where she was never more than "tolerated." except by the very few noble characters

who belonged to it, threw her more and more entirely under the influence of her Portuguese ladies, more ignorant and bigoted than herself.

Perhaps, however, it is hardly fair to blame Queen LtliZit for all this. Although the alliance with England was so long an object of her ambition, it must be remembered that the

English Court had at this time no fine record, no traditional splendour, like that of Louis XIV. The long interregnum, and his actual life as a fugitive Prince, had deprived the King of England of a good deal of hereditary dignity. Queen Luiza may not, very naturally, have thought that Charles II. did her daughter any great honour by marrying her; on the contrary, she may well have considered England the gainer. Catherine's dowry was magnificent, at least on paper ; the money portion of it proved a disappointment ; but she brought with her the possession of Bombay, being thus the founder, for good or of our Empire in the East.

Then, again, Catherine's characteristic virtues, as well as her defects, would have made it hard for her, however carefully educated, to shine at the Court of Charles II. Good and sincere, passionately attached to a thoroughly bad husband, she was absolutely and naturally ignorant of any arts by which to attract and keep his affection. And, indeed, she would have been a marvellous Queen to hold her own against Charles's Duchesses and actresses, one more lovely, more

fascinating, more unscrupulous than another. Poor Marie Therese of France was suffering in the same way, at the same time, Louis and Charles being equally worthy grandsons of Henry IV., of White Plume memory ! Marie Therese took refuge in helpless sulks, and was utterly neglected. Catherine, perhaps, was the more fortunate of the two, for really Charles, with all his vices, was a better man than Louis XIV.,- kinder-hearted man, at least. In the early days of their marriage Catherine certainly gained his affection, and Mrs. Davidson thinks that with tact she might have kept it. We take leave to doubt this. In any case, Catherine was in- capable of tact. She set herself against his mistresses with a fury that angered and bored him all the more because it sprang quite as much from love as from religion or morality. Then when her steady opposition suddenly gave way, her personal isolation becoming unbearable, and when for love of him she began to treat Lady Castlemaine as a familiar friend, he misunderstood this new tactlessness so far as to conclude that "all the former anguish was fiction."

However, it may be set down to Charles's credit that he never lost his respect for Catherine, and that when her religion brought her into danger, owing to Titus Oates, his personal slanders and his imaginary plot, the King was her constant, all-powerful friend and protector. And no doubt, as life advanced, Catherine's position became far more bear- able. She knew what she had to expect, and she endured her fate with Royal dignity. Though, says Mrs. Davidson, she threw off something of her Portuguese stiffness, she never lost her queenliness, and her life of strict religion was an example—little noticed, it is true—in a Court of which a contemporary said: "If there be hell, it is here."

Mrs. Davidson's book gives an excellent, picturesque account of England, and especially of London, during Charles's reign; and all the leading figures of the time, men and women, are treated with interesting detail. But we think a biographer's chief end has been successfully reached: Catherine herself is and remains the central figure. One is able to study, with agreeable ease, the development of the stupid, affectionate little Princess, with the long, twisted "foretop" of Evelyn's description and Stoop's portrait, into the dignified woman who, driven out of London by the spiteful discourtesy of William and Mary, ended her life as the successful, victorious Regent of Portugal, and whose face in Gascar's picture deserves Mrs. Davidson's epithets of "grave, sweet, and strong."

In the case of a second edition, it would be as well to correct what must be a misprint, for it can hardly be a mis- translation, in a letter from Louis XIV. to Catherine. The date being 1662, Louis could not have been congratulated on the birth of his "grandson." Also, though here we may be mistaken, the death of Queen Henrietta Maria seems to be included among the events of the year 1667. The date of her death was in August, 1669.