THE SAYINGS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.*

Tins is a difficult book to review impartially in the Spectator. Our reason for this remark is to be found in the following passage traken from the introduction

" The first circulars announcing The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth bore the statement that my next book would be culled The Ability of Queen Elizabeth. And then, in its splendid review— splendid in its sympathy, appreciation, understanding, and helpful- ness—of the first book, the Spectator used these words : ' And now for a specific suggestion. Mr. Chamberlin, in his preface, tells us that he- is writing a full biography of Queen Elizabeth. That is good news. But as a " side-show " like the present work, why should he not bring out a volume of the sayings of the Queen, Dicta Magnae Reginae ? There arc plenty of them, and they all have an extraordinary thrill in them. . . . The book would be mead wherever the English language is spoken.' The publishers at ohce wrote to urge the point, and in the course of a short period I came to the conclusion that the Spectator was right—and hence this book."

There is a freshness, a vividness, and an unconven- tional fascination in Elizabeth's sayings which it is difficult to describe, but which, the moment the actual text is before one, seem to start from the page. The first impression that one gets is of Elizabeth's humanity. When you see all her sayings collected together one realizes that she was not a tyrannical ill-conditioned shrew as she is too often represented. A scold, no doubt, she often seemed ; but one sees that her bad temper was often a pose and was evidently so regarded by her courtiers and friends ; for real

friends she had in no small numbers. No doubt, in a sense, people were afraid of her and of her sharp tongue ; but it was not fear in a bad sense—not the fear which men have for a cruel, arbitrary, selfish tyrant of the really bad type, such as was Henry VIII. towards the end of his life, and

" net Sayings of goon Elisabeth. BY Frederick Chamberlin. London : John Laie. 116s. net.]

such as was James I. in his worst moods—i.e., when he sent Ralegh to the scaffold because he had lost in a game of political forfeits. Elizabeth would talk a great deal about cutting off people's heads, and sending them to the Tower, and doing all sorts of atrocious things ; but, unless the needs of the State seemed absolutely imperative to her, as in the case of Mary Queen of Scots, and it was the case of her life and her regime against that of an enemy, she did not want to kill, or imprison, or ruin. Though, no doubt, her courtiers - took cover while the storm was at its height, there was always a gentlemanly understanding between Her Grace and her household that she was really acting a comedy or a tragedy as the case might be, and that her bark was much worse than her bite. The Ministers of State, and even much smaller .

people, were able to console themselves while they were being trounced by the Queen by thinking that " it was only pretty Fanny's way." That was why the Queen was always so popular—we had almost said so widely.beloved. Her violence was but a pinch of pepper in a very excellent dish.

It must not be supposed, however, that we imagine Elizabeth not to have had a good deal of Machiavelli in her nature.

She certainly had a very perfect understanding of the springs of human action on the sinister side. Take the very remark- able passage in the speech which she made to a Committee of 1 otli Houses of Parliament, which had demanded that she should marry and name a successor. The whole speech is an excellent example of what we said just now of Elizabeth pretending to be much more fierce, arbitrary and tyrannical than she really was. In this-speech she appears to be knocking the heads of everybody together in a malicious fury, but

there is plenty of method in her madness. Take the following :—

" Kings were wont to honour philosophers ; but if I had such I would honour theni as angels that should have such purity in them that they would not seek when they are the second to be the first, and when they are _third to be the second, and so on. It is said I • am not divine. Indeed, I.studied nothing else but divine till I came to the Crown, and then I gave myself to the study of government, as was meet for one ; and I am not ignorant of history, wherein it appeareth what hath fallen out for ambition of kingdoms as in Spain, Naples, Portugal and at home ; and what cockings.hath been between the father and the son for the same ! As for mine own part, I care not for death, for all men are mortal ; and, though I be a woman, I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had."

This passage is memorable because it enshrines a view which Mr. Gladstone is said to have expressed at the end of his life, namely, that at the top there were no personal friend- ships. Elizabeth had certainly not found at the top any . angels who wanted to let their friends be first and themselves second. The passage from which we are quoting ends with so delightful a personal touch and one so characteristic of Elizabeth's poignant rhetoric that we must quote it :-

" I am your anointed Queen,, I will never be by violence con- strained to do anything. I thank God I am endued with such qualities that if I were turned out of the Realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in christome."

The human side of Queen Elizabeth is very well brought out in the passages which deal with her marriage. No doubt she was playing a tremendous part all through, and yet incidentally every now and then she shows herself as a woman

and not as a Sovereign. No doubt these womanish outbursts were perfectly well calculated and were introduced for a particular purpose. In other words, Elizabeth was quite • prepared if Convenient to Use her real self as a means of annoy-

ing or upsetting the persons that she wished to floor in a negotiation. For example, she told the Ambassador of

Ferdinand, the Emperor, who was urging her to marry the Archduke Charles :-

" I shall never have a husband who will sit all day by the fire. When I marry it will be with a man who can ride, and hunt, and' fight."

Elizabeth, however, could even turn on the tap of the greatly shod el woman of . refinement at a lover's rage. When Alencon told her that rather than give her up he would see them both perish, she, then a woman of forty-eight, answered as follows :- " You must not threaten a poor old woman in her own kingdom ; passion not eason speaks in you, or I would think you mad. I beg you not to use such dreadful words."

One can imagine political lovers, diplomatists, and am- bassadors retiring from such conquests like whipped hounds.- What was to be done with a woman who could silence you-by

•

pulling out first the political stop, then the sentimental stop, and then the shocked-woman-of-the-World stop in her mag- nificently human organ ? She could even produce a poem, and a fairly good poem, if the situation seemed to demand it.

Witness the poem on the departure of Alencon after her • final refusal. The poem begins :— " I grieve, yet dare not show my discontent ; I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate."

Well might they all have said : " C'est impossible de causer

avec une rein comme ca." When she liked, nobody could be more kindly and polite than Queen Elizabeth. She had a good deal of the scholar and historian in her, and when she met good old William Lambarde, the antiquary, Who in her old age came to show her a lot of tiresome discoveries of

manuscripts which he had made in the Tower, she sent the old man away enchanted :-

" `So being called away to prayer, she put the book in her bosom, having forbidden me from the first to the last to fall upon my knee before her; concluding, "Farewell, good and honest Lambarde!""'

• She declared that nothing had given her " so great delecta- tion " as the prosy old gentleman's talk and his manuscripts.

Remember, too, that it was in this interview that the Queen made that very shrewd remark in regard to the Essex plot :-

" W. L. : ' So her Majestic fell upon the reign of King Richard II., saying, "I am Richard II., know ye not that ? " ' W. L.: ' Such a wicked imagination was determined and at- tempted by a most unkind gent, the most adorned creature that ever your Majestie made.' • --Her Majestic :- He that will forget God, will also forget his benefactors ; this tragedie was played floats times in open streets and houses.' " Here is the tragedy not only of Richard II., but of Elizabeth, the First and Last. The " most unkind gent " is, of course, Essex. Poor Elizabeth ! It was, indeed, hard luck that she

should have had the Essex tragedy to darken her old age.

• Lest we should be accused of being too friendly to Elizabeth we must note the very terrible section of the book which includes the sayings of Queen Elizabeth which deal with Mary Queen of Scots. It is no good to pretend that there is not something cruel and degrading to the Qneen's personality in her deSire to get rid of Mary and yet to put the responsi- bility of her death upon the underlings rather than upon the principal. That was mean as well as wicked. What, no doubt, governed Elizabeth in the last resort was, not personal: feeling or jealousy, but the thought expressed in one of her sayings : " If Elizabeth is to live Mary must die." How- ever; we will not end on this sinister and unpleasant note, but rather upon the excellent collection of the Queen's random

• flashes and retorts, with which the book ends. Among the retorts we may take two excellent remarks. When Hatton. asked her him she would extricate herself from her promise

to marry Alencon, she answered :-

"With words !—the coin most current with the French : when . the field is large and the soldiers cowards, there arc always means of creeping out."

• When Mendoza has said to her :— • " Your Majesty will not hear words, so we must come to cannon, and see if you will hear them.' Ile writes that then ' Quietly, in her most natural voice, as if she were telling a common story, .she said : " If you use threats of that kind I will fling you into a dungeon." ' " The sayings of her last few days are very poignant. For instance, the remark to Lady Scroopc "I saw one night my own body exceedingly lean and fearful in a light of fire. Arc you wont to see sights in the night ? "

Then, too, the remark made to Lord Admiral Howard, who tried to persuade the Queen to return to her bed :—

" If you were in the habit of seeing such things in your bed, as I do when in mine, you would not persuade me to go there."

• Her last remark was indeed worthy of her. The Archbishop of Canterbury; who was praying by her bedside, .called to her mind her great accomplishments as a monarch. She put him off with a magnificent gesture of humility :—

" My lord, the crown which I have borne so long has given enough . of vanity in my time. I beseech you not to augment it in this hour when I am so near my death."

We take leave of Mr. Chamberlin's book with the feeling that he has produced not only a very useful handbook fOr . the . historian, but something much more important—a book which will give inspiration and delight 10 the whole ,English. . speaking world, for Queen Elizabeth is, like Shakespeare and the Bible, the admitted possession of iNitr-one who gpeaki

M•MIN11111••••••■

the English tongue. For good or evil, every man and woman who speaks the English tongue knows something about her. Where all the rest of the Kings and Queens of England are dim, she is seen by the light of a great torch, and a great torch that she lighted and carried in her own hand, and not the torches of others such as show the pinched face and the huge wig of Lciuis XIV. Elizabeth was no great image on a throne, but a hungering, thirsting woman, kin to us all,

and perhaps as English in her thoughts, her aspirations, and her way of looking at life as any mentber of our race who

ever lived. That is why she succeeded in loving her people so honestly and so well, although undoubtedly she began her reign with little but selfishness and pride. rivat

Regina ! J. ST. Lox STRACHEY.