In Byways of Scottish History. Louis Auguste Barbé
Guild, of Glasgow, afforded us an opportunity of forming an opinion based on the evidence of his remarkable collection of portraits of the Queen of Scots – a collection which comprised, besides reproductions of most of the paintings claiming to be authentic, a series of over four hundred engravings, many of them by Clouet, and dating from the period of Mary's stay in France. We were compelled to agree with the possessor of that unique iconography that none of them showed the dazzling charms which poets and chroniclers have celebrated. And the portraits which various exhibitions have since then enabled us to examine, have only confirmed that earlier judgment. To reconcile this very striking contradiction seems difficult. Possibly the truth may be that the fascination of Mary's face consisted less in the regularity of outline or the striking beauty of any one feature than in the expression by which it was animated.2 Her complexion, though likened by Ronsard to alabaster and ivory,3 does not seem to have possessed the clearness and brilliancy which the comparison implies; for Sir James Melville, though anxious to vindicate his Queen's claim to be considered "very lovely" and "the fairest lady in her country", acknowledged that she was less "white" than Elizabeth.4 The brightness of her eyes, which Ronsard likened to stars, and Chastelard to beacons,5 has not been questioned; but their colour is a point about which there is less unanimity, opinions varying between hazel and dark grey. As regards her hair the discrepancy of contemporary authorities is even greater. Brantôme and Ronsard describe a wealth of golden hair, and this is to a certain extent confirmed by Sir James Melville, who, when called upon by Elizabeth to pronounce whether his Queen's hair was fairer than her own, answered that "the fairnes of them baith was not their worst faltes".6 To this, however, must be opposed the testimony of Nicholas White, who, writing to Cecil in 1563, described the Queen as black-haired. The explanation of this may possibly lie in Mary's compliance with the fashion, introduced about this time, of wearing wigs. Indeed, Knollys informed White that she wore "hair of sundry colours",7 and, in a letter to Cecil, praised the skill with which Mary Seton – "the finest busker of hair to be seen in any country" – "did set such a curled hair upon the Queen, that was said to be a perewyke, that showed very delicately".8
According to one account, the Queen of Scots wore black, according to another, auburn ringlets on the morning of her execution. Both, however, agree in this, that when the false covering fell she "appeared as grey as if she had been sixty and ten years old".
Mary's hand was white, but not small, the long, tapering fingers mentioned by Ronsard9 being, indeed, a characteristic of some of her portraits. She was of tall stature, taller than Elizabeth, which made the Queen of England pronounce her cousin to be too tall, she herself being, according to her own standard, "neither too high nor too low".10 Her voice was irresistibly soft and sweet. Not only does Brantôme extol it as "trés douce et trés bonne",11 and Ronsard poetically celebrate it as capable of moving rocks and woods,12 but Knox, although ungraciously and unwillingly, also testifies to its charm. He informs us that, at one of her Parliaments, the Queen made a "paynted orisoun", and that, on this occasion, "thair mycht have been hard among hir flatteraris, 'Vox Dianæ!' The voice of a goddess (for it could not be Dei) and not of a woman! God save the sweet face! Was thair ever oratour spack so properlie and so sweitlie!"13
When, to this description, we have added that Mary Stuart was of a full figure14 and became actually stout in later life; that she is described in the report of her execution and represented in several portraits as having a double chin, we shall have given a picture of her which, though wanting in some details, is as complete as it is possible to sketch at this length of time.
Mary Stuart is not infrequently mentioned as one of the precocious children of history. But the legend of her scholarly acquirements originates with Brantôme, an authority not always above suspicion when the glorification of princes is his theme, and it is not unnecessary to look more closely into the matter before we accept his glowing panegyric of the youthful prodigy. He informs us that Mary was "very learned in Latin",15 and that, when only thirteen or fourteen years of age, she publicly delivered at the Louvre, in the presence of King Henry II, Catherine de' Medici, his Queen, and the whole French Court, a Latin discourse which she had composed in justification of her own course of studies, and in support of the view that it is befitting in women to devote themselves to letters and to the liberal arts. This speech is also referred to by Antoine Fouquelin in the dedication of a textbook of Rhetoric which he composed for the young Princess.16 He records the admiration with which Mary had been listened to by the noble company, and the high hopes which the elegant oration had awakened. That she herself set some value on this production may be assumed from the fact that she was at the pains of translating it into French; and the mention of it in the inventory of books delivered by the Earl of Morton to James VI in 1578, where it appears as "ane Oratioun to the King of Franche of the Quenis awin hand write", would seem to imply that she looked back with pride upon her youthful triumph. This interesting manuscript has now disappeared; nevertheless, it is not impossible to obtain from another source a fairly accurate idea of the speech which called forth such high praise from the French courtiers. It happens that the National Library in Paris possesses the Latin themes written by Mary Stuart in 1554, the year before the oratorical performance at the Louvre. Amongst the exercises contained in the morocco-bound volume, fifteen refer to the same subject as the speech, and, it is fair to suppose, were intended as a preparation for the princely pupil's "speech-day".17 Disappointing as it may be to ardent admirers of the Queen of Scots, it must be admitted that her themes do not bear out the praises bestowed on her Latinity, but contain such solecisms as would probably have been fraught with unpleasant consequences to a less noble and less fair scholar. Neither need the substance of Mary's apology for learned women excite our enthusiasm. To string together, with a few commonplace remarks, lists of names evidently supplied by her tutor and taken by him from Politian's Epistles, was no very remarkable achievement on the part of a child who, if she began her classical studies as early as her fellow pupil and sister-in-law Elizabeth did, had already devoted fully five years to Latin at the date of her famous speech.
But, though the Queen's early proficiency may have been overrated, there can be no doubt that, in later life, she possessed considerable familiarity with the language of Virgil and of Cicero. We know from contemporary letters that, after her return to Scotland, she continued her studies under Buchanan18 and that, faithful to the habit which she had acquired in France, of devoting two hours a day to her books,19 she regularly read "somewhat of Livy" with him "after her dinner".
The catalogue of the books20 contained in the royal library affords further information as to the nature and extent of her acquaintance with Latin literature. In it we find mention, amongst others of lesser note, of Horace, Virgil and Cicero, of Æmilius Probus and Columella, of Vegetius and Boethius. Neither did she neglect the Latinity of the Middle Ages. In prose it is represented by such forgotten names as those of Bertram of Corvey, of Ludolph of Saxony, of Joannes de Sacrobosco, and of Nicolaus de Clamangiis, the authors of ponderous treatises on science and on theology; the latter subject being one which her interest in the great ecclesiastical revolution of the age rendered particularly attractive to her. Amongst contemporary Latin poets her favourites seem to have been Petrus Bargæus, Louis Leroy, Sir Thomas Craig of Riccarton, and George Buchanan, whose dedication to her of his translation of the Psalms has not unjustly been pronounced to stand "unsurpassed by all the verses that have been lavished upon her during three hundred years by poets of almost every nation and language of Europe".21
Whether
As bearing on the subject of Mary's personal appearance and the fidelity of her portraits, the following passages from an article contributed to the
T. Wright's
G. Chalmers,
Melville's
T. v, p. 86.
Teulet,
T. v, pp. 83-4.
Letter from Randolph to Cecil, 7 April, 1562.