Mary Queen of Scots (34 page)

Mary Stuart had her resplendent side, when she appeared to her subjects as Diana the goddess of the chase; but she also had another charming and touchingly domesticated side to her character in marked contrast to this dazzling public
persona.
This paradox is stamped on many of her actions, which hover between the imperious deeds of the woman born a queen, who loved to shine in the eyes of her people, and the more clinging reactions of a woman, who was after all markedly feminine, in temperament as well as in sex. She adored small dogs, as well as the great hounds of the chase, and this trait did not wait for the cramped conditions of her captivity to manifest itself: there is mention in her inventories of pretty blue velvet colours for the queen’s little dogs; a daily ration of two loaves of
bread was set apart for them; payment was made to the boys who looked after them, and occasionally they were sent to France. She loved to embroider, and is described as sitting at her Council, placidly plying her needle, a model of the compliant female. Mary Stuart was also marked all her life, in its early no less than in its later stages, by extreme attachment to her servants, particularly her own personal attendants, with whom she felt she could share her joys and woes without fear either of their presumption or of their disloyalty. Mary’s court therefore had an agreeably intimate character, which spread outwards from the feminine side of its queen’s own nature. There were certainly indoor pleasures enough to be enjoyed. The queen had a gambling streak, as her mother had had before her, and loved to play at cards or at dice, losing a jewel of crystal set in gold to her father-in-law Lennox on one occasion. She enjoyed biles or billiards, and in Lent 1565, before they were married, Mary and Darnley together lost an agate ring and brooch worth 50 crowns to Mary Beaton and Randolph, a debt which Darnley gallantly paid. Mary enjoyed backgammon, and also chess, her library including
The Rules of Chesse
translated from French by William Caxton in 1474. She loved to watch the plays of puppets, a new fashion which had lately spread out of Italy.
¹⁶

Mary was also a considerable linguist, and the number of languages which she had learned as a child in France was reflected in her reading-matter. Besides French, Latin, Scots books, and a few English volumes, there were books in Italian and Spanish – while the presence of books in the original Greek suggest that the queen either understood a smattering of Greek herself, or else had at least an interest in the culture of the Greeks. At all events her library was extensive: from the two incomplete lists of it made at Holyrood in 1569 for the Regent Moray, after she had fled to England, and in 1578 at Edinburgh Castle, it is possible to form at least some impression of her literary tastes.
§
¹⁷
Her library was kept at Holyrood in a green-carpeted room, and by 1566 her collection of Greek and Latin books had grown sufficiently large to be left by her in her will to the university of St Andrews. There were a quantity of Latin books in the original, not only the Livy which we know from Randolph that she read daily after dinner with George Buchanan, but also Horace, and a quantity of medieval and modern Latin prose, including the famous copy of Buchanan’s translation of the Psalms. This was dedicated by him to Queen Mary in Latin in lines which are strangely poignant when one recalls that it was later Buchanan who was to be Mary’s chief traducer:

Greek authors represented included Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides and Plato, and there were French translations of the classics such as Suetonius, Plutarch, Ovid and Cicero. Italian books numbered the
Decameron
, Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso
, Petrarch, and Marcus Aurelius translated into Italian.

By far the greatest proportion of the books is, of course, in French. English books are rare, but include the Acts of Parliament of Queen Mary Tudor, less frequently browsed over one feels than the volumes of history and French poetry, which seem to have been Mary Stuart’s real loves. Brantôme bore witness to her genuine passion for poetry – her library includes the works of Clément Marot, du Bellay and Ronsard, all poets she had known and loved in France. Mary seems to have had a preference also for medieval romances either of the Arthurian legends or the story of Roland. Melville reports that when she had leisure from the affairs of the state ‘she read upon good books, the history of diverse countries’
¹⁸
– books such as the chronicles of the emperors and kings of Austria, found in the list of Edinburgh Castle, and histories of the medieval kings of France. The colourful mixture of event and character to be found in history evidently appealed to her – it is obvious from her answers at her trial in England, and her conversations with Paulet at the end of her life, that she had read and pondered on English history. In short, her library shows the typical all-round tastes of what might be termed an educated Renaissance woman who enjoyed reading widely as her fancy listed – as well as the individual touches to be found in any library, such as
The Book of Hunting
(the sort of book which might also be found in the fine library of any eighteenth-century English gentleman), a book on astronomy, and dutifully enough the bound sermons and prayers of her uncle the cardinal of Lorraine.

There are three books on music listed: for music Mary Stuart would seem to have had a profound feeling which, like her love of poetry, appealed to the romantic, rather than the inquisitive, side of her nature. She herself played on both the lute and virginals, and as she plucked her lute strings she loved to display those long white fingers, which Brantôme and Ronsard admired. Although Melville in his famous interview with Queen Elizabeth described Mary as playing only ‘reasonably well’ for a queen, the verdict of Mary’s contemporaries who did not have to discuss the matter with her jealous rival is more generous.
¹⁹
Mary had a charming soft singing voice which, like her speaking voice, won the admiration of her listeners, and on whose natural ability Conaeus commented. Musical talent played its part in the selection of her valets of the bed-chamber – later it influenced the choice of Riccio; in 1561 she had five violas and three players on the lute, and some of the valets of the bed-chamber also played and sang, so that Mary could beguile the long dark Scottish winter evenings with the sort of little musical supper parties which she had enjoyed in France. The queen also loved to have music to accompany her Mass; at first this presented a problem, since the chapel organs had been destroyed at the time of the Reformation as being profane instruments, with the exception of that at Stirling which the mob could not reach. In 1562 Randolph reported her as being desolate because no one would play at her mass on Christmas Day;
²⁰
however, by April 1565 she had a band of musicians, and at Easter High Mass Randolph furiously noticed that ‘she wanted now neither trumpets, drum, nor fife, bagpipe or tabor’.
²¹

The skill of Mary Stuart for which Knox had a particular loathing, which summed up to him everything he detested about her character, education and upbringing, was her dancing. There was a genuine and irreconcilable difference of attitude. To Knox, dancing seemed truly an invention of the devil, something which good women never practised; in his opinion, the activities which Mary got up to whenever she was alone with her ‘French fillocks, fiddlers and others of that band’ made the whole atmosphere more like a brothel than a place for honest women. If we are to believe Knox, in December 1562 Mary danced excessively ‘beyond midnight’ out of glee, because she had received the news that the persecution of the Huguenots had begun again in France.
²²
He immediately resorted to his favourite weapon of the denunciation of the pulpit, as a result of which Mary summoned him to their second interview, some eighteen months after the first.

She received him in her chamber, attended by Lord James, Maitland and Morton. Knox proceeded to qualify his condemnation of dancing with certain provisos – he said that he was prepared to tolerate dancing if the principal vocation of the dancer was not neglected, and that the dancers
took care not to dance as the Philistines did, for the pleasure they took in the displeasure of God’s people. If they did fall into either of these two heinous errors, they should ‘receive the reward of dancers, and that will be drunk in hell, unless they speedily repented’. Mary Stuart on the other hand had been brought up in France to dance, and she danced well and elegantly; in the words of Melville, once more jealously cross-examined by the queen of England, she danced ‘not so high and disposedly’ as Elizabeth, but in Conaeus’s less inhibited phrase she danced most ‘gracefully and becomingly’. With Mary Stuart, dancing was a natural expression of her pleasure in life, as well as an artistic performance; it is small wonder therefore if the young queen, just nineteen, dancing with the ladies of her court in a carefree but hardly unseemly fashion, should have felt that of the two of them it was Knox, and not her, who was the Philistine.

In her dress, at least, Mary Stuart was able to give the femininity of her nature full reign, because to be magnificently attired was expected of a sixteenth-century queen, by all except the most bigoted and puritanical. Even in childhood, she had been distinguished by a keen interest in clothes when she teased her governess into letting her have as splendid gowns as the princesses of France. When she grew up, and had what virtually amounted to a constitutional duty to dress herself elegantly, she did so with innate good taste – lacking her cousin Elizabeth’s inclination to bedizen herself ostentatiously, possibly because she was conscious that unlike Elizabeth she had the sort of beauty which was best set off by rich simplicity. Of course a large proportion of her time as a young woman was spent in mourning – for her mother, her father-in-law, and finally for her husband. The outward signs of grief were taken extremely seriously at this period – it has been noted that she was wearing black when she first arrived in Scotland – after Francis had been dead a year, in December 1561, the court went into half-mourning but Mary herself did not totally cast off her mourning until she married Darnley four years later. Perhaps she understood how to make her many black accoutrements a dramatic foil for her red-golden hair, white skin and golden eyes; for the same reason, white appears and reappears throughout the list of dresses in her wardrobe there being perhaps no better setting for a glowing complexion than a white dress: the list of her robes, with their descriptions and colours, fully explains how she came to be known as
‘la reine blanche’
in France. Indeed her detailed wardrobe books show the intense interest which Mary Stuart took in every detail of her clothes: there are lists of all the articles delivered from the wardrobe at Holyrood each month from the beginning of 2 September 1561 to June 1567 when the nobles took arms against her.
²³
Ordinarily, she wore dresses of camlet (a sort of mohair), damask or serge, stiffened in the neck with buckram, and mounted with lace and ribbons; the queen was also fond of loose dresses (
‘à l’Espagnole’
); her riding skirts and cloaks were of Florentine serge, often edged with black velvet or fur. Beneath her gowns were
‘vasquines’
, stiffened petticoats or farthingales to hold out her skirts, expanded with hoops of whale bone to give a crinoline effect. Her underwear included silk doublets, and there is mention of
‘brassières’
of both black and white silk. Her ‘woven hose’ often were made of gold and silver, and it is specifically mentioned that they were of silk. Her hats and caps were of black velvet and taffetas – her veils of white.

On state and ceremonial occasions, the queen’s clothes were universally glittering. The inventory of the queen’s dresses made at Holyrood in February 1562
²⁴
lists 131 entries, including sixty gowns, of cloth of gold, cloth of silver, velvet, satin and silk. There are fourteen cloaks, five of which are in the Spanish fashion, and two royal mantles, one purple velvet and the other furred in ermine. There are thirty-four
vasquines
and sixteen
devants
or fronts (stomachers), mainly of cloth of gold, silver and satin. The dresses themselves ranged from the favourite white – often with silver fringes and embroidery – and preponderant black, to crimson velvet, orange damask embroidered in silver; the embroidery was so rich and detailed, that it was often passed from dress to dress, and listed separately among the jewellery.

Not only Mary’s dresses, but also her jewels were of enormous importance to her: these of course represented something more than adornment, since by being treated as solid financial assets, they could be given as presents, held for security, or sold to pay troops, if necessary. In her childhood, Mary Stuart was decked by her attendants in those jewels considered fit for an infant queen; in Scotland she enjoyed the enhancement of a series of romantic gems; later in her life, her jewels were to enjoy a career as checkered as her own, as they were stolen, seized, sold to Elizabeth, or pawned, all to her violently expressed anguish. The inventory of her jewellery, made also in 1562,
²⁵
contains 180 entries, an increase of twenty-one over the inventory of the queen’s jewels made at the time of her departure from France – new acquisitions include a cross of gold set with diamonds and rubies which Mary had just redeemed for £1,000 from the hands into which it had been pledged by Mary of Guise. She had also acquired some new Scottish pearls from an Edinburgh goldsmith, for Scottish pearls were held to share with Bohemian pearls the honour of being the finest in Europe, although still rated as inferior to the pearls of the Orient. As she loved white, so the queen seems to have had an especial affection for pearls – it was noted that she was wearing two of a group of
twenty-three pearls in her ears at the actual moment when the inventory is taken. But rubies she also seems to have admired, as she loved to wear crimson velvet; and among her profusion of rings, necklaces and ear-rings, there is mention of enamel, cornelian and turquoise, as well as, of course, gold and diamonds.