ELIZABETH AND ESSEX: a tragic history Read Free Page A

before the game was played out he would "make her sit upon her tail and whine, like ane whippet hound." Long years passed, and then suddenly the rocks of Edinburgh Castle ran down like sand at Elizabeth's bidding, and Maitland took refuge from the impossible ruin in a Roman's death. Mary Stuart despised her rival with a virulent French scorn; and, after eighteen years, at Fotheringay, she found she was mistaken. King Philip took thirty years to learn the same lesson. For so long had he spared his sister-in-law; but now he pronounced her doom; and he smiled to watch the misguided woman still negotiating for a universal peace, as his Armada sailed into the Channel.
     
    Undoubtedly there was a touch of the sinister about her. One saw it in the movements of her extraordinarily long hands. But it was a touch and no more - just enough to remind one that there was Italian blood in her veins - the blood of the subtle and cruel Visconti. On the whole, she was English. On the whole, though she was infinitely subtle, she was not cruel; she was almost humane for her times; and her occasional bursts of savagery were the results of fear or temper. In spite of superficial resemblances, she was the very opposite of her most dangerous enemy - the weaving spider of the Escurial. Both were masters of dissimulation and lovers of delay; but the leaden foot of Philip was the symptom of a dying organism, while Elizabeth temporised for the contrary reason - because vitality can afford to wait. The fierce old hen sat still, brooding over the English nation, whose pullulating energies were coming swiftly to ripeness and unity under her wings. She sat still; but every feather bristled; she was tremendously alive. Her super-abundant vigour was at once alarming and delightful. While the Spanish ambassador declared that ten thousand devils possessed her, the ordinary Englishman saw in King Hal's full-blooded daughter a Queen after his own heart. She swore; she spat; she struck with her fist when she was angry; she roared with laughter when she was amused. And she was often amused. A radiant atmosphere of humour coloured and softened the harsh lines of her destiny, and buoyed her up along the zigzags of her dreadful path. Her response to every stimulus was immediate and rich: to the folly of the moment, to the clash and horror of great events, her soul leapt out with a vivacity, an abandonment, a complete awareness of the situation, which made her, which makes her still, a fascinating spectacle. She could play with life as with an equal, wrestling with it, making fun of it, admiring it, watching its drama, intimately relishing the strangeness of circumstance, the sudden freaks of fortune, the perpetual unexpectedness of things. "Per molto variare la natura è bella" was one of her favourite aphorisms.
     
    The variations in her own behaviour were hardly less frequent than nature's. The rough hectoring dame with her practical jokes, her out-of-doors manners, her passion for hunting, would suddenly become a stern-faced woman of business, closeted for long hours with secretaries, reading and dictating despatches, and examining with sharp exactitude the minutiae of accounts. Then, as suddenly, the cultivated lady of the Renaissance would shine forth. For Elizabeth's accomplishments were many and dazzling. She was mistress of six languages besides her own, a student of Greek, a superb calligraphist, an excellent musician. She was a connoisseur of painting and poetry. She danced, after the Florentine style, with a high magnificence that astonished beholders. Her conversation, full, not only of humour, but of elegance and wit, revealed an unerring social sense, a charming delicacy of personal perception. It was this spiritual versatility which made her one of the supreme diplomatists of history. Her protean mind, projecting itself with extreme rapidity into every sinuous shape conceivable, perplexed the most clear-sighted of her antagonists and deluded the most