HENRIETTA MARIA

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22195, 11 September 1937, Page 18

HENRIETTA MARIA

Queens are, as a rule, very uninteresting people to read about. Living, they are enmeshed in the artificial ceremony which surrounds royalty; and when the great realist death has touched them, they shrink back among the ever-increasing crowd of mere puppets whom historians make dance to the tunes of their fancy. There are, of course, exceptions: the great ones, Elizabeth and Victoria, the romantics, Mary Queen of Scots and Margaret of Navarre. Among these last, if she were better known, would stand the foreign consort of Charles I, whose whole life was' an uninterrupted chain of romance and adventure; but the delightful memoirs of Madame de Molleville are not easily available, and Henrietta Maria remains almost unknown. From the time when as a child of four she shared in the panic of her father's assassination and perchance saw his mangled body brought back to the Louvre, to the day when, amid the sombre pomp of a royal funeral, white-haired Bossuet rolled forth the most magnificent eulogy that ever set forth the graces and virtues of a daughter of the church, her life was one long adventure. Only once, for a brief period of years in the Indian summer of her love, did she enjoy peace, happiness, content. Let it be said at once that her life is no "chronique scandaleuse." The story, ill substantiated, of her secret marriage with Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, even if true, would be no challenge to her good fame; and besides this there is no suspicion of infidelity either to her husband living or to his memory dead. The difficulties of her early married life were due in the main to the domestic tyranny of her priggish husband. In part, too, they were the inevitable outcome of the religious and political strifes of the times in which they lived. In time the discipline of the churches of which they were devout children, together with certain changes in their environment, brought them a serene and peaceful love which was proof against the tragic happenings of their later years; and it lasted on the Queen's part to the end of her earthly life. Contrarieties The daughter of the gallant Henry of Navarre and that tiresome busybody, Marie de Medici, was brought up from her childhood in the strictest form of the Catholic religion, then struggling for life against the swelling forces of the Reformation. She was trained rather as a political and social unit than as an individual; but the strong tide of her father's blood | endowed her with an individuality j which gives her singular charm and' interest. Schooled in all the arts and graces of high society, acclaimed as a beauty, and recognised as a great personage, this daughter of France accepted without question the place allotted to her by the politics of her country as the wife of Charles I. At the age of 15 she went from the full-blooded Renaisance life of the French Court to the narrow, almost provincial, environment of the Stuart King. Her husband was romantic, it is true; he was handsome, it cannot be but melancholy withal, and so blameless as to be tiresome, so vacillating that all his schemes and projects came to nought. She had in common with him a firm faith in the doctrine of divine right and a devotion to the Catholic Church as staunch as that which bound Charles to the See of Canterbury. Nevertheless, in the small things that made their daily life, their tastes were different and their temperaments antagonistic. It was singularly unfortunate for their domestic peace that Charles had as his personal advisers the cynical, arrogant Duke of Buckingham and the narrow bigot, Laud—Buckingham, jealous of the pretty young wife; Laud, suspicious of the devoted Catholic who looked upon his claim to spiritual gifts and powers as a baseless pretence. The Bride's Welcome Henrietta was married by proxy in Notre Dame, vrith all the splendour which befitted a king's daughter, and from Paris made an almost royal progress to the coast. There her troubles began. Many days she waited for a favourable wind, and when at length she embarked on the sailing-boat which was to carry her across the Channel, she met with troubled and tempestuous seas, which delayed her for a miserable 24 hours. She landed at Dover late on a winter's evening, spent the night in the ill-furnished, shabby apartments of Dover Castle, and only next morning met her laggard bridegroom. In spite of her troubles, she met him with outstretched hands of welcome; he, in turn stately, shy, awkward, did the best he could to show her kindness. Next day the note of all their future discord was struck when the Queen's principal woman demanded a place with the happy pair in the royal coach. Charles forbade, fumed, protested, but at last the lady had her way; and they started on the long journey through rain, wind, and mud to London. The beauties of an English spring and summer must have done something to reconcile Henrietta to her new home; but soon the royal pair were at loggerheads. The King hated the crowd of foreigners who thronged the royal palace, flouted his authority, and muttered impertinences in excited, voluble French. The Queen clung to her ladies as compatriots and friends, the last links with her childhood and with home. The King feared the band of priests whose presence in London threatened to increase his difficulties, already acute, with his Protestant subjects. The Queen saw in the reverend fathers in en necessary to her soul's well-being and to the plans which she had for the conversion of England. The Queen's Ladies Meanwhile the Duke of Buckingham treated the little French girl with open insolence. The King was mad, enough to confide in this arrogant worldling not only the troubles of his hearth and home but even the intimacies of his married life. Tu crown all, as years went by no heir came to stabilise his shaky throne. So acute were the royal quarrels that at one time the King locked himself and Henrietta in the royal study; and when she in des-

A Forgotten, Unhappy Queen (SPECIALLY WBITTBJf FOB THE PRBSS.) [By G. M. L. LESTER.]

peration broke a window with her naked fists, he seized her and subdued her by force. The only comic interlude in this somewhat sad history was the Embassy of M. de Bassompierre, whom King Louis sent over to allay the irritation at Whitehall. Bassompierre was a gay puck of forty-five years, so . gay, indeed, that when five years later Richelieu laid him by the heels and lodged him in the Bastille he boasted that he had spent two days burning more than two thousand love letters from ladies of high and low degree. He came to Whitehall, he saw the Queen, but he by no means conquered; for the total result of this embassy was an amusing account of his stay in England, and the loss of two coaches and 40,000 francs worth of clothing on the return journey across the Channel. His mission, however, was not quite without fruit. Charles, who some months before had written to Buckingham to get the Queen's attendants out of England (in these ungentlemanly terms: "Force them away, driving them away like so many wild- beasts, until you have shipped them, and so the Devil go with them"), at last had his way. All but 60 of the Queen's ladies were deported; whether the devil went with them history sayeth not. The Queen perforce submitted, and in return the King made seemly arrangements for-the celebration of Mass in the royal palace, and allowed her her ecclesiastics all the liberties of their religion within the precincts of the Court. Brief Felicity Shortly after the mission of Bassompierre a change comes over the scene. Buckingham, on his return from the abortive expedition to Rochelle, was murdered by Fenton. Charles, struck to the heart, shut himself for two days in the seclusion of his room, and emerged a changed man. He found, as other weak monarchs have found, that he could not support the burdens of his dignity without the aid, comfort, and support of a wife. The generous Henrietta met him half-way; and in less than a year we find her writing to her sister Christine that she is "not only the happiest princess, but the happiest woman in the world." Her happiness was soon completed by the arrival of the first of her numerous children. In the National Portrait Gallery in London there hangs a beautiful portrait of the happy Queen, painted at this time, and not far off, in one of >the King's collections, there is a delightful group of her children, clustering round the future Charles 11. He looks a roguish youth, and so he was. When quite a boy he refused to take medicine at the command of the Royal Physician. His mother wrote saying that if he tiid not take it she would come home arid make him. He duly obeyed, but saved his boyish dignity by this delightful note to his .Governor: My Lord, . I would not have ypu. much Phlsick, for it make me worse, and I think it will do the like with you. I * ride every* day and am ready to follow any other directions from you. Charles P. This peaceful time was not to last. Soon the war clouds of rebellion ushered in the Civil War, which was to leave the Queen a widow and her children outcasts. Of the intimacies of these unhappy years I will say nothing, except that through all; their storm and stress the Queen' never failed in courage or in lovei and loyalty to her husband. One; belated spring time she had, before curtain rang down on her happiness for ever. The King's fortunes j were at a low ebb, but not quite! desperate; and the Court and Parlia- i ment for a brief space found security in Oxford. The staid University was the refuge of a brilliant Court. The Queen lodged in Merton College. The college chapel, which had never heard the murmur of the Mass since the Reformation, woke up to the splendour of the Roman ritual. Gallants and fair ladies flocked through the streets. Picnics, masques, dances, strolls in fair academic gardens kept alive the drooping hopes of the sorely tried Royalists! Fair ladies in diaphanous dresses, looking like angels, frequented the college chapels. Life once more was fair and gay, but for the news of ill successes in the field and the ominous groups of wounded who found their way into the quiet city. Fallen Fortunes This gleam of sunshine could not last. The Parliament triumphed and the Kings cause was lost. The Queen, ill, only just recovering after a confinement, fled in many disguises, through much tribulation by the way to France, leaving to Charles this touching missive: I am giving you the strongest proof ?L l °Zt vi at l c t an glve - I a "> hiding my life that I may not incommode your affairs. Adieu, my dear heart If I die, believe that you will lose a person who has never been other than «%?hZ £ OUrs ' b * her affecforget ner 65 * yOU should not Prematurely aged, desperately ill in rags, she was kindly welcomed by the French Court, whose pensioner I she was until the Restoration. She lavished what money she had on exiled Royalists, and fought the rung s battle from over the sea with undaunted courage and resource It was a miserable, anxious life—how miserable may be gathered from the tact that one snowy winter's day Cardinal de Retz found her in bed in a lodging with her little daughter Minette beside her, afraid to get up because she had no fuel to whnA e: She , Was literallv swing, and it speaks well for the slippery cardinal that he sent for faggots, food, and wine, nor did he leave her penniless, for he secure!

from the Government an immaftpl grant of 40,000 francs. ntl When the dreadful neff 'jf Charles's execution reached Big etta, she was stricken to the *g From time to time she found WWP and rest in the little convent ofljf which she had founded. It is ««* ous coincidence that she bough* W site from the bankrupt estate fItPJ gay M. de Bassompierre, whastjjg bassy she had received at WhßlHjf After the Restoration she rCMrtP to England and played a part MP tortuous politics of her son. Ijjf again, for the last time, she retßßPt to her little Chateau of Cc4oa*«W! the much-loved house of peMUT* Chaillot. At the age of 60 shfg the innocent victim of a doctMflgg take. Vallot, Louis XIVs pnyaffcft prescribed a powder to malajgtl sleep; her own doctor, M4JWR warned her against it Bat-.'g night, longing for peace, she «S it and fell into the sleep that *Mf no waking. Bossuet preached her magnificent Louis provided hcf eral; and her body was laMjEft in the abbey church of St. PM»T which her forefathers for maBSWL erations had found their last W»» place.