REAL QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Western Star, 31 January 1922, Page 4

REAL QUEEN ELIZABETH.

RELENTLESS TUTJOtt RULER:

Mr Frederick Chamberlin, the author of 'The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth,' unfolded tho other day his theories concerning Queen Elizabeth as. a compound of weak and Abnormal, ■physique .and overpowering force of character.

Queen Elizabeth was, without, question, the most remarkable monarch who ever sat on a throne of Europe. Mr Chamberlin does not succeed (that, perhaps, is not his' aim) in sumeeting the., tremendous ability of the" woman—relentless, unscrupulous, th e supreme daughter of the Renaissance, audi the on,e successful English pupil of Machiavelli—who first made England a great European Power.. The story of the struggle with Spam and the intrigues with France certainly could not be told in a single volume of no great length. Mr Chamberlain's ambition is to prove that Elizabeth was intellectually a giant, physically diseased and morally chaste.

.Referring to her intellectual equipment, Mr°Ohamberlin says: All through ,her life, whenever free from the tremendous responsibilities of her position, until she was more than tfxty-five, she made translations, a number'of which have been preserved, from* the best Greek and Latin authors; and when, in her sixty-fourth year, an inexperienced Polish Ambassador made her a .slighting speech, -she 'turned on him. with a long, angry, extempore of Latin that not only took away his breath, but that of ('the listening Court, while she—how like a woman,!—as soon, as the- gale had! passed, buret out laughing, with tbe remark: "God's death, my lords! I have been enforced this day to 1 scour up my old Latin." The simple fact is that Henry VIII, a very learned man, 'ft very cultured man—and' again we speak in the twentieth-century -sense of the terms —a- master of four modern languages, as well as the classical, a. musician, a composer, an author, a student of the beet in ancient and modern literature, an historical scholar, and an enthusiastic promoter of learning and its institutions, had decreed that his three legitimate children should have the best education that the world could then afford. Correspondence between Elizabeth and Edward was conducted in Latin, French, and Italian, and they habitually spoke these tongues. The Queen, indeed, when an old woman, confided to one "of the French Ambassadors that when cshe came to the throne she knew six foreign languages fetter than she did her own. ■ History, astronomy, mathematics, logic, philosophy, architecture, music, poetry, were pursued indefatigaibly ell day long, for she was fascinated ly learning; but the particular, bent of her mind is shown in the fact that it was her habit to spend at least hours each ,day upon history. When Elizabeth was a girl of fifteen she was accused of being the mistress of- Thomas Seymour brother of the Lord! Protector., She defended herself with amazing skill and courage, but Mr Cbamberik suggests that the charge and the ■worries that surrounded her during tho'reign of her sister Mary made her neurotic, and permanently injured her health. The clothes of" the day added to her physical troubles. "When we 'ook at the full-length portraits of Quee"n Elizabeth if is clear that she must nave suffered from tight-lacing: Corsets- were 'very faultily constructed in her time, and the supports of the petticoats involved further impediments to free respiration." Mr Chamberlin, whose industry is prodigious, and: who has consulted many contemporary authorities neglected by other historians, has compiled the Queen's medical record and submitted to five eminent doctors, whose conclusions ■he quotes. Sir Arthur Keith says:— '

The results of my reading of tho symptoms are these: There can he no doubt that Elizabeth was a fully and completely formed W/Oman. . . • Her chief complaint is best explained 'by supposing that she suffered from aiuemia coining on just after—or, rather, in—the opening years of her sexual life. The swelling of the face and body, tbe pallor, the giddiness, the swoons seem all to point to yuch a. diagnosis'. Then follows a period of stomach-liver derangements. Later still there was a period with a septic condition of her mouth,, particularly of her teeth. She seems to have died from, a septic condition arising from the -condition, of the liKoutb. , The pain i'in her left arm may have been rheumatism. I think all who suffer from pyorrhea, also suffer from chronic rheumatism. But it may also have been angine pectoris, for there are signs which suggest that her arteries may have been diseased. ...

Sir Arthur Keith adds: Elizabeth had inherited a very active brain; the progress of her scholarship, her penmanship and needlework, in quite early life, shows that it was a- brain of exceptional power. From her fifteenth year until her twenty-sixth it was the acuteness of her brain which kept her head on her body. Was ever any other girl's life spent in. such a school for playing for safety—of playing one party off against another P Then when she got a crown -she had to keep that •poised on. her head by balancing one power against another Protestant and Catholic, aristocrat and plobian, Kings of .Spain and France, not to speak of Ireland), Scotland, tho Low Countries, and one politician against another. .' . .

, Elizabeth had the advantage of her defects as a stateswoman; she: -paid the penalty for her defects' in a feelimt of ill-being and often positive dllionlth. In a mndical sense her sexual system was blasted!; she had neither the instinct of sweetheart nor mother --for these instincts are impassible in such a frame as heiv. How she tveated women I do not- know; but I should suspect she could not stand to eec near her those whom Nature had fitted out with her finest paraphernalia, while she had lost her hair audi her good looks. We know more about 'her treatment of men; -he liked them young, she liked them handsome, but only in ko' far as £h.ey

served- her purpose. I think her selfishness —for her crown' and her kingdom as- much as for herself—must- be sought in her really sexless condition. Even the sexless indivic\ial has an attenuated faculty of playing; oh the surface of love—of sniffing the fruit which they have not the capacity of tasting. Elizabeth toyed with her young men,but one cannot conceive more than t'hat. Her /Condition freed her from the bonds which bind most women; but in exchange she had to bear other bonds—the misery of disturbed health and ill-being. —'Malevolent Intentions. — There are, therefore, physical reasons for rejecting the commonly accepted stories of Elizabeth's irregular moral life. Mr Chamberlain examines the evidence on which these charges rest with a lawyer's thoroughness. Most of it is hearsay- He points out that '~ no ambassador dan bo found to say flatly that Elizabeth was immoral," and, as his conclusion, he quotes the French Ambassador, De la Mauvissiere, who wrote: "Audi if some persons have wished to tax her falsely with having amorous attachments, I shall say with truth that these are inventions forged by the malevolent, and from the cabinets of some ambassadors, to prevent those to whom it would have been most useful for I making an alliance with her."

Mr Chamberlin is a laborious enthiusiaist, and he seems to prove his case. But one somehow feels of his able and most unscrupulous Tudor heroine that at no time of her life would she have hesitated for one moment to sacrifice her chastity to gain some political advantage.