Every Girl's Library Part 14

AUTUMN FIRES

In the other gardens And all up the vale, From the autumn bonfires See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over And all the summer flowers, The red fire blazes, The gray smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!

Something bright in all!

Flowers in the summer, Fires in the fall!

ROBERT STORY

STORY, ROBERT, the author of the following poem, was born in Scotland in 1790, and died there in 1859. The poem is much more famous than its author, having been reprinted time and again, and sometimes under the wrong author's name. It is one of those pieces that are called "fugitive," which means that it has no particular abiding place in type, but makes its home in collections, being, as it were, an only child. Simple as it is, it has stood the test of time and is here given for this reason, no less than for its appropriateness.

THE WHISTLER

"You have heard," said a youth to his sweetheart, who stood While he sat on a corn-sheaf, at daylight's decline,-- "You have heard of the Danish boy's whistle of wood: I wish that the Danish boy's whistle were mine."

"And what would you do with it? Tell me," she said, While an arch smile played over her beautiful face.

"I would blow it," he answered, "and then my fair maid Would fly to my side and would there take her place."

"Is that all you wish for? Why, that may be yours Without any magic," the fair maiden cried: "A favor so slight one's good nature secures;"

And she playfully seated herself by his side.

"I would blow it again," said the youth; "and the charm Would work so that not even modesty's check Would be able to keep from my neck your white arm."

She smiled, and she laid her white arm round his neck.

"Yet once more I would blow; and the music divine Would bring me a third time an exquisite bliss,-- You would lay your fair cheek to this brown one of mine And your lips stealing past it would give me a kiss."

The maiden laughed out in her innocent glee,-- "What a fool of yourself with the whistle you'd make!

For only consider how silly 'twould be To sit there and whistle for what you might take."

AGNES STRICKLAND

STRICKLAND, AGNES, an English historical writer; born in London, August, 1796, and died at Southwold, July, 1874. Her best and most celebrated work is _Lives of the Queens of England_, from which the following biographical account is taken.

THE STORY OF HENRIETTA MARIA, WIFE OF CHARLES I. OF ENGLAND

Henrietta Maria was the sixth child and youngest daughter of Henry IV.

of France, by his second wife, Marie de Medicis. She was born at the Louvre, November 25, 1609. Great as Henry was, he suffered his mind to be swayed by predictions. He had been told that he should die the day after his queen was crowned. To her great mortification, he would not permit that ceremony to be performed until after the birth of his youngest daughter. The queen prevailed on him to give orders for her coronation at St. Denis, where it took place, when Henriette, who was only five months old, was present, held in her nurse's arms, on one side of her mother's throne, surrounded by her brothers and sisters--a group of very beautiful children--the dauphin, too soon to be Louis XIII., Gaston, Elizabeth, and Christine. The next day Henry IV. was a.s.sa.s.sinated by Ravillac in the streets of Paris, May 13, 1610.

The royal children were barricaded all that dreary night in the guard-room at the Louvre, next to the chamber where the king's bleeding corpse lay. No one slept in the palace excepting the infant Henriette, whose peaceful slumbers in her nurse's arms were in strange contrast to the grief and terror of all around, for it was believed that an insurrection would follow the regicidal act. Again the infant princess appeared in her nurse's arms, at the funeral of the royal hero of France, and once more, at the coronation of her young brother at Rheims, when she was only ten months old. Her governess was Mademoiselle de Monglat, whom she used to call Mamanga. She received her education from her brother Gaston's school-master, M. de Bevis: she was the constant companion of Duke Gaston, who was only eighteen months older than herself.

Henriette was the darling of her mother, perhaps her spoiled darling, for Maria de Medicis, queen-regent of France, was neither wise nor judicious. When the queen was deprived of the regency and her liberty, Henriette was permitted to share her royal mother's captivity.

When the queen-mother recovered her liberty, the young Henriette, not then fifteen, became the ornament of the court. Anne of Austria, the young queen-consort of Louis XIII., cherished love and friendship for her sister-in-law, of which Henriette found the benefit in her worst fortunes.

When Henriette was only in her fourteenth year, she and her future consort, Charles, Prince of Wales, unknown to each other, met at a ball in the palace of the king her brother, early in February, 1623. The Prince of Wales and his father's favourite minister, George Villiers, Earl of Buckingham, were travelling incognito to Madrid, under the homely names of Tom Smith and Jack Smith. The object of the Prince of Wales was to see the infanta Donna Maria (with whom he was engaged by the king his father in a treaty of marriage), and to make acquaintance with her before they should be irrevocably bound in wedlock. The prince and his companion halted at Paris, and went like others to see the Louvre, and look at the royal family of France on the night of the ball.

Struck by their personal appearance, the Duke de Montbazan gave the handsome and distinguished-looking strangers advantageous places in the hall of the Louvre, where Charles saw the beautiful Henriette dance. The circ.u.mstance was afterward mentioned to Henriette, who sighed, and said, "Ah! the Prince of Wales needed not have gone so far as Spain to look for a wife." She had not noticed Jack Smith in the gallery of the Louvre, yet she had seen portraits of Charles, who was the most graceful prince in Europe.

The Spanish match was broken off. Donna Maria afterward married the Emperor of Germany. James I. demanded the hand of the beautiful Henriette for his heir.

The English people preferred having a daughter of the Protestant hero, Henry the Great, for their queen, to the grand-daughter of the cruel Philip II. of Spain. Unfortunately, Henriette had been brought up in the most ignorant bigotry by her mother. We have read a letter, very much worn with often unfolding, of advice and instruction from this queen to her daughter, regarding her conduct in England, in which she mentions the belief of the English in the same terms as if they were Jews. Such imputation the creed of the Anglican Church no more deserved than her own. Unfortunately, her young daughter was utterly ignorant of all history but that from prejudiced sources, as she afterward deeply regretted to her friend Madame de Motteville.

The marriage articles were very tedious, and much disputed; a clause was left by the council of James I., giving his son's consort power in the education of her children until their thirteenth year; a clause regretted by Charles, and which his determination to break afterward, occasioned the only real unhappiness in his married life. When all was ready for the betrothal, James I. died, March, 1624-5.

Some anxiety was shown lest the young king, Charles I., should not ratify his father's treaty; but the wooing amba.s.sadors, the Earls of Carlisle and Holland, had described the young princess in such favourable terms that Charles was eager to complete the agreement. In one of Holland's letters to Charles she is thus mentioned: "In truth, she is the sweetest creature in France, and the loveliest thing in nature. I heard her the other day discourse with her mother and her ladies with wondrous discretion. She dances--the which I am witness of--as well as I ever saw. They say she sings most sweetly; I am sure she looks as if she did!" In the course of a few days the Earl of Holland heard this wonderful voice. "I had been told much of it," he wrote; "but I find it true that neither her singing-master, nor any man or woman in Europe, singeth as she doth; her voice is beyond all imagination!" The musical and vocal powers of the queen-mother of France, Marie de Medicis, were likewise of the finest order; and her youngest daughter had inherited from her, gifts lavishly bestowed by nature on the children of Italy.

Pope Urban VIII. was exceedingly adverse to the English marriage: he had been Henrietta's G.o.d-father when he was cardinal legate in France. He was unwilling to grant a dispensation for his G.o.d-child wedding out of their Church; putting his objection on his duty to guard her happiness, rather than the usual polemic wranglings. No one can deny that his historical ac.u.men was right in what he said--"If the Stuart king relaxed the b.l.o.o.d.y penal laws against the Roman Catholics, the English would not suffer him to live long. If they were continued, what happiness could the French princess have in her wedlock?" These were the words of wisdom, and ought to have been heeded. But the unwise prejudice against placing a princess on the English throne of lower rank than the royalties of France or Spain, unduly influenced James I., or rather his English council, since he did not act thus in his own case.

Charles I. and Louis XIII. resolved to proceed with the betrothal without Urban's dispensation, which, of course, caused it to be sent very quickly. Henriette and Charles I. were betrothed, May 8, 1625, by proxy. She was dressed in a magnificent robe woven with gold and silver, and flowered with French lilies in gems and diamonds. The marriage took place three days afterward. The palace of the Archbishop of Paris (but lately destroyed) stood just behind Notre Dame; a gallery-bridge connected it with that cathedral, hung with violet satin, figured with gold fleur-de-lis; the marriage procession pa.s.sed over it from the palace to Notre Dame. The bride was led by her young brother Gaston, and was given away by the king, Louis XIII.

The Duke de Chevreuse, a near kinsman of Charles I., was his proxy; he was attired in black velvet; but over this plain attire wore a scarf flowered with diamond roses; the queen-mother shone like a pillar of precious stones; her long train was borne by two princesses of the blood, Conde and Conti. The marriage took place in the porch of Notre Dame; the English amba.s.sadors, and even the proxy of England, out of respect to the religious feelings of Charles I., withdrew from Notre Dame during the concluding ma.s.s.

The Duke of Buckingham, amba.s.sador-extraordinary from England, arrived at the conclusion of the ceremony. He was angry because he was too late--and certainly behaved in a most extraordinary manner while in France. Subsequently, he was on ill terms with the young Queen of England.

The Duke of Buckingham caused many delays by his flighty conduct. At last the cortege of the bride approached Boulogne. Charles I. came to Dover Castle to meet and welcome his queen. Her pa.s.sage was dangerous.

The king had that Sunday retired to Canterbury, thinking the bride could not embark in the storm. However, she landed at Dover, June 23, 1625, at seven in the evening. At ten, next day, the king arrived while she was at breakfast; he wished to wait, for she had been very ill with sea-sickness. Yet the bride rose hastily from table, hasted down a pair of stairs to meet the king, then offered to kneel and kiss his hand; but he wrapped her up in his arms with many kisses. "Sir, I have come to your majesty's country to be commanded by you," were the set words the poor bride had prepared for her first speech to Charles, but her voice failed, and ended with a gush of tears. Charles kindly led her apart, kissed off her tears, and said he should do so while they fell. His tenderness soon soothed the weeping girl, and she entered into familiar discourse with the royal lover. Charles seemed pleased that she was taller than he had heard; and, finding she reached the height of his shoulder, he glanced downward at her feet. Her quickness caught his meaning, and she said to him, in French, "I stand on my own feet; I have no help from art; thus tall am I, neither higher nor lower."

The young queen then presented all her French attendants to Charles, beginning with her cousin, the beautiful Madame de St. George, formerly her governess, now her first lady of the bed-chamber. To her the king very early took an antipathy.

The same eventful day, the bride, the king, and court set out for Canterbury, where the marriage was to be celebrated. On a beautiful extent of greensward, called Barham downs, a banquet was prepared; and in the pavilions the bride-queen was introduced to the ladies of her English household, and the n.o.blemen and gentlemen appointed to her service. That evening, Charles and Henrietta were married in the n.o.ble hall of St. Augustine, Canterbury.

Next morning they embarked at Gravesend, the king choosing to enter his capital by the grand highway of the Thames, that he might show his bride the stately shipping of his n.o.ble navy, which greeted the royal procession as it pa.s.sed on its progress up the stream with thundering salutes, while the river was covered with thousands of boats and beautiful barges belonging to the n.o.bility and merchants of London. A violent thunder-shower came on as the procession neared the landing-place at Whitehall; the queen, however, waved her hand repeatedly to the people. She was splendidly dressed; like the king, the colour she wore was green.

Even in the first days of his marriage, Charles I. saw strong reason to lament he had admitted the Roman Catholic colony with his young queen.

His position was extremely difficult; he foresaw all its dangers, and came early to the resolution of neutralizing the worst features of the case. The queen was childish in years; her reason totally uncultivated; she was, moreover, alike ignorant of the language and history of the country. Her confessor and her bishop were probably not less bigoted than herself; and the king knew that their celebration of rites, of which they would abate not one jot, was the greatest offence in the eyes of his people. It was his ruin, as the natural good sense of Henrietta afterward acknowledged, in her confessions of pa.s.sionate penitence to her friend, Madame de Motteville.

Charles I. found great cause to regret the establishment of his queen's Roman Catholic train of priests and attendants, besides other injurious stipulations in the marriage treaty his dying father's council had ratified. The queen was but an unreasoning girl of sixteen, entirely guided by the unusually large train she had about her. She would not learn English, and was encouraged by her French attendants to pay little regard to the customs and prejudices of the nation over which her consort reigned. Thus, she would not be crowned, February 2, 1626, lest she should join in the rites of the Church of England; she was the only Queen of England who ever refused her coronation; this deeply grieved her husband and incensed his people, who never forgave the offence, as she found afterward to her cost.

Charles was crowned _solus_. Henrietta viewed the coronation procession from the palace gate-way by King Street. Her French officials were accused of capering irreverently during the solemnity--as they were not in the abbey, that was no great crime; yet the next time Charles I.

caught them capering he made it an excuse for a general clearance. He thus got rid of six ecclesiastics, many French ladies, especially of Madame St. George, who claimed the privilege of occupying a seat in the royal carriage wherever the king and queen went, to the great annoyance of Charles. Her place, as the queen's first lady, was filled by the Protestant Madame de la Tremouille. Only Pere Gamache and another very quiet humble priest were allowed for the service of his queen's chapel by Charles I. Such innovations enraged the young queen greatly; she threw herself into agonies of rage at the departure of her French attendants; and in her fury contrived to break the windows of the king's closet or private apartment at Whitehall, although he restrained her by keeping the cas.e.m.e.nt shut, and holding both her wrists, because he forbade her to bid them farewell when they embarked at Whitehall stairs.

The king did not send them empty away; 22,000_l._ was distributed among them; nevertheless, the French women of the royal bed-chamber carried off all the queen's clothes, as lawful perquisites, leaving, besides the dress she wore, only an old gown and three chemises--not good for much.

The king tenderly soothed his afflicted consort, who seemed to be reconciled; but before the close of the year, 1626, she manifested such temper that Louis XIII. sent his father's old friend, the Duke de Ba.s.sompierre, as amba.s.sador-extraordinary, to inquire into his sister's conjugal unhappiness.