Читать книгу Fanfare for Elizabeth - Edith Sitwell - Страница 12

Table of Contents

The beings of this Sophoclean tragedy of passions, faiths, lusts, and ambition that had the fever of lust, poured out their blood and spirit in a world of giant spiritual upheavals. Henry the King, once beautiful for all his monstrousness, half a bestial bulk of physical matter, half a kingly being of enlightened greatness and primitive intellect, Catherine, the deserted Queen, a dark and sombre Niobe weeping for her children, and Anne, the summer lightning—these, their forms, their actions, were lit by the enormous flares of fires in which the martyrs perished, kindled in vindication of Henry’s regency under God, and in homage to Elizabeth, the new-born offspring of that almost supreme being. Those flares show a face of kingly power, marred by passions and self-will, the face of a darkened and burnt-out Queen-nun, and a face of unutterable terror; a laughing mouth and tears falling like comets down a face that held all the summer’s beauty. We think that a voice is about to speak—then a thunderous darkness falls again, and a faint sound arises—the whispering of plots, like the crepitating sound that comes before an earthquake.

The scene, the events, and the beings of the tragedy were bound together in such a manner as to be indivisible. The tragedy had grown slowly and inevitably from the character of the time, and of the actors, from the change in the minds of mankind, from an imaginary incest, superstitious fear, the King’s overwhelming infatuation, his lust for power, his need for a son who would save his kingdom from the danger of civil war.

“If ever”, wrote the Reverend Father, Herbert Thurston, S.J., in the Catholic Encyclopedia, “a moral and religious cataclysm was the work of one man, most assuredly the first stage in the Reformation in England was the work of Henry VIII. The new learning,” he continues, “the humanism of scholars, the discovery of America, had fired the imagination.”

Fate had chosen a great, even at times an illuminated character, “of whom, one would say”, wrote Erasmus, “that he was a universal genius”, and a darkened and evil, but yet great man, Wolsey, as the pre-ordained actors in this side of the drama. Henry, that tragic and lonely being, a giant in scale, a creature of powerful intellect and insane pride, of cruelty, vengeance, and appalling rages, of kingly generosity and breadth of understanding, of half-lies and half-truths, a great King in the primitive sense, a human being of such unsurpassable, irresistible charm that we feel it even at this distance of time, had helped to bring about the tragedy through two factors, his kingly sense of duty to his people, and his curious power of self-deception.

He has been much misjudged: Charles II has been forgiven for his lusts and pruriencies because he, and they, were little and nasty, and littleness is understood and sympathised with by petty people. Henry, whose morality was higher, in spite of the plague that destroyed him, has never been forgiven for his six marriages, because he was a being of elemental greatness, and this alien quality creates hatred.

Henry had inherited a strong religious strain. In youth, he had earned from Pope Leo X the title of Defender of the Faith, by his vindication against Luther of the Catholic doctrine. “He is very religious”, wrote Giustinian,^[19] “and hears three masses daily when he hunts, and sometimes five and six on the other days. He hears the office every day in the Queen’s” (Catherine’s) “chamber—that is to say Vespers and Compline.” The most eminent theologians and doctors were regularly required to preach at Court, and Erasmus declared that the Court was an example to all Christendom for learning.

But that learning, that zeal, and above all, the King’s conscience, made him more dangerous.

Never were savagery and benevolence more strangely mixed in a nature. “Tolerance and clemency were no small part of his character in early manhood”, wrote Professor A. F. Pollard; “his influence on his people was enlightened.” “In short” (as Chieregati told Isabella d’Este in 1517) “the wealth and civilisation of the world are here; and those who call the English barbarians, appear to me to render themselves such. I here perceive very elegant manners, extreme decorum, and very great politeness. And amongst other things, there is this most invincible King, whose accomplishments and qualities are so many and excellent that I consider him to surpass all who ever wore a crown: and blessed and happy may this country call itself in having as its lord so worthy and eminent a sovereign, whose sway is more bland and gentle than the greatest liberty under any other.”

But Henry’s violent obstinacy was the ruling quality of his life. This Minotaur who could, as Catherine had said, “be driven like a bull into the arena”, could only be so driven when he believed his own will to be the motive power. And yet, he would listen patiently to a Minister, and, though he pursued his own way, he never punished or disgraced a counsellor whose views were not his own.

In his youth, there was nobody to combat that royal will, and when, with his wish to set aside Catherine of Aragon, that will was crossed for the first time, he succeeded in persuading himself that he had committed a crime against God and man in marrying the widow of his brother, that he was incestuous and must suffer as a Divine punishment the death of his children by Catherine. It was in order, he told himself, to escape from his sin that he wished the marriage to be declared null. “For if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing. They shall be childless.” ... So said the Book of Deuteronomy. The King knew—or we believe he knew—that the Queen’s marriage with his brother had been in name only. But he set the thought aside. He remembered only that he had defied God’s commandment and that God’s regent on earth, by reason of his semi-Divine kingship, was yet accursed by God because of his sin.

In this belief, he began to hate the blinded partner of his guilt, feeling a spiritual and physical horror in her presence, knowing that not only he, the incestuous King, but his people, were doomed by this curse from Heaven, since only by the birth of a male heir to the throne could civil war be averted from England.

His marriage to Anne Boleyn was, in fact, an incest, since Mary Boleyn, her sister, had been his mistress. It was even whispered of him that a far more frightful crime had been committed by him in marrying Anne,—that he had been the lover of her mother, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn. In this last calumny there is no shadow of truth. The former story is true, but there is this difference between the two incests: Henry believed that by his marriage with Catherine he had injured the memory of his dead brother, and had committed a deadly sin against the royal line of England—whereas by marrying Anne after having been the lover of her sister, he had injured no one.

One by one, Fate struck down all the beings who stood near this tragedy, as if they lived in an infected air. And in each case the doom was the inevitable punishment of the victim’s own sin.

Henry sent his second wife to the scaffold, and we shall never know the truth—whether she was innocent or guilty—whether Henry believed in her fault or blinded himself to her innocence because he wished her out of his way. Everything connected with that tragedy is covered by darkness and dust. The present writer thinks that Henry believed her guilty, but that she was not so: in fact after the death of Anne Boleyn, Chapuys was told by one of Henry’s gentlemen that the King had refused the hand of Francis the First’s daughter, “because she was too young, and for the reason ‘qu’il avait trop expérimenté avec la dicte Concubine que cestoit de la pourriture de France’ ”.^[20]

It is possible, though highly improbable, that Anne, in her terror at finding herself unable to give birth to a male child by the King, may have tried to produce, by means of a sin, an heir to the kingdom, in order to save her own life, which she believed to be threatened by that failure. But against this, there is her oath, taken as she was about to die, that she was innocent. Would she (for she was not devoid of faith) have risked damnation by calling God to witness what was a lie, and by dying with that lie upon her lips?

We know this alone, that Anne was guilty towards Catherine, although it is improbable that she contrived her death by poison. And that whether Henry was, or was not, guilty towards his second wife, there crept out of her blood-stained grave a horrible yet pitiable little ghost, Katherine Howard, the dead woman’s cousin, with an apish lewdness and lust that seemed the phantom, suddenly turned real, of the sin for which Anne had suffered, and which may, or may not, have existed only in the mind of Henry. And that ghost struck him down. From that moment, he was an old man waiting for death.

Cardinal Wolsey had plotted the overthrow of Catherine, the true Queen. He was brought to his destruction, not by her hand, but through the plots of the woman who was the instrument of her ruin—though not the instrument he had chosen—(he wished Henry to marry the daughter of the French King). Anne Boleyn plotted to take the place of the Queen whose maid of honour she had been. She went to her death largely, it is supposed, through the plots of her own maid of honour, or that maid’s supporters. Jane Seymour, the woman in question, connived, possibly, at the death of Anne, in order that she might become Queen and give the King a son. She died as a result of giving birth to that son. Cromwell was to suffer death, some years later, as a result of his own practice. He had grown used to flattering. But he said what he thought would be pleasing to his master, once too often. He was careless once only, but his balance was precarious on the high path to which he had climbed, and he fell. Then he who had introduced the infamous law of condemnation by attainder without trial, in the case of the Countess of Salisbury, was the first to die according to it. He suffered death before the old woman whose end he had encompassed.

Such were the beings who helped bring about an upheaval in the spiritual history of mankind.

But above all, that upheaval was brought about by the King’s need of an heir.

The Cardinal Governor of Bologna declared that “... if the King should die without heirs male, he was sure it would cost two hundred thousand men’s lives”.... At one time “Even his Holiness”, Gardiner told Wolsey, “began to reckon what titles might be pretended by the King of Scots and others, and granted that without an heir male ... the realm was like to come to dissolution”. Catherine’s children were either born dead, or died within two months of their birth—with one exception, that of Mary.

On the 31st of January 1510, seven months after the marriage, a dead child, a daughter, was born. Then, on the 1st of January 1511, came the heir to the throne. He lived until the 22nd of February, when, having caught cold at his christening, the little creature died. In September 1513, according to the Venetian Ambassador,^[21] Catherine gave birth to another son, who was either born dead or who died immediately after birth. In June 1514, there was again a mention of the King’s new son, and his christening: he, too, died soon after the ceremony. Then we find Henry taunting Catherine with her father’s treachery, and with his own conquests; and to this brutality, says Dr. Pollard, Martyr attributes the premature birth of Catherine’s fourth son, towards the end of 1514. According to a Venetian writing from Rome, as early as August 1514, there was a rumour “that the King of England means to repudiate his present wife, the daughter of the King of Spain”.^[22] But then Mary was born, on the 18th of February 1516, and, for the time being, there was no more mention of a divorce. It was said the Queen was about to bear another child, in August 1517, but then there is silence, and it is probable that she had several miscarriages at about this time. On the 10th of November 1518, there was yet another still-born child. In 1519 “the King swore that he would lead a crusade in person if he should have an heir”.^[23] But no doctors—either the English or those sent from Spain—were of any avail. By 1525 the last hope was dead. Henry was then but thirty-four.... Of his marriage wrote the French Ambassador in 1528, “God has long ago passed sentence on it”.^[24]

But the Emperor and his will stood in the way of the King’s remarriage, and the Pope was in great fear.

“Of the three great temporal Potentates in Europe,” wrote Dr. Pollard,^[25] “Charles was the most powerful. For he ruled Castille and Aragon, the Netherlands, Naples, Burgundy and Austria ... he could command the finest infantry in Spain, the science of Italy, the lance-knights of Germany were at his disposal, and the wealth of the Indies was poured out at his feet. He bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus, and the only hope of lesser men lay in the maintenance of Francis’ power. Were that to fall, Charles would become arbiter of Christendom, Italy a Spanish kingdom, and the Pope little more than the Emperor’s chaplain.”

Since the Sack of Rome in 1527, the Pope was virtually the Emperor’s prisoner. He had been elected Pope by Imperial influence, and even before the Sack of Rome was thought to be the Emperor’s creature. “Great masters”, said Turnstall, with reference to a papal brief urged by Charles, “could get great clerks to say what they liked.... If the great clerk were called upon to decide between the great master and Henry, it was obvious that all Henry’s service to the Papacy would count for nothing.”

If, as Froude has said,^[26] “the Pope decided for Henry, he lost Germany, if for Catherine, while Henry was supported by Francis, France and England threatened both to fall from him. ... Francis cared nothing for the question at stake, his aim was to make the breach between Henry and the Emperor, his great rival, irreparable, and by inducing the Pope to consent to the King’s demands, to detach the See of Rome conclusively from the imperial interests.... The Pope’s only cause, therefore, was to induce the Emperor to show patience, while he worked upon the King of France; and if France and England could once be separated, he trusted they would yield in despair.”

The Pope had not a character fitted to deal with great events. “He was very reserved,^[27] irresolute, and decides few things for himself. He loves money and prefers persons who know where to find it to any other kind of men. He likes to give himself the appearance of being independent, but the result shows that he is generally governed by others.” “The Pope”, the same writer told Charles V, “is at the disposal of the conqueror.”

Over the question of the annulment of Henry’s marriage, Clement the Fifth, that predatory creature, with the narrow face, and lips drawn up close under the snuffling, long nostrils—a mask that was lupine or vulpine, according to the light in which it was seen, temporised. He wept, when he believed that his tears were not watched, he wrung his hands. Sometimes, he hinted he would allow the settlement of “the King’s question”. At other moments he fulminated threats. “He has told me three times in secret”, wrote the Bishop of Tarbes to Francis (27th March 1531), “that he would be glad if the marriage” (with Anne Boleyn) “was already made, either by dispensation of the English legate or otherwise, provided it was not by his authority or in diminution of his power as to dispensation and limitation of Divine Laws.” ...

On the 18th of September in the same year, the agent Casale informed the King that “a few days since, the Pope secretly proposed to me that your Majesty might be allowed two wives. I told him I could not undertake to make any such proposition, because I did not know whether it would satisfy your Majesty’s conscience. I made this answer, because I know that the Imperialists have this in view, and are urging it; but why, I know not.”

The same thought had struck the King, who, unknown to Wolsey, sent his secretary Dr. Knight on a Commission to Rome to put the suggestion before His Holiness; but for some reason the Commission was withdrawn before the journey was accomplished.

And still the Pope, though he wept and wrung his hands, was no nearer to settling the question. His threats became more frequent.

When it became clear that nothing was to be expected from him, Anne urged the King not to wait for the dissolution of his marriage with Catherine, but to marry her—Anne—immediately. But the King replied only that for her sake he had made many enemies. “What does that matter,” she cried—how could that be compared with the fact that she had braved all for his sake—even the ancient prophecies that a Queen of England would be burned alive at this time. Even if she must die a thousand deaths, it would abate nothing of her love.^[28]

At last, in order that he might have his own way, and in order that he might produce the saviour of England, Henry braved the risk of excommunication, that final seal of eternal damnation.