CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE LETTERS AND THE POSSIBLE FORGERS
A few words must be said as to a now obsolete difficulty, the question as to the language in which the Letters were originally written. That question need not be mooted: it is settled by Mr. Henderson’s ‘Casket Letters.’ The original language of the epistles was French.
I. The epistles shown at Westminster were certainly in French, which was not (except in the first one or two sentences) the French later published by the Huguenots. That French was translated from the Latin, which was translated from the Scots, which was translated from the original French. Voluminous linguistic criticisms by Goodall, Hosack, Skelton, and others have ceased, therefore, to be in point.
II. Many phrases, whether as mirrored in the Scots and English translations, or as extant in contemporary copies of the original French, can be paralleled from authentic letters of Mary’s. Bresslau proved this easily, but it was no less easily proved that many of the phrases were conventional, and could be paralleled from the correspondence of Catherine de’ Medici and other contemporary ladies. A forger would have ample opportunities of knowing Mary’s phrasing and orthography. It would be easy for me to write a letter reproducing the phrasing and orthography, which is very distinctive, of Pickle the Spy. No argument against forgery can be based on imitations of peculiarities of phrase and spelling which the hypothetical forger was sure to know and reproduce.
But phrasing and spelling are not to be confounded with tone and style. Now the Letters, in tone, show considerable unity, except at one point. Throughout Mary is urging and spurring an indifferent half-hearted wooer to commit an abominable crime, and another treasonable act, her abduction. Really, to judge from the Letters, we might suppose Bothwell to be almost as indifferent and reluctant as Field-Marshal Keith was, when the Czarina Elizabeth offered him her hand. Keith put his foot down firmly, and refused, but the Bothwell who hesitated was lost. It is Mary who gives him no rest till he carries her off: we must blame Bothwell for not arranging the scheme before parting from Mary in Edinburgh; to be sure, Buchanan declares in his History that the scheme was arranged. In short, we become almost sorry for Bothwell, who had a lovely royal bride thrust on him against his will, and only ruined himself out of reluctance to disoblige a lady. It is the old Irish tale of Diarmaid and Grainne over again.
But, on the other hand, Letter II. represents Mary as tortured by remorse and regret. Only to please Bothwell would she act as she does. Her heart bleeds at it. We must suppose that she not only grew accustomed to the situation, but revelled in it, and insisted on an abduction, which even Lethington could only explain by her knowledge of the apices juris, the sublimities of Scots law. A pardon for the abduction would, in Scots law, cover the murder.
Such is the chief difference in tone. In style, though the fact seems to have been little if at all noticed, there are two distinct species. There is the simple natural style of Letters I., II., and the rest, and there is the alembicated, tormented, precious, and affected style of Letters VIII. (III.) and IV. Have we any other examples, from Mary’s hand, of the obscure affectations of VIII. (III.) and IV.? Letter VIII., while it contains phrases which recur in the Casket ‘Sonnets,’ is really more contorted and symboliste in manner than the verses. These ‘fond ballads’ contain, not infrequently, the same sentiments as the Letters, whether the Letters be in the direct or in the affected style. Thus, in Letter II., where Lady Bothwell and Mary’s jealousy of her are the theme, we read ‘Se not hir’ (Lady Bothwell) ‘quhais feinzeit teiris should not be sa mekle praisit or estemit as the trew and faithful travellis quhilk I sustene for to merite her place.’ Compare Sonnets ii. iii.:
Brief je feray de ma foy telle preuve,
Qu’il cognoistra sans faulte ma constance,
Non par mes pleurs ou fainte obeyssance
Comme autres font, mais par divers espreuve.
In both passages the writer contrasts the ‘feigned tears,’ ‘feigned obedience’ of Bothwell’s wife with her own practical proofs of devotion: in the Sonnet using ‘them’ for ‘her’ as in Letter IV.
A possible, but unexpected explanation of the extraordinary diversity of the two styles, I proceed to give. We have briefly discussed the Sonnets, which (despite the opinion of Ronsard) carry a strong appearance of authenticity, though whether their repetitions of the matter and phrasing of the Letters be in favour of the hypothesis that both are authentic might be argued variously. Now from the Sonnets it appears that Lady Bothwell was endeavouring to secure her bridegroom’s heart in a rather unlooked-for manner: namely, by writing to him elaborately literary love letters in the artificial style of the age of the Pleiad. As the Sonnets say, she wooes him ‘par les escriptz tout fardez de sçavoir.’ But Mary maintains that Lady Bothwell is a mere plagiarist. Her ingenious letters, treasured by Bothwell, and the cause of his preference for her, are