APPENDIX E
THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE CASKET LETTERS
The casual treatment of the Casket Letters by Mary’s accusers, and by the English Commissioners, is demonstrated by an inspection of the texts as they now exist. One thing is absolutely certain, the Letters were produced, at Westminster and Hampton Court, in the original French, whether that was forged, or garbled, or authentic. This is demonstrated by the occurrence, in the English translation, of the words ‘I have taken the worms out of his nose.’ This ugly French phrase for extracting a man’s inmost thoughts is used by Mary in an authentic letter.[423] But the Scots version of the passage runs, ‘I have drawn all out of him.’ Therefore the English translator had a French original before him, not the French later published by the Huguenots, where for tiré les vers du nez, we find j’ay sçeu toutes choses de luy.
Original French letters were therefore produced; the only doubt rests on part of Crawford’s deposition, where it verbally agrees with Letter II. But we may here overlook Crawford’s part in the affair, merely reminding the reader that the French idioms in that portion of the Letter (Scots version) which most closely resembles his very words, in his deposition, may have come in through the process of translating Crawford’s Scots into French, and out of French into Scots again, to which we return.
The Casket Letters were produced, in French, on December 7 and 8. On December 9, the English Commissioners read them, ‘being duly translated into English.’[424] We are never told that the Scottish Lords prepared and produced the English translations. These must have been constructed on December 7 and 8, in a violent hurry. So great was the hurry that Letter VI. was not translated from French at all: the English was merely done, and badly done, out of the Scots. Thus, Scots, ‘I am wod;’ English, ‘I am wood.’ As far as this Letter goes, there need have been no original French text.[425] In this case (Letter VI.) the English is the Scots Anglified, word for word. The same easy mode of translating French is used in Letter V.; it is the Scots done word for word into English. In Letters I. and II., M. Philippson makes it pretty clear that the English translator had a copy of the Scots version lying by him, from which he occasionally helped himself to phrases. M. Cardauns, in Der Sturz der Maria Stuart, had proved the same point, which every one can verify. Dozens of blunders occur in the English versions, though, now and then, they keep closer to the originals than do the Scots translators.
Of this we give a singular and significant proof. In the Scots of Letter I. the first sentence ends, ‘Ze promisit to mak me advertisement of zour newis from tyme to tyme.’ The next sentence begins: ‘The waiting upon yame.’ In the English we read ‘at your departure you promised to send me newes from you. Nevertheless I can learn none:’ which is not in the Scots, but is in the published French, ‘et toutes fois je n’en puis apprendre.’ The published French is translated from the Latin, which is translated from the Scots, but each of the French published letters opens with a sentence or two from the original French: thus the published French, in one of these sentences, keeps what the Scots omits.
Therefore, the Scots translator undeniably, in the first paragraph of Letter I., omitted a clause which was in his French original, and is in the English translation. Consequently, when, in the same short letter, the English has, and the Scots has not, ‘to Ledington, to be delivered to you,’ we cannot, as most critics do, and as Herr Bresslau does, infer that Lethington had that mention of him deliberately excised from the Scots version, as likely to implicate him in the murder. It did not implicate him. Surely a Queen may write to her Secretary of State, on public affairs, even if she is planning a murder with her First Lord of the Admiralty. When the Scots translator omits a harmless clause, by inadvertence, in line 6, he may also, by inadvertence, omit another in line 41.
From these facts it follows that we cannot acquit Lethington of a possible share in the falsification of the Letters, merely because a reference to him, in the original French, existed, and was omitted in the Scots text. He need not have struck out the clause about himself, because the Scots translator, we see, actually omits another clause by sheer inadvertence. In the same way Mr. Henderson’s text of the Casket Letters exhibits omissions of important passages, by inadvertence in copying.
Again, we can found no argument on omissions or changes, in the English versions. That text omits (in Letter II.), what we find in the Scots, the word yesternight, in the clause ‘the King sent for Joachim yesternight.’ M. Philippson argues that this was an intentional omission, to hide from the English commissioners the incongruity of the dates. The translators, and probably the commissioners, did not look into things so closely. The English translators made many omissions and other errors, because they were working at top speed, and Cecil’s marginal corrections deal with very few of these blunders. On them, therefore, no theory can be based. Nor can any theory be founded on clauses present in the English, but not in the Scots, as in Letter II., Scots, ‘I answerit but rudely to the doutis yat wer in his letteris,’ to which the English text appends, ‘as though there had been a meaning to pursue him.’ This, probably, was in the French; but we must not infer that Lennox had it suppressed, in the Scots, as a reference to what he kept concealed, the rumour of Darnley’s intention to seize and crown the child prince. The real fact is that the Scots translator, as we have seen, makes inadvertent omissions.