The only thing that my speculation does not explain is the bitter cry from the heart that was wrung from her when she heard of the birth of King James I to her great rival, Mary Queen of Scots: “The Queen of Scots is the lighter of a fair son, but I am a barren stock!”[(3)] How did she know? Was she thinking of the amazing number of miscarriages that befell two of her father’s wives, which to us now appear such certain evidence that he was probably suffering from constitutional syphilis? That is the best suggestion I am able to make.
Innumerable attempts have been made to explain the slanders upon Queen Elizabeth, from Miss Gwen John’s explanation given in her little play, “The Prince,”[(12)] that probably they arose from accidental episodes that occurred when she was about her normal duties at Court, to Major Hume’s idea—which is generally held—that they were the result of purposeful “hoaxing” by the Great Queen, all done for the sake of her country. True, like her father Henry VIII, Elizabeth was very patriotic; but, as one of Professor Chamberlin’s doctors suggests, it is difficult to distinguish between her patriotism and her desire to keep her own head on her shoulders. So far as I know the present suggestion—that the contemporary rumours about her physical malformation were impossible—has never been put forward before. It again leaves the field open for those who are able to estimate the effects of sectarian enthusiasm upon the human mind to find some other explanation than a physical malformation.
Her character has been so much besmirched by slander that we are sometimes apt to forget that in reality she was as clever and intellectual as her great father in his youth. She knew several languages, and to seek consolation in the worries that necessarily befell her it is said that she translated Boëthius’ “Consolatio Philosophiæ.”[(9)]
If we are to remember her as the man-struck old maid who philandered with and petted her favourites, it is equally well for us to remember her as the intellectual woman who was able to translate a deep philosophical work. The extremely intellectual qualities that one finds in Elizabeth are sometimes forgotten in the whirlwind of sectarian slander and patriotism that had centred itself on her head. Possibly the reason why she fixed upon Boëthius for translation—he had already been done by Chaucer—is because he wrote his great “consolation” in prison while he was awaiting the Roman executioner. Perhaps she thought that his case somewhat resembled her own.
Her dual personality came out strongly in her last words. According to Sir Sidney Lee they were “Ad inferos eat melancholia”—“To hell with melancholy.” Not long afterwards she fell into a deep coma[(10)]—probably caused by septic intoxication from an abscess in her tonsils, acting upon a woman whose arteries were much older than her years—and died in her sleep. In these words one sees the reckless courage that we suppose to be male, swearing and laughing in the face of death however unwelcome he may be, and the feminine desire to charm which led her to paint her face as she said them.
But after all, the best epitaph upon Elizabeth is the little verse that she scratched upon a windowpane at Woodstock Manor, where her loving sister Mary was “entertaining” her much as we entertained Napoleon at St. Helena:
“Much is suspected of me;
Nothing proved can be;
Elizabeth prisoner.”