They do say that Sir Walter and Queen Elizabeth enjoyed many a quiet smoke with their feet on the table—so as to equalize circulation. Both of them were big folk, with plans and ambitions plus. Sir Walter was contemporary with Shakespeare, and in fact looked like him, acted like him and had a good deal of the same agile, joyous, bubbling fertility of mind. That is, Sir Walter and William were lovers by nature; and love rightly exercised, and alternately encouraged and thwarted, gives the alternating current, and lo! we have that which the world calls genius. And I am told by those who know, that you can never get genius in any other way.
Good Queen Bess—who was not so very good—fanned the ambitions of Sir Walter and flattered his abilities. And of course any man born in a lowly station, or high, would have been immensely complimented by the gentle love-taps, and sighs, vain or otherwise, not to mention the glimmering glances of the alleged Virgin Queen.
But a good way to throttle love is to spy on it, question it, analyze it, vivisect it. And so Sir Walter's bubbling heart had chills of fear when he discovered that he was being followed wherever he went by the secret emissaries of Elizabeth.
Had he been free to act he would have disposed of these spies, and quickly too; but he was in thrall to a Queen, and was paying for his political power by being deprived of his personality. Oho, and Oho! The law of compensation acted then as now, and nothing is ever given away; everything is bought with a price—even the favors of royalty.
And behold! In the palace of the Queen, as janitor, gardener, scullion and all-around handy man was one John White, obscure, and yet elevated on account of his lack of wit.
He was so stupid that he was amusing. Sayings bright and clever that courtiers flung off when the wine went around were imputed to John White. Thus he came to have a renown which was not his own; and Sir Walter Raleigh, with his cheery, generous ways, attributed many a quiet quip and quillet to John White which John White had never thought nor said.
Now John White had a daughter, Eleanor by name, tall and fair and gracious, bearing in her veins the blood of Vikings bold; and her yellow hair blew in the breeze as did the yellow hair of those conquerors who discovered America and built the blockhouses along the coast of Rhode Island.
Doubtless in his youth John White had a deal of sturdy worth, but a bump on the sconce at some Donnybrook Fair early in his young manhood had sent his wits a woolgathering.
But the girl was not thus handicapped; her mind was alert and eager.