It was for many reasons advisable to crush, if possible, the spread of gossip, and especially because the Queen Elizabeth hated her favourites to marry. As she grew old and began to lose her power as a woman, this feeling increased in violence. Whether that feeling be good or bad, is of no importance. It existed, and Ralegh knew well that it existed. Many consider that his devotion (and that of most of her courtiers) was merely based upon the advantages which he could get from the old woman: that he really flattered and despised her; that his conduct was base and unscrupulous. This view would seem to be at fundamental variance with the facts of his nature, of the Queen's extraordinary power, and of the whole tendency of the time. Not for nothing were love-sonnets the fashion: though there are men who think that fashion sufficient to prove once for all the coldheartedness and insincerity of the time.
When Ralegh returned, he was sent to the Tower, avowedly because he had disobeyed orders in setting sail at all, really because the Queen looked upon his marriage as a kind of personal treason. She detested marriage, thinking it did not improve the efficiency of a man. And Ralegh, without any treachery to his wife, whom he continued to love until the end of his life, was thrown into misery by the Queen's anger. There are men whose nature will not admit of more than one call upon their affection, and that of a limited kind. You will find that they are apt to preen themselves upon their loyalty, wisely enough. Ralegh was not made on those lines. His feeling for the Queen was a real and vital feeling, and was not swayed by every circumstance of his life. She was a woman whom he had loved, and a great woman for all her caprices: she was his Queen and an illustrious Queen: she was Queen of England, which under her rule had crushed Spain's power. It would have been strange if her fierce resentment of his action had not affected him. As it was he wrote from the Tower—men, English men, were not then ashamed of their feelings: they liked to try and express them—
"My heart was never broken till this day, that I hear the Queen goes away so far off—whom I have followed so many years with so great love and desire, in so many journeys and am now left behind her, in a dark prison all alone. While she was yet nire at hand, that I might hear of her once in two or three dayes, my sorrows were the less: but even now my heart is cast into the depth of all misery. I that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks, like a nymph: sometime siting in the shade like a Goddess; sometime singing like an angell; sometime playing like Orpheus. Behold the sorrow of this world! Once amiss, hath bereaved me of all. O Glory that only shineth in misfortune, what is becum of thy assurance? Al wounds have skares, but that of fantasie, all affections their relenting, but that of womankind. Who is the judge of friendship but adversity? or when is grace witnessed but in offences? There were no divinety, but by reason of compassion; for revenges are brutish and mortall. All those times past,—the loves, the sythes, the sorrows, the desires, can they not way down one frail misfortune? Cannot one dropp of gall be hidden in so great heapes of sweetness? I may then conclude Spes et fortuna valete. She is gone in whom I trusted, and of me hath not one thought of mercy, nor any respect of that that was. Do with me now, therefore, what you list. I am more weary of life than they are desirous I should perish; which if it had been for her, as it is by her, I had been too happily born.
"Your's not worthy any name or like,
"W. R."
There are some who see in this letter merely an artifice to play upon the senile affections of a doting woman. They write nimbly of true nobility: they describe the deterioration of an old woman's body; they ask, could a man care for such a person? and assert that all Ralegh desired was money and appointments. Their point of view is wearisome and false: it leaves the bad taste that the report of divorce-court proceedings leaves—with that pettiness and familiarity, which is disgusting.
Meanwhile Ralegh remained in prison: and his enemies triumphed at his downfall.
It is refreshing to read Spenser's account of the story, written a little after the event, as an episode of the "Faërie Queene." It clears the air with its gentleness and that sweet mingling of humour and sadness.
Belph[oe]be has left the squire with Amoret, and comes back.
"There she him found by that new lovely Mate
Who lay the whiles in swoune, full sadly set,
From her faire eyes wiping the deawy wet
Which softly stild and kissing them atweene,
And handling soft the hurts which she did get:...
"Which when she saw with sodaine glauncing eye,
Her noble heart, with sight thereof was fild
With deep disdaine and great indignity,
That in her wrath she thought them both have thrild
With that selfe arrow which the Carle had kild:
Yet held her wrathfull hand from vengeance sore:
But drawing nigh, ere he her well beheld,
'Is this the paith?' she said—and said no more
But turned her face and fled away for evermore."
He smiles a little at the intensity of the squire's grief, but makes no hint at his insincerity, and he could have done so quite easily without injuring his friend, Ralegh. All through the character of Timias the Squire, he dwells on the impetuosity of his feeling with kindly humour. For Spenser must have often teased Ralegh on that terrible restless energy which drove him from experience to experience, and from the height of enthusiasm to the depth of despair. "Do it with thy Might" was a singularly characteristic device.
"And his faire lockes, that wont with ointment sweet
To be embalm'd, and sweat out dainty dew,
He let to grow and griesly to concrew,
Uncomb'd, uncurl'd, and carelesly unshed."