The letters to her mother, though written in terms of the formal respect which the times exacted, are full of gaiety and lively sallies, and show that she enjoyed existence, sweetened as it was by close intercourse with her brother’s wife, who still, when the sea divided them, and the clouds of Charlotte de la Trémoille’s stormy life grew dense and almost without a ray of hope, remained the recipient of her confidences, till death severed the sisterly tie.
CHAPTER II
AT THE HAGUE. A DREARY COURT. A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE. A LADY OF HONOUR. HOME. THE FIRSTBORN. CLOUDY SUNSHINE
In 1626 Charlotte de la Trémoille was present with her mother at the Hague, the Court, at that time, of Prince Fréderic-Henri of Nassau, her great-uncle.
In the only letter preserved at this time, Charlotte expresses a great dislike to Holland. She finds the Court very “triste,” and already the conviction that “the world is a very troublesome place to live in” forces itself upon her.
Meanwhile, negotiations for her marriage were being speedily concluded, and in the month of July of the same year (1626) Charlotte de la Trémoille was married at the Hague to James Stanley, Lord Strange, eldest son of the Earl of Derby and Elizabeth de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford.
The Earl of Derby, the representative of one of the most illustrious families of the English nobility, was lord paramount of the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, and hereditary sovereign of the Isle of Man.
His eldest son, who took the title of Lord Strange, was only twenty years of age at the time of his marriage. Handsome, high-minded, brave, intellectual, he was worthy of the wife who shared so faithfully in the fortunes of his troubled existence. A marriage less of choice than of convenience, it was to prove a union that could put to shame many a love match; but the passing of the years was to test its value.
At first, the separation from the home and the scenes of her childhood and girlhood was very grievously felt by the young wife. The civil dissensions in France, scotched only, not destroyed, were beginning to regain their old virulence; and travelling, apart from its ordinary difficulties and perils at that period, was rendered almost impossible for women. In England a similar state of things was rapidly developing; and so it came about that Charlotte, now Lady Strange, never again set foot in her native country, or beheld the loved face of her more than sister, the Duchess de Thonars.