smokingboot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smokingboot) wrote2006-09-28 07:49 am
smokingboot) wrote2006-09-28 07:49 am
The Word of a Prince
Last time I was in London, I was lent Maria Perry's 'The Word of A Prince' a biography of Elizabeth Tudor's life with snippets from her letters included. I have always been fascinated by Elizabeth, and when the masterly colonel_maxim told me that her old residence, Hatfield House, was 20 minutes up the road and offered to accompany me there, I had to visit.
I put this under a cut because it's just a mishmash about Elizabeth, the book and the house, a record for myself really.
The book is better than the house. The knot gardens and wilderness are charming, peppered with actors who cordially sang/ran about/ informed me that my eyes are nothing like the sun. Beware of visiting without knowing which bits are open: the Salisburys live in what is now Hatfield House, a Jacobean monstrosity with neither flamboyance nor delicacy to recommend it, while the real prettiness is tucked away at the side. Elizabeth's childhood residence, the remnant of the old tudor palace has all the charm of red brick and lead panes assaulted by ivy. Sometime home, sometime prison, she lived much of her early life at Hatfield, held her first council as queen there - and then never went back.
The book itself is fascinating, and ably demonstrates the glittering claustrophobia of Elizabeth's world. I love her brilliance, her wit, her diamond hard understanding and her incredible powers of equivocation. And yet, she was also very highly strung, prone to hysteria and easily driven to tears, nervous, flighty, a bird woman in a world of carnivores. Nothing ever seems to have been the thing it appeared; everything had its ambiguous measure. In Hatfield she was happy, in Hatfield she was afraid; her old tutors and governesses loved her greatly, and of course, denounced her when they were taken to the tower, for torture levels all loyalties; Katherine Parr was the best stepmother in the world, filling her life with books and gentleness, while her own mother was anathema, never to be mentioned; Seymour has often been considered a near rapist for that incident where pubescent Elizabeth wore a posh frock which he cut from her body. The assumption is made by modern historians that this was a very unwelcome form of abuse, though those there seem to have considered it harmless enough, and the romps and tickles between Elizabeth and Seymour left many pondering if she had an affair with him. But if she cared so much, why then no reports of hysteria at his execution? She was young and not always in control, and yet, such politic silence. The necessary mask, perhaps, learnt early.
The book speaks of her utter devotion to her father, and this is the thing I always find difficult.
Mentions of an early dance with her father, the red faced gaint whirling her round and round, her laughter and his, letters detailing her adulation, her efforts to please him and his queen; I often wonder if this wasn't a form of Stockholm Syndrome really; Mary stood up to her father, earning his displeasure for the memory of her mother Katherine, Elizabeth never ever made that mistake. Love your executioner well, especially if all the world is his, and she did, with no shadow of disloyalty to him in life or memory.
Mary ruined herself in trying to atone for the wrongs done unto Katherine; Elizabeth never tried to redeem her mother, but then she never knew her. More, she held onto nothing pointless from the past. Mary began to relive the resentments of the old Henry/Katherine/Anne triangle, and she couldn't keep them out of her politics or her relationship with her sister. The irony then, of her cold world! Looking at her little sister and seeing the Bullen harlot peeping out of her eyes, expecting treachery, when it came it must have been the worst; losing Calais, childless and dying, knowing that her beloved husband was bound to propose marriage to the next ruler of England, the beloved red-haired girl. Harsh for Mary. In the end, the harlot won.
I cannot feel too much for Mary, for I am of Elizabeth's party despite her faults. I tried to dream of her at Hatfield, a place made tiresome by keep out signs and overpricing. It was only when I went right up to the walls of the old banqueting hall and stood under the trees along the side that I thought for a moment she was there. Like her I found it delightful; and like her, I was ready to leave.
colonel_maxim told me that her old residence, Hatfield House, was 20 minutes up the road and offered to accompany me there, I had to visit.I put this under a cut because it's just a mishmash about Elizabeth, the book and the house, a record for myself really.
The book is better than the house. The knot gardens and wilderness are charming, peppered with actors who cordially sang/ran about/ informed me that my eyes are nothing like the sun. Beware of visiting without knowing which bits are open: the Salisburys live in what is now Hatfield House, a Jacobean monstrosity with neither flamboyance nor delicacy to recommend it, while the real prettiness is tucked away at the side. Elizabeth's childhood residence, the remnant of the old tudor palace has all the charm of red brick and lead panes assaulted by ivy. Sometime home, sometime prison, she lived much of her early life at Hatfield, held her first council as queen there - and then never went back.
The book itself is fascinating, and ably demonstrates the glittering claustrophobia of Elizabeth's world. I love her brilliance, her wit, her diamond hard understanding and her incredible powers of equivocation. And yet, she was also very highly strung, prone to hysteria and easily driven to tears, nervous, flighty, a bird woman in a world of carnivores. Nothing ever seems to have been the thing it appeared; everything had its ambiguous measure. In Hatfield she was happy, in Hatfield she was afraid; her old tutors and governesses loved her greatly, and of course, denounced her when they were taken to the tower, for torture levels all loyalties; Katherine Parr was the best stepmother in the world, filling her life with books and gentleness, while her own mother was anathema, never to be mentioned; Seymour has often been considered a near rapist for that incident where pubescent Elizabeth wore a posh frock which he cut from her body. The assumption is made by modern historians that this was a very unwelcome form of abuse, though those there seem to have considered it harmless enough, and the romps and tickles between Elizabeth and Seymour left many pondering if she had an affair with him. But if she cared so much, why then no reports of hysteria at his execution? She was young and not always in control, and yet, such politic silence. The necessary mask, perhaps, learnt early.
The book speaks of her utter devotion to her father, and this is the thing I always find difficult.
Mentions of an early dance with her father, the red faced gaint whirling her round and round, her laughter and his, letters detailing her adulation, her efforts to please him and his queen; I often wonder if this wasn't a form of Stockholm Syndrome really; Mary stood up to her father, earning his displeasure for the memory of her mother Katherine, Elizabeth never ever made that mistake. Love your executioner well, especially if all the world is his, and she did, with no shadow of disloyalty to him in life or memory.
Mary ruined herself in trying to atone for the wrongs done unto Katherine; Elizabeth never tried to redeem her mother, but then she never knew her. More, she held onto nothing pointless from the past. Mary began to relive the resentments of the old Henry/Katherine/Anne triangle, and she couldn't keep them out of her politics or her relationship with her sister. The irony then, of her cold world! Looking at her little sister and seeing the Bullen harlot peeping out of her eyes, expecting treachery, when it came it must have been the worst; losing Calais, childless and dying, knowing that her beloved husband was bound to propose marriage to the next ruler of England, the beloved red-haired girl. Harsh for Mary. In the end, the harlot won.
I cannot feel too much for Mary, for I am of Elizabeth's party despite her faults. I tried to dream of her at Hatfield, a place made tiresome by keep out signs and overpricing. It was only when I went right up to the walls of the old banqueting hall and stood under the trees along the side that I thought for a moment she was there. Like her I found it delightful; and like her, I was ready to leave.