Part 4 (1/2)
LAURA DE SADE.
[BORN 1310. DIED 1348.]
SISMONDI.
Petrarch reproached himself with fostering a pa.s.sion which had exerted so powerful an influence over his life, which he had nourished with such unsubdued constancy for one-and-twenty years, and which still remained sacred to his heart so long after the loss of its object. This remorse was groundless. Never did pa.s.sion burn more purely than in the love of Petrarch for Laura. Of all the erotic poets, he alone never expresses a single hope offensive to the purity of a heart which had been pledged to another. When Petrarch first beheld her, on the 6th of April 1327, Laura was in the church of Avignon. She was the daughter of Audibert de Noves, and wife of Hugues de Sade, both of Avignon. When she died of the plague, on the 6th of April 1348, she had been the mother of eleven children. Petrarch has celebrated, in upwards of three hundred sonnets, all the little circ.u.mstances of their attachment; those precious favours which, after an acquaintance of fifteen or twenty years, consisted at most of a kind word, a glance not altogether severe, a momentary expression of regret or tenderness at his departure, or a deeper paleness at the idea of losing her beloved and constant friend.
Yet these marks of an attachment so pure and un.o.btrusive, and which he had so often struggled to subdue, were repressed by the coldness of Laura, who, to preserve her lover, cautiously abstained from giving the least encouragement to his love. She avoided his presence, except at church, in the brilliant levees of the papal court, or in the country, where, surrounded by her friends, she is described by Petrarch as exhibiting the semblance of a queen, prominent amongst them all in the grace of her figure and the brilliancy of her beauty. It does not appear that, in the whole course of these twenty years, the poet ever addressed her unless in the presence of witnesses. An interview with her alone would surely have been celebrated in a thousand verses; and as he has left us four sonnets on the good fortune he enjoyed in having an opportunity of picking up her glove, we may fairly presume that he would not have pa.s.sed over in silence so happy a circ.u.mstance as a private interview.
There is no poet in any language so perfectly pure as Petrarch, so completely above all reproach of levity and immorality; and this merit, which is equally due to the poet and his Laura, is still more remarkable when we consider that the models which he followed were by no means ent.i.tled to the same praise. The verses of the troubadours and the trouveres were very licentious. The court of Avignon, at which Laura lived--the Babylon of the West, as the poet himself often terms it--was filled with the most shameful corruption; and even the popes, more especially Clement V. and Clement VI., had afforded examples of great depravity. Indeed, Petrarch himself, in his intercourse with other ladies, was by no means so reserved. For Laura he had conceived a sort of religious and enthusiastic pa.s.sion, such as mystics imagine they feel towards the Deity, and such as Plato supposes to be the bond of union between elevated minds. The poets who have succeeded Petrarch have amused themselves with giving representations of a similar pa.s.sion, of which, in fact, they had little or no experience.
”How jeering crowds have mocked my love-lorn woes; But folly's fruits are penitence and shame, With this just maxim, I've too dearly bought-- That man's applause is but a transient dream.”
THE COUNTESS OF RICHMOND.
[1495.]
TYTLER.
Henry VII. is supposed to have been influenced by the advice of his mother, the Countess of Richmond, to whose opinions he was accustomed to listen with deference, and whose amiable qualities were likely to make an impression on her grandchildren. She was, in truth, a remarkable woman; and her dutiful and affectionate biographer, Bishop Fisher, who was also her chaplain, has fortunately left us a fine portrait of her character. Her piety and humility were great, though slightly tinged with asceticism. She rose at five in the morning, and from that hour till dinner, which in those primitive days was at ten, spent her time in prayer and meditation. In her house she kept constantly twelve poor persons, whom she provided with food and clothing; and, although the mother of a king, such was her active benevolence that she was often seen dressing the wounds of the lowest mendicants, and relieving them by her skill in medicine. She also evinced her respect for learning, both by her own works, and by munificent endowments for its encouragement.
She was a mother to the students of both universities, and a patroness to all the learned men of England. Two public lectures in divinity were inst.i.tuted by her, one at Oxford, and another at Cambridge; but those generous efforts were surpa.s.sed by her last and n.o.blest foundations, the colleges of Christ and St John in the latter university. It was right that such a benefactress to knowledge should be embalmed in an epitaph by Erasmus.
There can be little doubt that the advice and instructions of this exemplary woman must have had a considerable influence in directing the education of the royal progeny, and we may perhaps trace to the influence of her example that early love of letters which was shown by young Henry. Erasmus, who was then in England, has left us so pleasant a picture of the royal school-room at this time, that I need make no apology for introducing it. ”Thomas More,” says he, ”who had paid me a visit when I was Montjoy's guest, took me, for the sake of recreating the mind, a walk to the next country-seat. It was there the king's children were educated, with the exception of Arthur, who had then attained majority. On entering the hall the whole of the family a.s.sembled, and we found ourselves surrounded not only by the royal household, but by the servants of Montjoy also. In the middle of the circle stood Henry, at that time only nine years old, but bearing an expression of royalty, a look of high birth, and, at the same time, full of openness and courtesy; on the right stood the princess Margaret, a girl of eleven years, afterwards married to James IV. of Scotland; on the left was Mary, a child of four years of age, engaged in play; while Edmund, an infant in arms, completed the group. More, with Arnold, our companion, after paying his compliments to little Henry, presented a piece of his own writing. I forget what it was. As for me, I was not antic.i.p.ating such a meeting; and, having nothing of the kind with me, I could only promise that I would shortly show my respect for the prince by some similar present.”
ELIZABETH WOODVILLE.
[1490.]
HUME.
Jacqueline of Luxembourg, d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford, had, after her husband's death, so far sacrificed her ambition to love, that she espoused in second marriage Sir Richard Woodville, a private gentleman, to whom she bore several children, and among the rest Elizabeth, who was remarkable for the grace and beauty of her person, as well as for other amiable accomplishments. This young lady had married Sir John Gray of Grobie, by whom she had children; and her husband being slain in the second battle of St Alban's, fighting on the side of Lancaster, and his estate being for that reason confiscated, his widow retired to live with her father at his seat of Grafton, in Northamptons.h.i.+re. The king [Edward IV.] came to the house after a hunting-party in order to pay a visit to the d.u.c.h.ess of Bedford; and as the occasion seemed favourable for obtaining some grace from this gallant monarch, the young widow flung herself at his feet, and with many tears entreated him to take pity on her impoverished and distressed children.
The sight of so much beauty in affliction strongly affected the amorous Edward. Love stole insensibly into his heart under the guise of compa.s.sion, and her sorrow so becoming a virtuous matron, made his esteem and regard quickly correspond to his affection. He raised her from the ground with a.s.surances of favour. He found his pa.s.sion increase every moment by the conversation of the amiable object, and he was soon reduced in his turn to the posture and style of a supplicant at the feet of Elizabeth. But the lady, either averse to dishonourable love from a sense of duty, or perceiving that the impression which she had made was so deep as to give her hopes of obtaining the highest elevation, refused to gratify his pa.s.sion; and all the endearments, caresses, and importunities of the young and amiable Edward, proved fruitless against her rigid and inflexible virtue.
His pa.s.sion, irritated by opposition, and increased by his veneration for such honourable sentiments, carried him at last beyond all bounds of reason, and he offered to share his throne as well as his heart with the woman whose beauty of person and dignity of character seemed so well to ent.i.tle her to both. The marriage was privately celebrated at Grafton.
The secret was carefully kept for some time. No one suspected that so libertine a prince could sacrifice so much to a romantic pa.s.sion; and there were in particular strong reasons which at that time rendered this step to the highest degree dangerous and imprudent.
JOAN OF ARC.