Post Mortems Two: Mere Mortals: Medico-Historical Essays - Audiolibro Gratis

Queen Elizabeth

No decent man would add to the slanders that have been passed upon this extraordinary woman, who stood at the head of the English nation when it was engaged in one of its fiercest struggles for very existence. These slanders are so numerous in quantity, but in quality so much alike, that they may all be summed up in one—slander against her sexual morality. Professor Chamberlin(2), evidently considering that the morals of a great queen of the sixteenth century should resemble those of a great queen of the nineteenth, spent many years in ascertaining the nature of the sicknesses from which she was said to have suffered. The farrago of somewhat quackish-sounding symptoms that he discovered has no meaning in modern medicine. She has been slandered quite enough, poor lady, and I for one shall not add anything to it. Rather than seek an explanation for the innumerable contemporary physiological slanders I propose to see whether they are possible.

They may be said to have been summed up by the kindest, most gentle and most sympathetic of historians, Professor A. F. Pollard(1), whose immense industry and meticulous fairness will at once absolve him from any obvious conscious bias, sectarian or otherwise. Writing of her extraordinary juggling with her numerous suitors he says: “There is evidence that she had no option in the matter and that a physical defect precluded her from hopes of issue. On this supposition her conduct becomes intelligible, her irritation at parliamentary pressure on the subject pardonable, and her outburst on the news of Mary Stuart’s motherhood a welcome sign of genuine feeling. Possibly there was a physical cause for Elizabeth’s masculine mind and temper, and for the curious fact that no man lost his head over her as many did over Mary Queen of Scots. To judge from portraits, Mary was as handsome as her rival; but apparently Elizabeth had no feminine fascination, and even her extravagant addiction to the outward trappings of her sex may have been due to the absence or atrophy of deeper feminine feelings. The impossibility of marriage made her all the freer with her flirtations, and she carried some of them to lengths which scandalized a public unconscious of Elizabeth’s real security.”

To analyse such remarkable slanders as those passed by Mary Queen of Scots(3), and many years after Elizabeth’s death by Ben Jonson(4) in his tipsy tattling would need a paper more suited for a gynæcological journal than for general publication. Without emulating Ben by going into unpleasant physical details I content myself by saying that so far as I know there is no physical defect of the female form obvious to the sufferer which will preclude hope of offspring, and yet allow her to reach the age of nearly seventy. Before coming to that conclusion the author laid down four postulates to himself[8] which will occur to every critically minded doctor; and it seems to him that every suggestion fails miserably in at least one of these postulates. And since, when tested in this way, every slander founded on the physical appearance of her body necessarily fails, it is equally possible that the suspicions thus based may be equally without foundation. Such rumours about her are founded upon a lamentable want of knowledge of woman’s physiological and anatomical necessities.(11)

It seems to me, that we can gather better evidence from contemporary portraits than from contemporary religious slanders; it is well known that whenever sixteenth-century religion came in at the door objective truth flew out at the window. No one can study the beautiful portrait of Queen Elizabeth which Miss Gwen John allows me to publish without thinking: “That is not the portrait of a loose woman! She may have been cruel, vindictive, merciless, but she cannot have been loose and sensual.”

Her amazing personality is best explained by the new science of the ductless glands—endocrinology.[9] Sometimes she seems to have had all the male qualities, such as swearing, roughness of speech, freedom from convention. Sometimes she seems to have behaved like a doting old maid, in her inordinate love of dress, jewellery, and flattery. Rather than believe that she was abnormal in form, which I think to be impossible considering the known facts of her physiology, I find it easier to believe that in some way her “endocrine balance” was abnormal. It is now rather more than suspected that no individual is entirely male or entirely female; the psychic qualities of both sexes are more or less mingled in everybody, and thus we could easily explain the remarkable fact noted by Professor Pollard that no man ever seems to have fallen in love with Elizabeth sufficiently to risk his head for her. A century before, Owen Tudor fell in love with Katherine of Valois(7), and risked death by marrying her secretly. But no such vehement lover appeared for Elizabeth; and, if he had, her want of “endocrine balance” would not have prevented her from child-bearing. When she shouted to Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, “God’s death, villain, I’ll have thy head,”(3) the violence of the male in her came to the surface; when she fondled and fooled with the Duke of Alençon and called him her “little frog”(6) and other silly names, the doting old maid in her was paramount. Major Hume considers that it was with the Duke of Alençon that Elizabeth was in love for the first and only time in her life; and it is quite possible.

The only thing that my speculation does not explain is the bitter cry from the heart that was wrung from her when she heard of the birth of King James I to her great rival, Mary Queen of Scots: “The Queen of Scots is the lighter of a fair son, but I am a barren stock!”(3) How did she know? Was she thinking of the amazing number of miscarriages that befell two of her father’s wives, which to us now appear such certain evidence that he was probably suffering from constitutional syphilis? That is the best suggestion I am able to make.

Innumerable attempts have been made to explain the slanders upon Queen Elizabeth, from Miss Gwen John’s explanation given in her little play, “The Prince,”(12) that probably they arose from accidental episodes that occurred when she was about her normal duties at Court, to Major Hume’s idea—which is generally held—that they were the result of purposeful “hoaxing” by the Great Queen, all done for the sake of her country. True, like her father Henry VIII, Elizabeth was very patriotic; but, as one of Professor Chamberlin’s doctors suggests, it is difficult to distinguish between her patriotism and her desire to keep her own head on her shoulders. So far as I know the present suggestion—that the contemporary rumours about her physical malformation were impossible—has never been put forward before. It again leaves the field open for those who are able to estimate the effects of sectarian enthusiasm upon the human mind to find some other explanation than a physical malformation.

Her character has been so much besmirched by slander that we are sometimes apt to forget that in reality she was as clever and intellectual as her great father in his youth. She knew several languages, and to seek consolation in the worries that necessarily befell her it is said that she translated Boëthius’ “Consolatio Philosophiæ.”(9)

If we are to remember her as the man-struck old maid who philandered with and petted her favourites, it is equally well for us to remember her as the intellectual woman who was able to translate a deep philosophical work. The extremely intellectual qualities that one finds in Elizabeth are sometimes forgotten in the whirlwind of sectarian slander and patriotism that had centred itself on her head. Possibly the reason why she fixed upon Boëthius for translation—he had already been done by Chaucer—is because he wrote his great “consolation” in prison while he was awaiting the Roman executioner. Perhaps she thought that his case somewhat resembled her own.

Her dual personality came out strongly in her last words. According to Sir Sidney Lee they were “Ad inferos eat melancholia”—“To hell with melancholy.” Not long afterwards she fell into a deep coma(10)—probably caused by septic intoxication from an abscess in her tonsils, acting upon a woman whose arteries were much older than her years—and died in her sleep. In these words one sees the reckless courage that we suppose to be male, swearing and laughing in the face of death however unwelcome he may be, and the feminine desire to charm which led her to paint her face as she said them.

But after all, the best epitaph upon Elizabeth is the little verse that she scratched upon a windowpane at Woodstock Manor, where her loving sister Mary was “entertaining” her much as we entertained Napoleon at St. Helena:

“Much is suspected of me;

Nothing proved can be;

Elizabeth prisoner.”

And perhaps it is as well that nothing can be proved against the personal morality of one of the greatest women in history. One imagines that her wraith would laugh ironically at all our vain efforts, as her young girlhood evidently laughed at poor Mary as she scratched the words Elizabeth prisoner.(5)

I take from the British Medical Journal of 1910 the description of her actual death, because it is in accordance with my own experience of the deaths of fierce and obstinate old ladies.

Lady Southwell, one of her maids of honour, said: “She kept her bed for fifteen dayes besides the three dayes that she sat upon her stool without speaking; until one day, being pulled upon her feet by force, she stood upon her feet for fifteen hours. Her Majestie understood that Mr. Secretarie Cecil had given forth that she was mad; and therefore in her sickness she said ‘Cecill, know thou that I am not mad; you must not try to make Queen Jane of me.’” Queen Jane was “Crazy Jane,” mother of Charles V, and this recollection of the days of her youth, when Charles V was the greatest man in the world, is very characteristic of an old person. “And,” continues Lady Southwell, “though by Cecil’s means many stories were spread about that she was mad, myself, nor anie that were about me, could never see that her speeches, so well adapted, proved her distracted mind.”

Then they lifted her into bed; she fell asleep; and the last of the great personal monarchs of England died in coma. There was no sectarian nonsense about her waking from a stupor to press anybody’s hand, when all she wanted was to get on with her dying.

But though Elizabeth was so great and had such an astonishing effect on English history(8) it would be a mistake to turn her into the heroine of a sentimental novel.

(1) A. F. Pollard, Political History of England.

(2) F. Chamberlin, Private Character of Queen Elizabeth.

(3) F. Chamberlin, The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth.

(4) Ben Jonson, Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden.

(5) F. A. Mumby, Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth.

(6) M. S. Hume, Courtships of Queen Elizabeth.

(7) Mabel Christie, Henry VI.

(8) Rachel Taylor, Aspects of the Italian Renaissance.

(9) The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, June, 1924.

(10) Facts from the British Medical Journal, 1910; guess my own.

(11) Julian Huxley, Essays of a Biologist.

(12) Gwen John, The Prince.