NOTA IN HISTORY >^ Willis cJ. Abbot (TOy Hate QJoUege of ^^grtcultutg At (Cornell IniwetBttg atljara, 5J. 1- ICtbrarti Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014014900 CLEOPATRA FruiiL llir piiLiiting hij (I uido Rent, J'lttl Valace, Florence NOTABLE WOMEN IN HISTORY THE LIVES OF WOMEN WHO IN ALL AGES, ALL LANDS AND IN ALL WOMANLY OCCUPATIONS HAVE WON FAME AND PUT THEIR IMPRINT ON THE WORLD'S HISTORY BY WILLIS J. ABBOT AUTHOR OF "THE BLUE JACKET" SERIES, "THE BATTLEFIELDS" SERIES, "THE STORY OF OUR NAVY," "AMERICAN MERCHANT SHIPS AND SAILORS," ETC. 3Uuatrate& PHILADELPHIA, PA. THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. Publishers Copyright, 1913, by WiLus J. Abbot Copyright, 1912, by Willis J. Abbot PREFACE OUT of the mouldering records of bygone cen- turies any competent student can gather ample evidence of the capability of woman to fill any place to which fate may sxunmon her. Not that every woman can fiU any place, more than every man could. But given the need and the individual will appear. Driven from point to point by the irresistible logic of the facts and by the develop- ment of a more inteUigent pubUc sentiment, the stub- born conservatives of to-day, who would deny to woman a share equal to that of man in the government of her nation, make their final forlorn stand on the plea that because women cannot fight the battles of their country with sword and gun they should have no share in guiding its poUtical destinies. But men in plenty forbear to rush into the carnage of battle with- out being thereby debarred the pleasures of politics. The soldier and the statesman are types distinct. And even among soldiers women have figured gloriously. Isabella of Castile, Catherine II of Russia, were as truly generals as Wellington or Grant. like the Enghsh and the American leader, they rode with their troops, shared the perils of battle and the dis- comforts of the bivouac, stimulating their soldiers by their presence, planning their campaigns and receiving the submission of their enemies. Shall we say that (1) PREFACE Lord Raglan or Florence Nightingale did the more to reanimate the drooping spirits of the English soldiers in the Crimea. And as a dashing leader, a beaux sabreur, Sheridan in no degree surpassed Joan of Arc. Her white armor and flowing tresses rallied her waver- ing troops as effectively as did that "terrible oath" which "Little Phil." is practically reputed to have ripped out on the twenty-mile ride to Winchester. These are extreme instances of course — extreme as to men as well as to women. But I think no one can read these sketches of seventy Women of History — it would not have been hard to collect three times as many — ^without appreciating some of the heights to which the feminine mind is capable of rising and the infinite variety of its flights. Let it be remembered that in all times and amidst all peoples of which we have knowledge the woman has been held the weaker vessel and the study of man has been to keep her weak. Not necessarily physically weak by any means. Wit- ness the lordly husband of the tropics lolling at ease while his various wives till the fields. But weak in all that makes for personal initiative and independence. Philosophers tell us that skirts were first put upon women to impede their movements so that they might not so readily run away from their mascxiline pro- prietors. But time brings its revenges. The skirt, once a badge of subjection, even its instrument, has become an emblem of majesty and authority. When it is desired to emphasize the eminence, the wisdom, the power of a man, be he cardinal, king or justice of oxir own Supreme Coiu't, we clothe him in the flowing robes of womankind — scarlet, ermine or rus- PREFACE tling black silk, as the case may be. From these facts we may learn that "dress reform" is no necessary part of the programme of the emancipation of woman. In these pages will be fomid pen portraits of women of many sorts. It is a far cry from the frivolities of Nell Gwyn to the statehness of Martha Washington, and the good quaUties of each enter into the composite picture of the eternal woman. And if there seems to be much space given over to ladies who in our land would be received but coldly, if at all, in polite society, let us remember that many of them exerted a very pos- itive influence upon the history of their own times. The greatest ladies of the French salons, for example, woidd stand but a sorry chance of recognition in "literary circles" to-day, but they stimulated and advanced the national thought that led to the French Revolution and the overthrow of the ancient aristocracy upon the foUies and vices of which they had fed. Catherine of Russia was an imspeakable libertine; Victoria a wife and a mother without a blemish. But as queens they were equally great, and if during the cabn reign of the British sovereign the national red was far-flung over the map of the world, so, under the feverish rule of the Russian empress the paw of the bear fell heavily on many new lands and reached nearer to the Russian goal — the Bosporus — than ever before or since. Just now the upward and onward movement of womankind has taken a more coherent, a more dramatic form than ever in the past. The radicaUsm of yester- day is the conservatism of to-day. In nine American States women have the same political rights as men, PREFACE and vote probably with just about the same degree of patriotism and wisdom. In the professions they enjoy equal rights, and in certain advanced com- munities the woman judge has appeared, accompanied by her correlative the woman poUceman. In certain fields of activity woman is displacing man, and the time may be approaching when the sterner sex, being wholly shorn of its unjust privileges, may have to do battle for the remnant of its just rights. This book, however, was not written to advance a cause or push a propaganda, though its author frankly expresses his complete sympathy with the women who fought and who are still striving for equaUty of oppor- tunity and equal rewards for like service for both the sexes. If lessons or texts are to be drawn from these sketches it is because history has put them there, and made them too plain to be overlooked. Without wholly acquiescing in the misleading maxim that there is no way of judging the future save by the past, it may be said confidently that the portions of woman's past comprehended in the last one hundred years is a clear record of bonds broken, barriers thrown down and confident advance toward the supreme goal of equality before the law. Willis J. Abbot. Washington, Februakt 12, 1913. CONTENTS Paqb A GROUP OF CLASSIC DAMES AGRIPPINA 15 A Wicked Woman; a Devoted Mother ASPASIA 20 The Inspiration of Pericles CORNELIA 25 Mother of the Gracchi CLEOPATRA 30 The World's Most Famous Beauty HYPATIA 35 The Female Philosopher of Alexandria EMPRESS THEODORA 39 The Great Empress of the East ZENOBIA 44 The Empress of Palmyra MANY QUEENS AND SOME MARTYRS KATHERINE OF ARAGON 50 Heroine of the Most Famous Divorce ANNE BOLEYN 59 A Martyred Queen of Henry VIII MARY TUDOR 65 "Bloody Mary," the Maker of Martyrs (5) 6 CONTENTS Page MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 76 A Victim of Her Own Intrigues LADY JANE GREY 87 A Nine Days' Queen QUEEN ANNE 93 Commonplace Queen of a Majestic Era ^ QUEEN ELIZABETH 98 "Good Queen Bess;" "The Virgin Queen" CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA 108 The Semiramis of the North QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN .... 118 A Royal Wanderer in Europe -^ ISABELLA OF CASTILE 127 The Financier of Colmnbus' Great Voyage MARIA THERESA OF AUSTRIA 137 The True Founder of the Austrian Empire MARIE ANTOINETTE 146 The Diamond Necklace and the Guillotine CHARLOTTE CORDAY 156 The Avenger of Marie Antoinette EMPRESS JOSEPHINE 160 The Discarded Wife of Emperor Napoleon HORTENSE BONAPARTE, QUEEN OF HOL- LAND 170 A Milliner's Apprentice and a Queen A QUEEN LOUISE OF PRUSSIA 175 A Nation's Immortal Idol CONTENTS 7 Faob CATHERINE DE MEDICI 180 A Royal Dispenser of Poisons MADAME ROLAND 189 Priestess of the Revolution QUEEN VICTORIA 197 The Most Splendid Monarch of the Nine- teenth Century WOMEN OF WIT AND PLEASURE COUNTESS DU BARRY 207 The Ruler of Louis XV COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON 212 An English Saloniste BARBARA, DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND . . 217 A Type of the Vampire MADAME DU DEFFAND 222 The Blind Ruler of a Famous Salon NINON DE L'ENCLOS 227 A Typical Parisian Parasite ' MADAME RECAMIER ... 232 The Beauty of the French Salons MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR 238 The Most Splendid Adventuress MADAME DE MAINTENON • • 243 The Wife of a Hunchback and of a King MADAME DE STAEL 248 The Wit of the French Salons SARAH JENNINGS, THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH 253 "The Viceroy over Queen Anne" 8 CONTENTS Paqb MLLE: DE la VALLIERE 258 Heroine of a Royal Romance THEODOSIA BURR 263 Whose Fate is an Unsolved Mystery PRIESTESSES OF WOMAN'S CAUSE SUSAN B. ANTHONY 268 A Life-long Champion of Woman's Rights ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 274 A Wife, Mother and Eminent Suffragist LUCY STONE 279 A Champion of Liberty for Slaves and for Women JULIA WARD HOWE 284 Author of the Battle Hymn of the RepubUc FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 289 The Enghsh Soldier's Angel of Mercy CLARA BARTON 294 The American Florence Nightingale FRANCES E. WILLARD 299 The Effective Foe of Intemperance ANNE HUTCHINSON 303 An Early Defender of Free Speech LUCRETIA MOTT 308 A Quaker Preacher of Freedom's Truths MARY BAKER EDDY 313 The Founder of a New Faith HARRIET MARTINEAU 318 The Writer of PoUtical Romance CONTENTS Page SOME WOMEN OF THE FOOTLIGHTS CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 323 America's Most Famous Tragedienne NELL GWYN 328 "Pretty Nelly," the Orange Girl JENNY LIND 332 "The Swedish Nightingale" MADAME RISTORI 337 " The Columbus of Italian Dramatic Art" MRS. SIDDONS 342 "The Tragic Muse" "PEG" WOFFINGTON 347 "Queen of all Hearts" SARAH BERNHARDT 352 A Stage Idol for Fifty Years ADELINA PATTI 357 The Queen of Song WOMEN IN ARTS AND LETTERS LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 362 The "Jo" of "Little Women" JANE AUSTEN 367 A BriUiant Chronicler of the Commonplace ROSA BONHEUR 372 The Friend and Painter of Animals ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING ... 377 A Poet and a Poet's Bride 10 CONTENTS Fagb MARY ANN EVANS 382 "George Eliot," England's Most Famous Woman Novelist MARGARET FULLER 387 An Inspired Conversationalist CHARLOTTE BRONTE 392 The Creator of "Jane Eyre" HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ... 397 The Little Woman who Caused a Big War MADAME DUDEVANT 402 The "George Sand" of French Fiction MADAME DE LA RAMEE ... .407 The "Ouida" Beloved of School Girls HELEN HUNT JACKSON 411 The Indian's Devoted Friend MARY LAMB 416 The Gentle Humorist's Adoring Sister FRANCES TROLLOPE . . .421 Whose Book on America Enraged a Nation WOMEN WHO STAND ALONE MARTHA WASHINGTON 426 The Original "First Lady of the Land" DOLLY MADISON 434 The White House Heroine of 1812 JOAN OF ARC 439 Seer, Soldier, Leader of Men, Martyr LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Cleopatra Frontispiece From the painting by Guido Reni, Pitti Palace Florence Page Cornelia . 25 From the painting by J. Champagne Anne Boleyn . .... .... 59 National Portrait Gallery. Painter unknown Isabella of Castile . . 127 From an engraving by Charles Staal Marie Antoinette on the Way to the Guil- lotine 146 From the painting by F. Flameng Charlotte Corday 156 From the painting by Fleury Empress Josephine 160 Painter unknown Madame Roland 189 Painter unknown Queen Victoria 197 Madame du Barry 207 From the painting by Drouais Duchess of Cleveland 217 From the painting by Sir Peter Lely, Hampton Court (11) 12 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Pagb Madame Recamibr 232 From the painting by David, the Louvre Madame de Pompadour 238 From the painting by Nattier, MusSe de Saint- Omer Madame de Stael 248 From the painting by F. Gerard Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough 253 From the painting by Godfrey Kneller Louise de la Valliere 258 From the painting by Mignard, Uffizi Gal- leries, Florence Susan B. Anthony 268 Elizabeth Cady Stanton 274 Julia Ward Howe 284 Lucretia Mott 308 Harriet Martineau 318 Charlotte Cushman 323 From the painting by Chapvel Nell Gwyn 328 From the painting by Sir Peter Lely, Na- tional Portrait Gallery Mrs. Siddons 342 From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds Peg Woffington 347 From the painting by James Latham Adelina Patti 357 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 13 Page Rosa Bonheur 372 From the 'painting by Duhufe George Eliot 382 From the painting by Frederick Burton, Nor tional Portrait Gallery Harriet Beecher Stowe 397 George Sand 402 From the drawing by L. Calamatta Martha Washington 426 From the engraving by Jno. Woolaston Joan op Arc 439 From the painting by Ingres AGRIPPINA (A. D. 16-59) A WICKED woman; A DEVOTED MOTHER A GRIPPINA, Empress of Rome, is perhaps best L\ known as the mother of Nero, the woman X A. who thrust that detestable tyrant upon the people of Rome, and who later suffered death at the hands of his hired assassins. "Strike me through the body that bore that monster Nero," she said, when she recognized the murderers as his emis- saries. The woman who died thus miserably in her forty- third year was endowed by fortune and by natm-e with every possible attribute which should bring suc- cess and enduring fame. She was the daughter of Germanicus, one of the really great Romans; was married to Claudius, who, if not great, was at least a harmless ruler; and gave birth to Nero, whose fid- dling over burniug Rome later historians deny, but whose cruelty and debauchery no whitewash can blot out from history. Nature gave her surpassing beauty, but denied her any sense of chastity. Her violations of that virtue were notorious, and assumed forms which in our days are heard of only in the most debased and vicious families. Rome at that time had a strin- gent statute against violations of the moral law^rthat ■ (16)'" 16 WOMEN OF HISTORY is, in the case of women — but qualified it if such lapses were shown to have been due to an ambition to advance the interests of the state. Of this quahfication Agrippina took the fullest advantage, and it served to excuse her in the mind of the Roman populace when, after a riotous career as a girl and a marriage of which Nero was the fruit, she_married her imcle, the Emperor Claudius. For the rest Agrippina was majestic in carriage, of most distinguished manners, with a lively and enterprising intellect capable of undertaking great things. But as her beauty was bartered to the ends of lust and ambition, so her really regal mind was marred by the passions of avarice, jealousy, and revenge. She was capable of acts of the most hideous cruelty, and who- ever blocked the path to reahzation of her ambition suffered and disappeared. Of Agrippina's first marriage it is unnecessary to speak. It was soon terminated and its one contri- bution to history was the child Nero. Later, when Messalina, wife to Claudius, and an even worse woman than Agrippina, died, she set herself to win the widowed emperor. For her it was no question of affection. Claudius was her uncle, older by far than she, and attractive neither in person nor in intellect. But he was emperor, and Agrippina had a son whom she destined for the unperial purple. That Claudius should acquiesce was understandable. As daughter of Germanicus, Agrippina had a large following among the people of Rome and particularly with the all-power- ful Praetorian guard, for her father had been, above all things, a soldier.^ AGRIPPINA 17 Claudius had two children — a son, Britannicus, and a daughter, Octavia. The daughter was easily dis- posed of by being betrothed to Nero, then aged twelve and undergoing his education at the hands of the famous philosopher, Seneca. Claudius further was persuaded to adopt Agrippina's young hopeful. After that matters went smoothly and the task of thrusting Britannicus into the background seemed for a time easy. But it chanced that Claudius belatedly saw through Agrippina's design to have her son, rather than his, succeed to his imperial dignities, and, in his puerile fashion, he protested. According to the pleas- ant marital customs of the day there was nothing for Agrippina to do but to get rid of so inconvenient a husband. The necessity was annoying, of course, and the event was made the more embarrassing by the fact that the dish of mushrooms — ^his favorite viand — which she had prepared for him proved to be a little too deUcately poisoned. It incommoded him sorely, but gave no promise of fatal results. A skilful phy- sician, who was called in to relieve his distress, thrust a feather down the patient's throat to induce vomiting. As the feather had first been dipped in poison, appar- ently something Uke prussic acid, it relieved all his pains forever. Agrippina then moved with shrewdness and deter- mination. The death of Claudius was concealed until the Praetorian guard could be sounded as to their willingness to receive Nero as emperor. This was made easy by the fact that Britannicus — the only other possibility — was only about twelve years old and his proclamation as commander of the Roman 18 WOMEN OF HISTORY armies would have been obviously absurd. So all went smoothly and Agrippina soon saw all her plottings and poisonings rewarded by the spectacle of her son, then but sixteen years old, on the imperial throne of Rome. Very soon she discovered that like the fabled Frank- enstein she had created a monster for her own undoing. Though he had fulfilled the conditions of his betrothal and married his stepsister, Octavia, Nero speedily tired of her and became infatuated with Acte, a freed woman of oriental beauty. Thereupon his mother began to harass him. With her multitudinous faults she had a certain high-mindedness and a lofty ambi- tion for her son. She wanted him to be a real emperor, a Caesar or a Britannicus, not a mere libertine rioting over the wine cup. Her insistence annoyed Nero. The simplest way, he thought, to rid himself of this annoyance was to assassinate the mother who bore him and who had committed almost every sin on the calendar to make him emperor. But how? Agrip- pina was regarded almost with reverence by the Ro- mans, for she was the daughter of a man who would have been emperor but for his premature death, and the sister, the wife, and the mother of emperors. Nero's advisers cogitated long on this interesting problem. A picturesque solution was offered by one Anicetus, commander of the Roman fleet. The plan was for Nero to invite his mother to visit him at Baiae on the Bay of Naples, where he and his com-t were summering. After treating her with due filial respect and affection he was to furnish a vessel to return her to her home. This vessel was cunningly constructed so that one side of the hull could be thrown AGRIPPINA 19 open by the touch of a lever and it would sink before aid could be summoned. In the beginning the plot promised well. Agrippina found Nero a solicitous host and an affectionate and repentant son. Her visit ended, she stood by the waterside awaiting the splendid vessel which, with fihal devotion, the emperor had constructed for her special use. All her talk to her ladies in waiting was of the new spirit her son showed and her hopes of his future development. An hour or two later the cry was raised that the ship was sinking. Did the wise old plotter of the Roman court suspect treachery? Who can tell? At any rate she sUpped quietly over- board and swam for safety, while one of her waiting maids on the ship, being mistaken for her, was stunned and thrown into the water to drown. Agrippina meanwhile swam until picked up by a passing boat, which conveyed her safely home. Thence she sent, either innocently or with mahgnant irony, a courier to Nero informing him of her happy escape and inviting his rejoicings. Nero was mad with rage and with apprehension. How much his mother knew, he could only guess. If she really knew of his plot she could raise a revolt in Rome that would put his throne in danger. To openly assassinate her was perilous — to let her Uve was to invite disaster. Accordingly he sent a body of mercenaries to her home who did her to death with swords. Her last words are quoted in the first paragraph of this chapter — surely the most damning heritage that a wicked but devoted mother could leave to a more wicked and wholly thankless son. ASPASIA (Fifth Century B. C.) THE INSPIRATION OP PERICLES THE distinguished Italian historian Ferrero points out repeatedly the superiority of the condition of the women of Rome to that of those of Athens. Under the Roman law, he says, during the period immediately before and after the Christian era, married women owned and con- trolled their own property, except the dowry which was given the husband on the wedding day. In many respects their economic condition was better than that of women in certain of our states to-day. More than that, their social status was equal to that of men. They entertained their husbands' friends, were present at social gatherings, and bore a large part in the pohtical life of the day. In Athens, on the contrary, the old Asiatic idea of the sequestration of women was maintained. The "gynseceum," in which the wife and feminine relatives of the master of the house resided, was in essence the Turkish harem, with its rigors somewhat mod- erated, but its seclusion almost as complete. Mar- ried women had little share in the social life of the day, and none in pohtical affairs. The;/ neither met the friends of their husbands nor had any part in the (20) ASPASIA 21 intellectual life of the circles ia which their lords and masters moved. As a result women of a class, in our days without the social pale, wielded a large influence in Athens. Free from the domestic and intellectual bondage which dwarfed their respectable married sisters, they made of their houses the meetiag places for the most prominent men in political, intellectual, and artistic circles. Among women of this class the foremost in her time and the greatest in history was Aspasia, a beauti- ful Ionian, the date of whose birth is vmknown, but who flourished in the fifth century B. C. How and why she came to Athens is lost in the dim mists of the past. Presumably she came there as an adven- turess, seeking fortune which she found when by her beauty, which all contemporary writers declare sur- passing, her manners and her brUUancy she won the heart of Pericles — the greatest ruler Athens ever knew. The age of Pericles is famous in all history as the period when Athens reached the zenith of its glory in art, in philosophy, and in military prowess. It was then that Phidias flourished and crowned the AcropoUs with his masterpieces. Euripides and Sophocles were writing dramas which the intellectual world stni studies; Socrates and Plato were preaching the philosophy which lies at the bottom of modern ethics; Democritus and Anaxagoras were evolving political systems which still influence the government of the world. Thucydides and Herodotus were writ- ing the histories which form the basis of modern knowledge of the ancient world, and Pindar was com- 22 WOMEN OF HISTORY posing those odes which modern poets love to trans- late. For all of these the house of Aspasia was the rendezvous. How she came to meet Pericles is not recorded even in the somewhat vague traditions of the time when history was written on perishable wax tablets. But that she was to him all that a wife should be though denied the legal title, is certain. She bore him a son whom after the death of his two legitimate children he adopted and to whom he gave his own name. For his failure to marry her there were two very sufficient reasons. In the early days of their acquaintance he was a married man, though afterward estranged from his wife. But wholly insurmountable was the law which prohibited the marriage of a noble Athenian to a foreigner. Thus balked in their desire to marry, Pericles and Aspasia formed a union which proved as enduring as life, and which was truly a wedding of minds. Walter Savage Landor well ascribes their fault, if fault it were, to the narrowness of their time. There throned, immortal by his side, A woman sits with eyes sublime, Aspasia — all his spirit's bride; But, if their solemn love were crime Pity the beauty and the sage, Their crime was in that darkened age. The ascendency of Aspasia over the mind of Pericles was destined to prove dangerous, almost fatal to them both. The people of Athens disliked the spectacle of their ruler parted from his lawful wife and responsive to the influence of a foreign-born woman. Probably the lawful wives of Athens helped to stimulate this ASPASIA 23 discontent, for the prosperity of Aspasia and her class could hardly fail to awaken the jealousy of these sequestered ladies. Moreover, the frequenters of Aspasia's home were looked upon with distrust by the Athenians. Socrates, Democritus, and Anaxagoras were philosophers not in touch with the spirit of their day. They examined the system of government and criticized its faults. They expressed doubts as to the existence of the whole army of gods recognized in pagan theology, and questioned the existence of Jupiter, Minerva, and Venus. Phidias, though a sculptor skilled in carving statues of the gods, confessed to skepticism concerning them. In short, the salon of Aspasia was a nest of what we now call anarchists, and the people of Athens set about destroying them all. Against Aspasia they charged that she influenced Pericles for the injury of the state and that she in- structed him in unspeakable and indescribable vices. Incapable of proof, these charges were ahnost equally impossible to disprove. By constant reiteration in public places they came to be accepted as facts. When the matter came to a serious hearing it required all the oratorical genius of Pericles, all the influence he pos- sessed and all the fierce determination inspired by the love he felt for the woman who was in all truth his wife, to save her from Athenian jealousy. "His tears more than his eloquence swayed the judges," said a contemporary writer. But though able to save Aspasia by herculean efforts, Pericles was unable to protect his friends. The bril- liant circle which gathered about the Aspasian board 24 WOMEN OF HISTORY was broken up in dread of Athenian wrath. Phidias and Anaxagoras were swept away before the storm — one to lifelong exile, the other to prison and untimely death. Not long after, Socrates drank the deadly hemlock. The most intellectual coterie of classic days was demolished by an unreasoning populace. The name of almost every man who joined in the discussions at Aspasia's house is written large in his- tory; the name of none of their enemies is remembered. After this disaster Aspasia swiftly passed into obscm-ity. The plague fell upon Athens and carried away Pericles and his two children by his first wife. Some time thereafter Aspasia married once more, and gradually faded from the world's stage. The time and place of her death, as of her birth, are lost in history, but after nearly 2,500 years her name shines bright upon its pages, and though no writing, however frag- mentary, bearing her name exists, her fame is secure. 0")K.\KrJA From llli pnjiitiinj hij ,/. Ck(iill[in(Jii CORNELIA (Second Century B. C.) MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI SHORTLY before the Roman mob, urged on by the plutocrats in the Roman senate, beat to death the two brothers known as the Gracchi, the elder of these, Tiberius Gracchus, threw down the gauntlet to privilege thus: "The wild beasts of Italy have their caves into which to retire, but the men who spill their blood in her cause have nothing left but air and hght. With- out houses, without any settled habitation, they wan- der from place to place with their wives and children, and their generals do but mock them when at the heads of their armies they expect these men to fight for their sepulchres and domestic gods; for among such a mmaber there is perhaps not a Roman who has an altar that belonged to his ancestors, or a sepulchre in which their ashes rest. The private soldiers fight and die to advance the wealth and luxury of the great, and they are called masters of the world, while they have not a foot of land in their possession." Thus far back in the history of the world the evil of the monopoly of land impressed itself upon great minds. Two hundred years before Christ the Gracchi (26) 26 WOMEN OF HISTORY', saw it, protested and were murdered by hirelings of the monopolists. Henry George in our own day saw it, too, and died fighting it. Cornelia, who was proud to be known as "the Mother of the Gracchi," was above all things a noble Roman matron. Her nature would hardly appeal to our more modern women, who hold, and rightly, that there is something more for womankind than mere household devotion. All she stood for, all that she did, was to educate her two sons to become great figures in Rome. Had she lived a century or so earher she would have made of them great soldiers. As it was she bred them to the higher profession of state- craft. It is quite true that for the moment they failed, but few figures in Roman history have done more for real democracy than the Gracchi, and it was their mother who made them all they were. CorneUa was born in the second century B. C. — the year is not known precisely. She was the daughter of Scipio Africanus, whose latter name carried with it the glory of his triumph over Hannibal in the second Carthaginian war. Her husband, Tiberius Gracchus, sprang from the plebeian class; she herself was of the patrician order. Perhaps it was because of this mixed parentage that the two sons — the Gracchi, as they came to be known in history — ^had the manners of the patricians, while sympathizing in all affairs with the downtrodden plebeians. CorneUa's husband died in the midst of their most happy marital life. Even so, there had been born to them thirteen children, of whom three only survived — the two boys, Caius and Tiberius, and one girl. CORNELIA 27 All mothers expect their sons to be great figures in whatever walk of life they may tread. Of the baker's boy quite as much is expected in his line as of the crown prince. Cornelia beUeved from the very outset that her two sons were destined to the highest^place in the Roman Empire. So complete was her conviction that she declared that in history she would be known as "The Mother of the Gracchi" rather than as the daughter of Scipio Africanus. Her behef was well founded, and in the excavations of the Roman Forum, nearly 2,000 years after her death, there was found a battered statue of her, bearing the very title she most craved — "Corneha Mater Grac- chiorum." Perhaps in some other age she might have been more than a mother — if more than that there can be. But, on the other hand, it is quite possible that the woman who so shaped the characters of her two sons that they were willing to brave all the power of pa- trician Rome in support of the rights of the plebeians was surely herself a power. She stood manfully back of her sons, who fought in the senate and in the fonun to regain for the people part of the land that had been aUenated from them. And when the Roman senate inflicted upon the two popular champions that final and complete punishment which in those days every man who stood for the people had to brave — nowadays he braves business disaster, but not swift death — she accepted the tidings of their assassination without a murmur. "Can the mother of the Gracchi need consolation?" she asked. And indeed froip the viewpoint of a Roman 28 WOMEN OF HISTORY matron and mother she was right. The name of the Gracchi has passed into history. Who can name the cheap poUticians who accomplished their assassination? It was while the two lads were still in their early boyhood that Corneha made to the purse-proud Roman matron, boasting of her gems, that retort which has passed into history and serves as the subject of one of the world's greatest paintings. Challenged to show her jewels in competition with those of her visitor, she deferred the exhibition tactfully until the two boys with their tutor came in. "These are my jewels," she then said, with a pride justified by their later glory. Shortly after the death of her husband Cornelia was sought in marriage by Ptolemy, King of Egypt, then at the zenith of his power. Flattering as the offer may have been, it was declined by the widow of Tiberius,'^the plebeian, and her sons escaped being oriental princes. Over the early education of her boys Cornelia her- self presided, founding them in Greek, philosophy, and politics. She had been highly educated by her father, the great Scipio, and her home was the resort of the men of light and learning in Rome until the double calamity drove her into self-chosen exile. She then took a villa at Misenum to live out the re- mainder ot the days of her bereavement. To a great extent her 'intellectual court followed her thither, and these faithful friends have recorded their amazement at her composure and the quiet spirit of mingled resignation and pride with which she spoke of the lifework of her sons and of their untimely death. No CORNELIA 29 tears bedimmed her eyes as she recounted their noble deeds, nor did her voice give any indication of sorrow or regret. In a way she seemed to have detached herself from them — to be less the mother than an inspired historian chronioling the acts of great figures too remote and too lofty to awaken weak emotions. Indeed, her attitude was so Spartan that some even thought her mind might have been unhinged by age or her sensibilities wrecked by misfortune. But the biographer of the Gracchi says: "In this they (such observers) proved their utter lack of sensibility. They did not know the signs of that nobility of soul which is sometimes given by bhth and is always perfected by culture, or the reasonable spirit of endurance which mental and moral excellence supply." More than twenty-one centuries have passed since Cornelia gave her jewels to the Roman people, but her fame undimmed by tune still endures to be an inspiration to the mothers of our age. CLEOPATRA (B. C. 69-30) THE WOELD's most FAMOUS BEAtTTT A FRENCH philosopher, morahzing on the great influence of little matters, remarked that a fraction of an inch more on the end of Cleo- patra's nose would have changed the history of Rome and Egypt. As it was, her unblemished beauty, her wit, and her audacity disarmed two of the greatest generals Rome ever sent into Egypt. Not until a third remained oblivious to the charms she temptingly displayed to him did she abandon her effort to rule the world by beauty, and seek refuge in self-inflicted death. Cleopatra was joint heir to the throne of Egypt with her younger brother Ptolemy. In accordance with the monstrous custom of the Alexandrine dynasty she was expected not merely to divide regal authority with her brother, but to marry him as well. Against this she revolted — although whether it was against the marriage or the division of power is not very clear. At this time Julius Csesar, after overthrowing Pompey on the plains of Pharsalia, arrived with the mere remnant of an army at Alexandria. Here he found governmental chaos. The adherents of Ptol- emy and of Cleopatra were rioting daily in the streets. (30) CLEOPATRA 31 In the name of the Roman senate, then all powerful, Caesar sought to compose the quarrel and to that end summoned both Ptolemy and Cleopatra before him. Cleopatra might have responded with a brilliant retinue, or sent distinguished advocates to represent her. Instead, with a single companion, ApoUodorus, she embarked in a fragile skiff and made a tempest- uous voyage to Alexandria. Arrived there the ques- tion of how she should gain audience with Caesar became all important. That a queen should appear bedraggled from a sea voyage and accompanied by but one attendant was impossible. Cleopatra, whose dramatic instinct, no less than her personal charms, would be invaluable ia the comic opera field to-day, solved the problem. Clad in raiment of which the least said the most descriptive, she lay upon a rich oriental rug and was wrapped up by the faithful ApoUodorus into a neat bimdle, which he thereupon shouldered and carried to the palace. Upon the plea of bringing to the Roman general a tribute from the absent queen of Egypt, he found prompt admission to the audience hall. There he laid his burden on the floor before Caesar, undid the fastenings, and from the richly colored convolutions of the oriental fabrics rose the delicate and ravishing form of the most beautiful woman of the eastern world, even as Venus rose all dripping from the sea. Caesar was then above fifty years of age. His life, though that of a soldier who really fought, had not been marked by any austerity. In a lax age his morals had been those of his fellows. But the siu"- passing beauty of this Egyptian girl of twenty summers 32 WOMEN OF HISTORY enthralled him on the moment. He was at once her slave, and the next morning proclaimed that she should share equally with Ptolemy the royal prerogatives. But Ptolemy shrewdly surmised that Cleopatra plus Csesar would hardly divide equally power with Ptol- emy alone. There followed plots, conspiracies, and a sputtering of war in which the military genius of Csesar and the discipline of his Roman legionaries overthrew the vastly superior forces of the Egyptians. Thereafter for a time Cleopatra ruled supreme — alike over Egypt and her lover. That Csesar would have married her had he not already possessed a living wife there is no doubt. But ugly rumors about the life of effeminate and voluptuous luxury which the great JuUus was leading in Alexandria reached Rome, and his friends besought him to come home. He returned. Cleopatra presently followed him, hoping that some lucky chance in Rome might enable him to marry her. But the fates were unpropitious. Csesar fell before the daggers of Brutus and his fellow conspirators, and the Queen of Egypt and of Beauty was forced to flee again into her own land. For three years Cleopatra reigned with little trouble in Egypt, so secure were the foundations Csesar had laid. Then the disordered conditions in Rome began to affect her reahn. Brutus and Cassius warred with Antony for supremacy, and met disaster and death at PhiUppi. Curiously enough Cleopatra, in her effort to be diplomatic, had shown friendship for Brutus who dealt to Csesar the last fatal stab. Now Antony was in power and sent a curt summons to her to come and answer the charges against her. Again CLEOPATRA 33 the seemingly illimitable power of that surpassing beauty was brought into action. All the world knows how in a gilded barge, with sails of purple silk, the oars wielded by naked girls, the course directed by chosen beauties, she bore down to meet Mark An- tony's war galley. The queen herself reclined in a huge shell-shaped couch on the elevated quarter deck, and neither her garb nor her beauty was permitted to suffer by comparison with the crew of houris who propelled this ship of state of Venus on its way. An- tony sent her an invitation to dine with him upon his ship. "It is more fitting that your master should dine with me," she told the messenger. Antony came. To paraphrase Caesar's most famous despatch, "He came, he saw, she conquered." For Antony now were all the amorous dalliances which had kept Csesar in Alexandria when Rome needed him. For him the bacchanalian feasts, the dancing girls, all the luxurious dissipation which the voluptuous imagination of Cleopatra could devise and his own coarsely sensual nature relish. When every other device to stir jaded passions had been exhausted they fell to striving as to which could give the most costly entertainments. It was in the course of this contest that Cleopatra is said to have dissolved a pearl of great price in vinegar and drunk it. The story is hallowed by centuries of repetition, but is doubtful. Pearls dissolve but slowly in any acid, and vinegar is not a palatable beverage. However, the anecdote is characteristic of the stories that reached Rome, where the people began to clamor for Antony's overthrow. Octavius Csesar was sent 34 WOMEN OF HISTORY to attack him, and after an uninterrupted succession of victories appeared before the walls of Alexandria, compelled the surrender of Cleopatra's fleet, and made the city his own. Cleopatra took refuge in a massive mausoleum which she had built some years before. Antony came thun- dering to its doors, firm in the belief that the surrender of her fleet meant that she had treacherously deserted him. Her guards, fearing that in his wrath he would do the queen an injury, told him that she had slain herself. Instantly his rage gave way before a great wave of love and contrition. Rushing madly to his own quarters he threw himself repeatedly on his sword, inflicting fatal wounds. The news being taken to Cleopatra she had her dying lover conveyed to her retreat, bound up his hurts and niu"sed him tenderly imtil he died. Sentimental tradition has it that she died with him, but the historical evidence seems to show that after his death she sought to win over Octavius with the same charms that had proved so effective with Caesar and with Antony. But Octavius was cold and ambitious. His desire was to save Cleopatra that she might walk in chains a captive behind his chariot, at the trimnph which he knew Rome would decree him. But her determi- nation never to be displayed to the Roman populace as a slave was indomitable, and finally, persuading a serving woman to smuggle an asp into the tomb which served her as a refuge, she appUed the venom- ous serpent to her breast and died while Octavius and his lictors were thundering at the gates in an effort to seize and to save her. HYPATIA (A. D. 380-415) THE FEMALE PHILOSOPHER OF ALEXANDRLA MOST of US to-day know of Hypatia through Charles Kingsley's stirring historical novel bearing her name. Indeed any one whom this brief sketch may interest could do no better than to secure the novel, which tells in striking and graphic phrase the story of the era in which the Christian church of the day refused to let this girl preach doctrines which are now commonplace, and finally connived at the crime of a mob of monks and priests who hacked her naked body to pieces with shells and bits of earthenware and finally burned its mutilated fragments on a pyre. It is doubtful whether many people to-day know just what it was that Hypatia preached that made her so hated by the chm-ch of that day. The his- torians will tell you that it was Neo-Platonism — a phrase that means much to the historians but Uttle to the general pubhc. Roughly speaking, it was much like oiu- present preachments of ethical culture as against those of evangeUcal Christianity. We have our woman philosophers to-day, but unlike Hypatia they stand on a platform above all others and fear adulation more than they need apprehend C35) 36 WOMEN OF HISTORY violence, v Jane Addams might have been a Hypatia in the days of the latter, but the philosophy of the American woman is essentially practical; that of the Greek wholly speculative. In these practical days we find difficulty in under- standing the zest for the most technical and imprac- tical sort of knowledge which existed during the early days when education was being disseminated among the people. Theon, the father of Hypatia, taught mathematics and astronomy in Alexandria. One can hardly imagine the gilded youth of to-day flocking to lectures on mathematics or astronomy, but in Alexandria they crowded to his school as in late years fashionable women have attended the lectiu-es of the various Swamis — and perhaps for the same reason, namely, that the subject was a bit above their heads. Hypatia, too, lectured on mathematics and phi- losophy, but as she possessed singular beauty and charm the size of her classes was more easily accounted for. Nowadays her father would be called a pro- ponent of eugenics, for he set forth deliberately at his marriage to produce a perfect human being. Charts and theorems and formulas were used by this man to guide nature. Whether by luck or science he suc- ceeded. His daughter was facially beautiful; in figure admirably molded. Her height was five feet nine inches, and her weight one hundred and thirty-five pounds when she was twenty-one years of age. She was bom in 380 A. D. and torn to pieces by the mob in 415 A. D. A scant thirty-five years measured her living aid to philosophy, but all ages since have treas- ured her memory or been affected by her influence. HYPATIA 37 Just what bred the bitter antagonism of the Alex- andrine monks to Hypatia is now a source of mystery to all except the most erudite ecclesiastical historians. Her doctrine of Neo-Platonism is described as an effort to make Greek philosophy religious and Greek religion philosophical. That is a very good phrase, but as a matter of fact there is nothing in Greek philosophy which does not fit into the code of mod- em Christianity, nor anything in Greek religion save the symbolism of the multitudinous gods and god- desses that does not equally harmonize. Nevertheless, the school of philosophy presided over by Hypatia was watched jealously by the monks of Alexandria, headed by Peter the Reader — a melo- dramatic type of the fanatic, whose character is finely outlined by Kingsley. This reUgious maniac charged Hypatia with luring from the orthodox faith many of the yoimger Christians. So it happened that one day in March, 415 A. D., she left the garden in which her school was held and started toward the city. Men rushed to warn her of a mob of monks waiting to do her ill. "Shall the daughter of Theon show fear?" she asked proudly, and continued her way. Suddenly there rushed upon her a mob of monks and Christian sympathizers, who dragged her from her chariot and into a neighboring church. In that edifice, nominally sacred, the girl was stripped of her clothing and mocked and jeered as she stood at once defiant and abashed before her persecutors. They then fell upon her with sharpened bits of shell, pottery, knives and clubs till her white and hssome body lost all semblance to humanity. In the end it was committed to the flames. 38 WOMEN OF HISTORY So died Hypatia. In our day it would be impossible to say for what. Her preachments were the common- places of our era. It is true that we have Uttle definite knowledge of what she urged, for her writings shared a fate similar to her own. They had been deposited in the grand library of the Serapion, which was de- stroyed by a mob of fanatic Christians headed by the Archbishop Theodosius. It is proper to say that the erudite historians of the Roman Catholic Church demonstrate beyond cavil that this murder was merely a riotous outbreak in which the Church had no part. Peter the Reader was not a cleric. The whole subject is fully discussed by Socrates, the accepted Church historian of the fourth century. EMPRESS THEODORA (Sixth Century A. D.) THE GREAT EMPRESS OF THE EAST THOUGH the name of Theodora, Empress of Rome and wife of the great Justinian, has come down through the ages in a halo of glory, the origin of the woman that bore it was clouded with squalor and with vice. Like the water hly that shows its perfect bloom on the blue surface of the pond, her beginnings were rooted in sUme and mud. There is a curious similarity between her story and that of Nell Gywn which is to be told in a later chapter. The father of the girl who was destined to be one of the most powerfvil of the empresses of Rome held the interesting public post of bear feeder at the amphi- theatre in Constantinople, the seat of Justinian's eastern empire. Feeding bears was perhaps not so menial an occupation as it sounds. Probably it was a highly paid sinecure like helping the king on with his coat, or the queen off with her stockings, became in the days of Louis XV of France. It must have been a valued post, for while upon his death his widow promptly secured a new husband and a candidate for the profits of the bear pit, she was too late to save the latter. (39) ^ WOMEN OF HISTORY Three children, all girls, were left by the feeder of bears, who left nothing wherewith to feed his progeny. Theodora, the eldest, as soon as might be, went on the stage to earn a living. Dramatic records of that time are but fragmentary, but it appears that she was what we would call to-day a pantomimist. She never attained to the dignity of what modem actresses call a "speaking part." She neither danced nor sang, nor played any musical instrument. But in the art of facial mimicry, known to our stage as "mugging," she was a genius, and her facial contortions never failed to bring down the house. It was before the day of headlines and spot lights, else she would have shone in both. The face with which she took such liberties was singularly beautiful. In person and in humor she was attractive. Accordingly she naturally followed the coiu-se of many young favorites of the stage in all times and nations. From this time until her marriage her life was of a sort that baffles descrip- tion. The erudite historians who have studied her period recount innumerable anecdotes and descrip- tions of her acts and manners, but prudently quote them in the original Greek or Latin — thus impressing on the average reader the disadvantage of being with- out a classical education. Her first protector was a governor of Pentapolis, in North Africa, who took her with him to his province. The girl must, even at that early day, have had ambi- tion not to be boxmded by an African colony, for she speedily quarrelled with her lover and betook herself to Alexandria. FaiUng to impress herself on that sophisticated town she returned to Constantinople, EMPRESS THEODORA 41 to find herself forgotten by the roisterers among whom she had once been an acknowledged queen. Whether from whimsy or necessity she thereupon forsook the primrose path, and taking a lodging in the shadow of the cathedral, now the mosque of St. Sophia, assumed the character of a simple working girl, earning a slender but virtuous Uvelihood by spinning. Being a consum- mate actress, she looked the part despite her bygone years of riot. There is a marked mystery about this period of retreat from the madding crowd. Not least mysterious is the way in which, living the simple Ufe, she was able to attract the attention and win the love of the Em- peror of the East, Justinian, who was then reigning vmder the name of his uncle Justin. It has been sug- gested that he had known her in her butterfly day« and sought her out in the winter of her discontent. But the love he offered her was an honorable one. He sought to make her his wife and empress when he should fully succeed to the imperial honors. At any rate Justinian found her ia retreat and took her for his own. He could not for the moment marry her, as the Roman law prohibited marriage of a pa- trician with any woman of servile origin or who had followed the unhonored profession of the stage. More- over his aunt, the Empress Euphemia, a lady of rustic origin and stern morals, wovild not accept as her niece a bride with so questionable a past. Matrimony was therefore deferred for a time, but as the recog- nized favorite of the emperor she became a power in court and a great figure in that Constantinople which had once laughed at her grimaces in the Hippodrome. 42 WOMEN OF HISTORY So sincere and earnest was Justinian in his efforts to make of Theodora an "honest woman," as the cant phrase is, that it is pleasant to record that she never gave him occasion to repent it. From the day of her association with him until his death the taint of scandal never stained her, and it was a day of scandalmongers. After she became in fact his wife and the empress regnant she was his truest counsellor and veritable right hand. The first step toward matrimony was taken when Justinian caused a law to be promulgated moderating the rigors of the law which regulated the marriages of patricians. About the same time he secured the elevation of Theodora to the patrician class. When Justin died all obstacles to the marriage had thus been smoothed out, and it was solemnized in 527 A. D. Thenceforth Justinian and Theodora reigned hand in hand. The one, the emperor, was by nature staid and serious, a man bred to the purple who took his responsibilities seriously. The other was in her youth — ^well, never mind what — but when she became the consort of the emperor was a woman worthy of re- spect. It is said that she was avaricious, eager for the accumulation of gold in her own name lest her hus- band should die and leave her once again penniless. Probably that is true. They say, furthermore, that numerous spies, active on her account, were s-wdft to report all persons about the court who seemed un- friendly, and that a curious poison or a certain dark passage down to the Bosporus finally removed such suspects. That, too, may be true. 'Twas but the custom of the age. Not even torture was beyond her EMPRESS THEODORA 43 methods of controlling her enemies, and it is recorded that she found pleasure in personally observing the agonies of her victims. And yet she not merely joined Justinian in the most pious and charitable actions of his reign, but suggested many. The woman who could enjoy the spectacle of a young man having his ankle bones crushed to fragments by wedges driven into the iron "boot" that enveloped his leg could tiu-n thence to the establishment of a great home for fallen women — whose woes she above all others should have under- stood. In politics and in war she was her husband's best adviser. Perhaps her poUtical tact is best shown by the fact that in Constantinople, where among the pubUc men there must have been hundreds who knew her past, she compelled respect and averted scandal. Her husband, Justinian, became the most famous emperor of the eastern Roman empire, and at all times held his wife as chief counsellor. Her death is ascribed by most to cancer. To avert it she made a long journey to the Pythian warm baths, accom- panied by a right royal train of nearly four thousand attendants. The baths proved futile; the faithful four thousand were of no more avail, and twenty-four years after her marriage Theodora died, far from the husband who had elevated her from squalor and who grieved bitterly for her death. ZENOBIA (Third Century A. D.) THE EMPRESS OF PALMYRA AN Amazon if ever there was one; an earlier l-\ Joan of Arc without the French maid's re- X A. ligious impulse, an empress who at one time ruled over Palmyra, Syria, 'Egypt, and a large part of Asia Minor, Zenobia was one of the great figures of the early days of the Christian era. Her capital. Palmyra, was the most regal city of the age. Its Temple of the Sun outshone in beauty the Par- thenon, and imperial Rome had nothing to equal the great quadrangle of snowy pillars, seven hundred and forty feet to a side, or longer than the Capitol at Washington. Roman wrath first wrecked the city, and long centiu-ies of occupation by the fanatic hosts of Islam completed its demolition. But the infrequent travelers who penetrate Syria, now a desert, report that nowhere in the world is there so stately and mournful a spectacle as these huge ruins of glistening white stone, springing from the desolate sands, in silent soHtude save for a few Mohammedans Hving like pariah dogs in mud huts at their base. Over this great city ruled Odenatus, king of Syria, a mighty chieftain to whom Rome in the days of their amity gave the proud title of Augustus. But one (44) ZENOBIA 45 mightier than the king ruled with him in the person of his queen, Zenobia. What was the origin of this briUiant woman, what the race whence she sprung, is lost in the vague traditions of a people who read Uttle, wrote less, and perpetuated their history merely by word of mouth from father to son. Some have said that she was the daughter of an Arab chief; others that she was descended from Solomon, who according to the Scriptures founded Palmyra. She herself claimed to be descended from Cleopatra. Gibbon sums all up by saying: "She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, equalled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra, and far surpassed that princess in chastity and valor." An early historian, TrebelUus Pollio, writing while the traditions of Zenobia were still fresh, says of her: "She went in state to the assemblies of the people in a helmet with a piirple band fringed with jewels. Her robe was clasped with a diamond buckle, and she often wore her arms bare. Her complexion was a dark brown, her eyes black and sparkling, and of imcommon fire. Her countenance was divinely expressive, her person graceful in form and motion beyond imagina- tion. Her teeth were white as pearls and her voice clear and strong. She displayed the severity of a tjrrant when severity was called for; and the clemency of a good prince when justice required it. "She was generous with prudence, but a husband- ress of wealth more than is the custom with women. Sometimes she used a chariot, but more frequently rode on horseback. She would march immense dis- tances on foot at the head of her uifantry, and would 46 WOMEN OF HISTORY drink with her ofl&cers, the Armenians and Persians, deeply, but with sobriety, using at her banquets gol- den goblets, set with jewels, such as Cleopatra was wont to use. In her service she employed eunuchs advanced in years, and very few damsels. She spoke Egyptian perfectly, and was so versed in the history of Alexandria and the East, that she made an abridg- ment of oriental history." Her husband. King Odenatus, was a distinguished soldier who drove the Persians under King Sapor out of his territory, and in turn invaded theirs, where he won several victories. The gossip of the time was that Zenobia, who accompanied him on his cam- paigns, was the real strategist who mapped out his battles; but this seems contradicted by the fact that after his assassination by his nephew about 266 A. D., her miUtary career was unfortunate and finally went down in complete disaster. This may perhaps have been due to the fact that Odenatus never had the disciplined and stubborn Roman legions to deal with. It is probable that the chief cause of Zenobia's great military repute was due to her willingness to share the lot of the common soldier. In the long marches across the deserts she accompanied the column, often trudging along on foot. In battle she led the charges, moimted usually on a white horse, fully caparisoned, in white armor plentifully bedizened with gems. Her appearance must have been a gUt- tering mark for the enemy, but she seemed to have a charmed existence and never came to hurt. When Odenatus was slain she ascended the throne with the title of Queen of the East, .i^Her court at ZENOBIA 47 Palmyra was the most splendid of the time. To the pomp and dignity of a Roman emperor was united the barbarous ostentation and luxury of an Asiatic potentate. Rome grew jealous of her magnificence. She annexed Egypt, then rich and populous, to her domain, and gradually ignored her obligations to Rome. GaUienus, then emperor, and a singularly puerile one, despatched an army against her, which she defeated and drove out of her territory. This disgrace galled the proud Roman spirit and when the warlike Aurelian became emperor, he himself in 272 A. D. led an army against Palmyra. Twice in rapid succession the Palmyrenes were defeated. Thereupon Zenobia shut herself up in Palmyra to stand a siege, hoping that Persia might perchance come to her aid. She was still undaunted. Her army had been full of Roman soldiers who had joined it in the days of Odenatus. When Aurelian summoned her to surrender she replied: "I have suffered no great loss yet, for most of those who have fallen were Romans." There was wit in the retort, but historians think that with the Romans she lost her best soldiers. The siege was protracted. Rome must have jeered Aurelian on the delay, for a letter exists in which he says: "The Roman people speak with contempt of the war I am waging against a woman. They are ignorant both of the character and power of Zenobia." He for his part had no such ignorance, and he offered the queen most liberal conditions of capitulation — an honorable retreat for her and continued privileges for the citizens. But she unfortunately spurned the offer. Shortly thereafter she slipped out of the city, 48 WOMEN OF HISTORY and, with a small bodyguard on fleet camels, made for Persia in hopes of getting aid. But just as she was stepping into the boat on the bank of the Euphrates she was overtaken. Ten minutes more and she would have been safe. In his tent Aurehan received the captive with the cold dignity of a conqueror. "How dared you revolt against the emperors of Rome?" he asked. Adopting a woman's best weapon, flattery, she replied: "Be- cause I disdained to recognize as Roman emperors an Aurelius or a Galhenus. You alone I recognize as my sovereign." If the soft answer turned away the imperial wrath, it did not that of the soldiers who clamored for her death. But Aurelian spared her, wishing that she should grace his triimaph. Leaving a small garrison in Palmyra, which, with a humanity unusual in a Roman emperor, he had spared the horrors of a sack, Aurelian took up the march for Rome. In a few days the news reached him that the Palmyxenes had risen and massacred the garrison. Promptly returning, the Romans fell upon Palmyra, slaughtered its people, respecting neither age nor sex, and tore its stately structures stone from stone. The city was obUterated and its ruined colmnns stand to- day mute memorials of the Roman wrath. Months later through the crowded streets of Rome Zenobia trudged wearily on foot behind AureUan's triumphal chariot. Great golden chains weighed her down, chains so heavy that slaves were forced to uphold them. Her dress sparkled with gems, but her eyes were dimmed with tears. Behind her, in mute irony, rumbled empty the gorgeous chariot in which ZENOBIA 49 she had once boasted she would enter Rome in tri- umph. From every side jeers and insults were heaped upon her. In her proudest moment Rome could stoop to thus further abase a woman who had fallen. Zenobia's disappearance from this world is enveloped in doubt like that which attends her birth. Some say that, provided by the Senate with a villa in Tivoli, she married again and lived out her life in comparative happiness. But the Roman historian Zosimus says that, brooding over her downfall, the destruction of Palmyra, and the disgrace of Aurelian's triumph, she refiised all food, languished, and died. After aU, this seems the more fitting end for so great a fallen queen. KATHERINE OF ARAGON (1485-1636) HEBOINE OP THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS DIVORCE WITHOUT being in the slightest degree a great woman, Katherine of Aragon caused so great a revolution in Europe that its effects persist until the present day. Be- cause of her England was made Protestant, though she bred up her daughter, Mary Tudor, to the task of making it Catholic again. That he might rid himself of her, Henry VIH quarrelled with Rome; a quarrel that has never been composed. He broke with her father, Ferdinand of Spain, and began that long period of English hostility to that nation which finally wrecked the Spanish empire and reduced the state of Spain from the proudest to the meanest in western Europe. These things happened because of Katherine. Her part in causing them was to marry Henry VIII after the death of his brother, her first husband; to be imfortunate ia not fulfilling what Henry held the prime function of a queen, namely, to bear him an heir; and finally to resist with all her power, and with the potent aid of Rome, the divorce he sought that he might marry Anne Bolejm. The girl child that caused this tumult in the world C50) KATHERINE OF ARAGON 51 of European politics was born of the imperial pair, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in 1485. Her cradle was a camp, for at the time of the child's birth Isabella — as great a captain as Ferdinand, or perhaps greater — was engaged in the conquest of Granada. Three weeks after the event the queen mother was again in her saddle directing the troops and inspiring them with patience and courage, while in a nursery estab- lished in the heart of the besiegers' camp the baby Katherine slept with the beat of the drum and the roar of the culverins for lullabies. Being a princess, it was, of course, desirable that she be betrothed before she was weaned. At the moment, however, no eligible baby prince was to be foimd, for Spain was then the haughtiest of empires, and made its alliances only with the greatest states. But shortly there was born to Henry VII of England a son, and a treaty of marriage was presently con- cluded. The affair lagged somewhat, for Henry was avid for a large dowry, while Ferdinand — the same monarch who let his wife pawn her jewels to finance the expedition of Columbus — clung tightly to his gold. The figure was finally fixed, however, at 200,000 scudi (or about $200,000) in cash. Many an American father has paid more for a mere German count, but Ferdinand begrudged it for a Prince of Wales! After a careful education at home, by which she learned to speak and write French and Latin as fluently as her own tongue, the princess, then sixteen years old, set out for England to meet her eager bridegroom. The prince appears to have been about thirteen years old at the time, but in later years his age became a 52 WOMEN OF HISTORY matter of such importance to his brother's divorce as to bring out a mass of conflicting and perhaps pur- chased testimony of a rather salacious sort. A long and tedious voyage across the notoriously turbulent Bay of Biscay and English Channel finally brought Katherine to England. She was received with acclaim, for the British public was heartily in favor of the Spanish alliance. The lover she found awaiting her was a sturdy boy, large for his alleged age, fair haired, ruddy of complexion. She , for her part was also fair, with a good color, plump, with a glint of red in her hair, and graceful of manner. Though Katherine had been educated in French, th« language of courts. Prince Arthur had not, and the two conversed through the interpretation of two archbishops. The marriage was solemnized on November 14th, and after due feasting and celebration the pair set forth for Ludlow Castle, in Wales. There was grave debate in the privy council as to the wisdom of letting the two children go forth thus as man and wife, despite the ceremony, because of the bridegroom's age. Curi- ous though the point seems, it turned out later to be one of vital importance to England and to Rome, for after five weeks of outwardly seeming married bliss Prince Arthur died. Years after the question whether during that period, with so young a husband, Katherine became more than a wife in name only, menaced the peace of all Europe. With a fine show of paternal affection Ferdinand wrote to Henry VII to send the widowed princess home. Unfortunately he also asked that the 100,000 KATHERINE OF ARAGON 53 scudi sent to England with Katherine, as a first payment on account of the dowry, be returned with her. But to the loss of his son and heir Henry did not propose to add the pangs of parting with that Spanish gold. So he replied that he would find his daughter-in-law another suitable match, and sug- gested his second son, now heir apparent, aged eleven. While Spain was considering this, Henry be- came a widower and cheerfully proposed to marry Katherine himself. But this was too much even for the marriage brokers of Spain, and the royal offer was declined. Isabella then demanded the immediate return of her daughter and the share of the dowry already paid, or the prompt betrothal of the new Prince of Wales to the Princess Katherine. The betrothal was agreed upon in 1503, the prince being then twelve, the princess eighteen. To the marriage treaty attached the condition that the couple should be married when the prince had attained the age of fourteen, that a papal dispensation should be obtained legalizing the marriage of Henry to his brother's widow, and above all that the second instalment of the dowry, 100,000 scudi, should be promptly paid. Though the widow of one heir to the English throne and the affianced bride to the heir apparent. Princess Katherine found the world upon which she was thus rudely thrust a cold and callous one. It all grew out of the still impaid 100,000 scudi of her dowry to which Ferdinand clung like Shylock to his ducats, and the payment of which Henry demanded as a con- dition precedent to the marriage. The prince reached the contract age, but as the dowry was not forthcom- 54 WOMEN OF HISTORY ing no marriage took place. Nor did the kingly father-in-law, who had been willing enough to marry Katherine himself, or to give her to either or both of his sons, care to charge his royal revenues with her board and gowns. Neither did her own father. Incredible as it may seem, the girl on the very threshold of a throne was reduced to the extreme of penury. Her maids were trnpaid, her establishment shabby, and she wrote home that in the four and a half years she had been in England she had had but two new gowns. At last Ferdinand disgorged the remaining 100,000 scudi; the pope had issued the needed dispensation authorising her marriage to her dead husband's brother. There was no reason why the marriage should not be solemnized, but Henry VII invented reason after reason for postponement, until at last his genius for diplomatic delay was suddenly stilled by death. That was in 1509, more than fom- years after the time set for the marriage. Henry VIII was eighteen years old when he ascended the throne, a ruddy, pleasure-loving boy. Katherine was twenty-four. The contract of marriage made on his behalf when he was but twelve years old was hardly binding upon him in the days of his compara- tive maturity, and for some time Katherine waited in an agony of apprehension lest he should ignore it and cast her back upon the world which had treated her so harshly. Her queen mother had by this time died, and her father was still pottering with his scudi and leaving his daughter to shift for herself. It was a period of sore anxiety for Katherine, but it was ended when Henry, moved by one of the few honor- KATHERINE OF ARAGON 55 able impulses of his life, asked the woman, who had waited so long, to marry him at once. In 1509 they were married and duly crowned at Westminster. There followed for Katherine a period of happiness all the more joyous for the long season of privation and neglect that had preceded it. Her husband was young — six years younger than she — handsome, cheery, and devoted. In affairs of state he deferred con- tinually to her elder judgment, and she was a true power at a court which was one of the gayest of its age. But the first rift within the lute came when her first child came prematurely, still-born. Henry, though disappointed, passed the matter off with a coarse jest. A year later a son was bom, but the rejoicings of the court were hardly ended when the httle prince, already provided by his father with an estabhshment of his own, died. Five children in all Katherine bore to Henry. One only, Mary Tudor, known later as "Bloody Mary," passed the period of childhood. To Henry this was a cruel disappointment. He yearned for a man-child, and his irritation was not decreased by the fact that an illegitimate son grew and thrived apace. "Why," he asked gloomily, "should all my legitimate sons die while this one lives and grows sturdy and robust?" It was then that he became possessed with the idea that he had sinned in marrying his brother's widow, and that Katherine's failure to present him with an heir was the punishment imposed by God. All other services done for him by his queen, even when in his absence she organized an army and decisively defeated the Scots in the battle 56 WOMEN OF HISTORY of Flodden Field, could not blot out his resentment. This grew to fever heat when Ferdinand, with whom he was engaged in a war with France, concluded a dishonorable treaty without consulting him. A treach- erous father-in-law, a barren wife Henry thought was his lot, and he resolved to correct it. He became fairly morbid on the subject and apparently siacerely beUeved he was accursed because he had married his brother's widow. Accordingly he planned to lay the curse by securiag a divorce and marrying Anne Boleyn, a pretty maid of honor to his queen. For by this time the tender soul of Henry was less bent upon expiating the supposed sin of his marriage than it was upon getting a younger and prettier wife. There is no doubt, however, that at the outset, his mind made morbid by the death of so many of his children, he did beheve himself under the dire displeasure of the Deity. The story of that divorce must be told briefly; the evidence ia the suit cannot, because of its nature, be recounted at all. The king claimed that his mar- riage to Katherine was null and void from the first because she was his brother's widow, and marriage with a brother's widow or a deceased wife's sister was unlawful. That the pope had granted a special dis- pensation for this marriage did not alter the case, even though that dispensation was asked for by the king himself. For, he pleaded, the pope could not issue a dispensation to permit a man to commit a deadly sin, and furthermore, he, Henry, was too young to know what he asked when he besought this un- righteous privilege. KATHERINE OF ARAGO N 57 Katherine for her part pleaded that the papal dis- pensation absolutely legalized her marriage, and on that point she rested her case with Rome. But she went on to aver that because of her first husband's youth the marriage was one in name only, and there- fore null and void. The evidence taken on this plea of the queen's was much more suitable for a court of archbishops in the fifteenth century than for American readers to-day. Rome stood by the queen. Though a new pope was on the throne he knew he must uphold the act of his predecessor. But instead of deciding the case he diplomatized, postponed, and delayed. Henry, eager for his nuptials, would brook no delay. His envoys haunted Rome, His agents sought to aUay the feeling among the people of London whose sym- pathy was with the queen. But he could win neither the pope nor the people. Matters hung fire for years. Katherine was obdu- rate; the pope procrastinated; Mistress Boleyn would listen to nothing short of a full marriage ceremony, and Henry was frantic with rage and disappointed desire. Of course amid the throng of cardinals and bishops by whom Henry was surrounded there were plenty to advise him to do the thing he wished and be sure it would find favor in the eyes of the Almighty. Most successful of these clerical courtiers was Thomas Cranmer, who wrote a book in support of the king's contention, and was rewarded by being made arch- bishop of Canterbury, from which place Wolsey, who had advised against the divorce, was coldly turned out. 58 WOMEN OF HISTORY Into the deposed cardinal's mouth Shakespeare puts these plamtive words: Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies! But by this time Henry was done with popes and cardinals. Matters rushed swiftly to a conclusion. A second trial of the issue of the legality of his mar- riage, held imder the complaisant Cranmer, granted the divorce which Wolsey's court had refused. The pope refused to approve the finding, and Henry turned in rage to stamp CathoHcism out of England. Heads fell, priests were burned at the stake, monasteries sacked — ^aU that a love-mad king might possess a pretty maid of honor. As for Katherine, she was imprisoned, deprived by act of Parliament of her title and station, and her daughter, Mary Tudor, taken from her. When the poor woman died in 1536 it was beUeved that she had been poisoned, but proof was lacking. Strangely enough she maintained to the end her fealty to the brute who so misused her, and her last words, written in the Latin she knew so well, were: "Oculi mei te solum desiderant. Vale." — "Mine eyes desire thee only. Farewell." Nniioiuii y-* ANXE BOLEYN rtniil Cnlli'nj. I'ninlc unkiioLUii ANNE BOLEYN (1507-1536) A MARTYRED QUEEN OF HENRY VIII OF the hapless women whom ambition or con- siderations of state led to link their lives with that of the most uxorious of monarchs, Henry VIII, the story of Anne Boleyn is the most pathetic. It is pitiful, because she for so brief a time enjoyed the confidence and love of the king, her husband; because of the cruelty of the aspersions that were cast upon her character; because of the fact that, although she desired to gratify her liege lord in the ambition which had led him to marry her, nature thwarted her, and, finally, because of the fact that the man who had promised to love and cher- ish her not merely sent her to the block, but a few hours before the axe fell, persuaded a pliant archbishop to grant him a divorce and declare the marriage in- valid from the very beginning. Anne Boleyn was the daughter of a prosperous English coimtry gentleman, whose alliance with no- bility proceeded from the fact that his wife was the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. History leaves us in doubt as to the date of the girl's birth, fixing it diversely at 1501 and 1507. Though there is no evidence that Anne's parents foresaw or even imagined (59) 60 WOMEN OF HISTORY the brilliant — and disastrous — career and fate the future held for her, she was educated in a way to fit her to adorn any court, receiving her final schooling at the gay and witty court of France. In 1522 Anne returned to England with all the French airs and graces. She is described as having been at this time a tall, slender girl, weU shaped, with black eyes and a brunette complexion. More than one writer of the time refers to her beauty as of the gypsy type. Her voice was marvelously sweet, both in speech and song, and her wit and ready repartee sparkled even as did her eyes. About her age on her return chroniclers differ, though a most trustworthy account declares that when Henry VIII first met her at a fancy dress ball immediately upon her return she was but fifteen years old. The king was instantly infatuated and his pursuit of the girl never relaxed until she became his wife. Anne, while not a prude, was at least prudent, and though residing at the court as a maid of honor, she bore herself so that the breath of scandal was not raised against her. She stood out for the full measure of wifehood and the status of a queen. Both were ultimately granted, both taken away and her young life as well. Henry was at the time one of the most splendid and powerful monarchs of Christendom. He had to wife Katherine, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and with her he gained the favor of the pope and close alliance with Spain. But Katherine bore him no sons who survived infancy, and like all men — even our own captains of industry — as his power and fame increased he yearned passionately for an ANNE BOLEYN 61 heir to whom to transmit his crown. Long before he had become infatuated with Anne he had begun plotting to divorce Katherine, but the obstacles in his way seemed insuperable. Spain, of course, bitterly opposed the divorce and the pope set his face relent- lessly against it. But the sudden discovery of the sprightly and vivacious Anne, who responded to all his overtures only with arch remarks about a neces- sary marriage spurred the king to desperate measures. In the end he defied the pope, secured a decree of divorce from an archbishop — who held his place at the king's will — and married Anne, or rather announced that the marriage had taken place two months earUer. Very soon came the news that the new queen was about to present the king with the long-desired heir. The court was in an ecstasy of apparent rapture — though most of the courtiers hated Anne because of her sudden elevation to power. Soothsayers, diviners, wise women, aU the claque of prophesying humbugs foresaw the birth of a boy, knowing what they were expected to prophesy. AU the omens forecast it. And then fate, which often rough-hews the lives of royalty as well as of lesser folk, cast the die. On the 7th of September, 1533, the child was born. It was a girl. With that disappointment the wreck of Anne's fortimes began. With the unreasonableness of a spoiled child the king laid all the blame on her. He at once began to neglect his wife, though not abridg- ing in any degree her royal state nor limiting her freedom. His infidelities were as numerous as noto- rious, and at them the queen was obliged to wink. 62 WOMEN OF HISTORY Then for one brief space there seemed a possibility of a return to the happy days of their early wedded life. Once more there seemed prospect of a child and once again the king was devotion itself. The court turned from conspiring for her undoing to fawn- ing for her favor. The child came. It was the much-desired boy, but it was bom dead. Thereupon the king lost all interest in her. Within the court the conspiracies for her downfall doubled with no effort on his part to check them. Anne was in a most direful position. All the Catholic forces of Europe were against her. From every convent, mon- astery and church were spread rumors attacking her chastity before and after marriage. Spain had even refused to recognize her as queen. Her own court, of course, was hostile. Eager eyes were ever on the watch to detect her in some act on which to hang a scandalous tale, and lively imaginations were ready to invent scandals that had no foimdation. Anne met the impending crisis in a way that could only enhance its gravity. She was still queen and relaxed nothing of her queenly haughtiness. In the days of her power, when Henry would refuse her nothing, she snubbed the greatest figures in the king- dom, and now, out of favor and gUding swiftly to a fall, she did the same. Was her husband cold and sombre with her? Then she would disguise her out- raged feelings by being the merriest coquette about the court. That she flirted outrageously there seems to be no doubt, but that her flirtations passed beyond the danger point not even the inquisitors at her trial ANNE BOLEYN 63 were able to show. Four young men of fashion particularly paid lively court to her, loaded her with compliments and ogled her before the sinister eyes of her foes. One, in his cups, boasted that she accorded him the most intimate favors, and the other three being complimented upon like good fortune, smiled and did not deny the soft impeachment. They won the reputation, which some men envy, of being gay Lotharios, and a few weeks later paid for it with their heads after preliminary experiences in the tor- ture chamber. Henry's mind was fertile for the seed sown by those who told him the worst features of Anne's conduct. He had already determined that, like Katherine, she was "an unlucky woman" and that in denying him a son God was pimishing him for some technical flaw in his marriage. He was the more willing to take a harsh view of Anne's peccadilloes for that he was now desperately in love with Jane Seymour, maid of honor to Anne as the latter had been maid to Kath- arine. The four gay cavaUers were sent to the Tower, Rochford, the queen's brother, followed them, and a few days later Queen Anne herself entered that door- way to death. It is idle to detail the trial that ensued. Under EngUsh law at that time persons accused of high treason were denied all coimsel. Their sole method of defense was to interrupt crown witnesses with ques- tions or make bold denials of guilt. Anne was pitted against three of the ablest lawyers in the land. The jury was packed — six held office under the crown, two were her notorious enemies, and of the other 64 WOMEN OF HISTORY four nothing is known. Of course, the queen was convicted. Of the host of trials for treason up to that time one only had resulted in an acquittal, because the crown was behind all. So on the 19th of May, 1536, Anne Boleyn went to the scaffold — a scant three years after she went to the throne. At her supphcation Henry had gra- ciously consented that she be decapitated with a sword instead of the axe, the common lot of traitors. This royal boon she acknowledged, saying: "The king has been very good to me. He promoted me from a simple maid to be a marchioness. Then he raised me to be a queen. Now he will raise me to a martyr." And so. like a martyr, tearless and unflinching, she died. MARY TUDOR (1516-1558) "bloody MARY," THE MAKER OF MARTYRS MANY an American child grown to woman- hood, after the usual education in our pubUc schools, will remember little of her Enghsh history painfully and perhaps tearfully learned. But she will instantly recall "Bloody Mary." So immortality is often conferred by an epithet, some- times undeserved. Mary Tudor, whose name has been handed down coupled with this sanguinary adjective, may or may not have deserved it. She has her defenders, as had Torquemada and Lucrezia Borgia, but popular history has branded her as "Bloody" to the end of time. Mary Tudor was the daughter of King Henry VIII of England and his first queen, Katherine of Aragon. Her history is interwoven with that of the other royal women whom this detestable monarch either married or fathered, but upon whom in either case descended the curse of association with Henry. When a girl was born to royalty in those brave days of the divine right of kings, the first step was to see how her hand in marriage could be exchanged for a profitable alliance with some other royal house. And so the infant Mary had scarcely raised her first 5 (65) 66 WOMEN OF HISTORY earthly wail at Greenwich Palace, February 18, 1516, than the king, her father, set about finding a royal spouse for her. Katherine of Aragon, ablest of all Henry's galaxy of wives, set her heart on betrothing her daughter to Emperor Charles V of Spain. Spain was then at the height of its glory. In extent of possessions, in character and in intellectual attain- ments Charles was easily the leading figure in the courts of Europe. At the age of twenty-three, bhthe and debonair, he visited England to make the ac- quaintance of the six-year-old princess whom Kath- erine had picked out to be his queen. In the end a solemn treaty of betrothal was concluded at Windsor by which Charles bound himself to marry the Princess Mary when she had reached her twelfth year. Destiued to joiat occupancy of the throne of the greatest monarch of Europe, her education for that station became a matter of natural concern to her mother. As guide, philosopher and friend, one Ludo- vicus Vives, a Spaniard of grave if not sombre learn- ing, was called m. The course of education which he laid down for Mary was this: She should read the Gospels night and momiug, the Acts of the Apostles; selected portions of the Old Testament and the works of Cyprian, Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose; like- wise Plato, Cicero, Seneca's Maxims, Plutarch, the Utopia of Sir Thomas Moore and selected portions of Horace. Greek and Latin were to be made as familiar to her as her mother tongue. Cards, dice, the reading of romances and indulgence ia handsome dress were proscribed as pestiferous. Contemporary biographers note with mild surprise MARY TUDOR 67 that Mary emerged from this educational torment a girl of deUcate health and melancholy disposition. Meanwhile her royal father had wearied of her mother and yearned for another and a younger spouse. Riunors that Henry would soon divorce Katherine became rife. They reached the ears of the Emperor Charles, who saw at once that the divorce contem- plated would make Mary illegitimate and ineligible to the throne. Accordingly he cancelled the marriage contract entered into with such pomp only a few years before. Thereafter mother and daughter led a life of misery. Infatuated with Anne Boleyn, Henry pursued with rancor all who opposed his course. Katherine stood bravely for her rights. Mary, with fiUal spirit, sup- ported her mother. Both were exiled from court, Mary given almost servile employment as lady ia waiting to her own half sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn. Even when her mother died, in 1536, she was refused permission to be at the deathbed. About this time Anne Boleyn, for whom the king had divorced Katherine, fell under his displeasure. To her was not granted the comparative mercy of a divorce, but she was handed straightway over to the headsman. Being thus restored to single state, King Henry set about re-establishing relations with his daughter. His method was peculiar, to say the least, for the price of his favor was that she should formally recognize the divorce of her mother as righteous and thereby accept her own illegitimacy. Though Mary signed the document. Parliament practically nullified the action by passing a resolution, three years before 68 WOMEN OF HISTORY Henry's death, restoring to Mary all the rights of a legitimate daughter. When Henry died in 1546, full of years and dis- honor, his only son, Edward VI, succeeded him. The reign was a brief one, and brought to Mary little rehef from her trials and perplexities. The religious controversy burst forth with redoubled fury in Eng- land. Edward's sympathies were strongly Protestant, and he prescribed regulations for the solemnization of mass and the conduct of reHgious services, against which Mary bitterly protested. She did more than protest, and openly defied the new law by having mass said in Latin in her own private chapel. When ordered to desist she appealed to his most CathoUc majesty, Charles V of Spain, the betrothed of her childhood days, who straightway threatened war if his cousin's devotions were interfered with. Edward's reign proceeded speedily, but not smoothly, to its end. His administration was rent by faction and honeycombed with conspiracy. His very premier. Lord Northmnberland, plotted to so change the suc- cession that on Edward's death the crown should pass to Lady Jane Grey, Northimaberland's daughter- in-law, instead of the half sisters of Edward. The effort was successful, but briefly so only, as we shall see. Of Mary Tudor's lawful claim to the throne on the death of Edward VI there could be but little doubt. She claimed it alike by act of Parliament and by inheritance from her father, Henry VIII. But had she not possessed a more powerful argument than either of these she would have gone to her grave uncrowned MARY TUDOR 69 and, perhaps, without a head to wear a crown. For the Duke of Northumberland, thinking complete and unshakable the plans he made, had his daughter-in- law, Lady Jane Grey, proclaimed queen in the Tower and was raising an army to support her pretensions. Mary herself was in evU sort. Prominent and tried advisers she had none, for of those who sat about the council board, both of Henry and Edward, practically all were acting in collusion with Northmnberland. Dazed and irresolute for the moment, she fled from London to Sioffolk, leaving the field to Lady Jane. But her flight and seeming weakness roused up for her the one power that could bring Northumberland's plans to dismal disaster. The people of England, who had openly sided with her mother against King Henry and who had compelled Parliament to announce Mary's right to the succession, now rose to enforce that right. They rose with such unanimity as to prevent North- umberland from raising an army. The noble duke fled like a cur, leaving his daughter-in-law, for whose success he had plotted for years, to meet the long suffering of imprisonment and the swift, sharp anguish of the axe. Within nine days of her brother's death Mary was proclaimed queen. The reign upon which the Enghsh people now so joyously embarked proved brief, turbulent and bloody. Froude — ^most picturesque of Enghsh historians — says of it: "No Enghsh sovereign ascended the throne with larger popularity than Mary. The country was eager to atone to her for her mother's injuries. All the instinctive loyalty of the Enghsh toward the natural sovereign was enhanced by the abortive at- 70 WOMEN OF HISTORY tempt of Northumberland to rob her of her inherit- ance. She reigned little more than five years, and descended into the grave amid deeper curses than the acclamations which greeted her accession. In that brief time she had swathed her name in the horrible epithet which wUl cling to it forever, and yet from the passions which in general tempt sovereigns to crime she was entirely free." History has yet to determine the forces which led Mary into the com-ses which brought disaster upon her reign and obloquy upon her name. But the facts of her career are clear and imdisputed. Destitute, as I have said, of wise advisers at home, she turned for guidance to Charles V of Spain, and doubtless at his suggestion married his son, Philip VI, a boy eleven years her junior, whose indifference to her and to England were notorious and whose infideUties were innumerable. The marriage and the resultant alliance with Spain were unpopular among her subjects. They had known well enough that her accession would mean the effort to replace the "old religion," or the Roman CathoHc faith, but while the nation was fairly tolerant on the subject it wished the task accomplished by Englishmen, not by Spaniards. Moreover, Spain was at war with France, and the EngUsh, who above all things desired peace, foresaw truly that they would be dragged into a quarrel not of their choosing. Par- liament sent a delegation to Mary to protest against the marriage and various parts of England rose in armed revolt. Thus swiftly were heard the portents of the storm destined to turn the most popular of new queens into the most abhorred of English sovereigns. MARY TUDOR 71 As Henry had outlawed Catholicism by royal man- date, so, too, Mary replaced it as the state religion of the land. In her zeal and contrition for the past she even persuaded the pope to despatch Cardinal Pole to absolve the whole nation from the sin of living in heresy for so many years. Yet the task to which Mary had set her hand was not accompUshed with the ease with which Henry VIII had wrought his religious revolution. When the Catholics had been rudely shorn of power the rich lands which surrounded their abbeys, the ruins of which still stand in the garden spots of England, had been royally distributed by Henry among his favorites and the husbands of his mistresses. Many a proud ducal house of Eng- land to-day owes its princely rent roll to this kingly largesse. The restoration of Catholicism to favor imphed the restoration of these lands to their former holders. But to this plan, so obviously just, the beneficiaries of Henry's distribution of plunder raised furious objection. To nice theological questions they could well afford to be indifferent; the elevation of the Host they might endure, but the sacrifice of their broad pastures, their rolling wheat fields, cool green forests and lush meadows bordering rippling streams could not be considered for a moment. Composition and compensation were essential, and these Mary effected, thereby holding to her the ruling class in the country. No aid, either of advice or co-operation, came to Mary from her Spanish husband amid these per- plexities of state. Not even the affection which might at times have aided the queen to forget her troubles 72 WOMEN OF HISTORY was vouchsafed to her. True, it was scarce within the confines of reason for her to have expected much domestic bliss from a marriage of state contracted with a man eleven years her jimior. To him she brought an imperious will, a rasping temper, a mas- culine manner and a sickly constitution. Intellectually she was superb, speaking all modern languages with fluency, and a match for the subtlest in controversy. She had the feminine virtues and weaknesses, delight- ing in embroidery and music and prone to sudden illness and to fits of hysteria when crossed or grieved. From Philip she experienced indifference, neglect and final abandonment. A year after his marriage Philip went to Brussels to receive at the hands of his father the government of the Low Coimtries, as Holland and Belgium were then called. He was absent a year and a half and during this time doubtless contracted that infatuation for his cousin, the queen of Denmark, which only a few months later led to his decisive and final deser- tion of his wife. Better would it have been for Mary and her kingdom had he not paid this last brief visit to England. During his stay he involved the nation in the Spanish war with France. It is not too much to say that the conduct and the outcome of the war reflected httle credit on the EngKsh arms, for as one of its results England lost Calais, the possession of which had long been a source of pride to the sovereign and people alike. We can see now that the retention of Calais in British hands would have been a constant and recurrent incitement to further wars. Geographic- ally and nationally it belonged to France. But to MARY TUDOR 73 the British people it was as emblematic of British power abroad as Gibraltar is to-day. They called it "the brightest jewel in the English crown," and with characteristic bravado had inscribed over its gates: Then shall the Frenchman Calais win, When iron and lead like cork shall swim. Froude says of public sentiment at the time: "If Spain should suddenly rise into her ancient strength and tear Gibraltar from us, our mortification would be faint compared to the anguish of humiliated pride with which the loss of Calais distracted the subjects of Queen Mary." Some think the disaster hastened Mary's death. Certain it is that it extended her growing impopularity among the English people. Maddened by reverses in war, brooding over her husband's neglect and notorious infidehties, Mary began that course of reUgious persecution which finally riveted to her name the ghastly epithet by which all posterity came to know her. Her stanch defenders take issue with the word "persecution," claiming that she only enforced the laws as enacted by Par- Uament. The re-estabhshment of CathoUcism was attended by the hteral re-enactment of the laws for the suppression of heresy — laws breathing the spirit of the middle ages and wholly out of time with the budding spirit of liberty and tolerance in the English people. Mary went not a whit beyond the letter of these laws when in the brief space of a little more than three years she caused three hundred victims, of whom sixty were women and forty children, to be burned at the stake for presuming to worship God after their own fashion. 74 WOMEN OF HISTORY But she was all powerful with Parliament. A word from her to it would have caused the iimnediate amendment of the heresy laws so as to put them more in accordance with the spirit of the times. But the word was not spoken. She thought, and doubt- less sincerely, that the surest way to re-establish the old religion among her people and to crush out irrever- ence was to put to death with every circmnstance of barbarity and horror all who preached against it. Never was there a more mistaken beUef. Whatever the creed may be, the ancient maxim, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," applies to all alike. Never was a truer word spoken than the injunction laid upon Master Ridley by stout old Bishop Latimer as the flames enveloped them under the shadow of the Oxford colleges: "Be of good comfort, Master Ridley. Play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England as I trust shall never be put out." Long before the end of the fifth year of her reign Mary had come to be the most detested figure in all England. Prayers for her death were openly offered in the churches, and for the gratification of theit pious wish her subjects had Uttle time to wait. Falling ill of a malarial fever, Mary grew swiftly worse, and on the 17th of November, 1558, after receiving ex- treme imction, mass was celebrated in her chamber. At the sacred function of the elevation of the Host she lifted her eyes to heaven, and at the benediction fell back upon her pillow dead. Cruel and hard had been the life of Mary Tudor, and that her disposition grew hard and cruel seems but MARY TUDOR 75 natural. The student of her life can scarce select one day from the time she was turned over to the educational endeavors of the "modern Quintilian" until her death which could have been unreservedly- happy. What she thought of her queenhood was shown in her d3dng request that no semblance of a crown should press upon her dead brow, praying instead she be buried in the simple habit of a poor reUgieuse. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS (1542-1587) A VICTIM OF HER OWN INTRIGUES A BOUT the name of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, IJk tradition has built up a fabric of romance X ^ which history is far from supporting — the story of the beautiful young queen from the earliest days of her infancy made the pawn of rival factions playing for the thrones of England and Scotland, and the figure about which raged the savage warfare between CathoUc and Protestant in England in the sixteenth century. But Mary Queen of Scots was no pawn except ia her very earhest days. On the chess board of inter- national intrigue she was every inch a queen, and save for the fact that she had to encounter one of the greatest monarchs who ever sat on the English throne — ^Elizabeth — she might have attained her ambition of adding to her undisputed queenship of Scotland the throne of England as well. As it was, betrayed by too lofty ambition and outgeneraled at every point by "Good Queen Bess" — who was not so amazingly good, by the way — she ended her days on the scaffold. Readers of romance think of her as a young girl pathetically baring her neck to the headman's axe. As a matter of fact, she (76) MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 77 was forty-five when her supreme fate befell her. It was characteristic of the life of pretense she had led that when the executioner sought to raise her severed head by its tresses of glorious auburn hair to display it to the people, the hair came off in his grasp, a skuU scantily covered with patches of gray hair fell to the scaffold, and Jack Ketch was left grasping naught but a wig! Mary was bom December 7, 1542. As she came into a world heavily freighted with sorrow and woe for her, King James V of Scotland, her father, was going out of it with a broken heart. Henry VIII, who sat on the throne of England when Mary was born and James V died, began at once to intrigue for the union of the crown of England and Scotland by the marriage of Mary to his son, the Prince of Wales. The infants concerned, still wrapped in swaddhng clothes, were not cons\ilted, but every fac- tion, political or rehgious, in either England or Scot- land had its say and in the end the negotiations fell through. Religious controversies had much to do with the failure. The queen dowager and the dominant powers in Scotland were Catholic; Henry and his party in England Protestant. It was the day when men by the thousands slit one another's throats to uphold or demohsh a religious dogma, and nations went to war over a mooted text in the creed. At this time Mary was indeed a pawn. Setting aside the EngUsh alliance, the court party in Scotland arranged for her to be sent to France, there to be placed in charge of His Most CathoUc Majesty Henry II. This was in itself a deadly affront to England. 78 WOMEN OF HISTORY That nation and France were inveterate enemies, chronically at war. Up and down the Enghsh channel sailed the Enghsh fleet, hoping to intercept the French royal galley which was taking the baby queen to her new school. But its vigilance was evaded. Then followed twelve years of happiness for little Mary. Hardly had she arrived when discussion of her betrothal to the dauphin, or eldest son of the King of France, began. The diplomacy of the affair was apparent. With the French and Scottish thrones luiited, England would be isolated between two of her ancient and imcompromising enemies. While the diplomats were planning this coup, tutors of the highest order of scholarship were educating the child to fit her for high place in the society of European monarchs. Ronsard, whose name still ranks high among writers of French verse, taught her to turn a sonnet with true poetic art — an accompHshment which in time cost her dear, for a sonnet, obviously from her pen, was the means of fixing upon her the authorship of the "casket letters," which contributed to her final downfall. Nothing was left undone to instil into the mind of this little Scotch lassie the esprit of what was then the richest, most refined and most dissolute court of Europe. Be assured that her religious education was in nowise neglected. Her imcle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, had that in charge, and the girl grew up a confirmed Roman Cathohc, though the queen of later days had often for poUtical reasons to conceal her faith. As the child's mind grew in knowledge and adaptabihty her beauty became more and more engaging, until when she was sixteen MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 7 9 it was conceded that in no court of all Europe was there a woman with superior attractions of mind and person. Then began the evolution of the little pawn into the haughty queen. In April, 1558, the sixteen-year- old Queen of Scots was married to the fifteen-year-old Dauphin of France. The stately cathedral at Rheims was the scene of the ceremony, which was made as picturesque and gorgeous as the art-loving and luxurious court of France could conceive it. Life must have seemed bright to the young queen that day. True, her marriage was an affair of poUtics, and nothing has ever shown that she cared for her husband, who was of but slender ruteUect. For that, however, Mary speedily made up by caring much for a multiplicity of other gallants. But at this moment one life only stood between her and the throne of France, and it was scarce a year after the marriage when King Henry II was slain in a tourney and the young couple ascended the throne. As for Scotland, it was Mary's at will. Her mother, the queen dowager, was governing it diu-uig her absence, but its people were ready to welcome the child monarch at any time. Consider on what shght things the destinies of nations once hung — perhaps still do. The chance thrust of a lance in a friendly joust made Mary Queen of Scots Queen of France as well. Then came the am- bition, instilled and nurtm-ed by the international poHticians of the French court, to become Queen of England — ^the ambition that led to her ultimate down- fall. Yet it was an ambition not wholly without 80 WOMEN OF HISTORY plausible excuse. According to Catholic conviction, Queen Elizabeth, who had now succeeded to the throne of England, was illegitiniate by birth and barred from rightful claim to the crown. It is proper to note here that in dealing with the history of these kingdoms in that day the terms "Cath- oUc" and "Protestant" must be taken as referring to rival pohtical factions rather than to religious bodies. The cloud cast on the title of Elizabeth to the English throne stirred that prince of French politicians, Henry of Guise, to persuade King Francis and Queen Mary to proclaim themselves King and Queen of England, to quarter the arms of England with those of Scotland and France, and to prepare to enforce their claim. Even a milder woman than Elizabeth would have resented bitterly this affront. To have her position as Queen of England menaced would have been enough, but to have it questioned on the ground of legitimacy of birth, to be branded as a bastard by the first court of continental Europe, was more than the hot blood of the Tudors could stand. She met the danger by stirring up revolt against Mary among the Protestants of Scotland. Of course this outbreak took on the reUgious form. The opposition to Mary took the name "reformers" and had as many Scotch preachers as knights ia its forces. So much progress did the revolt make that Francis and Mary were fain to give up their pretensions to the English throne in consideration of being let alone in Scotland. The agreement was made, but Mary retained the English arms on her shield — a bit of girlish vanity that cost her a throne and her head. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 81 Just at the moment the Enghsh situation was most acute Mary's kingly husband died. A chance thrust through the vizor of his hehnet had slain his father. What killed the son? He was scant eighteen years old, physically perfect, mentally a good-humored booby. The stories of the time were that his mother, Catherine de Medici, had poisoned him. Evidence? None, except that the name of de Medici was already involved in a long list of cold-blooded murders. Cath- erine brooked no rival in power, and she would rather sacrifice her son than see the brilliant Mary Stuart the dominant force in France. Her husband gone, her French crown lost, nothing remained to Mary but to return to the land of her birth; to resume the crown her right to which had never been questioned. This she did, and for foiu- years reigned peacefully. She was but eighteen years old when she retiu-ned to her throne, and became once again a pawn not merely of politics, but in the marriage market. Even to-day the marriages of royalty — ^made often without affection, sometimes without acquaintance — are the marvel of simple-minded folk. But in the middle of the sixteenth century, when Mary Queen of Scots lived and suffered, royal matrimony was a pure matter of politics. From Queen Ehzabeth's point of view it was essential that Mary should marry no Frenchman, no one who would help her in designs against England or join in hostiUty to the Protestant party in Scotland. Such was the devotion of the "Virgin Queen" to these political convictions that she sent one of her cast-off lovers, Robert Dudley, to win 82 WOMEN OF HISTORY the Scottish queen with propositions of marriage. Mary scoffed at the match and married her cousin, Robert Damley, instead. After the brief ecstasy of the honeymoon Mary discovered her husband to be a "handsome fool." He, in turn, concluded that as the husband of a queen he should have the title of king. This he demanded, and she, with a keen knowl- edge of his defects and a strong will of her own, refused. Straightway he began to conspire with her enemies against her. The queen had a secretary, an Italian named Rizzio, whose oflScial relations with her were naturally intimate. Damley's new friends persuaded him that these relations were something more than those of a queen and a servitor, and with Darnley's covert acquiescence plotted Rizzio's death. The man, who seems to have been a coward, was dragged from behind the queen's skirts by a band of Darnley's fol- lowers, hustled into an adjoining room and there put to death by repeated sword thrusts. At first the news of the completed murder was kept from Mary. When she heard it, being herself no whit a coward, she said: "Farewell, tears! We must now think of revenge!" Revenge, or what seemed much Uke it, came slowly but remorselessly. A seeming reconciliation took place between Mary and her husband, though he con- tinued to demand the crown matrimonial and she to refuse it. Some two years after the Rizzio tragedy Darnley was lying ill in a wing of one of the royal residences called Kirk o' Field, when a sudden and mysterious explosion of gunpowder blew the stone edifice to pieces and its bedridden tenant out into the MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 83 fields, where his body was found. The body showed no mutilation nor powder stains. History fails to show any direct participation of Mary in the affair, but the famous Earl of Bothwell, who had become her favorite and prime adviser, was certainly deeply con- cerned. A pretended abduction by Bothwell's men was followed by her marriage to the abductor three weeks after he divorced his wife. This was too much for the Scottish lords, long dis- contented and ever stirred to sedition by agents of Queen Ehzabeth. They rose in organized revolt and besieged Bothwell's castle, whence the earl escaped by night, and Mary, in a suit of boy's clothing, a day or two later. Hastily mustering a royal army the two at first thought to give battle to the lords, but finding themselves outnumbered and outgeneraled, Bothwell fled and Mary surrendered. Thenceforth her life was one long record of imprisonment until death brought it to an end. Imprisoned first in Lochleven Castle, she was treated by the Puritan lords with a degree of brutality which seems incredible when one recalls that they professed to be waging a religious war. At one time offered her liberty in exchange for her honor, at another while still ill from having given premature birth to twins, the fruit of her brief life with Bothwell, she was forced by threats of assassination to abdicate her throne. Yet she was able through her natural gifts to win over to her aid useful friends within the castle. Nothing in history exceeds in romance the story of Mary's deliverance from imprisonment. The Laird of Lochleven sat at the head of his table where the 84 WOMEN OF HISTORY wine and food were passing fast. The great gates of the castle were locked, and in a distant wing the cap- tive queen sat in soUtude. At the laird's elbow lay the keys to all the stronghold. A sixteen-year-old boy, WiUie Douglas, acting as page, came to serve the chieftain with more wine. The sight of the keys aroused his instant determination, and as with one hand he poured the draught into the waiting wine cup with the other he stole the precious keys. Perhaps there was too much wine and wassail that night. At any rate the laird awoke to find his prisoner fled. Willie Douglas had hastened her with one attendant out of the castle, locking the portcullis behind him and throwing the keys into the mouth of a cannon standing by. Events then moved swiftly and disastrously for Mary. Though she raised an army numerically superior to that which the hostile lords rallied against her, it was honeycombed with dissension among the leaders. So in the end Mary's army was cut to pieces by a vastly inferior force, and she became again a fugitive. It was at this time that, seeking to disguise herself, she shaved her head and donned that wig that years later struck with horror the people who witnessed her decapitation. One faint hope remained now to the deposed queen and those of her servitors who remained faithful to her — ^namely, to escape to France. This could be done most easily by crossing into England, provided the eagle eye of Elizabeth could be evaded. But hardly had she set foot on EngUsh soil when Mary was recog- nized, captured and locked up in the Castle of Carlisle. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 85 Though she then made formal appeal to Ehzabeth to be permitted to pass into France, permission was refused. The old claim of Mary to the EngUsh throne still rankled hi the virgin queen's breast, and she detemuned to keep the claimant xmder lock and key. Then followed long years of imprisonment. ParUa- ment clamored for the life of the Scottish queen, at one time demanding it by a unanimous vote. But Ehzabeth hesitated, some think because of womanly pity, more beheve because she knew that the execution of Mary would arouse the wrath of all the CathoUcs in her kingdom. But the queen's hesitation was finally overcome by the detection of a plot for her own assassination, to which there was grave reason to beheve Mary was a party. Elizabeth's chief adviser, Lord Walsingham, with or without the knowledge of the queen, set deliberately at work to lead Mary into some written utterance that would lay bare all the secrets of her intriguing mind. Through a brewer who supphed her private table with beer, he suggested to her a means of communicating with her friends. Letters were sent back and forth in the beer barrels, and Mary wrote with perilous frankness. But the brewer was a mere stool pigeon and turned over the correspondence to Walsingham. Finally a letter showed a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth, and Walsingham struck his final and fatal blow. Pubhcation of the evidence threw England into an uproar. The conspirators were swiftly tried and executed, the chief, Babbington, suffering the bar- barous pimishment of being hanged, drawn and quar- tered — that is, disemboweled while still alive. 86 WOMEN OF HISTORY With seeming reluctance Elizabeth ordered Mary's trial for treason. The reluctance was assumed rather than real, but history must admit that Elizabeth had every reason to act and to act firmly. The trial was brief. Its verdict death. After eighteen years in prison it took but a few days to make an end of the Scottish queen. It was on a cold February morning that Mary, with the indifferent air of perfect courage, ascended the scaffold. She was robed in black, but on being told to remove her outer garments, displayed herself in an imderrobe of bright scarlet. Dramatic to the last, she laid her head on the block without a word, and with the fall of the axe the career of one of his- tory's most expert intriguants ended. Even to-day historians vary in their estimate of her. She is painted as a martyr and a murderess, a crafty conspirator, and a simple-minded victim to the jealousy of Queen Elizabeth. Somewhere between the truth Ues. LADY JANE GREY (1537-1554) A NINE days' QXTEEN THE royal records of England bear few stories of more pathos than that of Lady Jane Grey. An unloved child, offered at one time as a pledge for borrowed money, educated under the harshest system, made a puppet in a great game for the throne of England, married against her protest to an unloved husband, proclaimed queen for a nine days' reign, and finally sent to the heads- man's block — all these things befell Jane Grey, and her sunny head dropped iato the basket when she was just seventeen years old. Perhaps the gamut of human life and human vicis- situdes was never in this world's history so swiftly run. The child for whom the future held so much of dire disaster was born in October, 1537. Her parents were noble. Her father, Henry Grey, was Marquis of Dorset; her mother was a granddaughter to King Henry VII and niece to Henry VIII. It was that drop or two of royal blood in her veins that brought her finally to the block. When Henry VIII, the king of many wives, died and in his will mentioned Jane Grey as one of those (87) 88 WOMEN OF HISTORY entitled to the royal succession, ambition seized upon the Grey household. Then her education was begun in dead earnest, apparently with the view of fitting her to become the consort of the boy king, Edward VI. Her schooling seems to our modern ideas curious. But added to the arts of music and deportment and the a,ccompUshment of modern languages there was forced upon the luckless child the study of Hebrew and Chaldee! Yet, from her own writing we learn that she did not find her school days irksome. "One of the greatest benefits God ever gave me," she wrote, "has been sharp and severe parents and a gentle school- master." Jane was both precocious and brilUant. When she was ten years old her talents and beauty resulted in the child's being called to court and attached to the person of the queen dowager. Here she made hosts of friends by her pretty face and girhsh ways. She seems then to have been merely a normal child, fond of jewels, pretty clothes, and a good time. Very speedily she drifted away from her parents, Lord and Lady Dorset, who, in fact, practically deeded her over to Lord Seymour, husband of the queen dow- ager. Seymoiu' was speculating on the possibility of marrying her to the boy king, Edward — a marriage which, historians agree, would have been politically wise, and would have saved England much strife and bloodshed in later days. But the plan fell through, and in the end Seymour went to the Tower and thence to the block — the normal end of constructive states- men in those days. Her guardian lost to her Lady Jane returned to her LADY JANE GREY 89 father's house. Her retirement from court life, how- ever, was but brief. In 1551 her father, who had never shown any particular affection for her, was created Duke of Suffolk, and attached to the court. In the winsome, cultivated girl of fourteen years he saw a possible aid to his further advancement. For her he plotted nothing less than the winning of a throne, and was ready to barter her in marriage or to give her over as ward to any noble of high estate who might further this ambition. It happened that at this moment the Duke of North- umberland was the dominant power in the kingdom. He looked on Lady Jane and saw a girl of beauty, esprit and tact. She was a lineal descendant of Henry VII and her claim to the throne was made plausible at least by the act of Henry VIII, who, seeking new matrimonial adventiu-es, had not scrupled to declare his daughters, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth, illegitimate. So Northumberland arranged a marriage between his son, Guilford, and Lady Jane. It was celebrated in the palace of King Edward VI with regal pomp and magnificence. Within seven weeks Edward was dead, after having signed a deed of settlement naming Lady Jane as heir to the throne. Edward's death left possession of the throne of England in controversy for the moment. All claimants to it were women; the late king's sisters, Mary Tudor, daughter of Katherine of Aragon, later known as "Bloody Mary," and Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, could alone raise pretensions against Lady Jane. But these two had been explicitly declared illegitimate by their father, Henry VIII. Accordingly 90 WOMEN OF HISTORY Northumberland set about urging Lady Jane to accept the crown. To this she was much averse. In a letter showing wonderful foresight for one so young, and which in the light of the events that followed her coronation, seems uncannily prophetic, she said : "I am not so young nor so httle read in the guiles of fortune as to suffer myseK to be taken by them. . . . If I now permit her to adorn and crown me I must to-morrow suffer her to tear me in pieces. Nay, with what crown does she present me? A crown which hath been violently and shamefully wrested from Katherine of Aragon, made more unfortunate by the punishment of Anne Boleyn. • . . And why, then, would you have me add my blood to theirs; and be the blind victim from whom this fatal crown may be ravished, with the head that wears it?" But clear as was her foresight and right her position, she was overpersuaded by her ambitious relatives, and on July 10th was proclaimed queen in London's gray tower, which has seen many pomps of pride and more martyrdoms. Scarce a day had passed when the doleful predic- tions of Lady Jane began to be fulfilled. The friends of Mary Tudor, who had groomed her for the throne as assiduously — and as selfishly — as Northiunberland had pressed Jane, prepared for war. Their armies grew rapidly; those of Northumberland rapidly wasted away. Like politicians of every day he swiftly de- serted the queen, whom he had lured from a satisfied privacy into a tm-bulent public position, and himself proclaimed Mary queen of England. Within a few hours Jane Grey was a prisoner in the Tower, to which she had come as a queen. LADY- JANE GREY 91 It was a ruthless day and age. Mary, with pos- session of the throne and an army to aid her in holding it, might well have spared the child-wife, the nine days' queen whom she had consigned to London's grimmest stronghold. Instead she permitted Lady Jane and her boyish husband to be prosecuted for high treason. Both pleaded guilty and were sentenced to death. It is believed that Mary, cruel as her later career showed her to be, had no intention of permit- ting this sentence to be executed, but Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, who had been all his life a blunderer, entered into a plot against the queen which aroused her wrath and sent him as well as his daughter and son- in-law to the block. All the incidents surroimding the untimely death on the scaffold of this girl queen are inexpressibly pathetic, and at the same time indicative of the firm will and quiet dignity which she had attained through sore tribulation even at her early age. Lord Gxiilford had begged of Queen Mary the boon of seeing his wife ere he preceded her to the scaffold. But though the favor was granted by the queen it was refused by the wife. She wrote to Lord Guilford "that it was to be feared her presence would rather weaken than strengthen him; that he ought to take courage from his reason and derive Constance from his heart; that if his soul were not firm and settled she could not settle it by her eyes nor confirm it by her words, and that he would do well to remit the interview till they naet in a better world, where friendships were happy and unions indissoluble, and theirs she hoped would be eternal." 92 WOMEN OF HISTORY She saw her husband pass below her window on his way to execution. Waving him a mournful farewell she turned to complete her own death toilet. In the midst of this, glancing idly out of the window she saw his bleeding corpse being wheeled back from the block to the waiting grave. With this gruesome spectacle fresh in her mind the deposed queen made her own way to the spot where the headsman waited. Briefly she spoke to the people gathered; more briefly she begged the executioner to kill her quickly. Then with her eyes bandaged she groped about for the fatal block, crying piteously "Where is it? Where is it? Oh what shall I do?" At last, her head guided to its resting place, the axe fell, the slender neck was severed at the stroke and Lady Jane Grey had passed into the company of the ancestors who had given her those drops of royal blood which had proved her curse. QUEEN ANNE (1666-1744) THE COMMONPLACE QUEEN OF A MAJESTIC EBA PERHAPS too many Americans will associate the name of Queen Anne with a bizarre type of architecture which a few years ago covered our countryside with cottages of multitudinous gables, much jig-saw work, and a uniform color scheme of garnet and old gold. Being as a rule flimsy, the cottages have disappeared; the more substantial me- morials of the reign of a queen of Great Britain and Ireland, who was truly fortimate in her contempo- raries, endure. The reign of Anne was one of the greatest in Eng- Ush annals, though the queen herself was not great. But moving in the official circles of her time, or en- livening the coffee houses of London, were statesmen and soldiers as great as England ever knew, and essayists and wits unequalled in modern times. Sir Isaac Newton was director of the mint, John Locke commissioner of trade, and Joseph Addison a secre- tary of state. The first Duke of Marlborough won the battle of Blenheim in her time, and in return re- ceived his title, and the palace of Blenheim which in these later days it has fallen to the lot of a Vander- bilt heiress to restore to its bygone glories — the palace, (93) 94 WOMEN OF HISTORY not the title. The latter she found beyond restora- tion. Dean Swift lived in the days of Anne, and wrote "Gulliver's Travels" as a satire on the temper of the times. The satire is forgotten, but the children, always good critics, have taken out the story in which it was enveloped and made it one of their favorite books. Then too Defoe lived and wrote "Robinson Crusoe" — ^perhaps the most widely read book ever written in the English tongue. The statesmen of Anne's day first cast him into prison, and then stood him in the pillory for writing what he believed; then elevated him to a place and a certain measm-e of power for writing what they thought but had not the wit to express. Pope was then penning his polished verses, and Dick Steele entertaining the town with his Tatler. It was one of the golden ages of English hterature. Among this galaxy of genius Queen Anne reigned. "She was," says Goldwin Smith, a distinguished later historian of the British empire, "virtuous, well-mean- ing, good natured, dull, and weak, though obstinate when the fit was on her." Certainly she was not above the superstitions of the time. She "touched for the evil" — that is to say, she pretended todu-e scrofula by laying on the sufferer the queenly hands. She tried it on Samuel Johnson, but without avail. Nor did that magic touch of health avail much in her own household. Seventeen children in all she bore to her husband — some prematm-ely — ^but in the end none lived to inherit her throne. History says that this was the fault rather of her husband, whom Gold- QUEEN ANNE 95 win Smith describes as a "toper and a cypher," than of the queen herseK. At any rate the Duke of Marlborough became, in the absence of any king of force and vigor, the real power in the kingdom. The ministers of state were his creatures — even Lord Godolphin, who ranks high amidst EngUsh premiers. The wars prosecuted by Marlborough were in foreign lands, and like some later generals who aspired to high place, he had his corps of journalists to soimd his praises. In those days the great general had to be a great diplomat as well. Marlborough was both. At home he had his wife, once Sarah Jennings — most plebeian name — hard at work influencing the queen. Abroad he dealt with the keenest minds of all Europe, and beating them in diplomacy, turned about and demolished those he could not cajole, in war. The battle of Blen- heim ended French domination in Europe until Na- poleon re-established it. When Marlborough came home full of honors Addison, in resounding phrase, described him thus: "Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm." Unlike the great Elizabeth, or even Mary Tudor, it does not appear that Queen Anne took any cogni- zance of the campaigns of the English armies on the continent. All was left to Marlborough, who was furnished with vagrants, jail birds and felons to fill his ranks. That he made good fighting men out of this timber speaks well for his ability as a disciplin- arian. While he was building up the army and winning his battles Queen Anne was sitting supine at home, accepting the advice of her ministers or quarreling 96 WOMEN OF HISTORY with the Duchess of Marlborough, who insisted on being in court while her militant husband was in the field. As for the queen, she was famous most for the pleasures of the table. Indeed, behind her back the courtiers called her "Brandy Nan," because of her potations. During her days as a princess some writer of epigrams hit off the royal family thus: King William thinks all; Queen Mary talks all; Prince George drinks all; And Princess Anne eats all. Notwithstanding the ridicule of many of her con- temporaries, her essential qualities of good faith and womanliness are recognized by posterity. She was called "Good Queen Anne" and deserved the adjec- tive, though perhaps as applied to queens it is a little like the term "good hearted," which always seems to attach to a commonplace individual. ' And yet after all Anne was commonplace. Her era was glorious; her ministers and generals were great, but you may thrash over as you will the records of her time without finding that she was in any sense the animatiQg force. Personally she was a weak wo- man, fond of flattery, apt to be governed by some female favorite, dominated by her prejudices, and wholly without such personal conviction as would make her a great figm-e in the time in which she Uved. That was the beginning of the new democracy in Eng- land, but in building up the House of Commons and in developing parliamentary government she took no part. Her power was as flimsy as the cottage archi- tectiu-e to which her name has been lent. But the QUEEN ANNE 97 power of her ministers was bo supreme, their ability so great and so wholly exerted on the side of a new and stronger democracy in England that what was accomphshed in her reign justifies the title she bears of "Good Queen Anne." Anne was born to a great era, exactly as she was bom to wear a crown. She neither made, honored nor disgraced that era. If she knew the great figures in literature that honored it, history does not so state. The records tell of Queen EUzabeth treading a measure with wild "Will" Shakespeare, but that Queen Aime ever knew Addison, Swift, Steele or Defoe is not recorded. Yet they flourished in her time and, bar- ring the debtors' jail for Steele and the pillory for Defoe, throve. When the time came for her to die her physician, Dr. Arbuthnot, declared that no wearied traveler could have longed more for rest than she in her later years had longed for the end of her life. We may well be- lieve it. As a mother she had seen such of her chil- dren as came into the world ahve pass quickly out of it. As a queen, though applauded and upheld by the people, she was imable to impress herself upon the government. England was going too fast toward democracy for her, and perhaps the best thing to say about "Good Queen Anne" is that she did not one thing to retard that progress. QUEEN ELIZABETH (1533-160S) "good queen bess"; the virgin queen IN phrase and fable Queen Elizabeth is known as "Good Queen Bess" and as "The Virgin Queen." Our own state of Virginia was named after her supposed possession of the latter virtue by Sir Walter Raleigh. But historians are disinclined to allow her either of the quahties of 'womanhood ex- pressed in these adjectives. It is by no means wonderful that Queen Elizabeth developed into a cold, calculating, cruel and surpass- ingly able ruler of England. Consider her parentage. Henry VIII, an able monarch but a cold husband, divorced her mother, Anne Boleyn, and sent her to the scaffold. The divorce was intended to make EUzabeth ineligible to the throne. Henry desired an heir and finally got one in the person of Edward VI. Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace, September 7, 1533. Her birth, because of her sex, awakened in the king the most furious wrath against the hapless mother. But years after Henry's death the daughter whom he scorned succeeded to the throne and gave to England an administration hardly exceeded in bril- liancy up to the present day. And yet Elizabeth never reigned by right of birth. Henry's divorce of (98) QUEEN ELIZABETH 99 her mother made her illegitimate, and it was upon this purely technical illegitimacy that Mary Queen of Scots based her claim to the throne — and so claiming it lost her head. But by act of Parliament, confirmed finally by Henry's will, Elizabeth was declared con- tingent heir to the throne, to succeed Edward VI and Mary Tudor, should both die without issue. The really unexpected happened. The reigns of both Edward and Mary were brief. Neither left a suc- cessor and in 1558 the girl whom Henry had almost cursed at birth ascended the throne amid the plaudits of practically the whole nation. EUzabeth had been well educated for the station to which she had been called. She was reared in the household of Queen Catherine Parr, the only one of King Henry's wives to survive him. Of course, like every girl child with even a remote claim to the throne, EUzabeth had to encounter the schemes of men desirous of making her marriage serve their own political ends. Most serious of these was Lord Seymour, who had married Queen Catherine before the funeral baked meats of Henry VIII's obsequies were cold enough to set forth at a marriage supper. In all essentials Seymour held to her the position of a stepfather, yet with his wife still Hving he pressed on the girl the attentions of a lover and a would-be husband. That Elizabeth was im- pressed with his devotion seems certain. He was thirty years her senior, married to the woman to whom she owed her early education, a crafty, plotting politi- cian, yet withal the girl of scant fifteen fell in love with him. How far her infatuation led her the history which is accessible to most readers does not say. 100 WOMEN OF HISTORY However, Seymour — a ne'er-do-well if ever there was one — ^got himself into trouble and while trying him for one offence his inquisitors took occasion to investi- gate his relations with Elizabeth. She for her part showed singular acumen in self-defence, but while she emerged from the ordeal unscathed, if not wholly imtarnished, she found it advisable to go into retire- ment for some time. The Seymour affair imdoubtedly left a lasting impression on Elizabeth's mind. He was the first man she ever loved. Not the only man, however. The episodes in her life were many, for first as heir apparent and finally as Queen of England, the hands of many monarchs and great nobles were extended to her. But her grand passion was one of those extraordinary and inexplic- able infatuations which sometimes seize upon women. The object of this passion was the Duke d'Alengon, brother of Charles IX of France, and the youngest son of Catherine de Medici. That astute woman, after failing to interest Elizabeth in her elder son, the Duke of Anjou, set about negotiating a marriage for the younger. The time was scarcely propitious. Elizabeth reigned over England as the great Protestant monarch of the day. AH that her unmediate prede- cessor, "Bloody Mary" Tudor, had done to estab- lish CathoUcism in England, she had imdone. Yet the French ambassador, bearing the proposals from Catherine de Medici, arrived at the English court almost simultaneously with the news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, plotted and executed by Cath- erine de Medici and Charles IX. If the moment of presenting the tender propositions QUEEN ELIZABETH 101 of the Due d'Alengon seemed unfortiinate, what is to be said of the personal qualities he brought for her captivation? The Queen was forty. He had youth — ^was barely past twenty — but aside from that presented a revolting combination of deformities and blemishes. In stature he was a dwarf; in face he was hideous. Smallpox in early youth had sttmted and deformed his body, while putting its ineradicable stamp upon his face. As if this were not enough, some other evil had divided his nose in revolting fashion. His enemies, who were many, referred to his double nose as a fit emblem of double-facedness. For the rest, he was a debauchee, a man without poUtical or reUgious principles, posing now as a devout Roman CathoUc and then as a leader and protector of the Huguenots in France. Still EUzabeth loved him. For twelve long years she kept him dangling at her skirts, granting him every recognition except that of marriage. She petted him openly, kissed him on the lips in the presence of the French ambassador, and called him her "petite grenouille," or httle frog, from the fact that his dis- torted body and mottled greenish face gave the air of a fat frog when he sank into a chair. In the archives at Hatfield are a hundred or more letters from the "Good Queen Bess" to this misshapen mass of mortality which are said to outdo any records of the modem breach of promise courts. For the first twenty years of Elizabeth's rule her chief occupation was the consideration of the poHtical effect of suggested marriages. One after another the great figures of Europe offered her their hands in 102 WOMEN OF HISTORY marriage, but she lived to her seventieth year and roiinded out forty-five years as a monarch without marriage. Perhaps she loved. Certainly she some- times showed mad jealousy and vanity. It is said that the jom-ney of Essex to the block was expedited by his remark in a moment of wrath, "Her mind is as crooked as her body." Nevertheless when we look back upon the various marriages planned for Elizabeth we are compelled to concede that whatever her cause for rejecting them, the outcome was good for England. Philip of Spain, widower of Mary Tudor, offered his hand before his wife's entombment was fairly finished. But Philip was an ardent CathoUc and would have alienated the English Protestants. Then followed Robert Dudley, whom Elizabeth created Earl of Leicester and for whom she showed marked affection. But between Leicester and Elizabeth the shadow of an imexplained tragedy intervened. His lawful wife, Amy Robsart, died in a lonely country mansion whither he had sent her in charge of a servant whose reputation was none of the best. Public clamor was loud against the husband, but EHzabeth protected him, though their marriage was by that event made impossible. The long episode with the Due d'Alengon seems to have been but one of those flirtations with which a queen, debarred physically or pohtically from mar- riage, amused herself. When Parliament formally besought her to take a mate and raise heirs to the throne, she responded that her coronation was her marriage; the EngUsh people were the sole objects of her affection; that she would have no other spouse. QUEEN ELIZABETH 103 but desired her epitaph to be, "Here lies a queen who Uved and died a virgin." Whether Elizabeth was in fact a cold and cruel queen, or rather a great monarch forced by circumstances to commit deeds that savored of cruelty, will always be a matter of debate. One historian has aptly said, "She has gone down in history as 'Good Queen Bess,' not because she was a good woman, but because she was a great queen." Put briefly, these were the problems of her reign: 1. The restoration of Protestantism without unduly estranging her Catholic subjects. 2. The nineteen years' struggle with the partisans of Mary Queen of Scots. 3. The repulse of the Spanish endeavor to conquer England and make of it a Catholic coimtry. 4. The avoidance of entangling alUances with foreign nations. A concise accoimt of the treatment of Mary Queen of Scots will be foimd in the chapter on that un- fortunate queen. It is fair to say that in this matter — one of the gravest which confronted Elizabeth — she acted with patience and forbearance. With parlia- ment and the people demanding Mary's life, she stayed their wrath for nineteen long years, and at last consented to her execution only after long hesi- tation. In this connection she played a bit of poUtics characteristic of her. While signing the warrant for Mary's execution she did not seal it, and after the hapless head had fallen, declared she had never in- tended that the warrant should be enforced. Her luckless secretary Davison, who sealed the warrant 104 WOMEN OF HISTORY as a matter of course, she persecuted to the point of beggary, calling the while on Heaven to witness that she had not devised the death of her cousin. The exhibition of wrath and amazement would have been more impressive had she not done precisely the same tMng in the case of the Duke of Norfolk, also beheaded by royal warrant. In one respect Elizabeth was admirably fitted to cope with the religious warfare of the time — ^which was not reUgious but merely political. She was utterly destitute of religious sense or conviction. For the doctrines of Rome she had neither respect nor affec- tion, naturally since the Pope openly entered into the conspiracies to dethrone her. For the Protestants she cared little more, though she sent an army into Scotland to aid the "reformers" who were sacking and biirning monasteries and churches, killing "pap- ists" and generally deporting themselves in the same way that the CathoUcs had imder the reign of "Bloody Mary." After3he execution of Mary Queen of Scots, Eng- land was confronted with its first serious menace of invasion for many decades. PhiKp, King of Spain, swore vengeance for the slaying of the Catholic queen and began the creation of a great fleet wherewith to subjugate England. More than chivalric wrath ani- mated the Spanish monarch. The crown of England was a rich prize for which Spanish rulers had been plotting for years, though hitherto they had sought to gain it rather through the gentle device of marrying some English queen or princess than in the rude clash of war. But Spain was now in fighting mood. For QUEEN ELIZABETH 105 years the English admirals Drake, Raleigh and others, had harried Spanish shipping on the high seas without shadow of right, plundering and burning treasure gal- leons and playing the part of pirates as indeed they were. Accordingly Philip began the creation of what was known at the time as "the invincible Armada" — though the event showed it far from invincible. In all he gathered a fleet of 119 vessels mountiag not less than 2,000 great gims, 10,000 soldiers, 8,000 sailors and 2,000 slaves. It was the greatest fleet ever as- sembled up to that time and the work of building the ships, collecting the munitions of war and enhsting troops and crews was a matter of years. This work was notably impeded by the dashing Drake, who, though the countries were nominally at peace, made a descent upon Cadiz, burnt one hundred ships and destroyed or carried away vast quantities of stores. England was affrighted as never before, and never since, except at the time of the apprehended invasion by Napoleon. From the far-off West Indies cruisers were recalled and all male subjects between sixteen and sixty years of age were called into service. At the moment the English navy was at low ebb — only thirty-four ships flying the royal ensign. But in personnel, dash and efl&ciency it was never better. The EngUsh officers of the highest rank fought and worked beside the blue-jackets. "I should like to see the gentleman that will refuse to set his hand to a rope," cried Drake one day in a passion. "I must have the gentlemen to hale and draw with the mar- iners." The merchants of England contributed ships 106 WOMEN OF HISTORY and money lavishly, the city of London alone furnish- ing twice the number of ships and men called for. When the hostile fleets met in the channel the Eng- lish had 197 ships to the Spaniards' 132, though the tonnage of the latter exceeded that of the English almost two to one. This is not the place to tell the stirring story of the swift defeat of the Armada; enough to say that it was cut to pieces by the English in the first day of meeting and annihilated by stormy weather following. The latter years of Elizabeth's reign were hardly glorious, perhaps because no opportunity for glory offered itself with Spain crushed. Always of a coarse and belligerent disposition, age made her quarrelsome and violent. Her favorite and the wisest of her later advisers, Lord Essex, having failed in due formal respect to her, she boxed his ears, berated him like a fishwife and drove him from court. When he fool- ishly sought to retrieve his fortimes with an abortive revolt she turned him over to the headsman with as little compunction as though he had never been the most favored of her courtiers. Age too increased the vanity which had always been her dominant characteristic. The spectacle of the queen at seventy capering in exaggerated ruff and wide starched skirts before a slyly laughing court did not inspire respect. Yet it was in these years that Shakespeare, Spenser and Bacon thrived under her patronage and English voyagers pushed their way into imknown seas at her incentive. Queen to the last, her dying thoughts turned to her successor, for she had no direct heir. Though scarce QUEEN ELIZABETH 107 able to speak, she indicated by signs to those who questioned her the will that King James of Scotland, son of the very Queen of Scots whom she had put to death, should reign when she was gone. Was this perhaps a belated effort to make peace with eternity for what may have been a cruel and a grievous wrong? : She was long dying, and for days together sat in a chair, her finger upon her lips and her eyes fixed on vacancy. For some reason of a disordered mind she called for a sword to be placed beside her and thrust it from time to time into the vacant air as though she saw assassins siu-rounding her. One of her foremost com^iers told her that she must go to bed. A flash of her old queenly haughtiness came over her, "Must!" she exclaimed. "Is 'must' a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! thy father if he had been alive dvust not have used that word." This was the last assertion of that spirit at once haughty and frivolous, now proud and then ready to trifle with the Ughtest of the men who flocked about her. It was on March 23, 1603, that Elizabeth passed away. She had reigned forty-five years, a reign exceeded in length by those of but three EngUsh sovereigns, of whom Queen Victoria was one. His- torians differ in the estimates they put upon her char- acter. But history, which is greater than those who write it, records indelibly that her reign made England instead of Spain the great world power. CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA (1729-1796) THE SEMIEAMIS OP THE NORTH A WOMAN whom all the world concedes to have been a great ruler, an inspired empress, and ■ whom the same world believes to have been the cold-blooded murderess of her husband. An empress whose bodily licentiousness was reminis- cent of the Roman rulers in the days of the empire's darkest decadence, but a mother who found pleasure in writing moral tales and allegories for the edification of her grandchildren. A ruler who planned for Russia aU sorts of internal improvements — canals, schools, roads, towns — and then seized the money and the men necessary to their accomplishment and employed them in endless wars. A wife who hated her husband and probably plotted his death; and an imperial wanton who enormously enriched an endless succession of lovers. A lawmaker who prepared an excellent code for the government of her realm and visited severe penalties upon the deputies who took it seriously and wished to give it effect. A woman of mild and equable temper and noble and dignified carriage, who permitted her favorites and their favorites and parasites to be continually guilty of the most execrable crimes of graft, violence, cruelty and rapine. A militant mon- (108) CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA 109 arch, a Semiramis of the North, always at war and mvariably conquering, yet who had time to write plays and compose spectacles in glorification of the genixis and the greatness of Russia. That is a composite picture of the Empress Cath- erine of Russia, who worthily filled the throne of Peter the Great and extended by the sword the domin- ions he had left. The picture is feeble and incomplete. She was a great woman, not a good one — ^yet she fell short of goodness only, or at any rate chiefly, in her utter lack of that one feminine virtue which modern moraUty holds to be the foundation of all womanly worth. "She had two passions," said the anonymous writer of "The Secret Memoirs of the Court of St. Petersburg," "which never left her — the love of man which degenerated into licentiousness, and the love of glory which sunk into vanity." The woman who held oriental riot on the throne of Russia was by birth a German, sprung of that race which we think phlegmatic and unimaginative. She was the daughter of the Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, and was originally named Sophia Augusta Frederica, but this assortment of names did not suffice her. In 1744, being then fifteen, she went to St. Petersburg to be betrothed to the Grand Duke Peter, nephew of the Empress Elizabeth and her recognized heir, and was there received into the Greek Chiirch under the name of Catherine Alexeyevna. The prince to whom this sixteen-year-old fraulein was wedded was heir to the throne of Russia. He was also heir to a mean and contentious disposition and a weak mind. To these pleasing heritages the 110 WOMEN OF HISTORY smallpox had added a repulsive appearance, and his own filthy and degraded habits made him wholly loathsome. Worthless as a man, he was futile as a monarch. In a day of endless war he looked upon the anny as a mere plaything and would have the cannon roar for his entertainment when his slender intellect could not comprehend the plan of a battle. Naturally in this marriage there was no pretense of affection. Each of the parties went his or her own way — and each found consolers. In the most dnmken and dissolute com-t of Europe the archduchess was only too speedily initiated into the manners and morals of the moment. Her Uaisons were open and notorious, and when after ten years of marriage her first child, a son, was born, its illegitimacy was never doubted until with years he showed so immistakably the vicious traits of Peter that his paternity was no longer ques- tioned. Living in this com-t of misrule, this riot of sensual- ism and debauchery, Catherine began while still a princess to manifest that singular dual character that made her life a series of contrasts. In her Memoirs she said that on leaving home for St. Petersbm-g she had determined to do everything and believe — or pre- tend to believe — everything necessary to ingratiate herself with the Russian people and fit her for the crown. To this determination she rigidly adhered. Furthermore, she strove to develop and discipline her mind, reading Plutarch, Tacitus, Montaigne, Voltaire and other books which might open vistas of import- ance to a future ruler. She trod a devious path in those days. Wife as she was to the heir apparent, CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA 111 a false step might have led her to the dungeon beneath the Neva's tides, the lonely convent amidst perpetual snows or the scaffold itself. But with consummate tact she guarded her steps, making friends and gaining in maturity and poUtical sagacity as the years roUed by, until even her husband came to recognize her abiUty and to consult her as to such affairs of state as he considered in the intervals between his debauches. "Mme. Resource," he called her, or "Mme. Qmck Wit." Nevertheless, he both hated and dreaded her, and never more so than on January 5, 1762, when the Empress Ehzabeth died and he and his wife be- came Emperor and Empress of Russia. The joint rule of the two sovereigns was brief enough, though Peter began his reign by some laudable meas- ures, such as freeing state prisoners, recalling ejdles from Siberia and attempting to recover for the use of the people the vast expanses of rich land held by the Greek Church. But his personal habits laid him wide open to the assaults of his enemies. M. Bret- teuil, the French minister, wrote of him at this time: "The life of the emperor is most shameful. He passes his nights smoking and drinking beer, and does not relax these two exercises imtil 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning, and is nearly always dead drunk." His lov- ing wife, who gave him quite as much affection as he gave her, had been for years bviilding up a personal party of her own about the court and in the army to overthrow him when he should come to the throne. This was made the more easy by his contempt for all things Russian and admiration for the Germans. Frederick the Great was his idol, and a war which 112 WOMEN OF HISTORY Russia was successfully prosecuting against that mon- arch was promptly stopped by Peter on his accession. His ideals, such as he had, were German and his chosen companions Holsteiaers. It is curious that the Ger- man Catherine became more Russian than the Rus- sians, and thereby won their adoration, while Peter, descendant of Peter the Great scorned his country and aped the Germans. It was in April that Peter and Catherine ascended the throne. In July, the emperor being away from the capital with a body of his Holsteiners, the empress fired the fuse she had so long prepared. In two hours the army, the court and the civil officials had declared for her. Peter at first thought, with drunken flip- pancy, to laugh the matter off, but learning that the empress, with 20,000 men, was marching on his retreat at Oranienbaiun, he abdicated. The sole condition that he exacted was that he should be allowed to end his days in his beloved Holsteia. Foohsh and fatuous Peter! For this refuge he started, indeed, with a guard of honor composed of Catherine's trusted ser- vitors, but at a httle town called Ropsha he died sud- denly of "cohc" — a bodily derangement the symptoms of which closely resemble those of certain poisons. It is fair to say that had not fate thus kindly rid Catherine of Peter, she would have been herself the one to go, for after his death it was learned that he was preparing to immure her for life in one of those dungeons in which a life sentence seldom endures many months. The material achievements of Catherine's long reign are perhaps best summed up in her phrase: "I came CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA 113 to Russia a poor girl and Russia has dowered me richly. But I have paid her back with Azof, the Crimea and the Ukraine." Under her the march of Russia to the sea progressed more rapidly than under any monarch, and the long sought prize of Constanti- nople was nearer to her grasp in 1770 than to her grandson in 1858, when it required the armies of a United Eiu-ope to beat him back. Always her troops were on the move southward and always, too, the conscription was in force, sweeping the farms and workshops of their available men to make food for grapeshot and canister, and co-operating with the tax- gatherer to reduce the populace of Russia to the con- dition of abject penury from which it has not yet recovered. Yet Catherine had her dreams of the triumphs of peace. She planned great cities, but save for those which spnmg up on the harbors of the Black Sea after Russia had won her way thither none was built. Joseph II of Austria shrewdly observed after laying with great pomp the second stone of a proposed city in Tauris, the empress having laid the first: "I have finished in a single day a very important business with the Empress of Russia; she has laid the first stone of a city and I have laid the last." The very site of the city is now unknown. Medals were struck in honor of cities planned but never built. The explanation of that was simple. Architects and builders pocketed the money furnished them and did no building. The medal was struck and presented to Catherine, who accepted it as evidence of the existence of a new town, and added it to the 114 WOMEN OF HISTORY collection to which she proudly poiated as evidence of her labors in developing her realm. At one time the St. Petersburg Almanac contaiaed a Ust of 240 towns founded by Catherine, some of which were merely stakes driven into the ground bearing the name of the phantom city. Upon the graft with which the administration of Russia was permeated Catherine looked with a singu- larly tolerant eye. Indeed, when still archduchess she was a party to a most execrable deal by which one of her lovers, commandiag an army in the field, accepted a bribe from the enemy, Frederick the Great, in consideration of his failing to push a victorious campaign for the Russians. In the Russian army the regiment was the imit; its colonel was supreme. To him was paid all money for subsistence, \miforms and munitions. Most of the colonels pocketed the money and quartered the troops on the imhappy people of the countryside. In conversation some one deplored the poverty of a soldier who was an acquaint- ance of the empress. "He ought not to be poor," said she in the most matter of fact way. "He has had a regiment for many years." When a court para- site with a salary of $200 a year built aroimd the palace a number of houses valued at more than $60,000 each the empress merely thanked him for thus beautifying her capital. Every high ofl&cial sold his signature and every favorite his influence, while his relatives, valets and hangers-on robbed right and left, protected by his power at court. The Ust of the favorites of the empress is impres- sive — or disgusting. A work of admitted authority CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA 115 names twelve and estimates that not less than $60,- 000,000 of the public wealth was squandered upon them by their imperial mistress, while no possible estimate can be made of the amounts they gathered in by various devices of graft. Some of these favorites developed personal ability and made valuable execu- tives. Two were even strong enough to dominate their imperial mistress. Unlike some other historic women of like tastes, Catherine never showed any resentment against the favorite who wearied of her or persecuted in any way those whom she dismissed. Korkasoff, whom she elevated from the ranks of one of her regiments to be her lover, she surprised in the arms of one of her ladies in waiting. She merely dismissed the pair from her service and would never see them again. Messalina or Agrippina would have had them thrown to the Uons. Morronof, whom Catherine loved when she was sixty, fell in love with the young Princess Scher- batoff and boldly avowed it to his aged mistress. Without reproaches Catherine smoothed the way for his marriage to his sweetheart and sent the couple to Moscow loaded with presents. Among her earhest favorites was Stanislaus Ponia- towski, with whom she was infatuated while still archduchess. Him she made King of Poland, in which place he demonstrated that one may be a most pleas- ing squire of dames without possessing the sUghtest attribute of pohtical sense or executive ability. Greg- ory Orloff, who succeeded him, maintained his associa- tion with the empress for twelve years. He was one of the favorites who ruled the empress. Haughty 116 WOMEN OF HISTORY and firm by nature, he was, during his regime, the veritable czar. But in time he gave way to the even haughtier Potemkin and died a raving maniac. It is alleged that his successful rival poisoned him with an herb, somewhat like the "loco weed" of our west- ern plains, which possesses the quality of turning the brain and which the Russians call "dnmkards' plant." Potemkin, who succeeded, was really a man of high abilities and force of character, notwithstanding the contemptible means he chose to secure his advance- ment. Moreover, he really loved his august mistress and was faithful to her until death. Magnificent alike in person, in pleasures and in extravagance, he dazzled the oriental mind of the Russians, who admired him even as he plimdered them. "There is something barbarously romantic in his character," said the Prince de Ligne. His death resulted from defying his physician and eating voraciously of salt meat and raw turnips, washed down with hot wines and vodka — a menu which expresses the idea of refined eating in the Russia of that day. It is almost incredible that the woman who thus flagrantly violated every principle of decency should have been in her daily walk and conversation dignified without haughtiness, calm, nuld and queenly. In her court was none of the ridiculous red tape which at the very moment characterized the court of France, but there was no lack of reverence for the sovereign. If she took her pleasures madly, she took her work seriously. What her armies were doing was known to her each day, and her voice was incessantly calling CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA 117 upon her generals to press on. She carried the Rus- sian frontier to the Black Sea. With Frederick the Great and Maria Theresa of Austria she overwhehned Poland, taking the greater part of it for herself. At the very threshold of her unexpected death she was planning war upon almost all Europe — Constantinople and Stockholm, Paris and Teheran were to be hers. And she had so instilled into the minds of her people confidence in the destiny of Russia and the martial valor of its armies, that none can tell what the out- come of such a plan of conquest might have been. Death came to her suddenly and mysteriously. Foimd lying in a stupor in an anteroom to her chamber, she died in a few hours without regaining the power of speech. She was succeeded by her son Paul, whom in violation of Rxissian law she had kept from the throne ever since he attained his majority — or more than twenty years. Well had it been for Paul had he been barred longer from that fatal eminence, for after a five years' reign he was strangled by a band of conspirators, one of whom was Zuboff, the last and perhaps the most infamous of all the lovers who had preyed on his imperial mother and her beloved Russia. QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN (1626-1689) A KOYAL WANDERER IN EUROPE IN the first half of the seventeenth century Sweden was esteemed one of the great powers of Europe. Her armies imder the leadership of King Gustavus Adolphus were invincible in the field, and after his lamentable death on the-hard-fought field of Lut- zen, the record of success was continued throughout the Thirty Years' War by the able generals he had trained. "The Lion of the North" was the proud title won by Gustavus Adolphus in his campaigns, and in history he ranks with such great captains as Na- poleon and Frederick the Great. But the full fruits of his valor and victories were not reaped by his country, but were largely dissipated by the eccentric daughter he left to inherit his throne. The daughter of the Lion might herself have been a Honess, for she had many qualities of greatness, had not some queer and unexplained quirk in her brain made her later career futile and even contempt- ible. Her sex was a sore disappointment to her mother, who had been assured by all the soothsayers and wise women about the court that the child would be a boy. The father, however, was more philosophical. "She (118) QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN 119 will be a clever girl," said he. "She has already- deceived all of us." Of her mother Christina wrote: "She could not bear to see me, because she said I was a girl and ugly to boot and rightly enough for I was tawny as a httle Moor." In the Queen Christina of later days the dominant characteristic was her extreme masculinity. Perhaps the harsh welcome to this world that her sex wrung from her mother had something to do with this. More probably, however, it resulted from the studied effort of her father to give her the education of a prince rather than a princess. When only an infant, accom- panying her father as usual on one of his journeys, they came to a fortress. The governor hesitated to fire the customary salute to the king lest the thimder of the cannon should frighten the child into convul- sions. After a moment's hesitation Gustavus cried out: "Fire! She is a soldier's daughter and must leam to bear it." To his great deUght the baby instead of showing fear, laughed and leaped in his arms clapping her hands. Thereafter his determina- tion to give her a masculine education was fixed. He succeeded so well that toward the end of her life she said that her one regret was never to have wit- nessed a battle, nor seen hmnan blood flow. She did, however, see it flow once when one of her lovers was foully murdered by her own commands in her pres- ence. When the child was four years old the king took the field at the head of the allied armies against Fer- dinand, Emperor of Austria. Before going he made every provision for the stabiUty of his kingdom and m WOMEN OF HISTORY the future of his daughter. Christina was acknowl- edged as his successor by the states general and the army. A regency headed by the famous Chancellor Oxenstiem was created to govern the kingdom should the king die while his daughter was still a minor, and a body of distinguished scholars were chosen to be her tutors. Two years later the king fell, fighting bravely, and in the very moment of victory at Lutzen. The Princess Christina was, at the time of her father's death, about seven years old. Straightway the ma- chinery which Gustavus had created for the preser- vation of order in Sweden began to work. The young queen was crowned before a diet, or coimcil, called by the regents. With all her excessive masculinity in later days, she did not lack a certain feminine love of adulation. "I still remember," she said, "how en- chanted I was to see aU these men at my feet kissing my hand." During the period of her education the industry and concentration of Christina challenge belief. She worked with her tutors twelve hours daily; learned to read and even speak colloquially Greek, Latin and the principal modern languages. She rode and shot. Everything that a man could do in the field of learn- ing or of sport she mastered. Loving men, as she said, "not because they were men, but because they were not women," she grew up without feminine graces or charm; self-wiUed, impatient and arrogant. Of her mother she saw practically nothing. That lady was engrossed in mourning her husband in a most remarkable way. His heart she had taken from his body and placed in a golden receptacle which she QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN 1 21 ever kept by her. Her days were spent in a room ceiled, walled and hung in black, with the light shut out by like sombre drapings at the windows. In this cave of gloom she was supposed to meditate on her loss — ^though chroniclers of the time aver that she kept the apartment crowded with jesters, buffoons and dwarfs, whose fool play kept her in a gale of merriment. Gradually Christina assxmaed the duties of a queen. At sixteen she presided over the senate with tact and decision. At eighteen she became of age and became queen in fact; the regency being dissolved. Her spirit was dominant. She would have no prime minister, and ruled as a personal sovereign. She read all of the despatches and dictated the replies to generals in the field and ambassadors at foreign com"ts. She attended all meetings of her council and ruled it by force of character and sheer resolution. She was esteemed the most autocratic sovereign Sweden had known in centuries. i The power she had was not always exerted wisely. She forced the cessation of the Thirty Years' War, not because her spirit revolted against the barbarity of that furious conflict, but because she thought the regent, Oxenstiem, was getting too much glory out of it. The Treaty of WestphaUa was a good thing for humanity, but bad for Sweden, for it was dictated by Christina just in time to deprive her country of some of the richest fruits of victory. Early in her reign pressure was brought to bear upon her to marry. She was obdurate. She who hated women would not marry a man. The danger 122 WOMEN OF HISTORY to the succession, should she not provide an heir, was pointed out. She responded by designating her cousin, Charles Gustavus, as her heir. He beiag passionately in love with her, declared angrily that if he could not have her he would not have her throne. Finally she pacified him with the promise that she wovild give him her answer in five years, and if she could not then marry him she would never marry any one. Homely as she was, and notoriously of violent temper, the emperors and kings of Eiu'ope were at her feet, some pleading for themselves, others for their sons. To all she gave a decisive negative, not often trying to temper it with soft words. And when members of the council continued to preach to her about the need of an heir to the throne, she repUed brusquely, "Do not," she cried, "compel me to make a choice. Should I bear a son it is equally probable that he will prove a Nero as an Augustus." , Christina's stubborn refusal to make a royal match bred discontent both at the court and among the people. Her extravagance and wanton squandering of the property of the crown was another cause of grow- ing popular dislike. She had a singular fancy for creating new nobles — a tribe without which any state could get along cheerfully. Within ten years she created 17 counts, 46 barons and 426 lesser nobles. Of course, each had to have an estate. There are plenty of penniless counts and barons now to supply the American marriage market, but Christina started her new peers well, whatever may be the condition of their descendants. The crown lands were sold or mortgaged to an amount exceeding an annual outlay QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN 123 of 1,200,000 rix dollars. The rix dollar is a silver coin of varying value, but usually equivalent to about $1.16 of our coinage. The higher purchasing power of money in Christina's time made this sum equal to almost double what it would be to-day. And as this generous monarch, who could read Thucydides in the original, had not acquired a habit of system, she so frequently gave away the same parcel of land several times that the authorities were sore put to it to deter- mine what was crown property and what belonged to the newest count. No more uneasy head ever wore a crown. By 1654 she had positively determined to abdicate. Poetry and romance had somehow made their way into that hard and virile mind. She dreamed of the soft skies of Italy. She pictured herself with the revenues and dignity of a queen, but without a queen's duties and vested with perfect Uberty. Accordingly, in 1654 she abdicated. To her cousin, heir and faithful lover, Charles Gustavus, fell the crown. But none of her adherents would lift it from her head, so she herself handed it to him as he knelt before her. Never would he wear it in her presence, though he was proclaimed King of Sweden with the title of Charles X, the same day. Thus freed, Christina made haste to leave her native land. In abdicating she had not failed to drive a sharp bargain with the government. She was given for life an allowance of 240,000 rix dollars aimually. She was permitted to take away all her personal treas- ures — she gave wide latitude to the word "personal" — and was to reside wherever she chose with all the 124 WOMEN OF HISTORY rights and powers of a queen over her own household. This latter guarantee she later construed as a right to murder a gentleman in waiting. The extent of her appropriations of public property before leaving Sweden irritated the populace and there was serious talk of using force to prevent her departure with her spoils. However, she got away safely, and reaching a little brook which separated Sweden from territory then owned by Denmark, she leaped hghtly across it crying, "At length I am free and out of Sweden, whither I hope never to retm-n." Her first act was to send her waiting women back to the capital; her next to don men's clothes, in which apparel she proceeded to Brussels. Here she formally renounced the Protestant faith, of which Sweden- had long been the great bulwark in Europe. Here, too, she was feted and herself entertained with prodigal ex- penditure. The great Cardinal Mazarin, exulting over this new recruit to Cathohcism, sent a company of comedians to Brussels who entertained the court with plays and operas. She herself hved with royal magnificence, giving huge sums to priests, poets, courtiers, mummers and parasites. When the money she had brought from Sweden was running low she turned toward Italy with a train of more than two himdred people. Her progress toward Italy was truly royal. Every- where she was given the welcome befitting a queen. Now and again she took occasion to further abjiu-e Protestantism and emphasize her faith in the Church of Rome. But occasionally she let some evidence of her callous insincerity slip, as when at Innsbrouck QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN 125 after professing faith at the cathedral, she was taken to a theatre. " 'Tis but fair," she said, "that you should treat me to comedy after I have treated you to a farce." Rome marveled at her entree, clad in men's clothes and riding astride on a white charger at the head of her cavalcade. Festivities had been provided in her honor by the Pope, but it does not appear that that sagacious prelate was wholly enraptured by the appear- ance of this peculiar convert who dressed, rode and swore like a trooper. The Swedes were none too weU pleased with her doings at Brussels and her repeated repudiations of the faith of her native land. There was talk of can- celing her allowance, but in the end they merely de- layed its payment that she might have a taste of what would happen if she persisted in her ways. The em- barrassed queen had to disband her court, and when she wanted to go to Paris pawned her jewels to raise the needed funds. Her reception at Paris was royal, though her male costvune, her manner of riding and general imcouth- ness amused the populace and horrified the court. The Duke of Guise met her at Marseilles; Cardinal Mazarin and the king hhnself — the latter incog.— at Chantilly. Before reaching Paris her cortege grew to regal proportions, and she rode in the midst on a white charger with pistols at her saddle bow and mightily pleased with herself. After weeks of festivity she returned to Rome in less royal state, for she traveled in a hired carriage and her expenses were paid by Louis XIV. 126 WOMEN OF HISTORY Christina now became a restless wanderer about Europe and a bit of an international nuisance as well. She had in her retinue a gentleman named Monalde- schi, reputed to be her lover. One day she sum- moned him. He found with her three armed men and a priest. Displaying a packet of letters the nature of which has never been disclosed, she asked if he recog- nized them. Falling on his knees he admitted their authorship, and despite two hours of pleading was put to death in her presence. Yet she was not with- out piety while superintending a murder. The priest was there to confess the victim, but the suppliant wovild not confess. "Give him a few stabs to bring him to his senses," said the queen, and the poor wretch received several thrusts before the priest discharged the last office. This ended Christina's standing at the French court. The king immediately wrote her not to come to Paris. Retiuriing to Rome, she cajoled an allow- ance of 12,000 crowns from the Pope, then quarreled with him. She began again the dreary round of bor- rowing and pawning. With strange fatuousness she dreamed of regaining the crown of Sweden, and made two futile joiu-neys to that country, being on the second occasion refused permission to enter Stockholm. In 1689 she died, deserted by friends and surrounded only by dependents. One of her monuments is a medal she had struck showing a bird of paradise soaring above land, sea and clouds, with on the reverse in Italian: "I was born, have lived, and will die free." Which would suggest that the worth of freedom rests with those who enjoy it. ISABELLA OF CASTILE From an vitgroviiKj hij Churlcs Sliiul ISABELLA OF CASTILE (1451-1504) THE FINANCIER OP COLUMBUS' GREAT VOYAGE LEGENDARY history tells many stories of Isa- bella of Castile which may or may not be true, ■« but authenticated history relates much as romantic as legend. It is not all important whether she did or did not make a solemn vow not to change her lingerie until Granada had surrendered, and thus made a dingy hue fashionable for Spanish lace. The important fact is that she captured Granada and drove the Moors from Spain. Neither is it vital whether or not she pawned her jewels to aid Columbus. What is vital is that without her aid the great Amer- ican continent might have remained long undiscovered. Naturally legend clings close about her, for she was one of the great figures of history. Over the early days of Isabella we may pass briefly. They bear the record common to the lives of young princesses of the time, whose title to the throne was collateral rather than direct, and who therefore became the center of plots and counterplots either for their advancement or their undoing. Her father was John II of Castile, who on his, death was succeeded by his son, and Isabella's elder brother, Henry. Still another brother was living in her earUer days, so that her (127) 128 WOMEN OF HISTORY chance of succeeding to the throne was but remote, and she spent her childhood in remote coimtry places of Spain. But in 1468 the younger brother died and King Henry, proclaiming her his lawful heir to the thrones of Castile and Leon, summoned her to court. Of course statesmen gambled with the matrimonial chances of a possible queen. At first her brother affianced her without her knowledge to Alfonso, King of Portugal, a dissipated monarch much her senior. Her happy recollection that "the infantas of Castile could not be disposed without the consent of the nobles of the realm," saved her. Then one Don Pedro de Pacheco was selected as her consort, and though she flourished a dagger declaring she would strike him dead at the altar, the preparations for the wedding were continued. But on the way to Madrid where the nuptials were to have been celebrated Don Pedro obligingly died. It was reported that poison hastened an end which certainly had not been antici- pated when he started on his matrimonial adventure. But it was never charged that Isabella was a party to the crime — if crime there were. Quick upon Pedro's demise came a prince of England, destined later to be King Richard III, hated by all the readers of Shakespeare's immortal tragedy. Following him was the Duke de Guienne, heir presumptive to the throne of France, which by the way he never attained. Both of these were set aside by the Spanish beauty, though it appears that for a time she looked favorably upon the latter. It is hard to tell how much personal con- siderations and how much affairs of state led her to finally fix her choice upon Ferdinand of Aragon, crown prince of that independent kingdom. ISABELLA OF CASTILE 129 Ferdinand was young and personable, his prkicipal- ity adjoined that of Castile and Leon to which Isabella was heir. Affection and policy alike approved the match and it was made. But in the making of it the ire of her brother, King Henry, was again aroused and he threatened imprisonment and other dire things if she longer remained obdurate and refused to marry the man of his choice, Alfonso of Portugal. The girl thereupon fled to Madrigal — a town with a name like a song, but which in fact is gloomy as a dirge. Meanwhile ambassadors were sent to King John of Aragon m-ging him to hasten his son's appearance for the wedding lest the bride be captvu-ed by the hostile faction. The call came to King John at a hapless time. Put- ting it colloquially, he was at the moment "broke." His treasury, exhausted by a long war with the Cata- lans, would not stand the cost of a smtable wedding outfit for Ferdinand nor provide the Prince with an escort and equipage suitable to his rank. But if love among the lowly laughs at locksmiths, so with the Prince and Princess it rose superior to treasury deficits. In the guise of a servant to a company of merchants Prince Ferdinand proceeded to ValladoUd, where he foimd his bride and was presently united to her by the then friendly Archbishop of Toledo. King Henry being notified of the marriage, showed his disapproval of it first by a cold and studied silence, then by revoking the proclamation by which he had declared Isabella his heir. Instead he conferred the reversion of the throne upon his daughter Joanna, about whose legitimacy there were sundry well founded 180 WOMEN OF HISTORY doubts. Thereupon the neighboring throne hunters flocked about the new heiress. While these plottings for the throne were going on Ferdinand and Isabella were living in the utmost simplicity at Duenas — for they had not the money to Uve otherwise. Ferdinand was young, handsome, an outdoor man and a popular one. A contemporary writer describes his bride thus: "Isabella was a year older than he. She was well formed, of the middle size, with great dignity and gracefulness of deport- ment; a mingled gravity and sweetness of demeanor; confiding and affectionate." Sometimes adversity brings its recompenses. The simphcity of life forced upon the young couple brought them influential friends who revolted against the profligacy and extravagance of King Henry's coiut. Even Henry himself, in a moment of apparent contri- tion, consented to reconciUation with his sister and on foot led her palfrey through the streets of Saragossa. But his new brotherly affection did not last and the rejoicings of the people, who had already learned to estimate Isabella at her true worth, had not died away before she was compelled to flee to avoid arrest by the Ejng spurred on by his favorites who had charged her with an attempt to poison him. However, Isabella had not long to wait before coming to the throne upon which she was destined to confer such glory. December 11, 1474, Henry died, after a reign discreditable to him and useless to his kingdom. He had left no will and Isabella and Joanna were left claimants to the throne. Naturally it was won by the more aggressive. Isabella was in Segovia when ISABELLA OF CASTILE 131 the news arrived. The next morning she was crowned Queen of Castile. Though hasty, all was performed in due pomp and magnificence. The heralds pro- claimed from the four corners of the platform "Castile! Castile! for the King Don Ferdinand and his consort Doima Isabella, Queen Proprietor of these kingdoms." After a solemn mass and the chanting of the Te Deum Isabella waUied in stately procession down the aisle of the cathedral, at last a queen but well knowing that she would have to fight for her crown. "Uneasy," says the hackneyed proverb, "hes the head that wears a crown." Never was one more imeasy than that of Isabella. Her first difficulty arose with her husband, who had been away at the time of her coronation. He returned in a state of childish pique because he had not been crowned king. In his own state of Aragon no woman had ever ruled, and he was sorely displeased at being a mere prince consort in Castile. But Isabella diplomatized. The royal couple had one child, a daughter, and the queen argued that only her assumption of the queenly state could secure the throne to their daughter. Ferdinand acquiesced, though with some surliness. The War of the Succession broke out immediately after the assumption of the throne by the royal pair. The King of Portugal had been betrothed to Joanna, Henry's daughter, and he straightway led his armies into Spain to win the crown for which he long had plotted. For a moment Isabella's fortunes seemed to be in desperate case. Under the profligate rule of Henry the army of Spain had fallen away to nothing. The young queen had a scant 500 men at her command. 132 WOMEN OF HISTORY She was compelled to appeal to the nobles and grandees. But these too shared the general decadence of the nation. Their loyalty to the crown was of the very slenderest. The form of the oath of allegiance they took emphasized the elasticity of this bond: "We who are each of us as good as you, and all together more powerful than you, promise loyalty to your government, if you maintain our rights and liberties; but not otherwise." A queen without an army, without a court, without even a capital, Isabella lived for the first few months of her reign in the saddle, galloping over Spain to seek an army. Her indomitable determination and her powers of persuasion triumphed in the end. Her 500 men of May, 1474, had grown to 40,000 in August. All were dispatched to Ferdinand, who was confront- ing the implacable Alfonso seeking the Spanish throne. It does not seem to have been a war of many battles, but rather one of many threats. Ferdinand, defeated in his effort to drive the Portuguese from the walled town of Toro, wanted to conclude peace on terms which involved the surrender of two Spanish cities. "Not a foot of our territory! Not a stone of our fortresses!" cried the indomitable queen, and she made good her boast, for presently thereafter, having taken personal command of her army, she drove the Portuguese back into their own territory whence they did not again emerge. In the end the vexed question of the succession was settled by diplomacy. Isabella after a ride of 250 miles on horseback met her aunt, AKonso's sister-in-law, at Alcantara and the two women settled by treaty the issue which the slaughter of thousands of men had not ended. ISABELLA OF CASTILE 133 /Isabella loved action — seemingly she loved trouble. Between her wars she undertook two civic tasks which occupied much of her life and which have brought in certain circles dark odium upon her name. Both were seemingly dictated by her passionate devotion to the Roman CathoUc religion and her desire to extir- pate heresy in her dominion. Her first task was the expulsion from Spain of all the Jews. This she de- fended as a pious work, but history shows that after the time-honored custom of their race the Jews had been the money lenders of the nation, and their debtors, as reluctant to pay as they had been eager to borrow, warmly approved the queen's efforts to drive the heretics to foreign lands whence their dunning letters would cause httle worry. The expulsion was con- ducted with the utmost harshness and the sufferings inflicted upon the helpless Hebrews in the name of reUgion will ever stain the name of Isabella. In the name of her faith too she established the Holy In- quisition for the detection and punishment of heresy. At its head was a priest, Thomas de Torquemada, whose name has become a synonym for cold cruelty, though there is no doubt that in all he did he honestly beUeved himself working for the kingdom of Heaven on earth. The incidents of Isabella's first meeting with him throw light alike on his character and hers. He was in the confessor's booth. She came to con- fess, and knelt before him. "It is usual for both parties to kneel," said the queen haughtily when she noticed that the priest placidly retained his seat. "No," said he with equal hauteur, "this is God's 134 WOMEN OF HISTORY tribunal; I act here as his minister and it is fitting that I should keep my seat while your Highness kneels before me." The reply impressed deeply the devout mind of the Queen and thenceforward Torquemada had her im- phcit trust and was loaded with honors. Nearly all of the deeds which cast lustre on the name of Isabella had some religious reason for their undertaking. In the savage and successful war which she prosecuted against the Moors in Spain she was animated quite as much by the determination to drive the unbeUeving infidels out of Europe as by the wish to add their provinces to her dominion. In that war she was ever in the field. Two of her children were born at the front, one of them being Katherine of Aragon, destined to exert so great an influence upon Enghsh history. Her nurseries were always in the camps. Once, after a brief absence, returning to the scene of action she was so horrified by the sufferings of the wovmded that she set aside several large tents for their use. This was the first instance in history of a field hospital and for years that institution was known ia the Spanish armies as "the Queen's tent." At the siege of Granada her tent caught fire and she escaped with her life, but httle else. The episode gave her an idea. It was already apparent that the defense of the Moors would be stubborn and pro- tracted. Accordingly she used the labor of the be- sieging army, which could be employed in no better way, in substituting for the camp of tents and mud huts, a regular city of stone and mortar. From the battlements of Granada the Moors looked down upon ISABELLA OF CASTILE 135 this growing city of Santa Fe (Holy Faith), as the queen called it, and marveled at the woman who, not content with seeking to take from them their town, bmlt one of her own before it. Perhaps this evidence of indomitable determination affected their own ob- stinacy. At any rate Granada was sm-rendered and the last vestige of Moorish domination in Europe was destroyed. Just as the war for the expulsion of the Moors had its religious foundation, so too had Isabella's support of the expedition of Colmnbus which produced more far-reaching and important resvilts than anything done by any one man. Columbus urged in vain the probable profits that would attend the success of his effort. But when the Genoese navigator — who must have been coached by some one about the court — spoke of taking the true faith to the savages whom no doubt he would encounter, her interest was straight- way stimulated. Ferdinand, who, to the end of a life spent in the shade of the refulgent glory of his greater spouse, was peniu"ious to the extreme, would have naught to do with Columbus and made no secret of his impatience with her for Ustening to the needy Italian adventurer. "I will assume the undertaking for my own crown of Castile," cried Isabella, "and I am ready to pawn my jewels to pay the expenses." Out of this exclama- tion grew the story of the pawning of the jewels, which in fact never occurred. Nevertheless had it not been for the insistence of the queen, Columbus would never have set out on his epoch-making voyage, and it seems odd that in our national capital, plentifully besprinkled 136 WOMEN OF HIST ORY with monuments and statues in honor of the great navigator, there is no statue of the great woman who alone made his enterprise possible. When Columbus returned, bringing strange woods and spices and above all several Indians to attest his discovery of a new land and an unknown race, Fer- dinand eagerly shared the glory of an achievement to which he had contributed nothing. The queen, however, feeling that the great work had just begun, fitted out the explorer with a fleet of seventeen vessels and dispatched him again into the unknown seas. Once more the religious element loomed large in her nature and she adjured him to treat the heathen "well and lovingly and to chastise in the most ex- emplary manner all who should offer the natives the slightest molestation." It was a report that the ad- miral had violated these instructions that led to his being brought back to Spaia in chains, but for this indignity Isabella, though not responsible, made such fuU reparation that the iron-hearted discoverer in an ecstasy of gratitude threw himself at her feet and wept aloud. The later days of the great queen were full of sorrow. Death repeatedly invaded her household, carrying away her only son. Prince Juan, in the midst of his honeymoon, and her daughter Isabella. More cruel still was the hopeless insanity of her daughter Juana. Under these repeated blows the iQdomitable spirit of Spain's greatest monarch broke and November 26, 1504, she died broken hearted. "In all her revelations of queen or woman," wrote Lord Bacon, "she was an honor to her sex and a corner-stone of the greatness of Spain." MARIA THERESA OF AUSTRIA (1717-1780) THE TEUE FOUNDER OF THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE THE daughter of Emperor Charles V was twenty-three years old when that monarch, after having survived divers battlefields and other perils incident to kingcraft, ate too lav- ishly of mushrooms stewed in oil and passed spasmod- ically away, leaving to her his throne and the accu- mulated troubles that attended it. The name con- ferred upon her at baptism had been Maria Theresa Valperga Amelia Christina. If it seems a trifle long it is at least balanced by the list of titles she acquired with her father's death — Queen of Himgary and Bo- hemia, Archduchess of Austria, Sovereign of the Netherlands, Duchess of Milan, of Parma, and Pla- centia, and Grand Duchess of Tuscany. The pre- posterous name she bore in peace, but for every one of her titles she was forced to fight. Her inheritance of fighting force — save her own indomitable and militant will — had been but slender. Her father shone rather in the arts of peace than in the clash of arms. He drilled a corps de ballet better than an army corps, and while he led an orchestra playing his own compositions with skill and vigor, he was never seen leading a cavalry charge. This was (137) 138 WOMEN OF HISTORY the more unfortunate because in that warlike age Austria was completely surrounded by powerful states all eager for slices of her territory. Russia, Tui'key, France, Prussia and Sardinia (then a power) all looked hungrily on the Austrian provinces. Charles V thought he had provided for his daughter that peace which he himself loved when he concluded with the powers of Europe a treaty called the Pragmatic Sanction by which they all agreed to support Maria Theresa as Empress of Austria. It was beyond doubt a noble treaty, which, if respected, would have averted the War of the Succession. But its weakness was that it was made at a period when treaties were made only to be broken, and one after the other, all the parties to it attacked Maria Theresa when she succeeded to the throne they had solemnly promised to protect. Besides this precious treaty the emperor left to his heiress a bankrupt treasury. In it was a scant $40,000, not enough to pay the accrued interest on the national debt. The army, widely scattered, unpaid and almost wholly destitute of munitions of war, numbered barely 30,000 men. The provinces were undermined with revolt, particularly Bohemia and Hungary, the great nobles of the latter being about to cast in their lot with their neighbors the Turks. Finally Austria's most powerful neighbor, Frederick of Prussia, after- wards to be known as "the Great," quietly ignored the treaty to which he had been a party, and march- ing his troops into Silesia calmly notified Maria Theresa that he had picked this special bit of her territory for his own. This was the beginning of a war lasting eight years, MARIA THERESA OF AUSTRIA 139 the story of which can by no possibility be told here. In it were involved at various times Russia, Austria, Bohemia, Prussia, Turkey, France, Holland and Eng- land. From time to time two or three of these nations would be fighting together as allies, and a day or two later against each other as savage enemies. Treaties and formal alliances were as common as the smoke over the battlefields, and as evanescent. It was the day of savagery in war. The sack of cities, the mas- sacre of non-combatants, the shrieks of violated women and of slaughtered children, were all part of the mili- tary programme of the great captains of those days. When our own General Sherman, accused of being harsh in a war prosecuted on both sides with singular restraint from cruelty, said "War is hell!" one wonders what he would have said could he have been present at some of the orgies that attended the capture of a town in this savage war. Into this struggle the empress plunged with a cour- age far beyond the forces she had to support it. That she prosecuted it for eight years and emerged with credit is due to her wonderful will. Her husband, the Duke of Lorraine, for whom she felt such affec- tion as resulted in her bearing him sixteen children, was a brave soldier, but no general. She was not only a general, but marvelous in her power of awakening loyalty among disaffected subjects. In the midst of her darkest days she went, to Presburg— in wavering Hungary— to be crowned. There they placed upon her head the u-on crown of St. Stephen, draped over her jeweled robes his ragged cloister gown and girded his battered sword about her waist. Thus attired she 140 WOMEN OF HISTORY rode to the crest of the Royal Mount and defied, with drawn sabre, "the four corners of the world." Theatrical? Of course, it was. As she uttered that brave defiance she could hardly defend herself and her tkingdom against any adversary. But she was posing before one of the most emotional people of Europe, and when, flushed with exertion, her crown removed and her rich hair falling in masses about her glowing face, she addressed the Hungarian nobles they rose as one man, and with clanking scabbards and gleaming swords cried out in chorus, "We will consecrate our lives and arms; we will die for our King Maria Theresa!" . Himgary then recognized no queens. With this triumph in her most disaffected province the queen speedily had an army wherewith to fight for her dominions. It was the beginning of that marvelous empire which to-day, imder the name of Austria- Hxmgary, challenges the admiration of the world for the beauty of its two great cities, Vienna and Buda- pest, and for the fashion in which once warring national- ities have been welded into a fairly harmonious whole. Out of this war Maria Theresa came with some loss of territory — ^the odds against her compelled that — ^but with fame as one of the great warriors of the day. When she entered upon it she had been looked upon as a weak young bride wrapped up in husband and children. She herself has said that but for the sense of responsibility which the crown conferred upon her she would have been glad to have played the merely domestic part. "With joy," she wrote, "had I been insignificant and had remained simply Grand Duchess MARIA THERESA OF AUSTRIA 141 of Tuscany, if I could have believed that God so willed it; but as he has chosen me to bear the great burden of government I hold it on principle and con- sider it my duty to apply all my resources to the task." That she did so apply her resources is shown by the station of Austria among the nations of Europe to-day. She laid the foimdation of its present greatness. And yet men say that women are destitute of the faculty of constructive statesmanship! Neither did this woman who had fought so hard to prevent other nations from robbing her of her own territory hesitate for a moment to do a little robbing when the opportunity presented itself. Upon the fair fame of Maria Theresa the one dark blot is the part she took in dividing up the territory of Poland and wiping that nationality off the map of Europe. This was merely imperial theft. Poland was surrounded by Austria, Russia and Prussia, and was itself dis- organized and unable to resist an act of international piracy. At Maria Theresa's incentive the three sur- rounding nations invaded Poland, obUterated its government and divided its territory. Austria's share was 45,000 square miles and 5,000,000 inhabitants. Now, after the lapse of a centiuy and a half the par- tition of Poland is still referred to as one of the great crimes of history. The militant empress, who fought so hard to save her empire, was not merely a soldier. Though she could send men by the thousands to bloody deaths, could order the sack of an enemy's city or expose one of her own to the riot and rapine of a brutal soldiery, she was equally devoted to her civic duties. As a 142 WOMEN OF HISTORY mother, though sixteen children blessed her union with Francis, she can scarcely be said to have been devoted. The care the children received was the care of others, though there was maternal supervision of their needs precisely as there was queenly recognition of the regiments far away fighting for the maintenance of her empire. To us in more modern days it seems curious that a mother should ignore her children thus, and that a great nation would look upon her enthusi- asm for her army as being a sufficient excuse for her indifference to her family. And yet, out of this ap- parent indifference, the children grew in abihty and dignity. Perhaps among them all there was no more striking instance of what might be done by her system of education than the hfe of Marie Antoinette. This ill-fated princess was betrothed to Louis XVI of France when she was but fifteen years old. The betrothal was part of a diplomatic plan by which Maria Theresa sought to tie France to her in a new war which she was planning. France and Austria had been hereditary enemies. At the moment when the empress of Austria sought to make of France an ally there was no real king of France — the power in that land was Mme. de Pompadour, the king's mistress. It must have been a bitter mortification for the empress of Austria, a woman of unblemished life and of royal heritage, to address the Pompadour pleading for aid. Nevertheless, she did so, calling her "Madame, my cousin and dear friend." It was one of the first recog- nitions that the famous courtesan had obtained from royalty and it speedily resulted in an aUiance between France and Austria. In making this new alliance the MARIA THERESA OF AUSTRIA 143 Austrian empress estranged for a time her husband and her children. But, with characteristic diplomacy, she won them to her way of thinking. Her one pur- pose in life was to win back Silesia and to destroy the power of Frederick the Great, and to accompUsh this she abased herself before the Pompadour. In passing it may be noted that Frederick, the greatest warrior of his time, and Maria Theresa, though bitter enemies and almost constantly embroiled in war, held the highest respect for each other. Each was a master of the art of war, wholly indifferent to human life and suffering; seeing in the triumphs of the battlefield rather than in the industry of the farm and the workshop the highest glory of a nation. Each, too, was a skilled diplomatist, as ready to break a treaty as to make it, and shifting alliances so swiftly that sometimes the troops of other nations in the field were in doubt whether they were fighting for Frederick or for Maria Theresa. In 1756 the fighting began again — inaugurating the so-called Seven Years' War. In this titanic struggle, the fiercest that Europe saw before the time of Na- poleon, Austria had at first the co-operation of France, Russia and a number of lesser powers. Frederick stood alone except for some financial support from England — ^the people of which nation, by the way, are still paying some miUions sterling a year upon a national debt incurred largely by financing the quarrels of European kings. Of the Seven Years' War it may merely be said that it lasted the time indicated by its name; that in it cities were razed, provinces desolated and 500,000 men 144 WOMEN OF HISTORY slain; how great the expenditure of treasure and the loss due to the shock to trade and industry cannot be estimated. When fairly fought to exhaustion the two high contending parties signed a treaty re-establishing the situation precisely as it was at the beginning of the war. Not an iota of advantage was reaped by either after all the outpouring of blood and treasure. A picturesque illustration of the vicissitudes of the conflict was furnished in the battle of the Oder. With the aUies in full retreat Frederick sent to his queen at Berlia this exultant message: "We have driven the enemy from their entrenchments; in two hours expect to hear of a glorious victory." In less than two hours the fugitives had returned to the attack and a second coiurier galloped off with the message: "Remove from Berlin with the royal family. Let the archives be carried to Potsdam and the capital make conditions with the enemy." •■ With the end of the Seven Years' War peace settled upon Maria Theresa's life — ^peace, but hardly happi- ness. Though destined herself to a long life — seventeen years more — death invaded her household, and some- times in a form pecuUarly cruel. Her husband, Francis, was first to go, dropping dead of apoplexy as he was leaving the opera. The empress had been worrying over his appearance aU day and had besought him to be bled, but he refused, pleading his opera engage- ment and a promise to sup later with his son — ^the latter rendezvous, however, is beheved to have been with one of his numerous mistresses. Though thor- oughly cognizant of his innumerable infidelities, Maria Theresa seems to have been sincerely devoted to MARIA THERESA OF AUSTRIA 145 r- Francis. To her children she wrote: "You have lost a most incomparable father; and I a consort — a friend — ^my heart's joy for forty-two years past." (Never dviring the next fifteen years did she fail to visit his tomb on the anniversary of his death. Maria Theresa was stern, haughty, imperious of temperament. This quality cost the Ufe of her daughter, Josepha, who, on the eve of her departure to join her betrothed, the king of Naples, was forced to go down into the family tomb and offer a prayer in accordance with Hapsburg ceremonial. The poor girl knew that but recently the body of one of the royal family who had died of smallpox had been placed in the tomb, yet she obeyed. "I am going to leave you, Marie," she said pathetically to her sister, Marie Antoinette, "not for Naples, but to die. I must visit the tomb of our ancestors, and I am sure that I shall take the smallpox and be buried there." In a few days the prophecy came true. November 29, 1780, it came Maria Theresa's time to go into a presence more imperial than hers. To her son Joseph, who succeeded to the throne, she com- mended her younger children, and to them she pre- scribed loyalty and obedience to the emperor. Among her last utterances was this: "I could wish for immor- tality on earth for no other reason than for the power of reUeving the distressed." A truly pious thought, but one which sounds strange coming from an empress whose avidity for war and eagerness to maintain her pride by the sword had brought distress upon hundreds of thousands of house- holds! 10 MARIE ANTOINETTE (1755-1793) THE DIAMOND NECKLACE AND THE GUILLOTINE ONCE upon a time a queen of France, when the people of Paris were literally starving, was reported to have said innocently: "If they have no bread why don't they eat cake?" About this same time a clever swindler, calling her- self Countess de la Motte de Valois and an earlier prototype of Mme. Humbert, used the name of the queen to swindle a trusting jeweler out of a diamond necklace, and in the enterprise duped the Cardinal de Rohan and dragged that proudest of French names in the dust. Queen Marie Antoinette probably never made the heartless jest at the expense of a starving people. Certainly she was no party to the diamond necklace swindle. But the mob of Paris, maddened by oppres- sion and privation, believed she could laugh at their misery. They had been taught that kings and queens were more than ordinary mortals, but here was a queen conspiring with the basest swindlers to rob a jeweler. For the jester they had hatred and execration; for the swindler they lost all reverence and fear. Save for the temper of the people the affair woidd have been trivial. But it proved all important. "Mind that miserable affair of the necklace," said Talleyrand. (146) MARIE AXTr)IXETTK OX UEli WAY TO TUl'] GUILL^JTIXE From Ike jjoinling by F. Fhnnriig MARIE ANTOINETTE 147 "I should not be surprised if it should overturn the French monarchy." The wiUest of European diplo- mats foresaw correctly. Marie Antoinette was born in 1755, and was accord- ingly fifteen years old when in 1770 she was married to the Dauphin of France, who became King Louis XVI and gave his head as tribute to the French revo- lution. Her mother, Maria Theresa, was not merely the wife of Francis I, and therefore empress of Austria — she was one of the great monarchs of history, a ruler fit to be ranked with Isabella of Castile, Elizabeth of England, and Catherine of Russia. The daughter possessed many of the mother's regal quaUties, and had she not been impeded with a supine and flabby husband might have checked the revolution in its incipiency, thus averting an upheaval which, though fatal to her, has been of surpassing value to humanity in all suc- ceeding generations. The progress of the child bride across the provinces of France to the great palace at Versailles, where the nuptials were to be celebrated, was triumphant. The nobOity and country folk turned out to do her honor. The roads were strewn with flowers and her nights were dream hours of music and poesy. Only when she reached Versailles did the air grow chill. Her bride- groom, indeed, was enraptured with her appearance and the king cordiaUty itself. But the ladies of the gayest and most intriguant court in all Europe looked askance upon this new factor in the life of the palace. Versailles, to-day the property of the French people, is a palace which could house a whole cityful. In the days of the last two Kings Louis it was thronged by thousands of idle, dissipated, immoral courtiers. 148 WOMEN OF HISTORY They looked on the prospective dauphiness as a new power, necessary to reckon with and most annoy- ingly likely to unsettle all their existing combinations. Saying she was too free in her manners, they turned from her to the courtesan Du Barry, who at the moment had the king xmder her influence, and whose manners and morals seemed quite in accord with the requirements of the court. Marie Antoinette had entered the most artificial society in all Europe, and her girhsh sense of humor impelled her to laugh at its follies. Grand dames drew comfortable pensions for pulling off the queen's stockings at night or tying the ribbons of her night cap. To put on the king's coat of a moming required the salaried services of four noblemen in waiting. All this the dauphiness laughed at and was correspondingly hated by the parasites who feared lest she laugh their perquisites away. The hostility of the people of Paris was equally marked and equally unfair. Upon the marriage of the royal pair the king ordered magnificent popular fetes at Versailles and Paris. Among the attractions was a display of fireworks, in the com-se of which a panic ensued and many of the spectators were killed or wounded. The people grumbled; 20,000,000 livres and thirty-two good French lives was a high price, they said, to pay for "La Petite I'Autrichienne" (the httle Austrian). The prime trouble was that France and Austria were hereditary enemies, continually at war, and the people resented the king's bringing a princess of the latter land to be their future queen. One of the personal perquisites of a French queen was a tax levied every three years on bread and wine. MARIE ANTOINETTE 149 This tax was peculiarly hard on the French people, who called it "la cernture de la reine," or "the queen's girdle." When in May, 1774, Louis XV died and Marie Antoinette became queen she remitted this tax, declaring she would never accept one sou of it. For a time the populace applauded her action, but speedily forgot it. Then came the scandal of the diamond necklace — an affair of which the queen was both innocent and ignorant. Cardinal Rohan was grand almoner of France, a noble of the highest standing at court, and withal a true gentleman of the time, preying upon the earnings of the people for profit and upon the virtue of women of every estate for pleasure. To him came the pretended Countess de la Motte with a story of a necklace of fabulous value for which the queen yearned, but which she dared not purchase. But more. The envoy told the cardinal that Marie was in love with him, and were he to purchase the neck- lace for her would refuse him nothing. The heart of the voluptuary was stirred; the ambition of the prac- tised courtier aroused. He agreed to buy the necklace, the queen to repay him later, and as its value exceeded even his command of ready cash, would pay for it in instalments. But he wanted some evidence of the queen's par- ticipation in the affair. Whereupon La Motte pres- ently produced an invoice indorsed "Appreuv6; Marie Antoinette de France." The signature was forged, but neither the amorous cardinal nor the jeweler, eager for his sale, seemed to doubt it. But De Rohan demanded even more assurance. He must have an 150 WOMEN OF HISTORY interview with the queen herself. Nothing easier. La Motte knew a woman having a singular resemblance to the queen. This girl, called d'Oliva, impersonated Marie in a midnight interview with De Rohan in the shrubbery of the Trianon. The necklace was bought and turned over to La Motte. The cardinal began to press his supposed advantage with Marie Antoinette, who, knowing nothing of the affair, was first puzzled and then brusque. Notes which the swindlers had given piuporting to bear Marie's signatm-e were un- paid, and the jeweler, facing bankruptcy, went in despair to the court for advice. It happened that the man he consulted was a bitter enemy of De Rohan, and gathering slowly all the evidence in the matter, he finally gave it the widest pubUcity in the way to do the most hurt. Only the Dreyfus case in later days has stirred France as did this seeming revelation of the partici- pation of a queen in a vulgar swindle. The mills of justice were set to work and ground swiftly, but though the evidence showed the queen wholly ignorant of the whole affair, the populace refused to believe in her umocence and the cabal in the court opposed to her kept the smouldering embers of scandal aUve with whispered suggestions about her relations with Rohan — ^who by the way was deprived of all honors and posts and exiled to a monastery. Under the strain Marie Antoinette broke down. Historians say that she became soUtary, weeping by the hour in her chamber. It was in this broken and pathetic state that she was called upon to meet the early stages of the revolution; to take the first steps along the path that ended with the guillotine. MARIE ANTOINETTE 151 It was unhappy for the queen of France that the affair of the necklace occurred just when the people were plunged into the deepest abyss of poverty and misery. Thomas Carlyle, the most unsympathetic of historians of the revolution, expressed the situation of the French people at this time thus: "A widow is gathering nettles for her children's supper; a perfumed seigneur dehcately lounging in the ceil de bceuf has an alchemy whereby he will extract from her the third nettle and calls it rent and law. Such an arrangement must end!" Under rent, taxes and seigneural rights the people of France had been ground down until they were as unreasoning in their wrath as wild beasts. Leaders they had at the outset who were wise, constructive statesmen. But it was part of Marie Antoinette's fate, or folly, that she set herself in opposition to those who were struggling for constitutional government and gave thereby the more excuse to the rabid revolu- tionists who brought on "The Terror." It has been the fashion to decry her husband for yielding to the advance of democracy, when she, like Napoleon, at the close of the Terror, would have checked it with "a whiff of grapeshot." Her militant poUcy would have been better for that particular royal family, but as it was accompanied with no plan to correct the just grievances of the French people the explosion would have come sooner or later. So she merely assumed an attitude of stubborn resistance to all the national assembly asked, and persuaded the king to veto many of its best measures, eaxning thereby the nickname of "Mme. Veto" and 152 WOMEN OF HISTO RY the hatred of the populace. The path she with others trod was not long, though plenteously watered with tears and blood. March 14, 1789, may be said to mark the true beginning of the revolution, for on that day the infuriated people of Paris stormed the Bastile. All that had gone before in the way of creating legis- lative assemblies had been orderly. Now red revolu- tion broke out with pikes and broadaxes and cannon. Bodies hung from the street lanterns, and the heads of officials appointed by the king were danced on pikes through the bloody streets. "Why, it is a revolt!" cried the king, startled, to the courier who brought him the news. "Nay, sire!" was the grave response, "it is a revolution." Only a few days after the fall of the Bastile a gor- geous banquet was given at Versailles. The courtiers in all their magnificence were there. So, too, the officers of the troops stationed about the palace. Wine flowed freely and the flames of loyalty bm-ned high. The white cockade of the Bom-bons, symbol of autoc- racy and all against which the people were contending, was tossed to the banqueters who threw aside and trod upon the tri-color — emblem of hberty, equality and fraternity — ^beloved of the people. Marie was present. How great the part she took in urging on the protests agaiust the people's uprising is not definitely known, but the people imagined the worst. In Paris the stories of the banquet were naturally exaggerated. The court was rioting with rich food and wines, trampling the tri-color under foot. The people were starving, feeding on swill or, as one royal official advised them, eating grass. The head of that MARIE ANTOINETTE 153 official, its bloody mouth stuflfed with grass, later danced down the boulevards on a pike. Somewhere in the Faubourg St. Antoine, nursing spot of revolu- tion, a haggard, himgry woman began beating a drum and calling, "Bread! bread! bread!" In a few hours some 30,000 men and women, the scourings of the Parisian gutters, were marching on Versailles. There the palace was sacked. The few soldiers who remained faithfiil to the royal family were massacred. Through- out this awful riot Marie bore herself like a true queen. The mob called for her, and with her two children at her side she appeared on a balcony. There seems Uttle doubt that it had been the purpose of some to shoot her when she showed herself, but they hesitated to injure innocent children. "Away with the children !" called scores of voices in imison. Knowing well what she risked Marie sent the children away and stood improtected, a fair target for the shot of any one of that maddened and drunken throng. Her courage disarmed her foes and presently cries of "Vive la Reine" ("Long live the queen") arose. Theimmediate peril was over. The next day, surrounded by a howling, execrating mob, the royal family was driven in the state coach to Paris, and lodged in the Tuileries, the city palace of the king, now his prison. Here every movement was spied upon, and Marie, imable to throw off her hereditary belief that royalty could do no wrong and that the people were never right, began plotting escape, and to undermine the revolutionary leaders. Austria was the hereditary enemy of France. She was an Austrian princess. Should she escape the 154 WOMEN OF HISTORY Austrians would invade France. Clearly she must be kept a close prisoner. Not at that moment did the revolutionists who reasoned thus, and justly, think of puttmg her to death. Finally the royal family undertook a belated flight, but like everything that Louis and Marie undertook, the matter was bimgled in every possible way. At Varennes the great carriage in which they traveled was stopped, and after a brief and humiliating examina- tion they were turned back to Paris. Lodged again in the Tuileries, it was soon found that there was no safety there for them. The mob broke in, sacked the palace, massacred the Swiss guards and would have slaughtered the royal family had not they taken refuge in the haU of the national assembly. In a day or two they were removed for safety to the Temple, a gloomy fortress hardly less forbidding than the Bastile. At first this was a refuge and they were well provided with luxuries; later it was a prison where they froze and starved. In this dungeon Marie was never exempt from insult. One day she heard the mob without crying, "Marie Antoinette! Mme. Veto!" Stepping to the window to see what was wanted, she was rudely thrust back by a guard, who closed the shutters. Indignant at first, her mood changed when she found that what the mob wanted her to see was the gory head of her dear- est friend, Mme. Lamballe, impaled on a pike and held against the bars of the window from which the guard had kept her. Not long after her husband was taken to another cell, to go thence to the guil- lotine. Her children were removed and of their fate MARIE ANTOINETTE 155 she remained ignorant until her death. Two guards were stationed in her chamber day and night before whom she was forced to perform the most deUcate operations of her toilette. There can be no doubt that she welcomed the summons to her trial and the inevitable call to execution on the 14th of October, 1793. On the scaffold Marie Antoinette bore herself as every inch a queen. As was said of Charles I at his execution: She nothing common did, nor mean, Upon that memorable scene. Over the heads of the yelling crowd, past the group of cold, knitting women who sat in front at every execution, she looked with clear, cahn eyes toward eternity. Her only words were for her children, "Adieu, adieu! Once again, my dear children. I go to rejoin your father." The axe fell, the headsman displayed the dripping head, the body was rudely thrown into the receptacle provided for it and the dynasty of the Bourbons was blotted out. The visitor to Paris may, if he wiU, see in the records of the Church of the Madeleine, built over the common grave of many victims of the guillotine, this entry: "For the coflSn of the Widow Capet, seven francs." Thus simply was the daughter of one king, and the wife of another, interred. CHARLOTTE CORDAY (1769-1793) THE AVENGEE OF MARIE ANTOINETTE STEWING in a great copper bathtub shaped like a wooden shoe, hoping to thus alleviate the tor- tures of a disease which would have put an end to his pestilential existence in but a few months, Marat, self-styled "Friend of the People," was handed a note from a yoimg girl who wrote that she brought him news of plots and conspiracies against the republic from Caen. Scenting more blood, the ogre of the French revolu- tion, the chief figure of the Terror, who had declared that at least 270,000 heads must fall before the republic would be secure, directed her admission. The woman who entered was about twenty-four years old, with soft gray eyes, light brown hair, a face singularly gentle, a figure tall and slender. Her man- ner was timid and she shrank a little as the unkempt monster, who was busily writing on a board laid across his tub, growled out: "Your errand, citoyenne?" Briefly she told him that a number of deputies of France, members of the Girondist faction, then under suspicion of being reactionary, had taken refuge in Caen, where she, Charlotte Corday, resided. They (156) (:i[Ai;i.i>'r-ri; cokdav /•■,«"/ //"■ ixiuiliiKj lifi Fhunj CHARLOTTE CORDAY 157 were plotting against the republic and raising an army for its overthrow. "Their names!" snarled Marat, writing them down as Charlotte repeated them. "They shall be guil- lotined within a week." "Guillotined!" cried Charlotte, who had been play- ing a part and adopted this pretext of betrayal to gain access to the revolutionist's presence. "My good friends guillotined!" And therewith she drew a long knife from her bodice and plunged it to the terrorist's heart. Death was almost immediate. He had but time to call in anguish, "A moi, ch^rie; a moil" when he sUd down into the bath which crimsoned with his blood. The woman whose aid Marat had summoned — an Amazon who served as housekeeper and something more to him — ^rushed in. Another domestic had knocked Charlotte down with a chair, and the Amazon trampled upon her fiercely, weeping the while, for with all his loathsomeness Marat had at least one to love him. The people of the neighborhood crowded in and for a time it seemed as though the girl would be torn to pieces, exactly the fate she coveted, for she had concealed from relatives and friends her trip to Paris and the pmpose for which it was made. Her errand was to kill Marat. "It is better," she said, "that one should die than thousands." She hoped that, her deed once completed, she would be slain without identification, which might bring shame to her relatives. But officials were quickly on the scene and, protected from the assaults of the mob, she was taken to the prison of L'Abbaye. 158 WOMEN OF HISTORY This slender girl who had done a deed of which doubtless tens of thousands of men in France had dreamed without courage to execute it, had practically but four days of history. She slew Marat on July 13, 1793. July 17th her head feU into the basket. The story of her early life is as short and simple as the annals of the poor. Born at St. Saturnin in 1769, left motherless at an early age, with a father too poor to take care of her, she was brought up by an aunt living ia Caen, and given a convent education. Her beauty made her popular ia the provincial city where she lived. Historians of a certaia type have sought industriously for evidences of love afifairs, but her mind in fact was literary rather than amative. Remotely descended from Corneille, the French poet and dramatist of heroism, she had steeped her intellect in his resonant phrases about patriotism and public service. Two other literary forces which appear, curiously, often in the records of the revolution made a great impression on her mind — Plutarch's "Lives" and the writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau. The story of Charlotte Corday's trial is brief. All trials were farces in the days of terror. Condemned without delay to death, she maintained her composure and on her return to her cell spent several hours sit- ting for her portrait to a yoxmg artist named Hauer. Through the streets, packed with a yelling, abusive Paris mob, the tumbril bearing her made its way. The scaffold she mounted fearlessly, and when the executioner sought to conceal the dread machine of death from her sight she courteously waved him aside and met her death in silence. They say that an as- CHARLOTTE CORDAY 159 sistant caught up the severed head and displayed it to the crowd, striking a blow on the cheek at the same time. The sweet face flushed rosy red, say the contemporary writers, and though we doubt the tale as romance, we may well take it as illustrative of a life which, save for one brief moment, was all simpUcity and purity. History sometimes works out its compensations. When Marat died he was the most powerful man in France, and Charlotte Corday the most execrated woman. But in two years the remains of Marat, which had been gloriously interred in the Pantheon, were ignominiously expelled from that temple of national fame, and portraits of Charlotte Corday began to appear in every Parisian house. EMPRESS JOSEPHINE (1763-1814) THE DISCARDED WIFE OF EMPEROR NAPOLEON PATHOS and melancholy enshrouded much of the Ufe of the girl who came to be Empress Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, and was by him later discarded in the furtherance of his ambitions. Bom in Martinique, the smiling West Indian island that had its laughter blotted out by the sulphurous blast of Moimt Velie, she was educated mostly in France at the convent of Port Royal. At the age of sixteen she was married to the Viscount de Beauharnais, son of her father's superior officer in the French navy. It was purely a marriage de convenance. Both had had their early romances, and the viscoimt still clung to his, which, as in the case of so many youths, was a passion for a woman older than he. The object of Josephine's early affec- tion, however, had passed out of her environment, for, while he warmly reciprocated her affection, he had been forced to marry a girl selected for him as the price of an inheritance. Naturally enough, the sea of matrimony on which the Beauharnais pair embarked without affection proved tempestuous. The husband's gallantries were flagrant and notorious. The wife's love was hardly outraged by them, but (160) I'o.tfiti I' }ii/lrii'iirii EMPRESS JOSEPHINE 161 her pride was, and her reproaches were so constant and vehement that after eight years of married life, during which two children were born, the husband sought a divorce. The court exonerated Mme. Beau- harnais from any wrongdoing, but granted the separa- tion nevertheless, gi\'ing the son Eugene to the father and the daughter Hortense to the mother. Life was destined to bring strange gifts to the chil- dren thus separated in youth. Hortense became Queen of Holland, while Eugene in due time became viceroy of Italy. Their attainment of these exalted stations was due to the power of their stepfather. Napoleon, who conferred upon their mother the very loftiest honors and then, by divorcing her for reasons of state, plunged her into depths of despair. But I am anticipating. Parted from her first hus- band, the Viscomtesse de Beauharnais repaired for a time to the island of Martinique, but returning after two years became reconciled with him. These were the days just preceding the revolution, and Beau- harnais had thrown his influence strongly with the Girondists. He openly opposed the execution of King Louis XVI, which was perhaps the most perilous thing a man could do at that time. He held to his duty in the miUtary service and was a valiant soldier in the army of the Rhine, but resigned after a brief campaign. Presently thereafter he was cast into prison, marked for execution and not long after sent to the guillotine. Josephine, too, was arrested and sent to a different prison. The task fell upon her one day to read aloud to the other prisoners the list of those executed, and among them she found the name of her husband. 11 162 WOMEN OF HISTORY With a shriek she fell senseless to the floor. But in that day of the Terror episodes of this sort had become commonplace to the wives and daughters imprisoned in the Conciergerie. Before long the new widow was restored to consciousness and to a sense of the duties still confronting her. It is proper to note that the early antagonism be- tween Josephine and her husband had been thoroughly assuaged before his death. Whether remarried or not they were reconciled, and their home had become a resort for all the best minds in Paris, when the baleful power of Robespierre descended upon it and sent the master to the guillotine. The wife would undoubtedly have followed, save that the downfall of Robespierre came so quickly that she was released before many more red carts rumbled the dismal way from the prison to the scaffold. Followed then a period of penury for the Beauharnais household. The son Eugene helped to support the family. Tallien, then a power in the government, which had little promise of stabiUty, secured for her a small pension in partial recompense for her estates, which had been confiscated. Barras, the most infamous of the political powers of the day, took in her an interest which his memoirs do not describe as wholly brotherly. Talleyrand, whom Victor Hugo afterwerds described as "a silk stocking filled with filth," became her friend. The fortunes that had simk to so low an ebb during the Terror she had begun to recoup before she met the man who made her an empress. It was shortly after Napoleon, with that "whiff of grapeshot" of which Carlyle tells us, had dealt the EMPRESS JOSEPHINE 163 revolution its first serious wound that Josephine and he met. She distrusted the young soldier who had shown himself so utterly indifferent to the basic prin- ciple beneath the revolution and set up his cannon as the final arbiters of right. Her distrust was wholly justifiable. From the day when Napoleon protected the convention with his artillery ia the name of the republic to the time when he crowned himself emperor and divorced his wife to marry the daughter of the Austrian emperor, he was essentially the aristocrat. Like some American poUticians he held the crowd with smooth words, but never failed to seek the great places for himself. Mme. Beauharnais reproached him with his needless massacre of the Parisian people, which was indeed one of the blackest blots on his escutcheon. "It is my seal that I have set on France," he answered with that calm confidence in his ultimate destiny that always characterized him. Disliking him at first, even ridiculing him, Josephine finally married the yoimg soldier of fortune — younger than she was. Probably the sage advice of Barras and Talleyrand had something to do with this. They knew he was a coming man and wanted him to have a wife whom they also knew. Either Napoleon's persistence or the diplomacy of these politicians triumphed. In 1796, upon the news of his appoint- ment as commander-in-chief of the army in Italy, Napoleon and Josephine were married. Two days later he set out for Italy; Josephine remained behind, doing all in her power to maintain his political strength at home. 164 WOMEN OF HISTORY At the moment that was not a difficult task. From Italy came nothing but reports of victory. Presently he summoned her to meet him there, and she made such hosts of friends by urging upon him mild methods in dealing with conquered states, that he said of her, "I conquer provinces; Josephine conquers hearts." This was the most fortunate period of Josephine's existence. Though her husband was often absent from her it was the fortune of war and might be ex- cused. If he was jealous — as indeed he was — that was the subtlest flattery dear to a woman's heart. She, however, influenced him greatly for good, per- suading him to heal the wounds inflicted by the revo- lution and to make France itself once more. But as he grew in power and station he lost affection for her. Ambition took the place of love. He who had been merely a soldier wanted to be the equal and the as- sociate of kings and emperors. Hortense, his step- daughter, was married to Louis Bonaparte, and the two given the throne of Holland— without the Hol- landers having anything to say on the subject. Na- poleon, after being elected first consul, finally crowned himseU emperor and Josephine empress in the great church of Notre Dame, whose interior, now so chill and forbidding, was ablaze with the colors of rich hangings. Then they went to Milan, where in the most magnificent of all cathedrals the "Iron Crown of Ancient Lombardy" was placed in turn upon the brow of Napoleon and Josephine. Immediately thereafter Eugene de Beauhamais was appointed by Napoleon viceroy of Italy. Amid all these imperial glories the disquieting belief EMPRESS JOSEPHINE 165 s: ^ ' was fonning in Josephine's mind that as her husband grew in grandeur his pride in her was diminishing. He had every reason for pride. The Martinique Creole had attained to all the personal dignity which should hedge about a queen and an empress. In her own magnificent villa of Malmaison she was a true chatelaine. In the various palaces he took for his residences she ruled like an empress. The Palais Royal was too small for his desires — though that memorial to the extravagance of an earlier king is bigger than any residence of an American captain of industry. Nothing short of the Tuileries would serve the Napoleonic purpose. Years afterwards the Paris commune set the torch to the Tuileries as the home of aristocracy, and to-day a public garden to which all may resort, occupies the site of the ancient palace which was kept for the luxury of the privileged few. At the Tuileries Napoleon began to manifest his newly developed royal tastes. He had his suite of apartments distinct from those of his wife, and began to practise that entire independence of moral rule which had been one of the reasons for the overthrow of the ancient regime. Nothing in history is more paradoxical than the singular fashion in which Napo- leon was able to cajole the populace. In their justifiable revolt against the Bomrbons he took no part. When that revolt was upon the point of creating a true democracy he put it down with his cannon. Acclaimed then as the savior of the republic, he overthrew the republic, and yet held the friendship of the republicans. AH the extravagances and follies of the kings whom the French people had destroyed he in turn com- mitted, yet remained the idol of France. 166 WOMEN OF HISTORY Kings "by divine right" married their children to the children of other kings. Napoleon having no children determined to ally himself with the royal families of Europe by wedding a princess. True he was already married, but to so great a potentate that was no bar. He determined to divorce Josephine, who had been not merely a tender but a most helpful wife to him. He claimed always that only the fact that she had given him no heir to the great empire he had conquered caused this determination. It is not for us to judge the motives which actuated him. Historians writing more nearly in his own time. Las Casas, Savary, Thiers, John S. C. Abbott, some of whom heard the story of the divorce from his own lips, accord to him the patriotic motive of avoiding future wars by providing an heir to the throne of France. Hostile writers aver that his main purpose was to raise himself from the position of an adventurer to that of one of the family of kings. At any rate, it must be conceded that no infatuation for another woman ani- mated him. Either devotion to the state or cold- blooded ambition for more royal standing was the cause of the divorce. With a woman's infallible intuition Josephine fore- saw what was coming. The separation of her apart- ments from those of the emperor was the first hint. His preoccupation when with her, his growing regard for royal etiquette, his increasing intimacy with the Austrian ambassador, whose imperial master had a daughter ready to succeed to the vacated quarters of Napoleon's wife, all served as warnings. When Napoleon came back from the famous victory EMPRESS JOSEPHINE 167 of Wagram, in 1809, the act that he had in contempla- tion could no longer be concealed from the wife. Every little detail of their daily life indicated his pur- pose to set her aside and look for a wife more in accord by birth with the imperial dignity he had attained. Unfortunately for her, she seized this particular mo- ment to reproach him upon his infidelities — of which in common with most royal personages he was noto- riously guilty. Inamediately he told of his determina- tion to divorce her. Voliunes have been written about the swooning agony of Josephine; the noble wrath of her son Eugene, the tears and lamentations of Hortense. Not here can the details of the way in which the tidings were broken to Josephine or how she received them be told. If the narratives of Thiers and others of his school are reasonably accurate, there was rather more of hysterics than beseemed the occasion. But in the end with recurring dignity Josephine accepted the inevitable and also the palace of Malmaison, the title of Queen-Empress-Dowager and an allowance of about $600,000 a year. Eugene, who had cast his post of viceroy of Italy in the emperor's face at the first news of the divorce, thought better of it and returned to his duties and their emoluments, while Hortense, whom Napoleon had made Queen of Holland, remained to rule over that placid Dutch people who had accepted her without even wondering why she who had never seen Holland should be their sovereign. This may seem a cynical sununary of the Napoleonic divorce. Over against it may be set the undoubted truths that so long as his power lasted Napoleon left 168 WOMEN OF HISTORY nothing undone to show courtesy and honor to his discarded wife. Of her he wrote that "Josephine was truly a most lovely woman — refined, affable and charm- ing. She was the goddess of the toilet. . . . She was so kind, so humane — she was the most graceful lady and the best woman in France. She possessed the most perfect knowledge of the different shades of my character and evinced the most perfect tact in turning this knowledge to the best account." True, he married promptly the Austrian princess, Marie Louisa, who in due time gave him the wished-for son, but who was swift to desert him in the hoxu: of his adversity. Josephine for her part, so far as history tells us, never wavered in affection and loyalty to him. They exchanged letters constantly, and while his were full of affection, hers gave him advice which if followed would have saved him many of his later vicissitudes. Curiously enough, the period of his descent from the glories of the Tuileries, to the last scene at St. Helena, began very shortly after the divorce. One who seeks to moraUze might say with much plausibility that the hand of Heaven fell heavily upon the emperor as soon as he set aside his marriage vows. But his final disasters came too late for Josephine to witness. She lived indeed to know of the dis- astrous Russian campaign, and the retreat from Mos- cow. She Uved, too, to learn of his abdication hardly four years after the divorce, and witnessed his exile to Elba. The very potentates that sent him thither treated her with respect and honor. Her health was breaking at the moment, and Emperor Alexander of Russia, who had written to and called upon her, sent EMPRESS JOSEPHINE 169 his own physician to her aid, but to no avail. She died in the fifty-first year of her age, May 29, 1814, just four weeks after Napoleon reached Elba. Her two children were at her bedside, but seeing that she sought to indicate the lack of something for her comfort, finally brought a large portrait of Napo- leon and placed it in clear view. With an air of con- tent she fixed her eyes upon it and murmuring, "Island of Elba — ^Napoleon," passed^ away. HORTENSE BONAPARTE, QUEEN OF HOLLAND (1783-1837) A millineb's apprentice who became a queen HER father guillotined, her mother escaping the scaffold only by the downfall of Robes- pierre, subsequently the bride of Napoleon, Empress of the French and finally the world's most famous divorcee; herself a milliner's apprentice, later the Queen of Holland and sister-in-law toTthe great emperor; dethroned at last with the rest of the Napoleonic family and like them condemned to exile from France, Hortense Beauharnais, the adopted daughter of Napoleon, sounded in her life all the strings upon which fortune plays airs now joyous, then melancholy and sinister. Josephine Beauharnais, the mother, was living in Paris in needy circumstances toward the close of the revolution when Napoleon, then one of the generals of the army, who attracted attention by his courage in suppressing the mob and protecting the session of the National Assembly, sought her out and married her. About this marriage there has been endless controversy. She herself wrote to a friend that she did not love htm, though she did not disUke him. Moreover, she wrote, "Barras assures me that if I (170) HORTENSE BONAPARTE 171 marry the general he will get him appointed com- mander-in-chief of the Army of Italy." She did marry him and he was appointed. Out of her reference to Barras — who was a most influential member of the directory — sprung an historic scandal, for it is openly asserted that Napoleon's progress to power was ma- terially assisted by Barras in return for the favors of Napoleon's wife. At any rate, Josephine's marriage to Napoleon took Hortense out of the millinery shop and landed her in the school of Mme. de Campan, a former maid of honor to Marie Antoinette, who had begun teaching the accomplishments of the ancient regime to the daughters of the men who overthrew it. At sixteen the girl was beautiful, accomplished and amiable. By this time her stepfather was first consul, and for the moment resident in the Palace of the Liixembowg, where her own father had been imprisoned, and whence he was led out to execution. In the course of events Hortense met General Duroc, one of the most brilUant of Napoleon's generals, then but twenty-nine years old, with a record of gallant service behind him and high honors yet in store. The two speedily fell in love. But Napoleon, though really attached to Duroc, had by this time attained such station that he looked upon the marriages of his family as matters of state. He had become convinced that Josephine would never furnish him with an heir, and he had conceived the idea of marrying Hortense to his brother Louis, in the hope that an heir might thus be obtained uniting the Bonaparte and the Beau- harnais blood. Accordingly, he sent to Duroc this 172^ WOMEN OF HISTORY callous message; "Tell him that if he weds my step- daughter he will have with her only a dowry of five or six hundred thousand francs, and that I shall give him an appointment which will necessitate his resi- dence at Toulon, whither he must take his wife, and that henceforth he and I are personally strangers to each other." The soldier in Diu-oc overcame the lover. He relinquished Hortense and was ever after thrust to the front by Napoleon until he died in battle. The forsaken girl was brokenhearted. To her the future became indifferent and she accepted without com- plaint the marriage to Louis Napoleon, who, for his part, was more averse to it. Perhaps ia time they might have learned to love one another, for she was but nineteen and he twenty-three. But whispered scandal embittered their lives. The gossips had it that the emperor's eagerness for an heir of his own blood re- sulted in his bearing a nearer relationship to the child his brother's wife was expecting than that of imcle. But the child was bom dead, and a second son to whom the emperor was devoted died of croup at an early age. All of Napoleon's plans to secure an heir, even his divorce of Josephine and marriage to the Austrian princess, miscarried. But perhaps it was as well. When the emperor died there was no longer an empire to bequeath. One son of Hortense and Louis did in- deed, after the lapse of nearly three-quarters of a century, become by usurpation emperor of the French, but only led that nation to the dire disaster of Sedan and the smash-up of 1871, HORTENSE BONAPARTE 173 The life of Hortense and Louis Napoleon was mis- erable in the extreme. The palace at The Hague, and the throne of Holland which the emperor gave to his brother, were to them a prison and a seat of torture. The king traveled alone over Europe; the queen frequented Paris and her mother's home at Malmaison. When the emperor divorced Josephine in order that he might ally himself matrimonially with the royal house of Austria, Louis Napoleon and Hortense be- sought him to allow them to end their troubles in the same way. The sublime egotist and arrant hypocrite refused. His own divorce and remarriage, he pointed out, were affairs of state. But his family, not being thus exalted, must not set to the world an example contrary to morals and of laxity in the marriage tie. So the two fettered ones remained man and wife, though Uving in complete separation. After Waterloo and the exile to St. Helena, Hor- tense, in common with aU the Napoleonic family, was forbidden on pain of death to reside in French terri- tory. For a long time the allies, who held France, fearing that one of her Napoleonic sons might yet make trouble, harassed her, forcing her to move from place to place. But gradually this apprehension died out, and soon after the death of her eldest remaining son, who feU in a riot in Italy, she dared visit France and threw herself on the mercy of the reigning mon- arch, Louis Philippe. She was received with kindness, but the moment was ill-chosen. It was the 5th of May, the anniversary of Napoleon's death, when all Paris celebrated his fame. Her presence with her son, if known, might be as the torch to the magazine. 174 WOMEN OF HISTORY So she was politely sped on her way to England and never agam permitted to cross the French frontier. When the remaias of the great emperor were brought back to Paris to rest under the gilded dome of the InvaUdes, Hortense and her son were at Baden. In- stantly it was determined that he should hasten to Paris and offer himseK to the army as the successor to his uncle. It was a futile conspiracy, suppressed without a shot, and its leader hurried to a French frigate, which conveyed him to America, where he remained until recalled to Switzerland by the grave illness of his mother. ■ That poor queen, without a crown, without a country, with three of her children dead and the fourth far away beyond the Atlantic, was indeed dying. Louis reached there in time to receive her dying blessing. But he was not allowed to follow her to the grave. The French government would receive her dead body, but not her living son. If her dead eyes could have looked into the future they would have seen that son she was obliged to leave at the frontier president of the French republic and emperor of the French. QUEEN LOUISE OF PRUSSIA (1776-1816) A nation's immortal idol IT is said that Gustav Richter in his well-known portrait of Queen Louise chose the moment when she was descending the stairs to meet the con- quering Napoleon at Tilsit and plead with him for mercy to stricken Germany. The expression on the beautiful face scarcely bears out this theory, but if it be well foimded one does not wonder that Napo- leon said after the interview, "I knew that I should see a beautiful woman and a queen with dignified manners, but I foimd the most admirable queen and at the same time the most interesting woman I had ever met with." Auguste Wilhehnine Amalie Louise was born March 10, 1776, in Hanover, where her father was field marshal of the household . brigade. Sorrow came early to her, for her mother died when she was but six years old and her aunt, whom her father married to provide care for his children, died fourteen months after the marriage. The child was thus left mother- less twice before her ninth year. As a result she furnishes a rather serious, or as one might say, old- fashioned, type of childhood. It was the practice then to have real footmen who ran beside the state (175) 176 WOMEN OF HISTORY carriage keeping pace with the steeds, however sharp the gait. Louise learned that the father of one of her Uttle playmates was so straining himself by this exer- tion that his life was in jeopardy. Weeping, she told her grandmother that she could never again ride with pleasure in the carriage if those poor men were forced to race alongside, and for the first time in court circles the custom was abandoned. I In 1793, being at Frankfort, Louise met the crown prince, Frederick WiUiam of Prussia. She was then seventeen years old, blue eyed, fair haired, tall, grace- ful, with a beautiful complexion and a frank, natural manner. With the crown prince it was a case of love at first sight. "I felt when I first saw her ' 'tis she or none on earth,' " said he later, quoting a phrase from Schiller. The twain were married in Berlin on Christmas eve, 1793, and lived together a life all too short but always full of love. Their bodies rest side by side in a stately mausoleum at Charlottenberg, under beautifully carved recimabent statues. Louise was crown princess of Prussia, resident at the court in Berlin. This station was hers for five years, during which period she made herself widely beloved of her subjects. Her manners were demo- cratic. A count and a cobbler being at the same time waiting in her anteroom, she said, "Show in the shoemaker first; his time is more valuable than the count's." Once, when queen, she was doing some Christmas shopping and was recognized at a counter by a woman who instinctively stepped respectfully aside. "Do not go away, my dear woman," said the queen, "What QUEEN LOUISE OF PRUSSIA 177 will the shopkeeper say if we drive away his cus- tomers?" Then learning that the woman had a boy at home about the age of her eldest, she handed her a number of toys, saying, "Take these toys and give them to your crown prince in the name of mine." In 1797 the old king, Frederick William II, died and Louise and her husband came into their kingdom. When they entered upon their reign Napoleon was just beguming his bloody struggle upward to imperial power. Prussia had kept out of war since the days of Frederick the Great and sincerely desired continued immunity. In 1805 Napoleon was crowned emperor — or rather crowned himself — and straightway began war against Russia. Treaties seemed to secure the neutrahty of Prussia, but the impetuosity of Napo- leon overrode all written agreements and Prussia was at last imwiUingly forced into the field. Whenever King Frederick reviewed his troops Queen Louise rode beside him; when the whole army took the field she accompanied it. The troops adored her. The generals begged that she would remain with them as an in- spiration to the men. "Her presence with us is quite necessary," said General Kalkreuth. Day after day the fortunes of war ran against the Prussians. At Jena and at Auerstadt they were cut to pieces. The French were in Berlin and the queen was forced to take refuge in fhght. Once she narrowly escaped capture and the fact was reported to Napoleon. "Ah," said he, "that would have been well done, for she has caused the war." The assertion was untrue, but nevertheless the queen, once embarked upon the war. opposed stren- 12 178 WOMEN OF HISTORY uously any unworthy surrender. All Prussia was dazed by Napoleon's success. Town after town sur- rendered. Men of the highest position counseled sub- mission to Napoleon. But in the desperate and bloody battle of Friedland the French suffered so severely that an armistice proposed by Alexander of Russia was agreed to by Napoleon. The terms of peace were discussed on a raft anchored in the river at Tilsit that the three negotiators, Napo- leon, Alexander, and Frederick, might be literally in no-man's land. Napoleon, though coiu-teous to the Russian emperor, showed from the first a purpose to crush Frederick. The latter in despair sent for his wife to come to his aid. Bursting into tears on receiving his message, she exclaimed, "This is the most painful sacrifice that I can make for my people." And in her diary she wrote concerning the interview with Napo- leon: "God knows what a struggle it cost me. For although I do not hate the man, yet I look upon him as the author of the imhappiness of the king and his people. I admire his talents. I do not like his char- acter, which is obviously treacherous and false. It will be hard for me to be polite and courteous with him; still, the effort is demanded and I must make the sacrifice." , Out of the conference the beauty and wit of Queen Louise could extract nothing. Particularly did she fight to save for Prussia the fortress of Magdebmrg,' but Napoleon would abate nothing of the demands of the conqueror. Talleyrand, slyest of diplomats, was fearful of her influence upon his master. "Sire," said he, "shall posterity say that you have not profited QUEEN LOUISE OF PRUSSIA 179 by your great conquests because of a beautiful woman?" In the end the treaty of Tilsit cost Prussia one half her territory and a war indemnity of about $112,500,000. It also compelled the reduction of the Prussian army to 42,000 men. After Tilsit all efforts were bent on building up the shattered country and meeting the war debt. The gold dinner service of Frederick the Great was coined into money. The queen sold all her jewels save a chaplet of pearls. "They betoken tears," she said, "and I have shed so many." The royal household lived as simply as ordinary citizens. A Russian diplomat after a night at the king's house said, "Not a thousand covut feasts with golden uniforms and stars would I take in exchange for the memory of that night. A queen sits at a poorly furnished table that, like herself, is divested of all external adornments, but her grace, beauty and dignity shine all the brighter." But to the idyllic life of this royal pair death came as it comes to less elevated and less happy households. July 19, 1810, in the presence of her husband Queen Louise died after but a brief illness. "The king has lost his best minister," said Napoleon when he heard the news. "Our saint is in heaven," said the grim General Blucher, then foremost of the Prussian soldiers. Somehow one likes to think of that grizzled warrior when four years later, after having dealt the cowp de grace to Napoleon at Waterloo, he dragged his gims to the top of the frowning hill of Montmartre, and as he stood looking down on Paris humbled beneath him, said in triumph, "Louise is avenged." CATHERINE DE MEDICI (1619-1S89) A ROYAL DISPENSER OF POISONS THE earnest women who, in England and the United States, are striving for so much of a share in the government as is conferred by the right to vote may find an argument ready to hand in the fact that in the latter half of the six- teenth century practically all Europe was governed by women. England was ruled by Elizabeth; Scot- land by Mary Stuart; Portugal by the Infanta, daughter of Eleanor; Navarre by Queen Jane; the Low Countries by the natural daughter of Charles V; Spain by Isabella of Aragon; and France by Catherine de Medici. In instances, it is true, they ruled through men— but none the less they ruled. Catherine de Medici was one of the powerful women of history. If the phrase "great woman" can be used of one who though grossly superstitious, habitually untruthful, utterly callous and cruel, brazenly treach- erous and wholly without moral sense, accomplished great things, then indeed she was truly great. She could order the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and listen unmoved to the cries of the victims, yet would be thrown into an agony of terror by the prophecies of a soothsayer or astrologer. Without hating Prot- (180) CATHERINE DE MEDICI 181 estantism she was guilty of the slaughter of tens of thousands of Huguenots for a political end; and with- out conviction of the truths of Catholicism was capable of posing as the greatest champion of that faith. She had many of the qualities of her grandfather, Lorenzo the Magnificent, who gave to Florence the character- istics of a cradle of genius, and she herself strove in every way to encourage in the bloody and barbarous Paris of her time the arts of painting, sculpture, music and literary expression. She secured crowns for four of her sons and is suspected of having poisoned two of them — the Medici family is famous for the deadly drop in the crystal vial. This woman, grandniece to a pope and a member of the greatest Italian family of the Renaissance, appeared on the horizon of France first in 1533 when she was married with much splendor at Marseilles to the young Duke of Orleans, afterwards Henry II. Her imcle, Pope Clement VII, had in person conducted her to the city and given her a bridal portion of 300,000 crowns. Though but fourteen, she had been highly educated and was not without experience of vicissi- tudes. Only a few months before, being imfortunately caught in Florence during one of that city's periodical outbreaks, she was confronted with the possible fate of being immTired as a "white slave" in a Florentine den, or hung up in a crate over the walls as a target for artillery. While her captors were wrangling over this choice of ways of expressing their disapproval of the Medici family, she was rescued. i.l Her husband, having no particular affection for the thin, pale little girl tossed him by diplomacy for a 182 WOMEN OF HISTORY bride, consoled himself with Diane de Poitiers, who was old enough to be his wife's mother, but charming withal. Catherine at once showed that despite her youth she had tact, and knew how to wait for what she wanted. Like all Italians of the ruling class, she had studied her Macchiavelli well, and foUowed^his cheerful advice to cringe, he, betray, deceive until the moment for action should arrive, then strike with- out compunction. She yielded her husband to his mistress, the sprightly Diane, without complaint and even refrained from twitting that lady on her age. To the mistress of the king, her father-in-law, the Duchesse d'Estampes, and to the monarch himself she was particularly affectionate — a bit of diplomacy which served her in good stead later. For she had no children during the first ten years of her married life — though ten came to her later — and her husband proposed to divorce her. But the king would not listen to the banishment of the little Florentine who used to accompany him on his maddest hunting gal- lops, taking occasional falls without complaint. It may be noted in passing that she first devised the form of side saddle now in use. When the old king Francis I died, the husband of Catherine ascended the throne with the title of Henry II. He had the title, but Diane had the power and through him ruled France according to her whims. Catherine went quietly along, studying the ways of this remarkable court and biding her time. Beneath her calm exterior was a haughty and violent sovl, but to the eye her demeanor was as placid as a blue lake held in place by a fragile dam. This dam broke CATHERINE DE MEDICI 183 when Henry II, playing at tournament during his daughter's wedding festivities, received a lance thrust through his vizor full into his brain and fell dead on the field of pleasure. Then began the period of power for Catherine de Medici. Her son, now Francis II, was too young to reign, being only sixteen, though already married to Mary Queen of Scots. Mis mother became regent. Her first act was to strip Diane de Poitiers of the crown jewels and send her into exile. But Catherine's power was not yet complete. The young king was indeed complaisant enough, but his wife, Mary Stuart, was beginning to show that talent for intrigue and "big politics" which she manifested all her Ufe. The yoimg queen's advisers were the Cardinal Lorraine, by whom she had been educated, and the Duke de Guise, the same who fatuously counseled her to claim the throne of England, thus proclaiming her cousin Elizabeth a bastard. Again Catherine resorted to diplomacy. Hating de Guise as she did, she nevertheless made hitn one of her advisers. It was at this time there occurred the so-called conspiracy of Amboise which was put down with a hard and a bloody hand. In the execu- tions which followed the conspiracy she showed for the first time her bloodthirsty spirit. The ladies of the court, her own children, herself even, made holiday of these horrors and gazed down upon the bloody execution ground. The reign of her eldest son was a source of worry to Catherine, who saw clearly the growing domination of Mary Stuart, to whom he was passionately devoted, 184 WOMEN OF HISTORY and who in turn was dominated by Cardinal Lorraine and the Duke de Guise. But presently the brow of the queen regent was observed to clear; her disposi- tion to brighten once more. It appears that her favorite astrologer had predicted the speedy death of Francis. The prospect of imlimited power quite overcame any material sorrow she might feel in the pending death of her eldest son. It was hinted indeed that she made the astrologer's prediction doubly sure by a dose of poison for which her family was famous. At any rate, Francis died after a reign of scarcely a year. Mary was packed off to Scotland lest she should marry the child king Charles IX, who was quite ready. And Catherine again assumed the reign of power with a long period as queen regent before her. The absolute power to which Catherine had attained, for the young king was but ten years old, brought with it problems which might baffle the wisest ruler. The religious war raging in France between the Cath- olics and the Huguenots was in effect a civil war and was waged with almost unparalleled savagery. Not handicapped by religious convictions of her own, the regent wavered between the two parties. In the end, however, the excesses of the Huguenots turned her toward the CathoUcs. We of the United States are apt to judge the French Huguenots from the dis- tressed exiles who sought oiu: shores and founded Charleston among other cities. We are familiar with Boughton's poetic picture of "The Huguenot /Lovers" fleeing from a murderous pursuit. But as a matter of fact these Protestants were not themselves free from the odor of blood and the taint of vandalism. Beyond CATHERINE DE MEDICI 185 any question the j5rst project of Catherine was to make France a Protestant nation as Henry VIII had done with England. Her purpose was diverted first by the anti-national alUance of the Huguenots with England; second by their savagery and vandaUsm when they sacked cathedrals, burned or wrecked the artistic relics of the middle ages and even defiled the tombs of the venerable dead. The regent first showed her hand against the Hugue- nots by repudiating the treaty they had made with England, and by leading in person the armies that drove the invading Enghsh back across the channel. At the siege of Rouen she led the besiegers, directing the attack with masculine vigor. It is ciu-ious to remember that this warrior queen, whose courage rose superior to caimon balls and musketry, was still of so superstitious a sort that she beUeved her safety was assured by wearing on her breast the skin of a baby, whose throat had been cut, adorned with mys- terious characters in diverse colors! With the English driven from the coasts of Nor- mandy, the regent turned again to consideration of the war between the factions in France. Just when she turned from the Huguenots to the Catholics is difficult to tell. Probably the assassination of the Duke of Guise, whose power she had always dreaded, was the starting point of her new policy. However, she continued to play fast and loose with both parties, and not until 1572 did she irrevocably inscribe her name in blood on the Catholic side by ordering the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. , Nominally that colossal crime was ordered by the 186 WOMEN OF HISTORY King, Charles IX, but in fact that youthful weakling was forced by his mother, sorely against his will, to sign the paper directing the murder of every Huguenot in Paris, however peaceful their vocations or however far they might be removed from the intrigues of the Protestant party. Bitterly did Charles repent his act. His remorse seized upon him when his nerveless fingers laid down the pen with which he signed the proclama- tion, and never left him until his death gasp, which was materially advanced by the nervous collapse that followed this frightful atrocity. Gladly would he have recalled the paper and canceled the license to slay, but his dragon mother stayed close at his side and he dared not oppose her will. She even ordered the tocsin — the signal for the massacre — rung three hours before the time fixed lest she be unable to hold his wavering determination firm. There is a story that she even had loaded muskets put in the room of the Louvre whence he watched the carnage and en- couraged him to take a cowardly shot at bleeding fugitives as they ran past. The tale of St. Bartholomew is a story for a volume, not for a brief sketch. For three days the gutters of old Paris ran crimson with human blood, and the leaning walls of the narrow streets, now swept away by progress, reverberated with the curses of combat- ants and the cries and moans of the dying. Every Huguenot foimd on the streets was done to death, every known Huguenot house was sacked and neither gray hairs nor infancy spared. The red wrath rolled into the palace of the king, to the very ante-chamber of the cold-hearted woman who had plotted this colos- CATHERINE DE MEDICI 187 sal crime. One man threw himself, all bloody, on the bed of her daughter Marguerite, who protected him with her body. Some forty Huguenots were lodged in the Louvre. All were driven with sword stabs to the windows, where they were thrown to the savage soldiery. The men who drove them to their death were men with whom but a few hours earlier they had been dicing or chatting in amity. No one knows how many were slain in those three bloody days. The estimates, which are many, vary between 10,000 and 30,000. The iron nerve of the queen regent never broke imder the responsibiUty for this massacre, but her son Charles IX never lived down the memory of his part in it. Ghosts waited beside his bed. Dying wails sounded in the stilly watches of the night. To his physician, Ambrose Parr, he said, "I know not what has happened to me these two or three days past, but I feel my mind and body as much at enmity with each other as if I was seized with fever. Sleeping or waking, the mm:dered Huguenots seem ever present to my eyes with ghastly faces and weltering in their blood. I wish the innocent and helpless had been spared." Catherine died in 1589, her death being hastened by the assassination of the Duke of Guise, whom her son Henry III had done to death. "You have slain the Due de Guise," she cried in horror. "Take care that his death does not render you king of nothing!" The wily old politician read the future better than any of her astrologers, for within a few months Henry too was assassinated and the Valois dynasty for which 188 WOMEN OF HISTORY she had plotted, intrigued, lied, made war and done murder was extinguished. Was Catherine de Medici great? '^She was active, brave, resourceful, unscrupulous and cold-hearted. She worked always according to her Ught for the advancement of France and of her family. But of her works httle save the freedom of France from British rule persists. Religious toleration abides where she stirred up reUgious strife and the Palace of the Tuileries she built as a monument to her grand- son, the people tore down as a monument to oppres- sion and aristocratic infamy. INIADAME ROLAND Painter wiihriowii MADAME ROLAND (1754-1793) PRIESTESS OF THE EEVOLTH'ION TO certain great figures in history is allotted the fate of being known more by some phrase uttered at a moment of supreme trial than by all that may have been tried and done during a life of devotion. More people remember Mme. Roland because of her words on the platform of the guUlotine, "0 Liberty! what crimes have been committed in thy name!" than can tell of the earnest, iatellectual work which, during her brief lifetime, she did to estabhsh that liberty which in the end proved her midoing. Bom of an artistic family — ^her father was an en- graver of slender means-^this girl became one of the greatest factors in the French Revolution, dominated the government of France for a time, fell from power because of a chance remark and died under the knife of the guillotine. Thirty-nine years was the full measure of her life. That part of it engaged ia poUtical activity scarcely exceeded ten. The period of her struggle and her martyrdom coincides closely with the days of our early struggle for independence and then national unity. It was in 1776 that she first became recognized as a force in the revolutionary (189) 190 WOMEN OF HISTORY propaganda; it was in 1793, when we were first or- ganizing under our constitution, that her head fell. For that fierce strife which swept the French mon- archy and aristocracy down into bloody demolition she was prepared both by the conditions of her child- hood and by her early reading. Her father, unsuccess- ful despite admitted talent, was in the habit of in- veighing against the follies and privileges of the aristoc- racy — an aristocracy probably more profligate and heartless than any known to history. She absorbed the spirit of revolt before it became audible in the streets of Paris. Her reading, too, was of a sort to stimulate the spirit of Uberty. In that day the doubtful boon of floods of "juvenile" books was denied to children, and Marie-Jeanne Phfipon at nine years of age was reading Plutarch's "Lives" and bemoaning her fate because she had not been born a Roman. Jean Jacques Rousseau, the philos- opher and hterary advance agent of the revolution, also exerted a powerful influence upon her young mind. As she approached womanhood her father, embit- tered and made desperate by a long record of failure in speculation, took refuge in dissipation. The girl's mother was dead. Her father squandered her dowry and refused his consent to her marriage to a certain Roland de la Platiere, whom she had met through a letter of introduction from a girl friend of her earher days at the convent. In grief she sought the solace of a mmnery. Fate, however, intervened — that fate that was to make of her an instrument in the overthrow of a rotten MADAME ROLAND 191 monarchy and send her at last to the guillotine. M. Roland was not wholly discouraged by the opposition of M. Phhpon. He continued to press his suit. He was a gentleman of wealth and practical leisure, though he held the weU paid sineciu-e of inspector of manu- factures. His personaUty appealed to her intellect rather than to her love. She herself said about him: "He was a man fond of ancient history, and more like the ancients than the moderns; about seven and forty years old, stooping and awkward, and with manners respectable rather than pleasing." The young girl had not been without suitors before M. Roland appeared upon the scene. But it is quite evident that her affections were swayed by her intel- lect. There was nothing according to contemporary chroniclers about Roland that was physically attrac- tive. One writer describes him as "a tall, meagre, rigorous gentleman of a sallow complexion and scant hair about the temples, but with the unmistakable stamp of character about him. He had the air and manners of a scholar, was careless in his dress and spoke in an unmodulated voice." Nevertheless, Mademoiselle Phlipon at the age of twenty-five married M. Roland. It was no marriage of love on her part, but rather one of respect, and after the fashion of the France of that day, it ended in her finding an "affinity" in the person of one Henri Buzot, who was her devoted servitor until the day of her death. Perhaps her essentially revolutionary spuit was best shown by what she wrote in her diary on her wedding day about husbands: "I could make a model of a man I could love, but it would be shat- tered the moment he became my master." 192 WOMEN OF HISTORY Shortly after her marriage the agitation which brought on the French Revolution began. Ours is an age of newspapers; that was an age of personal correspondence. It closely paralleled the period of our own revolution when the letters from the Adamses, Jefferson, Hamilton and the aUied patriots accom- pUshed what to-day we rely upon newspapers to per- form. Her political correspondence was voluminous. So, too, was that of men like Bosc, SouUieres, Isthume and members of the Gironde. It may be noted here that Bosc, though not her lover, made his way into her cell before her execution, strove to save her life, but was forced to abandon the effort. He saved her jour- nal, and by concealing it in a cave at Rheims preserved it for posterity. Mme. Roland won high prominence ia the revolu- tionary movement. She threw her lot with the Girond- ists, who might be called to-day the conservative revolutionists; they urged the establishment of the republic, but opposed the Terror. Her salon, how- ever, was open to representatives of all schools of revolution. Robespierre was there often, and it is a matter of history that after earnest conversation with Mme. Roland he would proceed to the National Assembly and ia language of which he was usually incapable advance political theories so elevated as to be looked upon as above his comprehension. In the end it was Robespierre who sent Mme. Roland to the scaffold, although she herself, aided by her cher ami Buzot, had once saved his own head against the protest of those who knew his nature. MADAME ROLAND 193 From the very moment that the murmurs of revolu- tion began to be heard, Monsieur and Madame Roland were in the thick of the fight. At first their activities werQ in Lyons, M. Roland's home, but he was soon elected a representative to the National Assembly and removed to Paris. There his young and enthusi- astic wife attended meetings of the assembly, wrote articles for the newspapers, and wrote also, it is said, her husband's speeches and state papers. When the Austrians massed their troops on the frontier prepara- tory to invading France, headed by the aristocrats who had fled from France, she wrote so powerful an appeal to the king, m-ging him to declare war alike on the emigrants and their allies, that the monarch straightway removed M. Roland from office. Had Louis XVI heeded Mme. Roland's advice he might — almost certainly would — have saved his crown and head. The revolution progressed. M. Roland, a man of wealth and the descendant of a distinguished family, fell under suspicion and was arrested. It was a mo- ment when the possession of a luxurious house and the enjoyment of a comfortable income were regarded as evidences of sympathy with the aristocracy and the song "Les aristocrats a la lanterne" (meaning hang them to the street lamps) was the popular dog- gerel of the day. The Gironde was moderate. It had indeed acquiesced in the vote by which Louis XVI and Marie T^itoinette were put to death, but it fought the sanguinary programme of Robespierre and Marat. The latter were conniving to destroy Mme. Roland on the plea that she was attempting to arouse 13 194 WOMEN OF HISTORY the southern arrondissements of France agamst Paris — that Paris which was wallowing in a sea of blood and which was utteriy unable to defend itself against a foreign invasion should one come. So in the end she was arrested at her home and cast into one of the diuigeons of the conciergerie. Her cell was at least five feet below the level of the Seine, and seepage made it damp and unhealthful. It was here that Mme. Roland wrote her "Memoirs" in the remarkably short period of twenty-eight days. Those who have read Charles Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities," or have seen the play founded upon it and presented under the title "The Only Way," will be interested to know that a woman sought to essay the role of Sidney Carton and go to the guil- lotine in place of Mme. Roland. EarUer in this chapter I referred to the friends she had made in the convent. Among these was Hen- riette Cannet, who had been the active agent in in- troducing M. Roland to his wife. Now that the latter was in imminent peril of death, this devoted friend came to the prison with the proposition that the twain change clothes; that Mme. Roland leave the cell and that Henriette should remain to suffer the death penalty. "I was a widow," wrote Henriette, "without chil- dren, whilst my friend had a husband and a daughter. What more natural than that I should expose my life to save hers? My prayers and tears availed nothing. 'They will kill you,' she continually repeated. * Yoiu" blood will be set back against me. Better suffer a thousand deaths myself than to reproach myself with yoiu-s.' " MADAME ROLAND 195 In the prison of the conciergerie this woman of refinement and intellectual attainments was incar- cerated in company with women of the slums and of the demi-monde. Du Barry, the dethroned courtesan and favorite of Louis XV, and the wife of Roland slept imder the same roof, though not at the same moment. It is a matter of history that so great was the ascendency of Mme. Roland over the baser of her sex that her mere presence stilled the riots and the orgies of those who, facing death, set conventions and propriety aside. Before the tribunal presided over by Fouquier Tin- viUe, with the mahgnant David as chief prosecutor, she maintained herself with dignity and courage. There was no question as to the hostiUty of the court which she confronted. Time and again she was told not to display her wit, but answer all questions with a mere yes or no. In the end she was convicted of plotting against the republic and sentenced to death. There was brief delay in that era of terror between sentence and execution. A scant twelve hours after the court had condemned her to the guillotine this refined woman was standing in one of the rough carts on the way to the place of execution. This was then known as the Place de la Revolution, now the Place de la Concorde, and an obeUsk from Egypt stands where the guillotine once did its murderous work. Facing the guillotine was a colossal statue of liberty modeled in clay — a fitting material in which to typify the liberty of Marat and Robespierre. It was turning to this that she delivered the epigram quoted earUer in this chapter. 196 WOMEN OF HISTORY With her in the lumbering red tumbril there rode an old man with hoary locks. Though his span of life was naturally nearing its end, he looked on the guillotine with pitiful terror. Mme. Roland sought to save him the horror of seeing other executions before his own. As her executioner seized her arm to lead her up the steep steps she checked him. "Stay," she said, "I have only one favor to ask. I beseech you to grant it to me." Turning to the old man she continued, "Do you precede me to the scaffold; to see my blood flow would be making you suffer the bitterness of death twice over. I must spare you the pain of witnessing my punishment." For a moment the executioner demurred, but her pleading gaze moved him and the change was made. Witnesses recorded, and physiologists admit the probability, that the average man sent to the guil- lotine was so affrighted by the prospect of death that but httle blood dripped from his severed neck. It had congealed about his heart. This woman's courage was so great that none of the fimctions of her body failed her, and the drop of the blade was followed by two great gushes of blood. I have said that her marriage was one of respect rather than of love, but when M. Roland heard of her execution he went into a forest, drew a sword from his cane, and fixing it against a tree, drove it through his heart. Buzot, her devoted friend, lost his reason and wandering into a wilderness was devoured by wolves. QUEEN VICTORIA QUEEN VICTORIA (1819-1902) THE MOST SPLENDID MONARCH OP THE NINETEENTH CENTURY GALL it coincidence if you will, or make it the basis of a serious political argument if you prefer, the fact exists that during the three most glorious epochs of EngUsh history the crown was worn by a woman. The Elizabethan era, the "days of Good Queen Anne," and the Victorian epoch are the periods of England's greatest grandeur. Not in one but ia many, perhaps in aU the lines of human endeavor, the progress of the English people during these reigns made all that had gone before seem sluggish. In literature, ta exploration and con- quest, in commerce and the industrial arts, and above all ia the poUtical thought that leads Great Britain ever nearer to pure democracy the record of these queenly regimes stands imapproached and unapproach- able. In her sixty-four years on the throne Victoria saw Great Britain grow from a kingdom to an empire. More than twelve million square miles and a popu- lation estimated at 240,000,000 came under British rule while she was queen. Though Australia and New Zealand were part of the British empire at her acces- (197) 198 WOMEN OF HISTORY sion, their actual settlement and development was under her, and to a great extent the same thing is true of British North America. When she was crowned it took months for her Foreign Office to communicate with her most distant possessions. When she died the news was flashed over mountains and under oceans to the very antipodes in a few seconds. She saw the stage coach give place to the locomotive; the wooden ship with towering sails of snowy canvas to the lean ocean greyhound of steel feeding on coal from British mines. In her youth cottagers spun and wove the fabrics worn by the people; in her advanced years great cities grew up wherever water power or cheap coal would drive the whirling bobbins and clanking looms in great factories where thousands of women worked. Electricity was a curiosity, a mystery and a toy in her youth; man's most serviceable slave in her age. Mankind progressed in brotherly love while she reigned at Windsor. Child labor was regulated, if not wholly prohibited; women were no longer per- mitted to work in mines; the negro, however savage, was free wherever the British flag waved; her ships were the chief factors in suppressing the African slave trade on the high seas and her influence was thrown on the side of the anti-slavery forces in our own war between the states. In the main her voice was always for peace; though once embroiled in war, she never sought peace save with honor. If she stood by while the ruling classes of England with a heavy hand blotted out the Dutch republics of South Africa, she at least aided in giving to the conquered a share in QUEEN VICTORIA 199 the new governments erected, so that, at this writ- ing, one of the most successful of the Boer generals is prime minister of the chief colony. It is as though we had made Aguinaldo governor-general of the Philippines. i Queen Victoria was the granddaughter of George III, who died insane, and the niece of George IV and of his brother William IV who succeeded him. The promotors of the modern science — or fad — of eugenics may find in her something of an argument for their theories. For she was in a sense bred for the throne. In the latter days of the reign of George III British statesmen awoke to the fact that there were but few royal heirs. That king had been prolific enough as a parent, but death, refusal to marry or failure to have children reduced the nmnber of direct heirs to three — the Dukes of Clarence, Kent and Cam- bridge. For the good of the nation, therefore, these princes were obliged to marry straightway and pro- duce progeny lest the succession to the throne should fail. AH dutifuUy performed this patriotic service, in part at least, but it was the fortune of the Duke of Kent, who married a German widow, the Princess of Leiningen, to furnish the successor to the throne. When his daughter was born there were four hves between her and the crown — all four were blotted out before she had entered her nineteenth year. The baby who was to be Queen was baptized Alex- andrina Victoria. In youth she was called "Drina," for the British public in one of its fits of insularity thought the name "Victoria" too foreign. The ob- jection seems curious to-day when to call a thing 200 WOMEN OF HISTORY Victorian is as much as to label it British. Her father was one of England's least admirable princes; a faUm-e in life, he died so overwhelmed by debt that in his last days he vainly begged parhament for authority to dispose of his estate by lottery for the benefit of his creditors. His widow, though Duchess of Kent and Princess of Leiningen, was essentially a German hausfrau, stoHd and thrifty. She could not even speak English and bewailed her fate, being, as she said, "friendless and alone in a country not her own." The dominating forces in Victoria's Ufe were strongly German. Aside from the Teutonic element in her father's family, her mother was wholly German, her governess a German baroness, her husband a German prince, her covmselor until the day of his death, the German King of the Belgians. In her descendants this Teutonic strain shows clearly, and it may be said of the EngUsh crown, as the English so bitterly com- plam of many of the wares sold in their shops, that it was "made in Germany." The education of the little princess was conducted with commendable common sense. It was the educa- tion of a young girl of the middle classes — no more. She found delight in drawiQg and painting, a pastune which she pursued even to her later days. It does not appear that she ever possessed a cultivated Uterary taste, and the galaxy of poets, novehsts and essayists that made her reign resplendent owed little to her patronage. Her biographers report Marion Crawford as having been the favorite noveUst of her riper years, but she herself confessed to a greater admiration for Marie Corelli. QUEEN VICTORIA 201 Knowledge of her station in life was concealed from her until her twelfth year, when a drawing of her family tree was deftly inserted in one of her text books where she would be sure to see it. Her gover- ness reported that she received the intelligence with glee and said that thenceforth she would always be good. But there are doubts alike as to the accuracy of the teacher's memory and the time when little Victoria first knew that she was destined to be a queen. There is no doubt that to the end of her days she permitted no one to forget that she was one. WilUam IV, the last uncle to stand between her and the throne, hated her mother bitterly. Of the girl he often said he was sxire she would be "a good woman and a good queen. It will touch every sailor's heart to have a girl queen to fight for. They'll be tattoorag her face on their arms and I'll be bound that they'll all think she was christened after Nelson's ship" (the Victory). He wished to five until Victoria was eighteen years old, so that her mother might not have the pleasure of being queen regent. Victoria was barely three weeks more than eighteen when he died. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chan- cellor of England, who rode hard from WiUiam's death- bed at Windsor to Kensington bearing the news, foimd admittance hard to gain. A sleepy porter at the palace gate grumbled at being knocked up before five in the morning. The Baroness Lehzen being sent for, felt sure her precious ward should not be robbed of her beauty sleep ait that unseemly hour. Appear- ing at last in dressing gown thrown hastily over her 202 WOMEN OF HISTORY night robe, her bare feet thrust in sUppers, the girl saw the two dignitaries drop to their knees saluting her as "your Majesty." Scarcely had she grasped the significance of the words when Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, came post haste from London, and was presently writing the speech which she had to deUver to the privy coimcil in a few hours. Through that ceremony she passed "with self-possession and feminine delicacy" as the Tory councilor Croker ex- pressed it. "She not merely filled her chair," said the Duke of Wellington; "she filled the room" — and the Iron Duke was not given to gush. She herself said that she was not overwhelmed with her accession, "she took things as they came, as she knew they must be." This indeed was her attitude throughout life. The daughter of a spendthrift duke who had failed as a soldier, and of a German princess of small estate, she never doubted that the Almighty had chosen her to be queen of a great people, never wondered at his choice, nor for one moment permitted others to doubt that the divine favor had singled her out to be superior to all human beings. In a sketch of the proportions of this one no at- tempt can be made to discuss any save the most vital incidents of Victoria's long reign. Rather is the writer limited to depicting as far as may be the personal character which enabled her to cope, on the whole successfully, with the problems which confronted her. Those problems were materially simplified by the fundamental fact that she was a woman, and indeed a helpless yoimg girl on her accession to the throne. By this the cause of democracy, which is always press- QUEEN VICTORIA 203 ing in England, though at times without the knowledge of the very people who urge it, profited. Many exclu- sive prerogatives of the sovereign, like the power of pardon in capital cases, for example, were withdrawn from her as too likely to iavolve distress of mind. The bestowal of peerages became a matter of strict party politics. She herself somewhat weakened the direct influence of the sovereign over parhament^by abandoning the time-honored practice of opening and proroguing parUament in person. At her elbow ever, during the formative years of her reign, was the astute Lord Melbourne, who, though prime minister, had constituted himself her private secretary. In this capacity he was devoted and invaluable, but imdoubt- edly he saw to it that none of the rights of parUament should be encroached upon by the Crown. The queen's marriage (of which more later) was none too popular with the people. She herself, adoring her bridegroom Albert with fervor, was discontented with the title "Prince-consort" conferred upon him. It should be "King-consort," she thought and besought Melbourne to have parliament so order it. Mel- bourne quietly reminded her that to assert the power of parliament to make a king was to admit its power to unmake a queen. "For God's sake, madam!" he said, "let's hear no more of it." The last preceding queen of England to have married beneath her in rank was Anne, and the precedent set in her case was followed in Victoria's, much to the latter's discontent. She said she would not have her noble husband classed with "the stupid and insignificant husband of Queen Anne." 204 WOMEN OF HISTORY Victoria's marriage, ideally happy, for a time threat- ened the ruin of her reign. Her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was a German princeling of a minor house. The match was sug- gested by King Leopold, and the British pubHc, which had rebelled when that monarch sent over a German count to be the Queen's private secretary, murmm-ed loudly at this new German invasion of their royal circle. Though the match was planned for political reasons, the queen fell violently in love with Albert and proposed marriage to him as cahnly as she had accepted the throne. "He never would have pre- sumed to take such a liberty himself," said she. The marriage was solemnized February 10, 1840. There followed a period of wrangling over the status of the prince-consort, his allowances, and his preroga- tives, which was torture to him and which aroused Victoria to fury and plunged her in tears. The prince could not be loved by the EngUsh people, though before he died he won their respect. He sympathized neither with their pleasures nor their amiable vices. He neither shot, drank nor kept late hours. In these characteristics his eldest son, Edward VII, was his direct opposite and was the idol of the people, while by a striking case of atavism Albert's grandson, George V possesses the grandfather's nature and has yet to win his people's adulation as his father did. In due time the queen's persistence and Prince Albert's dignity and tact estabUshed the latter in the position which he held to be his, that of "the Queen's permanent minister." The birth of her children strengthened the royal couple's hold on the people, QUEEN VICTORIA 205 and several futile attacks on the queen's life aroused still more the popular adoration. Though for years confronted with a hostile prime minister, Lord Pahner- ston, Prince Albert's influence grew apace. This influ- ence was at one time exerted upon the British in a way to confer supreme advantage upon the United States. It is matter of common knowledge that in our Civil War the sympathies of the ruling classes in Eng- land were with the South, and that when a hot-headed American naval officer stopped the British steamer Trent and took from her two Confederate envoys the two countries were brought to the verge of war. The American position was untenable, but the people were defiant. Lord Palmerston on receipt of the news drafted a dispatch demanding reparation in terms so peremptory that an explosion would surely have fol- lowed. The queen and the prince-consort expostu- lated and the latter wrote a note to Palmerston plead- ing so effectually for moderation that the dispatch was changed. It was the last thing he ever wrote, and the influence of the royal couple imdoubtedly averted war. Albert died soon after: December 14, 1861. The queen's grief was profound, her mourning protracted, her seclusion absolute. This was the period when Victoria most narrowly approached unpopularity. The nation felt that she was sacrificing it to her grief, and as years passed and she withdrew more and more from royal activities, the note of criticism became very loud in parliament and the press. Resonant rebukes thimdered from the Times, and Punch ventured to caricature her majesty. But she persisted long in her seclusion, receiving her ministers indeed and perform- 206 WOMEN OF HISTORY ing the necessary duties of her exalted station, but avoiding as nauch as possible the pageantry of the court. It is probable her popularity would have suffered even more from this course had it not been for the singular tact and bonhomie of the Prince of Wales, who went everywhere and was beloved of all the people. So great a figure as that of Queen Victoria can only be sketched in mass. The story of her times and of her life already fills volmnes and more are to follow. She lived in a great era and did nothing to detract from its grandeur. The people chose for her wise ministers, and though she often disagreed with their policies and sometimes influenced them, she never ventured to oppose them. If she never forgot that she was queen, she always remembered that her power was limited by the constitution. Democracy made giant strides dm'ing her reign, though not with her aid or coun- tenance. While she made it a point to understand what the government was doing, the course of events more and more deprived her of power to direct its action. She died at Osborne, Isle of Wight, January 22, 1902. The caisson bearing her body to the sepulchre was followed by four kings and members of every royal family in Europe. All London, all England, was draped in the purple hue fixed upon for mourning, but all the world sincerely mourned a woman who was a good queen, a good wife and a good mother. ■1 # jPv^^^n^^^SHEBH^I^^^^^B ^^^^^^1^1 ^ J^B i«^^^^^H ^^^^^^^^^^■^:, ,«>». /- "^SgH^^V ^^^I^H ^^^B^ i^'w m ^^^^^BH^B4 *^ m wi ^H|v'^^ ^^^^^^^^^^Ef^^H^^ Vfe ' V Jh9Hb|^^. ^ "'^'^fl^H ^^^^^^: ^^H^ ^|P«T./i^^3|H F^'"v! j^ « "^^l^^^^^^i ' ^ i k ''^i^^mMHoB^^HDI 1 4 F "^^^IHBHhk^H i^'^^iy t.^^H&v J iJ^I/j^^iii^H L 4,^^ '^jjj^^^jj ^jfK^H^^^HH^^^^B| L^^XiSlB MADAME DU BARRY From the puinting by Drouuis COUNTESS DU BARRY (1746-1793) THE RULER OP LOUIS XV THE Countess du Barry was the recognized mis- tress of King Louis XV of France, from about 1763, when his wife died, until 1774, when he perished miserably of the smallpox. She was legitimately neither coimtess nor"du" (a preposition which ia France denotes noble liueage) nor even Barry. As a matter of fact, she was a child of the peo- ple, whose real name was Jeanne Becu. In France they attach more importance to names than we do. The little prefix "de" carries with it a certain implica- tion of aristocracy, and as anybody can assume it there is no reason why it should not be quite as general as it is. Pretty Jeanne Becu became a milliner's girl — what romantic Americans on their first visits to Paris look for eagerly as "grisettes." Perhaps she was a little bit ambitious and ready to make sacrifices to climb higher. Anyhow, she met what Broadway calls "a, man about town," who rejoiced in the title of Count Jean du Barry. The title carried with it no income, but the coimt saw in the pretty young girl a possibihty of profit. It was a time when profit of this sort was regarded as quite proper among the nobility and gen- (207) 208 WOMEN OF HISTO RY try of France. The count seems to have gained his money by gambUng, and over the parties at his house the girl of unknown parentage presided — with a new name. She was then Mile. I'Ange. As an angel she seems to have aided the count's fortunes mightily. One after another great generals like Dmnouriez and great nobles like the Duke de Lauzim met her and became her slaves. But her greatest triumph did not come until Lebel, the king's valet, gave her the honor of an interview. Nowadays we would not look upon the favor of a valet with pride. But Lebel was more than a valet. His duties were both dehcate and despic- able. He stocked the Pare aux Cerfs and he made the mistake of inviting Mile. I'Ange there. That she would remain more than a day and night never occurred to him, but so successfully did she charm the worn-out rou6 Louis XV that she became the prime favorite and only left the com^ when the king died. Such is a blunt summary of the rise to power of a girl who, born in obscurity, became the real ruler of France and died under the knife of the guillotine like the most high-born dames of France. But betwixt the joyous beginning and the bloody end there was much that is worth the telling. After Lebel, the misguided valet, had introduced Mile. Jeanne into the secret chateau of the Pare aux Cerfs the rest was m the hands of Louis. For some reason the young woman charmed Mm. The Pompa- doiu-, who had been the joy of his royal existence, passed away and this new affinity seemed to be what was needed to cheer his declining years. He saw that she needed a title to be presented at court. Count COUNTESS DU BARRY 209 Jean du Barry, who had discovered her, could not sup- ply this, for he was already married. But he had a brother, also a count — which, by the way, might indi- cate to our American heiresses how plentiful counts are — who was willing to marry the young demoiselle for a consideration. The marriage was duly solem- nized. Coimt du Barry returned to Toulouse much richer than he was before, and his wife took up her gorgeous quarters at Versailles. It was the time when the feminine element was very strong in France. By this I do not merely mean the women who fluttered about the king and his coun- selors at Versailles, but in all the best circles of Paris women were the dominant forces. The salon of Mme. Geoffrin, who, by the way, had never learned how to write, was a power in the land because with wealth and tact she brought about her the greatest wits of the time. And the time was one in which wit counted — by wit I mean the power to see the abuses of the court and the skill to describe them. Curiously enough the influence of the salons was for a long time directed in favor of the Countess du Barry. She at first seemed content to be the chtre amie of the king and to keep out of the politics of the court. But that was a position which she could not possibly occupy long. Every com-tier who offered adulation to her followed it with some request for preferment. Though she much preferred to keep out of the struggle for place and power, she was inevitably drawn into it. They had a phrase in France in those days which ran this way, "Mistresses make ministers, but minis- ters cannot dethrone mistresses." One of the first li 210 WOMEN OF HISTORY political acts of the du Barry's reign was to cajole Louis into dismissing his minister of state, the Duke de Choiseul, and exiling him from Paris. The duke had not sufficiently "crooked the pregnant hinges of the knee" to the favorite, so one morning she remarked to the king apropos of her discharge of her cook, "I have got rid of my Choiseul; when will you get rid of yours?" The secretary of state speedily followed the cook. ' This victory made Mme. du Barry an international figure. The Empress of Austria, Maria Theresa, who had not been too proud to address the Pompadour as "dear friend and cousin," wrote her daughter Marie Antoinette to take special pains to be friendly with the king's latest favorite. The young princess, who until that time had been haughtily oblivious to the du Barry's existence, obeyed. Thenceforward the power of the courtesan was absolute imtil May 10, 1774, when Louis XV died of smallpox. With hun died the reign of the Countess du Barry. Historians say that with the extinguishing of the candle that told of the king's death, the wild rush of courtiers to congratulate the new king made a tumult like a charge of cavalry. But none of those steps was directed toward the apartment of the fallen favorite. In a beautiful villa, Lucienne, given her by the king and supported by the remnants of his boxmty, the countess Uved on for nineteen years. Then the storm of the French Revolution broke and the spectacle of her luxury founded on a life of vice roused the wrath of its leaders. In the days of her greatest prosperity she had made a pet of a little Bengalese boy, called COUNTESS DU BARRY 211 Zamora, who served as a page, but whom Louis by way of whimsy had appointed governor of Lucienne, making the chancellor of France countersign the appointment. This boy, on whom every luxury had been lavished, had reached manhood at the time of the revolution. He became a traitor and denounced his hapless mistress to the Convention, which promptly confiscated her fortune and sentenced her to death. Fifty-three days earlier Marie Antoinette had met death on the same scaffold — ^met it bravely as a queen should. But the light woman, the king's favorite, died in shrieking terror. All along the fateful ride from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Guillotine she cried aloud for aid and for mercy. Two executioners could hardly hold her in the tumbril. "Life, life!" she cried to the crowd. "Only let them give me life and I will give all my property to the nation." In the midst of a plea to the executioner the knife fell and the Coimtess du Barry was a mere memory. The infamy of her life was unredeemed by any dignity in death. COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTQN (1789-1849) AN ENGLISH SALONISTE PERHAPS it is not extraordinary that the near- est approach to a real Paris salon that London ever knew was presided over by an Irish woman. The distinctively British type does not lend itself to the gayety, the esprit, the intellectual thrust and parry of the conversation in a typical salon. But your Irishman, from bog trotter to peer, is ever talking, and wit is his saving grace whether he be Mr. Dooley or Bernard Shaw. The childhood of Marguerite Power, who became Countess of Blessington, reads like a page from one of Lever's Irish novels. Her father was a typical squire, hot of temper, hard riding, hard drinking. He was a "rale old Irish gentleman," grinding the faces of his tenants, who repaid him by mutilating his cattle and burning his hayricks. His daughter seems to have inspired him with no more affection than his peasantry. Before she was fif- teen he married her, despite her piteous protests, to a certain Captain Maurice Farmer of the neighbor- hood. Captain Farmer knew that the girl detested the sight of him, so he forbore addressing her per- sonally, but made his proposals to the father, support- (212) COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON 213 ing them by financial arguments which appealed to Power, who was chronically "broke." The father knew well enough that his daughter hated her suitor and that the latter was subject to intermittent attacks of dangerous insanity, but, needing the money, he sold his child. She Uved with her husband but three months, enduring the while all sorts of physical bru- taUty from him in his periodical fits of madness. At the end of that time the crazy captain was ordered to join his regiment. As his wife could not live with him in camp, she returned to her parents' house, finding there but a cold welcome and the assurance that she must return to her husband when his period of service had expired. Happily for her the warrior in a fit of rage drew his sword on his colonel, and for this was expelled from the army. Not long after, drinking deep with some friends in King's Bench Prison — ^in those old English debtors' prisons great laxity was permitted — ^he fell from a second-story window into the jail yard and ended his tipsy and useless life. Shortly thereafter 'Squire Power died, boasting on his last day that the day before he had taken his "usual four or five glasses of punch." Thus freed from about as worthless a pair of male relatives as ever afflicted a young lady, Mrs. Farmer spent several years in obscm-ity, which is the more mysterious for that her biographers stubbornly refuse to enlighten us to where and how she Uved. But in 1816, being then twenty-seven years old and seemingly well provided with this world's goods, she appeared in London and took up a house in Manchester Square. By dint of her beauty and her wit she speedily gathered 214 WOMEN OF HISTORY about her a company of interesting people. Among these was the Earl of Blessington, a gentleman of for- tune and with extravagant habits quite sufficient to prevent that fortime from growing any larger. He was fond of private theatricals, actresses, gay raiment and beautifully adorned rooms. His first wife had died before he met Marguerite Farmer, but as he had spent $20,000 on a stately, not to say stagy, funeral pageant in her honor and mourned her loyally for two years he thought that matrimonial account closed. Mrs. Farmer was then in the perfection of matured beauty. "Her form," writes a chronicler of her time, "was exquisitely moulded, with an inclination to ful- ness, but no finer proportions could be imagined; her movements were pleasing and gracefxzl at all times." Blessiagton was captivated with her at once, and they were married in 1818. He took his bride to his Irish estate, Mount joy Forest, where she was somewhat overwhelmed to find her private sitting room "hung with crimson Genoa silk velvet, trimmed with gold bidlion fringe and all the furniture of equal richness — a richness that was only suited to a state room in a palace." His town house in St. James Square, to which the couple soon returned, was equally magnificent. To it there flocked on Lady Blessington's nights politicians like Lords Palmerston, Russell and Brougham; actors like Kemble and Matthews, the literary men and social hons of the city. It was the most brilliant coterie in town,swinmng its pre-eminence through the beauty and charm of its mistress. > But Lord Blessington concluded he wanted to make COUNTESS OF BLESSINGTON 215 a grand tour of the continent — ^and make it he did in stately style, devoting several years to the excursion. He took with him a chef from the kitchen of an emperor, a whole batterie dei. cuisine taken from a club famous for good cooking and such a train of grooms, valets, maids and couriers as to make it seem Uke a royal progress. It was an intellectual pilgrimage despite the prominence of the cook in the preparations. His- toric and Uterary shrines were sought out, and Lady Blessington tried her 'prentice hand on books of travel, doing them very readably. At Genoa she met Byron, whose weakness she described as "a flippancy incom- patible with the nature we attach to the author of Childe Harold and Manfred, and a want of the self- possession and dignity that ought to characterize a man of worth and genius." She seemed to forget that Byron was also the author of the less dignified poem ' ' Don Juan. ' ' One who sought to find dignity and poise in that riotous poet would scarce seem fitted to be his biographer, but her book, "Conversations with Byron," is a most readable record of the poet's small talk. Nearing the end of this royal progress through Europe, Blessington took ill in Paris and died. His estate was encumbered, his legacies many and gen- erous. To his widow there remained only $10,000 a year and a house in Sherman Square. They had been living at the rate of $50,000 a year, and Marguerite, who had readily forgotten her childhood's lessons in poverty, neither knew how nor tried to live on her reduced income. Her London entertainments were as splendid as ever, and she became the acknowledged head of London society. To make up the difference 216 WOMEN OF HISTORY betwixt her income of $10,000 and her expenditures, averaging $30,000, she tiirned to writing — in every age the desperate recourse of the embarrassed and the unfit. Her fashionable vogue aided somewhat the sale of her novels and articles, but the rising tide of bank- ruptcy could not be stemmed by so slight a bark. Her peace of mind was not enhanced by the fact that her house sheltered the famous exquisite. Count d'Orsay, whose personal debts exceeded $600,000. As that was the era of imprisonment for debt, the noble count was precluded from taking the air except on Sundays. The inevitable smash came in 1849, when the credit- ors by concerted action put bailiffs in the house and all of the treasm-es collected by Lord and Lady Bless- ington went under the hammer. The total sum real- ized was about $60,000, though the collection was well worth three times the amount. None of the briUiant company that had thronged her drawing rooms came to her aid in the days of her disaster, though it is pleasant to record that fine old Thackeray, who hated snobs, was seen wiping away sm-reptitious tears as he sat at the sale and saw the art treasures of the rooms she had graced sold to strangers. A stroke of apoplexy in Paris carried her off in 1849. Fortune, which had given her so unhappy a childhood, redoubled its buffets as she drew near her end. For a woman who strove only to forward the gayety and the pleasure of her circle her fate seems hard. DUCIIi;s,S (tK CLK\"ELA.\D From llw puinhtitj Inj Sir !'tii;r Lily BARBARA, DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND (1640-1709) A TYPE OF THE VAMPIRE WHEN stout and God-fearing Cromwell ruled Britain one Charles Stuart, son of the Charles I whose head had been chopped off at Whitehall, was in exile in Holland. To him came an ardent loyahst, Roger Palmer, bringing a large sum of money to aid in his restoration. This patriotic devotion was rewarded by Charles, who was, in fact, restored to his throne shortly thereafter, and celebrated his first night in London by robbing the loyal Palmer of his nineteen-year-old wife. The lady thus honored by the fancy of the king, who was destined to become the most profligate of all English monarchs, was by birth Barbara ViUiers, of good family. Her father, a viscount, fell in battle fighting for the father of the restored king. Barbara at sixteen fell desperately in love with the second Lord Chesterfield, but in the midst of her infatuation the girl was married to Pahner. IVJatrimony did not change her greater inclination. "I am ready and wiUing to go all over the world with you," she wrote passionately to her old lover. But the addresses of the king blotted (217) 218 WOMEN OF HISTORY out recollection of husband and lover alike. It does not seem that her ready surrender was due to any affec- tion for the person of Charles, or even to the hysteri- cal weakness that might be pardoned at a moment when the capital in delirious joy was welcoming the king for whose father her own father had died. Her life's record shows that with calm calculation she had thrown herself in the way of Charles, and for years thereafter made him — that is to say, the British peo- ple — ^pay heavily for his pleasure. Palmer, well aware of the precise kind of welcome extended to the newly arrived king, sulked for awhile, but was placated by being created Earl of Castle- maine. Later he was made Duke of Cleveland, that his wife might flaunt the coronet and the title of duchess at court. Suitable revenues accompanied these titles and he philosophically withdrew to his own manner of life, leaving his duchess to play the part she had chosen — ^which, indeed, she would have done in any event, being a lady of dominant temper and a somewhat abnormal liking for the male sex. The plunder she extorted from the king ahnost baffles computation. Among her perquisites were an annual grant of $23,500 from the post office, a money gift of $150,000; $5,000 a year as compensation for some shadowy claims on Phoenix Park; $100,000 a year from the customs. Even more illegitimate gains were hers. The lord Ueutenant of Ireland needing her influence paid her $50,000 for a bribe. As for the king, he was continually heaping gifts of money and jewels upon her, to still her cantankerous tongue or win a momentary smile. It is recorded that she so berated BARBARA, DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND 219 him with billingsgate for hesitating to acknowledge the paternity of her third child — a matter concerning which he may well have cherished doubt — that he gave her 5,600 ounces of plate to purchase peace. Well indeed may Evelyn have called her "The Curse of England." For the life she led she needed money, even though she lived luxuriously at pubUc cost in the palaces of Whitehall and Hampton Court. She appeared often wearing jewels valued at $200,000 — though the wives of some of our modern plutocrats outdo her in this. She was a passionate gambler, not hesitating to lose $125,000 in a night and staking from $7,500 to $10,000 on a single throw. But more costly than jewels or dice were her lovers, of whom she maintained a horde, distributing among them with lavish hand the treasure she wrung from Charles. The foundation of the ducal house of Marlborough was laid with $25,000 she thus tossed to John Churchill, afterward the first duke. All this was known to Charles and observed by him with cynical philosophy. Contemptible indeed was the persecution which Barbara employed against the wife of Charles, a Portu- guese princess, whom he had been obUged to marry for reasons of state. The wife was small, brown, unpre- possessing; Barbara stately, as white of skin as black of heart, as fair of feattire as foul of morals. In every way she thrust herseK into the company of the queen, that all might note the contrast. When Charles, with singular blackguardism, introduced her to the queen at a public levee the latter did not at first catch the lady's name and greeted her with kindly warmth. In a moment a lady-in-waiting whispered to her the 220 WOMEN OF HISTORY truth. For a moment she strove to subdue her feel- ings, but the effort at repression was too much for her and she was carried from the room in a fit. Of the five children of the Duchess of Cleveland whom Charles acknowledged as his — one he repudiated — ^the two daughters married earls and the sons were granted coats-of-arms, given titles and enrolled among the elect of the land. The blood of this woman flows in the veins of many an EngUsh aristocrat of to-day. In time her influence over Charles waned. The French government, in pursuance of the devious diplo- macy of the day, sent over a famous beauty, Louise de Keroualle, to fascinate Charles and to wheedle him into a French alliance. Before this enterprise was undertaken the French ambassador at London had been instructed to secure the influence of the Duchess of Cleveland with the king and to pay her any price she might exact for her services. But the shrewd French diplomat reported to his royal master that the woman was so much a creature of whims and fancies that she would forget any such agreement, however well she might be paid, in the zest of her pursuit of a new aflBnity or the gratification of any passing fancy. Hence the Keroualle was sent over, and with her innocent, baby face and appealing eyes at once cap- tured the fancy of Charles. She was wise in her day and generation, however, and kept him at a distance for a long time until the price of her complaisance was paid to her king. Soon after entering upon these new relations Charles died, and, dying, the name of Nell Gwyn, of all his favorites, alone passed his lips. The Duchess of Cleveland now fell on parlous times BARBARA, DUCHESS OF CLEVELAN D 221 and met them as would a merely vulgar and degraded woman. She took up, one after the other, with new lovers, each less reputable than his predecessor. One, an actor named Goodman, tried to poison two of her sons that his share in her wealth might be greater. Succeeding him came "Beau" Fielding, whom she married. It was not a fortimate experiment, for he treated her brutally and she hailed with dehght the discovery that he had another wife living, which nuUi- fied her marriage. Li October, 1709, she died wretchedly of dropsy. Two dukes and two earls were her pallbearers; three dukes, her illegitimate sons, followed her to the grave. One tmns with sadness from the record of her life to think of her brave and noble father giving his fortune and his life for the perpetuation of the Stuart dynasty, which brought his beautiful and at one time innocent daughter down so' low. MADAME DU DEFFAND (1697-1780) THE BLIND RTTLEB OF A FAMOUS SALON THE Paris salon was a power which, when it died, as it did with Mme. Recaroier, perished without resurrection. Other wits in other lands strove to imitate it without avail. It flourished most under the ancient regime in those days of luxury and gayety which immediately preceded and brought on the French Revolution. Talleyrand said no one could comprehend what a dehghtful thing life could be unless he had belonged to the French aris- tocracy before the revolution. He did not round out his philosophical reflection by adding "nor what a miserable, abject and agonized thing unless he were one of the French peasantry or the canaille of the same era." One of the most vivacious of the aristocratic institu- tions of this dehghtful era was the salon. "There used to be in Paris," said Sidney Smith, "under the old regime a few women of brilUant talents who vio- lated all the common duties of life and gave very pleas- ant little suppers." The EngUsh cynic put in a phrase the essence of the salon, but failed to grasp its greater influence. Mme. du Deffand, one of the most brilliant of Pari- (222) MADAME DU DEFFAND 223 sian women, did nothing of moment prior to embark- ing on her career as a saloniste, except to be born and to get married. The former she did unwittingly in December, 1697; the latter, if not imwillingly, certainly without zest, in 1718. The husband who kindly pre- sented himself to the girl without a dot was M. Jean Baptists Jacques de La Land, Marquis du Deffand. His name was rather longer than their married life. But he had money and he took her to Paris — what more could be gained in a marriage de convenance ? Very soon after the marriage the pair gave up any pretense of living together and the young wife plunged into the worst excesses of the frivolous society of Paris. She had for her intimates two of the most profligate women of Paris; one of these manifested her friendship by introducing the bride to the little suppers of the Due d'Orleans, then regent, and a miracle of licentiousness. With him and his set she revelled for awhile and had the name of being his favorite — which in the tone of Paris society of the day did her no social harm. That was but a passing phase, however. A more enduring passion was her affection for the Presi- dent Renault, the "old, bhnd debauchee of wit," Wal- pole called him, which was quite openly manifested and endured through the greater part of her life — though not without certain interludes with other lovers to relieve the monotony of life. Ennui was her horror. "I am so constantly bored," she wailed. "Hence all my folUes." Soon after giving up the Regent she conceived the novel idea of resuming her marriage in a trial form. She persuaded her husband to agree to a six weeks' 224 WOMEN OF HISTORY test of compatibility. As the end of that new honey- moon approached the black beast ennui appeared again. Madame seemed triste, preoccupied, yawned more often than smiled at her husband. The marquis, a perfect gentleman of the day, jested a little, bowed low with exquisite courtesy and went home to his father. The marquise, after a few suitable tears, joined a gallant who had been peeping aroimd the corner during the test. With the husband safe in rural retirement, Mme. du Deffand sought new diversion. She had tried both domesticity and license. Now she turned to hteratiu-e and wit. At Sceaux, just out of Paris, the Duchesse du Maine held her court of wit and thither she betook herself. There she mingled with such com- manding figures in French intellectual hfe as Voltaire, the sneering philosopher; Mile, de Laimay, afterwards Mme. de Stael; Mme. de Lambert and the President Henault, whom she presently snapped up for her own, making amends for her indiscretion in living six weeks with her husband by calmly setting up her own menage in the president's home. Brilliant as the company was she shone pre-eminent in it and soon, not content with playing second fiddle, she set up a salon of her own, finding her home for twenty-seven years in the convent of St. Joseph in the heart of the then fashion- able quarter of Paris. It was the practice of the Parisian convents at that day to rent out as apartments some portion of their extensive edifices. The custom led to singular contrasts between what was supposed to be the asceticism of conventual life and the gayety of the convents. The MADAME DU DEFFAND 225 rooms occupied by Mme. du Deffand had been tenanted earlier by Mme. de Montespan, one of the mistresses of Louis XIV, and her arms were still emblazoned above the fire place. Beside the odor of sanctity that attached to an apartment iq a convent, the rent was cheap and the tenant was absolved from much of the expensive pomp and state that residents of the more fashionable homes were forced to maintain. Here Mme. du Deffand gave on Monday nights those "little suppers" which Walpole commended. There gathered a most brilliant assemblage of men and women who woiold sooner break any commandment than be guilty of a stupidity. Though she firmly refused to let politics have place, her guests included Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu, the envoys from many neighboriug states and sometimes their kings. A star among the men was d'Alembert, the most erudite of mathematicians, who, after a day spent in study would sally forth at night Uke a released school- boy seeking pleasure, tempering the purely intellectual with the spice of naughtiuess he was sure to find at this convent court. About 1750 the great disaster of the loss of her eyesight feU upon Mme. du Deffand, but it neither clouded her life nor embittered her wit. Her salon was maintained with its accustomed gayety and, despite rivals, showed no deterioration. The first reverse came in a pecuHar way. The great saloniste had taken as a sort of companion to soothe her blind- ness a certain Mile. Espinasse, who, being penniless, grasped eagerly at the offer of comfortable quarters and an allowance. At this time madame's habits of 15 226 WOMEN OF HISTORY life were not easy for a companion. She refused to seek her bed before dawn or to leave it until six in the evening. Suffering from insomnia, she exacted from the companion horn's of reading aloud. Under this system Mile. Espiaasse chafed. Having a pretty wit of her own, she took advantage of her patron's hours and held a little personal salon of her own in du Deffand's own apartment an hour before that lady was presentable. When this treachery was discovered rage ruled the convent. The traitor was expelled, but, finding a new patron, set up a salon of her own, to which many of du Deffand's guests transferred their allegiance. It was most horrifying and shook the very confidence in humanity of the blind social leader. Despite her blindness the poor old woman carried on her social activity until the last. On the very- day of her death her ante-room was crowded with friendly inquirers. As she lay dying she noticed that her secretary, Wiart, wept. "What," she said in surprise, "you love me, then?" More than half a century of Paris friendships had brought her to the edge of the grave incredulous of real love. NINON DE L'ENCLOS (1616-1705) A TYPICAL PAEISIAN PAEASITE TO be a light woman, rather lighter than the Ughtest, as light indeed as a bubble filled with laughing gas, until the age when wanton charms begin to fade; and then to win fame in the domain of intellect so that those who came to dally stayed to be dazzled by sparkling wit, is surely a life story far removed from the commonplace. It is in brief the story of the two phases of the life of Ninon de I'Enclos, whose name, two centuries after death, is still a synonym for the courtesan of quaUty. True, the line of divergence between the two lives led by Ninon was not very distinct nor wholly un- broken. Certainly a woman, one of whose latest lovers was her own natural son who killed himself in despair on learning his relationship to his goddess, must have trod aU the most dramatic paths of romance. A phrase, however, in a letter from Mme. de Coulanges to Mme. de Sevigne shows how thoroughly the Ninon of middle age won those who had turned aghast from her in the heyday of her youthful follies: "Women all flock to visit Ninon de I'Enclos as formerly only men used to do." Making allowance for the immoral nature of the (227) 228 WOMEN OF HISTORY French society in which she lived, moved and had her being, Ninon de I'Enclos is to be looked upon as perhaps its finest type. She scorned in about equal degree chastity and vulgar vice. Lookiag in good- humored tolerance on the chaste Mme. de Maintenon, she remarked, "She is too awkward for love." In- deed, she coined a maxim from poor de Maintenon's lack of charm — "Love without grace is like a hook without any bait." Of her own lapses from the straight and narrow path, repeated so often as to become the rule rather than the exception, she made a jest. At one time the stories of her salon became so scandalous that the queen regent in dudgeon ex- pressed the desire that the offender should retire to a reUgious house. Observing that no particular in- stitution was prescribed, Ninon obediently replied, expressing submission and declaring that she would retire to the monastery of the Grand CordeUers. The selection convulsed Paris, for the Cordehers at that particular time were an order of monks not at aU noted for piety, prudery or propriety. The jest came near being her imdoing, for Anne of Austria was violently angered, and all sorts of pleadings were necessary to save Ninon from being sent to the Retreat for Re- pentant Girls. "That would have been unjust," remarked one of her gallants; "she is no longer a girl and is certainly not repentant." One story of her loyalty will perhaps serve as an illustration of the difference between real and Phar- isaical friendliness which exists even in the present day. A certain nobleman encountering the disfavor of the coiu-t, fled in haste from Paris, and, it beifl.g . NINON DE L'ENCLOS 229 before the days of banks and safety deposit boxes, divided his fortune into halves, leaving 10,000 crowns with an eminent prelate and a like amount with Ninon. On return from exile he found to his horror that the priest, seeking a reputation for benevolence at no cost to himself, had distributed the trust fund among the poor: "If this is what I get from a saint," cried the distressed noble, "what can I hope from the sinner?" and with a heart full of apprehension he sought Ninon. She gave him a hearty welcome, produced his 10,000 crowns and thanked him for the trust he had reposed in her. Perhaps it was this incident that gave rise to the saying that Ninon could not be a virtuous wo- man, but had all the virtues of an honest man. Upon her career of pleasvire Ninon entered at the age of sixteen — she ended it at eighty-nine. Truly a long life in which nothing useful, but many amusing things were done. Though a butterfly, a true type of La Cigale, Ninon did not have the lack of prudent foresight which characterized that hapless figure in La Fontaine's fable. When her parents died she came into a moderate inheritance. Some women would have sought to increase it. Not so Ninon. The spirit of speculation was not within her and she did not even allow cards at her soirees. So she converted it into an annuity which brought her in a sufficient income and which died with her. It was enough to give her leisure to chase the phantom foUy all her days. She never pretended to wealth and the guests at her house were always encouraged to send in wines and dainties for her dinners. Perhaps she was never quite so sadly pinched as Mme. Scarron, later Mme. 230 WOMEN OF HISTORY de Maintenon, whose house was called the Hotel of Impecuniosity, and where the butler was reported to have whispered to the hostess to please tell another story as there was no roast that night. Her early entree upon Parisian society was under excellent auspices, and she was soon on a good foot- ing in the best houses. But from her father she had inherited a wayward disposition and a lofty scorn for hypocrisy. She never concealed, but blazoned her follies on high^ with the result that she was soon ostracized by most fashionable women of Paris, many of whom led the same life discreetly that she did flagrantly. One friend who proved useful remained to her, Marion Delorme, with whom she began her long series of receptions to which flocked all the gay- est and most distinguished men of Paris, but no women. As a matter of fact, Ninon had become a woman hater. The men who visited her were cynically classed as "the payers, the martyrs and the favored." She was not above taking money from her devotees and at least two of them made her an allowance for some years. In the -heyday of her youthful frivoHties her home was not unlike the house of Aspasia in the days of Pericles. Gradually the tone of the de I'Enclos salon changed. There seems to be no exact period at which its more flagrant follies were abated, but in time it became perceptible to the feminine world, and skirts and rouge were seen there again. It caimot be said that Ninon's personal morals improved, for at the age of eighty she inspired in the breast of the Abbe Gedoya, aged twenty-nine, so violent a passion that he almost went NINON DE L'ENCLOS 231 mad. But her soirees, from having been notorious became famous. The best society in Paris was to be encountered and "Women of the highest virtue en- couraged their sons on their entry into the great world to visit Ninon, on account of the social advantages accruing to anyone admitted into such amiable society, regarded, as it was, as the very center of good com- pany." So, if not precisely in the odor of sanctity, at least in an atmosphere of regained respectabiUty, Ninon approached death which attended her in her nine- tieth year. Her last days were tranquil. "Some lovers, many friends, a somewhat sedentary life, read- ing, agreeable supper parties and that completes the end of her story," was Voltaire's comment. It does not quite complete it, for the last phase appears in a letter of hers to St. Evremond, whom she had loved most among the many she had loved a little: "If I were told I had to go over again the life I have led, I would hang myself to-morrow," was her own final comment on her dazzling career. MADAME RECAMIER (1777-1850) THE BEAUTY OF THE FEENCH SALONS A NOBLE picture, so widely produced as to have become hackneyed, and a nostrum for the complexions of the nineteenth century fair ones have done more to make the name of Mme. Recamier famihar to the present generation than anything she ever did, said or wrote. As a matter of fact, she wrote nothing except personal letters, and in an age when all letters seem to have been written for pubUcation hers never won the dignity of print. Perhaps in no other period than hers, nor in any other coxmtry than France could Mme. Recamier have won the fame or the measure of immortaUty to which she attained. It was the famous era of the French salons, the time when women of wit, of learning or pohtical acumen gathered in their drawing rooms companies of those who were impressing themselves on the Uterature or the politics of the day. Mme. Recamier did this with eminent success — ^yet she had neither wit, learning nor pohtical acmnen. Her gift was heaven-bom — the gift of beauty — and it seemed to replace sufficiently all the others. For it Mme. de Stael, most brilhant of women, said she would give all her own genius. (232) MADAME RECAMIER 233 Born at Lyons, of parents in comfortable circum- stances, Jeanne Frangoise Julie Adelaide Bernard — the child sensibly rejected all these names but the third — ^was given the customary convent education. But the book most constantly consulted by her was her mirror. Almost in infancy her extraordinary beauty was the subject of general comment, and as admiring relatives and friends were not niggardly of their com- pliments, the girl was quite aware of her charm. It was the period just prior to the French Revolution, when one of the fimctions at the court of Versailles was a ceaseless procession of the people through the royal dining room to observe King Louis XVI and his family at dinner. It is related that JuUe, being then about eleven or twelve, was in this line when her beauty attracted the attention of Queen Marie Antoinette, who called her to the royal apartments, there to be compared with the princess royal, then about her own age. Indeed, from earliest youth everything con- spired to instil mto her mind knowledge of her beauty and the conviction that it was the only thing worth while. When it began to fade hfe for her lost its savor. "I do not deceive myself," she said in later years to a friend who sought to persuade her that age had made no ravages. "From the moment I noticed the little Savoyards in the streets no longer turned to look at me, I knew all was over." Her girlhood was brief. When she was fifteen she married in the most daughterly fashion M. de Recamier, a rich banker, forty-two years old, well educated, engag- ing in manner and kindly in disposition. Always his demeanor toward her was rather that of the father than 234 WOMEN OF HISTORY the lover, though he provided not merely for her every want, but humored her extravagances as well. Their wedding took place in the midst of the Reign of Terror, and until that fierce storm had blown itself out their life was necessarily quiet and secluded. It was no time to attract attention by evidence of undue prosperity. M. de Recamier, who saw Marie Antoinette die under the axe, effaced himself and his child bride as effectually as might be without abandoning his business. But with the return of order and of safety they shone forth in luxury and brilUance xmexcelled in all Paris. About her in this new home gathered the foremost representatives of French wit and wisdom. The young chatelaine whom they thronged to see is thus described by Mme. Lenormant, a contemporary: "A figure flexible and elegant, a well-poised head, throat and shoulders of admirable form and proportions, beautiful arms, though somewhat small; a small, rosy mouth; black hair that cxxrled naturally; a deHcate, regular nose, but Uen Frangais (very French) ; an incomparable brilhancy of complexion; a frank, arch face, rendered irresistibly lovely from its expresr sion of goodness; a carriage slightly indicative of indolence and pride, so that to her might be applied Saint Simon's compliment to the Duchess of Bur- gundy: "'Her step was Uke that of a goddess on clouds.'" Of course, of those who frequented the salon a fair proportion fell in love with its ruler. First of these was Lucien Bonaparte, brother of the First Consul Napo- leon. His love letters became so ardent that in some trepidation the young wife showed them to her husband, MADAME RECAMIER 235 suggesting that Lucien be forbidden the house. The prudence of the banker, however, outweighed the indignation of the husband. To offend the First Consul might hurt his business, "Grant him nothing, but do not drive him to despair," was in effect his counsel to the eighteen-year-old wife. So Lucien was kept dangling a year or more. After all, the prudence and complaisance of the husband availed nothing. The great Napoleon entered the hsts himself. He had with Mme. Recamier even less success than his brother. She distrusted him from the first, and when he became emperor hated him for having banished her friends Mme. de Stael and General Moreau, and for the part he took in the execution of the Duke d'Enghien — that execution which drew from Fouch^ the immortal epigram, "It was worse than a crime; it was a blimder." Accordingly when the emperor offered her a post as lady in waiting to the empress, she declined, though the offer was equivalent to a command. Presently thereafter the Bank Reca- mier needed a million francs. The Bank of France, under Napoleon's domination, declined to furnish the sum, and complete smash followed. Even this catas- trophe did not satisfy Napoleon. Learning that Mme. Recamier had visited Mme. de Stael in exile, he exiled her as well. During this period of exile Julie traveled widely. Everywhere her loveliness excited even the passersby; everywhere new lovers came with prayers for favor. In England crowds gathered on the streets to see her pass. In Coppet, the retreat of Mme. de Stael, Prince Augustus of Prussia fell desperately in love with her 236 WOMEN OF HISTORY and begged her to ask a divorce from her elderly husband and marry him. Either the exalted station of the prince or his ardor roused her cool blood for the moment, and she wrote her husband as the prince desired. M. de Recamier replied with kindness and without resentment. If she so desired, he said, he would go with her to some spot where they were not known and secure the divorce without scandal. But he recalled to her his affection since the days of her earUest youth, his present misfortunes and his impend- ing age. Her better nature was touched and the divorce abandoned. But the prince clung to hope to his dying day, years after. Most eminent of all who sought her favors and, when she was free, her hand, was Chateaubriand. Some hold that he alone, among aU who sought, won the prize. Perhaps. It was not at all a day of morals, and unless the lady's demeanor was severe the worst was believed and said. And beyond doubt Julie loved this man and was more influenced by him than by any of the suitors who sought her. But when he offered more than she thought right to accept she drew back. Somebody said of her, "As she was too cool for pas- sion she was too prudent for sin," and her life would seem to justify the phrase. Retvirning to Paris after Napoleon's exile, the Reca- miers took up the old life on a less opiilent scale. But even then disaster followed them. M. de Recamier failed again, this time losing 100,000 francs of his wife's money. Not in anger, but in sorrow, she there- upon left him, but continued to support him from the renmants of her private fortune. Her retreat was in MADAME RECAMIER 237 the Abbaye (or convent) du Bois. Here she had a small suite, and in a small way her salon continued. The list of her guests included the great of aU nations, and the record of her hospitahty throws a strange Ught on convent customs of that day. She died in 1849. Perhaps no woman ever left more mourning friends. Her name survives her century, though it would puzzle students of character to tell why she should be so generally remembered. MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR (1720-1764) THE MOST SPLENDID ADVENTUEESS ONE cannot write or read intelligently of the career of Mme. de Pompadour without keep- ing ia mind the cynical sayings, "Other times; other morals," and "Morality is largely a matter of geography." For this woman, beautiful, brilliant, intellectually able, ambitious and withal in a sense patriotic, was wholly destitute of moral sense. She sought to rule France through a weak and sensual king. She suc- ceeded. The price she paid was not merely her own virtue, but the shame and ignominy of procuring others to cater to the king's vices. Her reward was ahnost complete power in France and the servile adulation of princes and cardinals. The girl child destined to pass into history as Mme. de Pompadour was bom in Paris in 1720 or 1722. In later years she naturally insisted on the latter date. Her parentage is as doubtful as the date of her birth. Some say her father was a butcher, other historians assert he was a sutler in the army con- demned to be hanged for frauds. Voltaire, whom she once patronized, describes him as an honest fanner. However, it appears that the only father she really G38) ^lADAMIO ])K rn.MI'ADolU From llir JiiiiiililifJ III/ .\nlli, ,', M H..II lie Sil I III -<-> llirr MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR 239 knew was one Lenormant de Tourneheim, a farmer- general of means, who adopted her, treated her with fatherly kindness and developed the best qualities of her mind. At that time the tone of Ufe among the prosperous people in France was curious. No society has ever been less moral; none more intellectual. This girl, by the time she had reached the age of sixteen, had been made a pet by the brilliant men who moved about the salons of Paris, and by their wit and caustic pens laid the foundations of the revolution. Vol- taire, to mention only the sagest of them all, was so impressed with her that he noted in his memoirs: "She confessed to me that she had a secret presenti- ment that the king would fall in love with her and that she had a violent inclination for him." 'Twas a long- span from the sutler father (perhaps) sentenced to be hanged, to the love of a king, but she bridged it. The first span of the bridge was her marriage with Lenormant d'Etoiles, an amiable young gentleman and joint heir with Jeanne — ^which by the way was the name given her on her adoption — to the farmer-general's large estate. The marriage was one of passionate love on his side, of calm calculation on hers. She needed the fortune it brought, and even more the complete freedom which even until our own day is granted to the married woman in France and denied to the young girl. With money, position and freedom, she set herself to attract the attention of the king. Her home in Paris was conducted in the stateUest style. Its luxury was the talk of the boule- vards and of the courts. Great ladies and famous 240 WOMEN OF HISTORY actors, wits, poets, artists and travelers from all parts of the world made it their rendezvous. In its halls everybody was seen— except the king. So with un- daunted courage Mme. d'Etoiles pursued him in other ways. It took two years for the eager and aggressive beauty to catch the attention of the king. When at last she had won his royal favor it was only to find herself cast pohtely aside after a few hours of dalliance, as was the custom of this most oriental of monarchs. But even in those brief hours her vivacity and her wit impressed themselves upon him. A spoiled child of fortune, Louis XV suffered sadly from what we would call boredom. "Je suis ennuye," "I am bored," was his constant complaint. In the depths of idle gloom one day he complained of his sad lot to his valet. Binet, perhaps coached and bribed, reminded him of the pretty Mme. d'Etoiles whom he had known a month before. "Send for her," said the king. She came and never again left Ver- sailles until she left in her coffin. The ascendency of Mme. de Pompadour over Louis was maiutained not merely by her physical charms and her wit, but by the fact that she was a consum- mate pohtician and an adroit actress. Her control of the king enabled her to dispense favors about court with a right royal hand, but every beneficiary was expected to reciprocate by singing her praises to Louis. Voltaire, smoothest of courtiers, showed his apprecia- tion of this when she returned with the king from a successful, even glorious, military campaign. The other courtiers flocked to felicitate Louis, but the MARQUISE DE POMPADOUR 241 famous author and wit laid at the feet of the favorite this bit of fulsome flattery: "When Csesar, that charming hero whom Rome idolized, gained some brilliant combat, people compli- mented on it the divine Cleopatra; when Louis, the charming hero whom Paris makes her idol, gains a briUiant combat we must compliment on it the divine d'Etoiles." It was on returning from this campaign that Louis created Mme. d'Etoiles Marquise de Pompadour. Her position at court was, in fact, that of queen, for the true queen was a sad-faced, retiring little woman to whom no one gave the least heed. But it is proof of the Pompadour's wisdom that she knew her posi- tion, which seemed to be impregnable, might be over- thrown ia a minute by the king's whim. She had to do with a blas6, indolent roue, without ideals or ambi- tion, content to let others reign in his name so long as he could escape the black spectre of boredom. Wise beyond womankind, she recognized that her beauty would not last forever, and that even at its zenith it might pall on the jaded passions of the mon- arch, so she called on her art as an actress, appearing before him now as a modest, unsophisticated shepherd- ess, then as a dashing vivandiere full of military dash and insolence, or as a holy nun with cowled head and downcast eyes, telling her beads. It was the dehght of the royal heart to sit at her dressing table and watch these metamorphoses. But she was too keen to rely wholly on her own charms. Alwaj'S she feared lest some younger favorite should oust her from her place. To avert this she 16 242 WOMEN OF HISTORY established the notorious Pare au Cerfs (Stag's Park) a resort for the king when he was suffering from ennui. Chateaubriand described it as "that pillow of Louis XV's debauchery." The girls who were brought to entertain the kiag did not always come of their own voHtion. In many households of France, from peasant to peer, which had been violently iavaded, the curses of the Pompadour were loud and deep. She, how- ever, went serenely on her way. To the unspeakable orgies of the Pare au Cerfs she added gorgeous f^tes and spectacles on the lawns of Versailles. The foremost artists of France staged the spectacles, world famous writers like Voltaire wrote the dialogues. All this cost money and the people grumbled. To them the Pompa- dour gave no heed. "After me the deluge!" was her motto. The deluge followed and the heads of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette paid the Pompadour's penalty. Once only was her rule menaced. A fanatic named Damiens, brooding over the wrongs of the people, sought to assassinate the king. Louis concluded, not unreasonably, that the Pompadour was responsible for the discontent of which this was a symptom, and sent her away. But soon becoming ennuye he recalled her, and her power was not again interrupted until her death in 1764. A driving rain was pouring in tor- rents as her fimeral cortege passed down the broad avenue of Versailles. From an upper window the king looked down upon the scene. "The marchioness will have bad weather for her journey," said he with a smile, and with that royal pleasantry Mme. de Pompa- dour was dismissed to her eternal reward — or pimish- ment. MADAME DE MAINTENON (1635-1719) THE WIPE OF A HUNCHBACK AND OF A KING TO be born in a prison, spend her earlier years in penury narrowly approaching squalor, to marry one of the great monarchs of France and die in the odor of sanctity as his widow against whom the voice of scandal never has been raised, was the brief Ufe story of Mme. la Marquise de Maintenon. In its singular inequalities of fortune not even the career of Nell Gwyn or the Empress Theodora was more remarkable, though the life of the French woman was a smooth and placid stream in comparison with their turbulent struggles upward. Historians differ as to the reasons which gave to the daughter of Constant d'Aubigne the sinister dis- tinction of being bom in jail. Some aver that the family was imprisoned because of the father's imdue sympathy for the Huguenots. Others assert that he was held behind the bars for debts incurred in gambling. At any rate, even the prison taint did not seem to estrange some influential friends, for the godparents of the child were the Due de la Rochefoucauld, father of the famous author of the "Maxims," and the Countess de Neuillant. Some powerful influence secured the release of d'Aubigne, and he went with (243) 244 WOMEN OF HISTORY his family to Martinique, where he speedily gambled away what was left of his resources. Educated after a fashion by friendly relatives in France, whither she retiu:ned at the age of ten, the girl FranQoise at seventeen met the satirical poet Scarron, just then much in vogue in court and Uterary circles. Nature, in giving him a nimble wit, had almost spoUed the gift by inflicting upon him a sorely dis- torted body, so that he described himself as beiag built like the letter Z. Under a scoffing demeanor and a biting tongue the suffering poet must have had a good heart, for he offered to pay all the expenses of the penniless girl at a convent, or as an alternative to marry her, the latter not being, if the reports of her beauty are true, any particular self-sacrifice. She chose to marry him, despite his deformity, and while she made the few remaining years of his hfe happy and contented, it is fair to believe that his brilliant mind had much to do with shaping the intellect with which in later years she captivated Louis XIV. The circumstances under which the widow Scarron met this monarch were curiously out of harmony with her later relations with him. Louis as a man was a singular bundle of contradictions. Married, as happily as the state marriages of the day permitted to royal personages; deeply religious and most punc- tilious in his churchly observances, he yet employed to its fullest extent the prerogative of a king to main- tain mistresses. Yet even his left-handed associations were tempered by a certain religious spirit. Imbert de Saint Amand, famous as a writer of French history, points out how the devotional strain affected Louis MADAME DE MAINTENON 245 in the prime of his life thus: "When it is remem- bered that at the age of forty-four, being still in the full vigor of moral and physical strength, he put an end to all scandals and thenceforth lived an irreproach- able private life until his death, in spite of the seduc- tions surrounding him on every side, it is impossible not to render homage to such a triumph of religious sentiment." Mme. Scarron, however, entered upon the life of the court in its xmregenerate days. Her poet husband had died and, after the fashion of hterary folk, had left his widow penniless. She, however, enjoyed a pension of 2,000 francs annually, obtained through the favor of the king's reigning favorite, Mme. de Mon- tespan. The chance came soon to do something to justify this pension, for a child was born to the king's mistress which it was obviously indiscreet to bring up at coxirt. Mme. Scarron was chosen as a sort of a nurse-governess, and established in an isolated house far from the court. There, one after another, the illegitimate children of Louis XIV were brought up. In aU, seven such were born, all of whom that out- hved infancy being legitimatized by the king. In the course of her semi-maternal service Mme. Scarron saw much of the king, and he came to enter- tain the highest admiration for her character. Her pension was increased by him, and she bought the small estate of Maintenon near the court, from which she presently took the name by which she is best known. Her influence with the king became recognized by the courtiers, and naturally by Mme. de Montespan, whose friendship grew cold as her jealousy grew hot. Yet 246 WOMEN OF HISTORY it was an intellectual and religious ascendency and in not the slightest degree an improper one that the new favorite had gained over the king's mind. There is no doubt that Mme. de Maintenon strove to break off the unmoral relations of Louis XIV and the Montespan, but there exists not a scintilla of evi- dence, scarcely even a hint, that she aspu-ed to the latter's position. Her purpose, however, was accom- pUshed by the action of a lowly cleric of Versailles, who refused to admit Louis to commimion while he maintained his immoral connection. Impressed by the refusal and by an impassioned sermon by the famous priest orator Bossuet, Louis first dismissed his favorite, then took her back, but consoled hunself with a new favorite in the person of Mile, de Fontanges. The Montespan was fierce with rage. "There are now three of us mistresses," she said spitefully to Mme. de 'Maintenon. "I in name, that girl (Mile, de Fontanges) in fact, and you in heart." The taunt was unjustified, but not long after Louis discarded both the old mistress in name and the new one in fact. Soon after the queen died, passing away in the arms of Mme. de Maintenon, whom she had ever esteemed. Shortly thereafter Louis married Mme. de Main- tenon. History does not tell how soon the marriage followed upon the queen's death. It is said that M. de Rochefoucauld, at the moment the queen's soul departed, seized Mme. de Maintenon's arm and pushed her into the king's apartment, saying, "This is not the time to leave the king alone; he wants you." She was fifty-two years old; he forty-eight. Both were past the heyday of youthful love and singularly MADAME DE MAINTENON 247 serious in thought and demeanor. Their Uves were henceforth consecrated to doing good and to the government of France. In the great gray chateau of Versailles to-day the tourist will be shown the private apartment of Mme. de Maintenon, whither at five each afternoon Louis repaired after his day with the coiut. Outside, by day and in the small hours of the night Louis held court hedged about by interminable formulas of etiquette and enUvened by the pleasures of the dance and the gaming board. But in the sequestered apartment sat the wife who was not quite a queen, leading the placid, colorless life which moraUsts applaud but which fails of interest. "Why," asked a famous French writer, "are we so tender-hearted for Mile, de la Valliere? I fear it is on account of her sin, not on account of her repentance. Why are we so hard toward Mme. de Maintenon? I greatly fear it is on account of her virtue." , The king, dying in 1715, left his wife, then eighty years old, a recluse in St. Cyr, a rehgious retreat for girls of noble birth, which they together had founded. There she lived four years longer in the odor of sanctity. Three-quarters of a century later the storm of revolu- tion broke over France. Lead was needed for the patriot bullets. It was well known that the bodies of bygone aristocrats had been enveloped in lead, and the bones of Mme. de Maintenon were torn from her tomb, stripped of their leaden covering and thrown with the similarly despoiled remains of kings and prel- ates into a common trench. So pass the glories of the world. MADAME DE STAEL (1766-1817) THE WIT OF THE FRENCH SALONS A WOMAN who could write sentimental novels which sold by the tens of thousands and are » now forgotten, while at the same time she so stung Napoleon by her witty attacks that he ordered her never to Uve within forty leagues of Paris; a true friend of the revolution, who did not even balk at the Terror, though it cost the lives of some of her closest friends; an intriguante who whispered into the ears of men ia her salon novel thoughts which they proceeded to express in the national assembly on the morrow; a playwright and a philosopher; a globe trotter wandering all over Europe and failing at no point to sow some seeds of aversion to the emperor of the French who kept her "on the move" — all this and much more was Mme. de Stael, most brilliant of aU the women of the French salons. She had every gift which fortune could lavish on a woman, save a pretty face — and, with a touch of the eternal woman amid the mannish activities of her life, she vowed she would sacrifice them aU in exchange for the beauty with which nature had endowed her dearest friend, Mme. Recamier. The girl who developed into this woman of terrific (248) MAIJAMK DI-; STAI':L From thv pninllny h,j F. (. r,,r,t u, //»' i>n..sr,sion of M. dc Ih-oylie olF MADAME DE STAE L 249 talents was born in Paris where her father, Necker, was minister of finance to Louis XVI. Necker was a genius. He was acceptable to the king and to the populace alike, no Ught achievement in the days when the rumblings of the coming revolution were to be heard. He was good to Necker also, and without offending the monarch or the people whom he served, rolled up for himself one of the greatest fortunes of the day. He married a Swiss woman of humble birth, Susanne Churchod, who must have possessed some shining qualities of intellect, for Gibbon, the great historian of the Roman empire, was desperately m love with her and would have married her, save for his smug subservience to British prejudices and the opinion of Mrs. Grundy. The girl, Germaine, was the one child of the Neck- ers. In reading of her childhood one is inchned to think that she must have been a most wearisome little prig and poseuse. Her childish letters to her parents were not childish, but the sentimental vapor- ings of a practiced phrase monger. She began writ- ing tragedies at twelve. For her reading she chose the sentimental and pathetic. "That which amused her was what made her weep," wrote her childhood's friend, Mme. Huber. At fifteen she had written reflec- tions on Montesquieu's "Spirit of the Law," and had been asked by the Abbe Rajmal for an article on the "Revocation of the Edict of Nantes." Could any- thing better round out a pen portrait of this terrible infant? At twenty, being in Paris, rich, but with untitled parents and no assured place in society, she married 250 WOMEN OF HISTORY the Baron de Stael-Holstein, Swedish ambassador. It does not appear that he cared much for her, nor she anything for him. But from her point of view he was the most ehgible 'parti in sight — a nobleman, Protestant and a diplomatist with a most favorable standing at court. From his point of view her dowry of 2,000,000 francs had certain charms, for the baron was extravagant and self-indulgent. These mutual advantages they enjoyed together for years, then parted amicably without the embarrassing formality of a divorce. In the early days of the revolution she was its inspired prophetess and champion. She had been a student of Rousseau and had written a book about the author who had enthralled the highest intellects, and without whom, said Napoleon, "there would have been no revolution in France." When blood began to flow in the streets of Paris she was safe at Coppet, near Geneva. Would she stay there? Not she. Post haste she rushed back to the city which the prudent were leaving. She opened her first salon and made it the meeting place for the leaders of the revolutionary movement. Talleyrand, Lafayette, Bar- ras, Benjamin Constant and Narbonne were among its habitues. There she preached revolution and sowed the wind. But the time came when she reaped the whirlwind. The tempest she had raised grew beyond her control. Her friends began to fall before it, and she risked her own life in striving to save theirs. Seeking to flee the city, she was stopped by a mob who dragged her carriage to the Hotel de Ville. The populace, maddened MADAME DE STAEL 251 by the luxury of her equipage, howled for her life, and she had but one protector, a gendarme who sat in the carriage with her and, charmed by her manner, swore to defend her with his life. It is said it was the same mob that the next day murdered the Princess de Lam- balle with unspeakable atrocities. Escaped from this peril and from Paris, she went to England, where was gathered a little company of exiles. There, and at Coppet, she worked with her pen imtil the return of order in Paris brought her back and she established her "Salon of the Directoire." This was short hved. She early won the disfavor of Napoleon, who remarked of her soirees, "that is not a salon; it is a club," and exiled her. Clubs at that time in Paris were purely pohtical and usually against the government — hence the phrase. Exile was a bitter punishment for Mme. de Stael. The most exquisite pleasure of her Ufe, she once said, was the pleasure of conversing in Paris. This being denied her, she plunged restlessly into travel and Uterary work. Germany was the country she first chose and after traveling from one end of it to the other, and fraternizing with Goethe, Schiller and Fichte, she wrote her book "Germany." This book, said one critic, "was the revelation of the genius of Germany to the French people." It was not the sort of revela- tion that pleased Napoleon and he had the 10,000 copies of the book which had been printed in France, destroyed, and even sought to unearth the original manuscript that the work might be wholly blotted out. He failed in this, however, and in England and Ger- many the book created a sensation. It was by all 252 WOMEN OF HISTORY odds her greatest work and by competent critics has been ranked with the writings of Herodotus. Shortly after this triumph Mme. de Stael gave evidence that she was a literary woman, with the accent on the woman. Her husband was dead, and to the amazement of her friends, she married M. de Rocca, a French officer, who had distinguished him- self in Spain. He was twenty-five to her forty-five, sickly and crippled from woimds — but what would you? She wanted him, it is said she proposed to him, and they hved happily until her death. The mar- riage was long kept secret, as she feared ridicule — another human touch in that superhuman mind. When "the Corsican ogre" was sent into final exile at St. Heleiia, Mme. de Stael returned to Paris and established her "Salon of the Restoration," which someone described as "more instructive than a book and more amusing than a play." To it came all the great figures of the time and the new king and even the Emperor of Russia swelled her glory, while the deposed Napoleon, whom she had so long fought, gazed reflectively out to sea from his lonely crag at St. Helena. But the salon was of short duration, for its chief spirit died prematurely at the age of fifty-one in 1817. Of her Benjamin Constant, her disciple and intimate, said, "If she gives herself up to her impetuous nature there is a commotion like a thunder-storm or an earth- quake. . . . Did she but know how to govern herself she could govern the world." SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH From tlic painting hy Sir Godfrey Kndlcr in the collection of Earl Spencer at Althorp SARAH JENNINGS, THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH (1660-1744) "the viceroy OVEB oueen anne' IT is a curious fate that has caused the first Duchess of Marlborough, founder of that ducal house which at this moment (1913) has an American duchess for its chatelaine, to be remembered more for her abominable temper and her command of the vocabulary of invective and abuse than for her quaUties of real greatness. For Sarah Jennings was really a great woman, whose hand was occupied in great matters. Associating with a queen on terms of the most perfect equality, she could nevertheless stoop to keep the palace servants in her pay so that all the gossip of the maids and the valets was brought to her ears. As Horace Walpole put it, she was equally interested in the affairs of Europe and those of the "back stairs." Penurious to the point of being a miser, she built the most magnificent palace in all England. A natural conspirator, she used her influence at court to secure opportunities for her husband which he, with notable genius as a general, improved to the fullest extent.' A fierce and dominant spirit to the last, she defied (253) 254 WOMEN OF HISTORY her physicians on her deathbed. "I won't be bhs- tered, and I won't die," she cried when that form of treatment was recommended to her, nor did she die imtil several days thereafter. Sarah Jennings was the daughter of an English coxmtry gentleman of comfortable estate. At an early age she became the companion of the Princess Anne, who was about her own age and who later became Queen Anne of famous memory. With this lady when queen, as when princess, Sarah was on terms of the most perfect equahty. Indeed, the two, wearying of employing resonant titles in their intercourse, assumed the humble names of "Mrs. Morley" and "Mrs. Freeman," and thus addressed each other. Romance came early into Sarah's Ufe. One of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber of the Duke of York, afterward James II, was Colonel John Churchill. This yoxmg gentleman was handsome, able, and with a manner which Lord Chesterfield declared "was irresistible either by man or woman." Moreover, he was determined to "get on." His family was even then distinguished in EngUsh poUtics and has since given to England some of its foremost statesmen, but what was more to John Churchill's advantage, it gave his sister to James II for his mistress. ' Petticoat influence, indeed, contributed much to the early advantage of the future hero of the tented field, for his cousin, Barbara ViUiers, was mistress of Charles II, and, falling violently in love with the hand- some young soldier, gave him $25,000 of Charles' money, wherewith he proceeded to marry his pretty cousin Sarah. She at the time was described as having SARAH JENNINGS 255 "a face roimd and small, with soft, deep blue eyes; a nose somewhat retroussee; a dehcate, rosy mouth on which no trace of temper had settled; a forehead white as marble; with blond, thick and glossy hair." For a time the marriage was kept secret. PoUtical events moved swiftly at that time. Charles II died after a joyous reign, leaving behind him a desolate band of favorites and the title of "The Merry Monarch." James II, protector of Chm-chill, ascended the throne, only to be expelled by a bloodless revolution which put WiUiam of Orange and his wife, Mary, sister to Sarah Chmrchill's patron, the Princess Anne, on the throne. Straightway the two sisters began to quarrel. Disfavor came to the Marlboroughs in a queer way. King Wilham cherished a plan to seize Dunkirk by surprise and wrest it from the French. He told it to Marlborough as one of his chief generals. Marl- borough told it to his wife as his commander-in-chief. She told it to Lady Oglethorpe and so the tidings spread until they reached the ears of Jean Bart, a dashing French seaman, half admiral, half pirate, who straightway saved the town. William was wrath- ful, and not unreasonably. Marlborough was in dis- grace and dismissed from his command. Everybody thought the countess would be for- bidden the court, but when weeks passed and that dread order was not issued she either thought the affair had blown over or else in a spirit of bravado determined to put her standing to the test. Accord- ingly she went to a court reception, setting gossips all agog with her audacity. She was properly frozen by 256 WOMEN OF HISTORY the queen, who next day sent word to the Princess Anne that Lady Marlborough was insolent and must be dismissed from her service. Anne resolutely re- fused to disgrace her friend and confidant, and a day later was told to get out of Whitehall, the royal palace in which she had been housed. The Duke of Somerset lent her a house, whither she moved, much pleased with her loyalty to her friend but distressed because Lady Marlborough gave way to melancholy lest she had injured her husband's prospects. "For God's sake!" wrote" the kindly Anne, "have a little care of your own dear self. Give way as little to melancholy as you can. Try ass's milk." This remarkable remedy for the blues I have not met with before. But in 1702 Queen Mary died, Anne became queen and Lady Marlborough as her next and dearest friend began to be called "Queen Sarah." This should have been the final goal to her ambition, but she had so long patronized her patroness, so long ruled Princess Anne by force of her more dominant character, that haughtiness became insolence and she deferred no more to the queen than she had to the princess. The inevitable quarrel came at last over some trivial matter, and Lady Marlborough emerging from the royal presence, closed the door with so emphatic a bang that she was never asked to re- open it. So in the years when Lady Marlborough's influence at court should have been all powerful it was suddenly lost. But wrathful though she was, the wealth that came poining in upon her soothed her spirits, always thrifty. Marlborough had won the battle of Blenheim, SARAH JENNINGS 257 had been made a duke and the people of England were coUectmg for hun the funds with which to build the colossal pile of Blenheim palace. His descendants have only been able to keep it up by the device of marrying American heiresses. The house cost to build over $1,500,000, and is perhaps as ugly an edifice as there is in aU England. Marlborough and his duchess were in continual quarrels with the contractors, for the great man was as stingy as his wife. Swift once remarked, "I dare hold a wager that in all his cam- paigns Marlborough never lost his baggage." The last daj^s of the Duchess of Marlborough were given over to incessant quarrels. One of her spats with her husband had a sequel which brought tears to even her hard old eyes. ^After a quarrel with him in youth, she remembered that he dearly loved her glossy hair and in a fit of rage cut it off, leaving the shorn locks where he could not fail to see them. He made not a word of comment on her shingled head, but after his death she foimd he had carefully gathered up the discarded tresses and put them away with his dearest treasures. The duchess was slow a-dying — Uke Charles H, who apologized to his courtiers for his imconscionable delay. From her bed she dictated six hours daily to Tooke, her biographer. Her pleasures were to play with three dogs, to grind out tunes on a hand organ, which she said was better than the opera, and to hate Sir Robert Walpole and Queen Caroline. She finally passed away October 6, 1744. 17 MLLE. DE LA VALLIERE (1644,-1710) HEROINE OF A ROYAL ROMANCE A MIDST the frivolous and mercenary beauties ^A who danced attendance upon the pleasure^ -^ ^ loving French king, Louis XIV, Louise de la VaUiere stands like a camelia among scar- let poppies. The love that she gave him was untainted by the slightest motive of self-interest, and thiat it was an unhallowed love was a fault that she bitterly repented, though powerless to repair. Sainte Beuve 'writes of her, "She represents the ideal of the loving woman with all the quaUties that we delight in giving to it — ^unselfishness, fidelity, unique and delicate ten- derness, and no less does she represent in its perfection a touching and sincere repentance." The story of the love that in the end made La Valliere one of those near and dear to the king — they were many, alas! for the monarch was not con- stant — is a curious and pathetic one. At the age of seventeen, being then described as "very pretty, very gentle and very artless," she was installed as maid of honor to the Duchesse d'Orleans, daughter of Charles I of England, and wife of the king's brother. It was the fashion to call the duke and duchess plain mon- sieur and madame, but they nevertheless maintained, (258) LOUISE DK LA WLLU'AM From tin: pninliiig by Mi(iuor'l, UJIizi (I'dknj, Fiorunce MLLE. DE LA VALLIERE 259 a true court, and one in which the tone was dis- tinctly intellectual as contrasted with the gayer coteries of that reign. To madame the classic dramatists Corneille and Racine owed much encouragement. On the surface there seemed hardly a circle in the court life of that day into which an innocent yoimg girl could be introduced with less danger. But fate held in store for Louise a career of which she never dreamed, and which most decidedly she never would have chosen. Before her marriage madame, then Henriette of England, had been one of the princesses suggested as ehgible to the hand of the King of France. Discussion of such a marriage was brief, as Louis showed clearly that it was not pleasing to him. But strangely enough when she came to Versailles as the wife of his brother he first foimd her pleasing and finally became deeply infatuated with her. To what extent his passion was reciprocated is unknown — at least, the poor lady on her early death-bed was able to say to her husband with apparent sincerity, "Mon- sieur, je ne vous ai jamais manque." (I have never wronged you.) Nevertheless their association created some scandal, but they were unwilling to break it off. Accordingly it was agreed that in order to explain his frequent visits to madame's court the king should feign to be madly in love with one of her maids of honor. Of course that would not wholly allay his wife's jealousy, which was rising to an alarming de- gree, but at least it would protect his majesty from suspicion of making love to his brother's wife. There were three maids attached to the person of madame. All were pretty. Which should have the honor of the 260 WOMEN OF HISTORY king's addresses — feigned though they were to be? Madame's choice fell upon Louise de la Valliere. Was it perhaps because she was a little lame? Who could blame the mistress for not selecting an absolutely perfect beauty for her lover to make even pretended love to? Still the beauty of Louise was sufficient to kindle a fire in a lover's bosom. "She was lovable," writes Mme. de Motteville, "and her beauty had great charm from the whiteness and rosiaess of her skin, from the blueness of her eyes, which were very gentle, and from the beauty of her flaxen hair which increased that of her face." The plan worked well — all too well, in fact. The conspirators had underestimated the fact that Louise was eighteen, fair to look upon and inclined to regard the king with reverence and awe, while the latter also was young, charming of address and of person. Whether Louise had been apprised of the little comedy in which she was to play a part is not recorded. At any rate, Louis played his part with such fideUty to truth that in two months he had won the unstinted, and all-surrendering love of the young girl. The affection of Louise de la Valliere for Louis XIV was imique in the history of court amours. Though she bore him three children, she never flaunted her position as favorite in the faces of the court, nor employed it, as her predecessors and successors did, for personal or family advantage. Instead she was ashamed of her position and for a long time, with the king's aid, kept it a profound secret. Amazing stories are told of the way in which the birth of her first two children was concealed and of the brevity of her MLLE. DE LA VALLIERE 261 absence from court functions at such moments. But before long, concealment was no longer possible. She appeared at all the court fimctions and ia time was created a duchess. Even in the first days of her happiness La VaUiere was ever thinking of the convent. Once after a mere "lover's spat" she fled from the Tuileries, leaving no word of her destination, and sought refuge in a convent at St. Cloud. The Lady Abbess refused to receive her, and the king, who had traced her steps and ridden furiously in pursuit, found her lying on the floor of the reception room, repulsed and broken hearted. She was taken back tenderly to the palace, but already the days of her happiness were numbered. Athenais de Montespan had won the king's affections after a brazen campaign. The blow to Louise was cruel, and made more so by the king's demand that she should pretend ignorance of his relations with de Montespan and hve with that lady on terms of ap- parent intimacy and affection. This she did for seven long years. Some wondered that she would thus himible herself before a successful rival. The Princess Palatine once asked her concerning it. "She told me," said the Princess, "that God had touched her heart, had shown her her sin and that then she had thought she must do penance and suffer in the way that hurt her most — and this was to watch the king's heart turn away from her and disdain take the place in it which love had once filled." When freed at last from this cruel servitude La Valliere sought for the final time the CarmeUte con- vent in the Rue St. Jacques. There was perhaps a 262 WOMEN OF HISTORY touch of the dramatic m her renunciation of the world. A great crowd Uned the street at the door of the con- vent. Without awaiting the expiration of her novi- tiate she had her flaxen hair cut off at once — ^thus sacrificing her earthly crown. The famous Bossuet preached the sermon of the irrevocable vow, and from the hands of the queen whose rival she had been, Louise received the black veil. She died then to the world, but lived within the convent until 1710. At heart she had been a true good woman. Perhaps Mme. de Sevign6 best summed up her character in referring to her as "that little violet hiding under the leaves, who was so ashamed of being mistress, mother and duchess: there will never be another of that mould." THEODOSIA BURR (1783-1812) WHOSE FATE IS AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY DARK tragedy enshrouds the Ufe story of Theodosia Burr, perhaps the most cultivated and brilUant woman of her time, and the daughter of Aaron Burr, whose name sounds ill to American ears. Suffering and sorrow fell harshly upon her, and the very time and manner of her death being unknown, we are left to imagine it as being fit in horror to cap the climax of her tragic story. Yet her early life was happy, idyllic, save for the loss of her mother when she was but twelve years old. But even this loss was in part made up to her by the increased and unremitting attention of her father. Some have said that she was his very soul and, indeed, it is a matter of record that he did not embark on those doubtful and devious enterprises which brought down his illustrious career to shameful ruin imtil after her marriage. She was like him in thought, in nature, in education, in brilliancy and even in personal appear- ance. So wholly were the two at one that it is impos- sible to understand the daughter without some knowl- edge of her sire. Burr was one of the really great men of the forma- tive period of our nation. That in the end he sought (263) *264 WOMEN OF HISTORY to put his talents to unpatriotic uses does not disprove his possession of genius in the highest degree. His military service m the revolution was brilliant, so that he long preferred to base his fame upon his soldierly quahties rather than upon his knowledge of state- craft. With the completion of peace he laid down the sword and took up his law books, and at the age of thirty was a successful and prosperous lawyer in New York. No fame exceeded his save that of Alexander Hamilton, whom he later slew in a duel. The bullet that laid Hamilton low killed Burr's prospects as well. In 1782 Burr married a lady ten years his senior, the widow of a British officer and a woman of high cultivation. He was then with the tide that led on to fortime. When the British evacuated New York he took a town house in Maiden Lane and a country house at Richmond Hill, then two miles from the city, but now in its very heart. The latter was a stately edifice for the time and had been headquarters for Washington in 1776. Bm-r made it a center of political and intellectual society. He had a passion for books and his hbrary was continually recruited by shipments from his London bookseller. In this hbrary, one of the best of the day, Theodosia grew up, her childish tastes gently directed aright by a cultivated mother and a father who had determined that no man should excel in breadth of culture his daughter when she attained womanhood — and at that day a highly educated woman was a rarity this side of the Atlantic. When Theodosia was ten years old he encountered Mary WoUstoncraft's book, "A Vindication of the THEODOSIA BURR 265 Rights of Women," and was greatly impressed by it. "Is it owing to ignorance or prejudice," he asked, "that I have not yet met with a single person who had discovered or would allow the merits of the work?" Nowadays the book seems a mere collection of truisms. But then it was audacious, revolutionary even, and Burr had the intellectual courage to direct his daugh- ter's studies according to its precepts. Upon her mother's death the girl of twelve became virtual mistress of the house. Her father installed a French governess and Theodosia soon became facile in the use of that tongue, entertaining Louis Phihppe, Jerome Bonaparte, Talleyrand and Volney. Some- times her father's drafts on her capacity as a hostess seem rather heavy, as when he sent Brant, the Indian chief, to her with a note of introduction. But the fom-- teen-year-old hostess arranged a dinner party of dis- tinguished people and carried her duties lightly. In 1801, when only seventeen years old, Theodosia was married to Joseph Alston, a wealthy young rice planter of South Carolina. It does not appear that Burr opposed the match, grievous as the separation it entailed must have been to him. He even encour- aged and advised his son-in-law in the commencement of a political career that led him to the governorship of his native state. But whether by mere coincidence or as a result of the ensuing loneUness, the vicissitudes which later overwhelmed Burr seem to date from the time his daughter left his house. For the moment, however, all was gay. The bridal pair on their way to Charleston stopped at the new capital at Washington and saw Aaron Burr sworn in 266 WOMEN OF HISTORY as vice-president. The earlier presidential contest had resulted in a tie vote in the electoral college, and the House of Representatives had elected Jefferson president and Burr to second place. On the surface Burr seemed at the very zenith of success, but the appearance was deceitful. He was within one step of the presidency, but Jefferson's implacable hatred barred the way. He was apparently rich, but in fact overwhelmed with debt, the result of his too lavish hospitality. With his adored daughter leaving him for a husband's home, his cup on the day of his in- auguration was not wholly sweet. The life of the Alstons was ideally happy. A son came to Theodosia, whom she named after her father, to whom he was ever a source of pride. When her twenty-first birthday arrived he gave a dinner at Richmond Hill and had her portrait placed in a chair and toasted by his guests. "We laughed an hoxir, danced an hour and drank your health," he wrote to Theodosia. While the letter was making its slow way to South Carolina Burr met Hamilton on Wee- hawken Heights and shot him dead. This is no place to discuss the duel nor the collapse of Bm-r's great scheme to build an empire in Mexico. Perhaps had Burr fallen in the duel he would have been canonized. As it was, he was execrated, and his trial for treason in connection with the Mexican scheme added to the blots upon his name. All this brought sorrow upon Theodosia, the more so since her husband was heavily involved in the essay at empire building. But her letters were full of comfort, and during the long ordeal of the trial she sat by his THEODOSIA BURR 267 side. After acquittal by the court, but condemnation by the pubhc, he went abroad. PubUc clamor in time died down and the broken old man, retm-ning from Europe, was kindly received in New York. But Theodosia's joy was harshly checked by the death of her son. "Theodosia has endured all that a human being could endure," wrote her husband to Burr, "but her admirable mind will triumph. She supports herself in a manner worthy of your daughter." As the hurt child runs to its parent, so Theodosia, in this hour of anguish, sought her father. She took a ship alone for New York, put bravely out to sea and was never heard of again. Of ship, passengers and crew all trace was lost. No bodies came ashore, nor teU-tale wreckage was sighted. So complete was the obhteration of all that it was suggested that pirates might have scuttled the ship and murdered her com- pany, taking the women to one of their island strong- holds. To this Aaron Burr would never listen. "No, no, no!" he cried, "if my Theo had survived that storm she would have foimd her way to me. Nothing could have kept my Theo from her father." SUSAN B. ANTHONY (1820-1906) A LIFE-LONG CHAMPION OF WOMAN'S RIGHTS TO-DAY when the status of women in most states of the American union before the law is practically that of man except so far as the right to vote is concerned — and in 1913 that right is fully conceded by nine of the states and par- tially in most of the others — to-day when women can hold, sell and devise property, when the wife has a right to her earnings, when all the learned professions and a host of minor occupations are open to the sex, the conditions which first forced Susan B. Anthony into a lifetime of work for the rights of women seem almost incredible. Miss Anthony used to enliven her speeches demand- ing legal equality for women with this story for the truth of which she vouched: "A farmer's wife in Illinois, who had all the rights she wanted, had made for herself a full set of false teeth. The dentist pro- nounced them an admirable fit; she on her part said it gave her fits to wear them. He sued her husband for his pay, and the latter's coimsel put the wife, the wearer of the teeth, on the stand to testify to their worthlessness. But the judge ruled out her testimony, saying, 'A married woman cannot be a witness in (268) ,SU,S,\N ]1 ANTHONY SUSAN B. ANTHONY 269 matters of joint interest between herself and her husband.' Think of that, ye good wives! The teeth in your mouth are a matter of joint interest with your husband about which you are legally incompetent to speak!" In Miss Anthony's earUer days not only the col- leges, but even the high schools were closed to women, with the result that those whose parents could not afford private tutors grew up illiterate. Medicine, the law and the pulpit, ia all of which women of to-day have won eminence, were barred against them. Few industrial pursuits offered them place. For the un- married and unmonied woman there was no means of livelihood save teaching, at a beggarly wage, sewing or some menial occupation. Susan B. Anthony, who consecrated her life to fight- ing the limitations thus placed upon her sex, was born of Quaker parentage, at South Adams, Mass., Febru- ary 15, 1820. Though her father was a Quaker, he was a militant one and suffered the ignominy of pubhc reprimand for insisting upon wearing the kind of clothing he fancied, being ultimately expelled from "meeting" because he allowed the use of one of his rooms by a dancing class. He declared it kept the class away from a pubUc place where Uquor was sold, but his defense was unavaiUng. In his early days Mr. Anthony was rich, but gave all his children such an education as would enable them to support them- selves should disaster overtake him — as in fact it did. At fifteen Susan was teaching in a Quaker school for one dollar a week and her board. This she did to gain experience, but within two years the reverses he 270 WOMEN OF HISTORY had apprehended overtook her father and ever there- after she was self-supporting. Until her thirtieth year she taught continuously, and as an active member of the New York State Teachers' Association suc- ceeded in securing much helpful legislation for teachers. But her real instinct was for public life. In part this sprung from her father's public-spirited and pro- gressive mind, partly it came from her early associa- tion with the Quakers, who held the right of women to be heard in public meeting equal to that of men. The Society of Friends held to the equality of sexes and abhorred slavery, and Miss Anthony fought for the one and against the other. Her first active pubhc work, however, was in the struggle against intemperance. It was a time of practically universal addiction to hquor. The farmer's barn was "raised" with demijohns of rum and the harvest was garnered by the aid of the same stimulant. Abstinence was an eccentricity and drunkenness a gentlemanly diversion. But in the course of her assaults upon this evil she became convinced that it could only be abated through the ballot. She had "no time to dip out vice with a teaspoon while the wrongly adjusted forces of society are pouring it in by the bucketful." Even the ballot, she found, was not, as then held and cast, an efficient weapon against the foe. After observing impatiently the cool indiffer- ence with which delegations of women were treated in pohtical conventions she vowed to fight for votes for women, and, joined with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, led that fight until the day of her death. In the days just prior to the Civil War Miss Anthony SUSAN B. ANTHONY 271 gave much of her time and energy to anti-slavery work. Indeed, the freedom of the slave, votes for women and the destruction of the liquor power were the issues that ever occupied her mind. Among her intimates in those days were Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass and other abolitionists, and if her home was not a regular station on the imderground railroad, it was at least a watering place. Her real fight came, however, when it was desired to maintain Lincoln's emancipation proclamation by a constitutional amendment forever prohibiting slav- ery. To aid in this work the Woman's National Loyal League was formed in 1863 with Mrs. Stanton as president and Miss Anthony secretary. Its task was to awaken pubUc sentiment by writing and speak- ing, and to secure signatures to petitions to Congress. Miss Anthony was untiring in this work and raised aU the money necessary for the work, and by August, 1864, petitions with more than 400,000 signatures had been sent to Washington. Senator Sumner de- clared that these "petitions were the bulwark of the demand for the thirteenth amendment." But alas! In the end all their efforts were em- ployed by Congress in a way which the devoted women thought a direct stroke at their cherished doctrine, "Votes for Women." While still engaged in collect- ing and forwarding signatures they learned to their wrath and indignation that Congress intended to propose another amendment, granting negro men the suffrage and employing the word "male" in such a way as to make it clear that under the constitution only males were entitled to the franchise. Prior to 272 WOMEN OF HISTORY this amendment much doubt rested upon this point— and for that matter does still. Miss Anthony and her colleagues felt that the politicians had taken the fruits of their efforts and repaid them by betrayal. So, changing front, they fought the fourteenth amendment, but to no avail. It was adopted to the lasting regret of the country. In 1872, for the purpose of making a test case. Miss Anthony attempted to vote at Rochester. She was arrested and put on trial before an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who discharged the jury, himself pronounced her guilty and fined her $100. "Resistance to tyranny," said Miss Anthony, addressing the court, "is obedience to God, and I shall never pay a penny of this unjust claim." And she never did. With Mrs. Stanton in 1868 she estabhshed in New York a weekly paper called The Revolution, of which she acted as business manager and to maintain which she busied herself on the lecture platform. For, like most radical papers, The Revolution did not pay, though, like most revolutions, it cleared the ground that others were to till. In two years it had consumed all the money she could raise and involved her in debts amount- ing to $10,000, all of which were punctiliously paid. In a sense Miss Anthony was no jom-nalist, though a born agitator. She did not write easily, and when she came to prepare her monumental "History of Woman Suffrage" from material she had been years gathering, she did the editorial work while others did the actual writing. In organization work she was a genius, The first SUSAN B. ANTHONY 273 state, national and international Equal Suffrage Asso- ciation was created by her, the last in 1888, and from the nucleus then estabhshed has grown up a permanent organization of many millions of women, with branches in more than twenty countries. Her work of over fifty-seven years on the lectm-e platform gave her a faciUty in repartee which opponents learned to dread. "You are not married," said a well-known abolition- ist to her once. "You have no business to be dis- cussing marriage." "Well, Mr. May," she rephed, "you are not a slave. Suppose you quit lecturing on slavery." Miss Anthony died March 13, 1906, having lived to see most of the reforms she fought for accomphshed, and her great desire, woman suffrage, so far advanced that its complete victory in the United States is a mere matter of time. With her the cause of women took the places of husband, children and society; it was to her at once rehgion, politics, work and pleasure. "I know only woman and her disfranchised," she was wont to say and this single-hearted purpose she pur- sued until death. 1! ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (1815-1902) A "WIFE, MOTHER AND EMINENT SUFFEAGIST IF the effigy of any American woman merits being set on a high pedestal in recognition of her ser- vices to her sex, it is that of Elizabeth Cady Stan- ton. Yet curiously enough her strength arose from early revolt against being of the weaker sex at all. When she was eleven years old her only brother died and, as she tried with childish arts to console her father, he said with a deep sigh, "Oh, my daughter, I wish you were a boy!" She thereupon determined to be all that a boy could be. In her memoirs she tells how she began this task: "I hastened to our good pastor. Rev. Simon Hosack, who was always early at work in his garden. . . . i " 'My father,' I said, 'prefers boys; he wishes I was one, and I intend to be as near like one as pos- sible. I am going to ride on horseback and study Greek. Will you give me a Greek lesson now, doctor? I waiit to begin at once.' " 'Yes, my child,' he said, rising and throwing down his hoe, 'come into my hbrary and we will begin at once.' " In the effort thus begun she never faltered. Her outdoor sports were those of boys, in school she ranked (274) ELlZAJiE'rn C\I)Y STANTON ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 275 most of the male scholars. At last she took a prize in Greek and carried it triumphantly to her father, sure that now "he recognized the equaUty of the daughter with the son, (but) he kissed me on the fore- head and exclaimed with a sigh, 'Ah, you should have been a boy!' " It was a cruel stroke to deal the child, though the father was unaware of her ambition. But by this time her mind was fixed on achieving equality with man, and her life was devoted to winning that equality before the law for all women. The parents of Ehzabeth Cady were people of stand- ing. Her father had been a federaUst representative in Congress and a justice of the New York Supreme Coiu-t. Her mother was one of the New York Liv- ingstons and daughter of a member of Gen. Washing- ton's staff. Indeed, it was this maternal grandfather who, being suspicious of a certain British man-of-war lying off West Point, fired an unauthorized cannon ball into her. The vessel made off and Col. Livingston had, all unwittingly, blocked Arnold's treason. Wash- ington afterward rebuked him coldly for acting without orders; then thanked him warmly for saving West Pomt. Working hard with her books, Elizabeth fitted her- self for her brother's college. Union, and passed the examination, but, being only a girl, was denied admis- sion. At that time no colleges and few if any high schools were open to girls. She lived to see all high schools equally open to the sexes and all state univer- sities coeducational save those of Virginia, Georgia and Louisiana. While pursuing her studies she used 276 WOMEN OF HISTORY to frequent her father's law office and had her young wrath roused by some of the stories told by women who came for legal advice. Her attention thus called to the manifold injustices perpetrated upon women in the name of the law, she thought to remedy the situa- tion by cutting the obnoxious statutes out of her father's law books. This simple cure he stopped by explain- ing to her how laws were made and advising her to get after the lawmakers. The advice was tendered in jest, but accepted in earnest. Ehzabeth kept after the lawmakers the rest of her life. Life in Johnstown, N. Y., in those days was intel- lectually stimulating, and much of her time was spent at the house of Gerrit Smith, the well-knoWn abolition- ist at Peterboro, nearby. Her friends and associates were wrapped up in the abolition movement and in allied reforms, though in preaching freedom for women she led all the rest. It was at Peterboro that she met Henry B. Stanton, a famous anti-slavery orator, and became engaged to him. The period of the engagement could not have been very blissful to either, for she was racked with doubts as to the wisdom of giving up her freedom, for what was then the practical slavery of marriage. She could not forget the, dictum of Black- stone that "a. man and his wife are one and the man is the one!" In the end, however, she braved the matri- monial peril, and showed a very unfeminine strength of mind by even getting married on a Friday. "As we lived together without more than the usual matri- monial friction," she writes, "for nearly half a cen- tury, had seven children, all but one of whom are still living, and have been well sheltered, clothed and fed, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 277 enjoying sound minds in sound bodies, no one need be afraid of going through the naarriage service on Friday, for fear of bad luck." Mrs. Stanton in herself offered a complete refutation of the shallow and flippant criticisms brought against "advanced" women. She was a wife, mother, beau- tiful, graceful, exquisite in dress. '^iHer voice was low and well modulated; her wit acute, her good humor unruffled in debate. July 19, 1848, the first Woman's Rights Convention was held at Seneca Falls, N. Y. Its leading spirits were Mrs. Stanton and Luc retia Mott, but about them were gathered an earn est 'body of thinking men and women, whose names we identify with the anti-slavery cause rather than woman's r ights. There was a chorus of sneers and snarls from the press. Mrs. Stanton said afterwards that with all he r courage had she had any premonition of the storm of ridicule and denunciation which greeted their meeting she would never have dared to brave it. Her own father "on reading the demand of the meeting for woman suffrage rushed down to Seneca Falls to see if his daughter had lost her mind. Yet that is the only plank in their platform which Mrs. Stanton did not live to see effective, but complete suffrage in nine states and restricted suffrage in most of the others to-day gives earnest that it will ulti- mately win. One plank declared for equal rights to education— that need has been met. Another demanded the opening of the fields of industry to women— to-day nearly six miUion women are engaged in occupations other than domestic service. Another stiU demanded equality for women before the law, so 278 WOMEN OF HISTORY that she might collect her own wages, do business in her own name, own and devise her property. In prac- tically every state this is now conceded. A truly epochal event in Mrs. Stanton's life was her meeting with Susan B. Anthony in 1851. Thenceforth the two were as one ia thought and work. Together they "stumped" Kansas and Michigan in behalf of women's suffrage, and carried the agitation into states where the blanketed Indian, tomahawk and all, was still in evidence. Together they estabUshed The Revolution ia New York, nursed it tenderly for two years and paid its debts after its demise. Together they wrote and pubUshed "The History of Woman Suffrage in America," a monumental and needed book, which, however, engulfed all the money the two could earn on the lecture platform. Few friendships and few literary copartnerships have been so enduring. The one woman was the complement of the other, the two doing successfully the work at which either alone might have failed. This friendship endured for life, and when Miss Anthony at New York, October 26, 1902, looked down on the dead face of her friend she said, "Oh, this awful hush! It seems impossible to beUeve that voice is stilled which I have loved to hear for fifty years." LUCY STONE (1818-1893) A CHAMPION OF LIBERTY FOR SLAVES AND FOR WOMEN THE gospel of revolt against the domination of woman by man was never more ardently or eloquently preached than by Lucy Stone. Her childhood was spent in a household in which the father stood by aU the laws that then denied to woman any identity of her own. Francis Stone was a good busi- ness man, a man of energy and, according to the time, a good husband and father. But it never occurred to him that the Decalogue erred in classing a man's wife with "his man-servant, or his maid-servant, his ox or his ass," and he accepted as just the law which deprived women of a vote along with convicts, paupers and the insane. Against this code Lucy revolted at an early day. She encoimtered in the Scriptures one day the text, "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Staggered at first by this flat assertion of woman's subjection, she ultimately concluded that as the oppressor, man, had translated the Bible he had distorted this passage to his own advantage. Accord- ingly she determined to go to college, study Greek and Hebrew and consult the original text for herself. Get- (279) 280 WOMEN OF HISTORY ting to college was not so easy. Her father, who had just helped to put her brother through college, remarked on hearing that his daughter wanted an equal education with his son, "Is the girl crazy?" It may be remarked m passing that the favored son does not figure prom- inently in history, while the "crazy" girl made a place in the world and in history for herself. The only college then open to women was Oberlin, which at the same time was the only college open to negroes. The freedom of the slave and the emancipa- tion of women were reforms that long went hand in hand, and it is interesting to speculate on the causes which gave f\ill citizenship first to the ignorant blacks. To go to Oberlin would cost money, Lucy began by picking and selling blackberries and chestnuts. Study- ing the while she fitted herself to teach minor schools and for a time earned the dismal pay of a dollar a week, being "boarded round" with the parents of her pupils. Keeping up her own studies, she became fitted for better schools and in time was getting $16 a month — "very good pay for a woman," said the thrifty Massachusetts school trustees. That "for a woman" made Lucy writhe. It was either fair pay or niggardly. The sex of the recipient had nothing to do with it. When she was twenty-five years old she had saved $70 and started to Oberlin with it. It was a long journey from eastern Massachusetts to Ohio and the money needed to be carefuUy hoarded to carry her through. The last part of the trip was by boat from Buffalo across Lake Erie. There was no cabin for the ambitious student, but she slept on a pile of sacks on deck with a number of other women in as sore straits LUCY STONE 281 as she. At Oberlin she taught in the preparatory department, did housework for three cents an hour, cooked her own meals, hmiting her expenditures for food to fifty cents a week. Withal she studied, took high rank in her classes, and in her last term was asked to write a commencement day essay. Finding that even in Oberlin women were not permitted to appear on the platform, but that a professor would read the essay for her, she declined. The platform became famiUar enough to her before long. She retm-ned to Massachusetts the first woman of that state to have taken a college degree. At once she entered public life, speaking first on "Woman's Rights" from her brother's pulpit and then becoming a regular lecturer for the Anti-Slavery Society. New England was strenuously pro-slavery at that time and almost equally averse to the emancipation of women. Accord- ingly the experiences of women on the platform were not always pleasant. A clergyman at Maiden, Mass., being asked to give a notice of her meeting did so thus: "I am asked to give notice that a hen wiU attempt to crow like a cock in the town hall at five o'clock to-mor- row evening. Those who like such music will, of course, attend." In Connecticut one cold night some one thrust a hose through the window and deluged her with icy water as she stood on the platform. She wrapped a shawl about her and continued her plea. On Cape Cod she addressed an open air meeting with a number of other speakers. The mob became threatening and one by one the men on the platform withdrew until she was left alone with one Stephen Foster. "You had better 282 WOMEN OF HISTORY go, Stephen," she said, seeing a movement in the crowd, "they are coming." "Who will take care of you?" he asked. Just that moment a colossal man sprang to the platform, club in hand, intent on mischief. "This gentleman will take care of me," said Miss Stone in her exquisite voice. Taken by surprise, the rough rose to the occasion. Taking her arm in his, he led her throilgh the crowd, mounted her on a stump and protected her while she finished her speech. She so won her audience that they collected $20 to pay the gentle Stephen Foster for the coat they had torn from his back. Some sUght difference arose between Lucy Stone and the Anti-Slavery Society because she put too much woman's rights in her lectures. After first seeing Powers' statue, "The Greek Slave," she delivered a powerful speech with it for the theme. "Lucy, that was beautiful," said the Rev. Samuel May, who was in authority, "but on the anti-slavery platform it will not do." "I know it," she replied with some contrition, "but I was a woman before I was an abolitionist and I must speak for the women." In 1855 Henry B. Blackwell, a young merchant of Cincinnati, an aboUtionist upon whose head some people in Memphis, Tenn., had put a price of $10,000 because of his activity, heard her speak and vowed to marry her. He had never met her, but with a letter of introduction from Henry Ward Beecher went to her home full of ardor. He found her standing on the kitchen table, whitewashing the ceiling, but persuaded her to descend from this eminence and give ear to his LUCY STONE 283 tale of love. For a time she hesitated about giving up her work, but he promised to join in the work and be as active as she. Such promises have been made only to be forgotten, but it is right to say of Mr. Black- weU that he was as good as his word, and to the end was not merely a loving husband, but an efficient and help- ful associate. After their marriage she retained her maiden name with his fullest approbation. To the end of her days Mrs. Stone worked for the advancement of women. To one who late in Hfe ex- pressed regret that she could not witness the frxiition of her labors, she rephed, "Perhaps I shall know it where I am, and if not I shall be doing something better. I have not a fear, nor a dread, nor a doubt." Her last words, whispered to her daughter, were: "Make the world better." She died, October 19, 1893. With characteristic modesty she had advised against a church ceremony, but 1,100 people gathered in the Uttle town to hear eminent men and women pay tribute to her worth. JULIA WARD HOWE (1819-1910) AUTHOR OF THE BATTLE HYMN OP THE EEPUBLIC IN a time of national storm and stress, in a day of the roaring of cannon and cries of brothers chnched in the strife of civil war, the inspiration came to Julia Ward Howe to write a noble hymn which ought to be a national anthem, but for some reason is not. A million men in war and in peace have sung the doggerel of "Marching Through Georgia" to a handful who can recall the sonorous symphony of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Yet the latter was written to a weU-known popular air and there is a reverberating resonance in such stanzas as: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored, He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword, His truth is marching on. It was in the very earUest days of the war that this poetic inspiration came to Mrs. Howe. She was in Washington in 1861 and after the fashion of holiday makers of the time, went out to see a review of Federal troops. A sudden rumor that the enemy was approach- ing ended the review imtimely, and Mrs. Howe and her party were escorted back to the capital by a small detachment. On the way the soldiers sang "John (284) JULIA WARD HOWE JULIA WARD HOWE 285 Brown's body," and James Freeman Clarke, who was with Mrs. Howe, seeing her much moved by the sing- ing, said to her: "You ought to write some new words to that tune." "I will," she responded fervently, and that night retired thinking of the task she had set herself. She awoke in the gray dawn to find that in the strange subconscious workings of the brain in slumber the words of her hynan had fitted themselves to the air and she had but to set them down. The song won instan- taneous appreciation. It was simg by churches, by choral societies, by weary soldiers about campfires and by starving captives in libby Prison and at Ander- sonviUe. Until the day of her death the author never appeared in pubUc without being asked to read it, for it was emphatically the grand achievement of her life. By some one it was called "the MarseiUaise of the unemotional Americans." And yet it never quite won the place its poetry deserved. Men went into battle singing of "John Brown's body" or "We'll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree," while the grand phrases of the ambitious "Battle Hymn of the Repub- lic" were forgotten. The woman who thus ahnost reached the highest pinnacle of achievement — for to write the songs of a people has been held greater than to make their laws — was bom to the purple, if the United States at that day furnished a parallel to that imperial color. Her father, Samuel Ward, was one of New York's most prosperous bankers. Her birthplace was Bowling Green, the little oval at the foot of Broadway now faced by the granite custom house, but then the site of the city's most liixurious residences. 286 WOMEN OF HISTORY Her family were allied with the Astors. Her sister became the wife of Thomas Crawford, a famous sculp- tor, and the mother of F. Marion Crawford, the more famous novehst. One brother, "Sam" Ward, became famous as a wit and an epicure, whose name is handed down to posterity as the distinguishing title of a cock- tail and a sauce. In 1843 she married Dr. S. G. Howe, a philanthropist whose untiring endeavors in perfecting measures for the education of the deaf and dumb gave him inter- national fame. He opened the doorways of the mind to Laixra Bridgman, a blind, deaf and dumb girl, an earher example of the Helen Keller of our own day. Dr. Howe's home in Boston was the resort of the mem- bers of the most thoroughly intellectual circle the United States has ever known. It was a day when every Bostonian had an "ism." Bronson Howard and Margaret Fuller were preaching transcendental- ism so that they only could understand it. George Ripley was experimenting with Fourierism at Brook Farm with fine results in the cultivation of minds, but niggardly returns from the cultivation of the fields his disciples were supposed to till. As Mrs. Howe, sud-. denly introduced to this society, wrote ,"I was now to make the acquaintance of the Boston of the teachers, of the reformers, of the cranks and also of the apos- tles." In the society that gathered about her hearth only the dullest mind could fail to find interest and profit. The fist of her guests sounds like a directory of New England authors. "When I think of it," she writes, "I believe that I had a salon once upon a time. I did JULIA WARD HOWE 287 not call it so, nor even think of it as such; yet within it were gathered people who represented many and various aspects of life. They were real people, not lay figures distinguished by names and clothes." With the possible exception of her "Battle Hymn," Mrs. Howe's writings were wholly fugitive. Two plays came from her pen — one written for the elder Sothern was produced but qmckly entombed; the other, a classic drama in blank verse for Edwin Booth and Charlotte Cushman, was never staged. No books, save a collection of occasional verse, bear her name. Despite, however, this meagre personal record, Mrs. Howe's whole life was spent in intellectual and liter- ary activity. Her activity in club work won her the name of "queen of clubs." A ready speaker, she lec- tured in all parts of the United States and in several European cities. Moreover, she occupied for some time the pulpit of the Unitarian church in Boston with which she was afiiUated. Anti-slavery, woman suffrage and international arbitration were the causes to which she devoted her best efforts. While far less miUtant and self-sacrificing than either Susan B. Anthony or EHza- beth Cady Stanton, she efficiently supplemented their work, reaching a class in the commimity which they could less readily interest. Among the intimates of her Boston home was Sena- tor Charles Sumner, at that time a hero to New Eng- land. Mrs. Howe seems to have been shrewd enough to see a Httle deeper into him than his worshippers. Once she invited him to meet Edwin Booth, then just coming into prominence. Sumner declined, writing with supreme egotism, "The truth is, I have got beyond taking an interest in individuals." 288 WOMEN OF HISTORY "God Almighty has not got so far," noted Mrs. Howe m her diary. Later she showed him the diary and he begged her to scratch out the comment. The circiunstances of Mrs. Howe's life all made for a long life. At seventy she considered herself young and at ninety was still sitting on the platform at pub- lic meetings, reading the Battle Hymn and appearing before legislatures and investigating committees. In that year some one sent her a birthday card reading, "Greetings to Boston's greatest trinity: Howe, Hig- ginson and Hale." All were of very advanced years, and with a smile she remarked, "Well, they can't say we drop our H's in Boston." Mrs. Howe died October 17, 1910, at her home near Newport. To few have been granted so long, useful and happy a life. FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1820-1910) THE ENGLISH SOLDIEK'S ANGEL OP MERCY N ""^- "^URSING is an art; and if it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any sculptor's or painter's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or cold marble compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit?" So wrote Florence Nightingale, first of all the noble army of women who have given their Uves to the ame- lioration of himaan suffering. In this twentieth century of ours there are scores, hundreds, perhaps thousands of women who are trained to do what Miss Nightin- gale did. We have not merely our trained nurses, om- organizers of hospital service in the field, like the late Clara Barton, but our women doctors as weU — a class unknown in her day. Florence Nightingale not only did nobly, but did it first. Many a ship crosses the Atlantic now, but the fame of Columbus remains undimmed. Mankind loves the leader and in her field Florence Nightingale was as truly as Columbus . . . the first That ever burst Into that unknown sea. 19 (289) 290 WOMEN OF HISTORY By birth and education Florence Nightingale was fitted for a very different sphere of life than that which she chose for herself. Her father was a man of means, a landed proprietor and clearly a gentleman of culti- vation. Her birth occurred in the historic Tuscan city of Florence — Whence her baptismal name. From her earliest days she showed an interest in the affairs of the sick room — ^practicing bandagmg on her dolls and performing a cure upon a shepherd dog whose master thought him to have a broken leg. As she grew older she traveled widely with her parents and wherever she went studied hospitals, reformatories and all places given over to the care of the suffering and unfortunate. History does not relate whether in this passion she had the sympathy of her parents, but to some extent it must have been forthcoming, for she was plenti- fully supplied with funds for the prosecution of her studies and even for the assistance of some of the insti- tutions which she approved. It seems odd to-day to hear that in the early days of the nineteenth centm-y there was in all Europe only one institution for the training of nurses other than those supported by the Catholic orders. This was at Kaiserwerth, on the Rhine, a school of deaconesses. Miss Nightingale, who had visited many of the Cath- olic schools and had become deeply impressed with the nobihty of the work they were prosecuting, determined to enter this sohtary Protestant school and use her influence to extend the scope of its work. Before this time she had been presented at court and had been given every possible introduction to Lon- don society. Nothing but devotion to a cause could FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 291 have prevented her from taking the place in the social whirl which was hers. In this brief sketch it is enough to say that Florence Nightingale perfected herself in the art of nursing and also in the more serious business of organizing and build- ing hospitals. About that time came on the Crimean war. One day in the London Times appeared a despatch from W. H. Russell, its most distinguished correspondent, telling of the sufferings of the wounded. As a matter of fact, the situation was hardly worse than that of our own soldiers in the Spanish war, whether at Siboney or Chattanooga. When we recall the number of Uves lost by tjrphoid fever at Chatta- nooga in this day of sanitation we must look with admiration upon the record made by Miss Nightingale in reducing the deaths in the Crimea from sixty in the himdred to httle more than one. The graphic despatch from Russell which stirred her to undertake this work deserves mention. Had it not been for the work of this brilUant journaHst either Florence Nightingale would not have under- taken the task which made her famous, or, for that matter would the money necessary to her work have been contributed by the British people. Immediately upon reading this vigorous appeal the heart of the English people was stirred. Subscrip- tions in aid of the soldiers at the front were opened and in two weeks those sent to one newspaper alone exceeded $75,000. The contributions of blankets, flannels and clothing of all sorts fairly overcrowded the receiving depots. But who should handle this fund, who distribute these supphes was a matter to be 292 WOMEN OF HISTORY determined. Miss Nightingale's reputation had become established in England, so that when greatly distressed by the news from the Crimea she wrote offering her services to the government, her letter crossed one from the secretary of war, begging her to undertake that very service. It was the first time the British govern- ment had ever called upon a woman to undertake so important a duty. Of course there were criticism and doubt, but both were stiUed by her complete success. For success was won by Miss Nightingale from the very first day of her arrival at the front, whither she went with thirty-four nurses. She found men dying of typhoid and dysentery, lying on filthy mattresses in dismal hovels. Soon she had them on clean and com- fortable beds in cheerful hospital wards. Hers was the genius of organization. She could not herself, of course, give personal attention to a tithe of the suffer- ers, but she saw that the attention they did get was not perfunctory, and she herseK was in evidence most of the time. Twenty hours a day was no unusual stretch of work for her. Though she herself was seized with the fever that she fought for her patients, she refused to give up her work and prosecuted it imtil the end of the war. To the men she was a true angel of light. "We call her 'the angel,' " one wrote in a letter home. "Could bad men be bad in the presence of an 'angel'?" And another not quite so refined in expression, wrote, "Before she came there was such cussin' and swear- ing as you never heard; but after she came it was as holy as a church." Swiftly the fame of this savior of the soldiers spread. Those who had scoffed at her despatch to the seat of FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 293 war, because of her frail health, became the loudest in her praise. The war having ended, the British gov- ernment sent a man-of-war to bring her home, and planned a triumphant reception for her, but she, being ever averse to ceremonial affairs, evaded this national courtesy by returning to England on a French ship and proceeding directly to her home. But even so, she could not escape the ovations of a grateful people, though her shattered health enabled her to beg off from pubhc appearances. Queen Victoria summoned her to Balmoral and there presented her with a ruby red enamel cross on a white groimd, which may have been the origin of our own Red Cross emblem. The Sultan of Turkey sent a rich bracelet. From most of the nations of Europe came some evidence of gratitude and esteem. Officially Great Britain gave her $250,000, which she at once used to found a training school for nurses at St. Thomas' Hospital. Naturally the noble service of Miss Nightingale foimd admirers ia our own coimtry and she was offi- cially consulted in our civil war. Although the experi- ences of those terrible months in the Crimea perma- nently affected Miss Nightingale's health, and she was forced to lead a more or less quiet life thereafter, she Uved to the ripe old age of ninety, dying in London in August, 1910. CLARA BARTON (1821-1912) THE AMERICAN FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE IT was the fate of this really great woman, after a lifetime spent among the "moving accidents by flood and field," to come upon evil days in the time of her old age. Clara Barton's retirement from the presidency of the American Red Cross Society, the disputes and the recriminations that attended it are still matters of too recent occurrence to be regarded in the calm light of history. She had her savage detrac- tors and her impassioned defenders, but her death in 1912, following swiftly upon her practical deposition from office, silenced the one and only added to the loyalty of the others. The story of Miss Barton's life of activity and helpfulness is long enough and stimulating enough. It would be futile here to try to clear the turbid waters in which her sun set. Miss Barton did not find her vocation early in life. She was forty years old before the Civil War broke out, the Massachusetts troops were fired on in Baltimore and she volunteered to go to the scene and nurse the wounded. Her earlier life had been spent as a school teacherand asa clerk in the PatentOffice at Washington. In the former vocation she won some local repute by fitting up through her own efforts the first public school (294) CLARA BARTON 295 in Bordentown, N. J. She commenced with six boys, in a building that had been deserted, teaching at her own expense; she ended the year with 600 and a school building erected at public cost. The townspeople who thought there was no demand or need for a public school were shown their error. From Bordentown she went to Washington and spent three miserable years in the Patent Office. Women clerks were little seen and less desired, the men doing all they could to drive them out of the service. The Civil War created a new Clara Barton; the New Jersey school teacher, the plodding compiler and copyist of patent office records, became a national character, a figure well known in the camp hospitals and on the battlefields. Shortly before the battle of Bull Rim her brother, who was engaged in business within the Confederate lines, was captured by the Federals. Miss Barton determined to go to his aid, but thinking that a visit to the front might be made useful to others, put a smaU notice in a Worcester, Mass., paper saying that she would carry any stores or money that the folks at home might want to send to wounded soldiers. The reply was so generous that she presently had a building at Permsylvania Avenue and Seventeenth Street, Washington, filled with goods she had promised to dehver to the soldiers at the front. How to fulfil her promise was the problem and it remained her prob- lem until the end of the war, for from that day Clara Barton was the recognized agent of communication between home folks and the boys in the trenches. There were, it was true, the United States Sanitary Commission and various state commissions engaged 296 WOMEN OF HISTORY in the same errand of mercy, but Miss Barton's work was individual, personal and seemed especially to touch the hearts of the people. This, of course, was all before the days of the Red Cross. To tell the story of her activities during the war would fill a book. She was present at such savage battles as Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg and the Wilderness. Though she held no commission and represented nobody, she was recognized by the government, and men, teams and a safe conduct everywhere were supplied to her. She herself seems to put the first value, however, on her work in the identi- fication of the dead, fisted as missing, and in marking their burial places. While all hmnan foresight had been employed during the war to secxu-e the names of the dead and to discover the missing, it was inevitable that in so colossal a conflict, and at a time of such excitement and disorder all systems would fail. At the close of the war letters poured in upon the authorities from people begging for intelligence of husbands, sons or fathers. The more merciful affliction had fallen upon those who knew that their loved ones were dead— the curt report "missing" carried with it the possibifity of such a multipUcity of woes. Learning that nearly 80,000 such letters of inquiry had been received. Miss Barton went personally to President Lincoln and asked that she be designated to receive and answer them. An order to that effect was promptly promulgated and a bureau organized. Even after its accompfishment this task seems one to baffle the most painstaking and keen searchers. Men CLARA BARTON 297 had fallen in battles like that of the Wilderness and their bodies were consumed in the fires that swept away the underbrush. They had been shot down cross- ing streams, only to be swept away by the torrent. They had perished miserably in the prisons or hospitals of the enemy, where records were but carelessly kept, or were destroyed when the Confederates fled before the advancing Union armies. Fortune sometimes favored the searchers. Such was the case with the Atwater records of Andersonville. Dorance Atwater was a New England soldier who was confined in the great Confederate prison at Ander- sonville. He had been detailed there by the prison authorities, to keep the record of the deaths and burials. Foreseeing that these records might be destroyed and feeling sure that there would be a demand in the North for them, he began with secrecy and ingenuity to copy all the hsts he prepared. He was hard put to it to secure paper and would sometimes mark down the day's Ust of deaths on a rag, but in 1865 he was freed with a fairly complete Ust in his possession. This the War Department with incredible stupidity pigeonholed, while giving the compiler a government job as a reward for his industry. When Miss Barton's mission was announced he informed her of the information ready to hand. She secured it and with the necessary assist- ants hastened to Andersonville. Here the graves were marked with head-boards and the full list of dead compiled. To Miss Barton fell the honor of first raising the United States flag over the government cemetery at Andersonville. After a profitable year on the lectm-e platform she 298 WOMEN OF HISTORY went abroad in 1869 to rest. The nature of her rest was to nurse the wounded in the Franco-Prussian War, and do it with such devotion that from queens and governments she received gifts of jewels and decora- tions. Queen Victoria decorated her with her own hands. Returning to the United States, she worked to per- suade this country to jom in the treaties creating the International Red Cross Society. For a long time her efforts were unavaiHng. Some congressmen said we would have no more wars, so what was the use? Others in-ged that such a treaty would constitute one of those entangling alUances against which Washington warned us. At last, however, with the aid of Garfield, she won and the United States joined in the most civiUzed of all international agreements. The list of foreign honors and decorations bestowed upon her would fill a page. But toward the end of her long Ufe her position was less certain at home. There was serious revolt in the Red Cross against her con- tinued domination, and her last years were embittered by the hostility of some who had been her associates and whom she thought her friends. Perhaps, like others who have created a great organization, she clung too long to its control. Her advancing years afforded not merely an excuse, but a peremptory reason for her retirement. But the hardest lesson for any devotee to learn is when to stop. Time will inevitably expimge the petty dissensions and the little weaknesses that at- tended Miss Barton's last days and leave her character standing forth as that of one of the truly great women of her century. FRANCES E. WILLARD (1839-1898) THE EFFECTIVE FOE OF INTEMPERANCE IN the statuary hall of the House of Representatives at Washington, termed by some the Chamber of Horrors because of the admittedly inferior quaUty of the statues, there stands the marble effigy of but one woman — Frances E. Willard, long the domi- nating force of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The method by which these statues are selected gives special importance to each. Space for the installation of two statues is assigned to each state. Most have utilized it to secure immortality for miU- tary heroes, a few have put forward their citizens who in civil life fought for good government and the rights of the people; Illinois alone presents the statue of a woman who fought for good government and right liv- ing and was ever the foe of corruption, whether social or poUtical. Frances E. Willard, before her death, made the tem- perance movement practical, and incidentally she made of what was then the httle town of Evanston, just outside of Chicago, a Mecca for all who believed in practical social reform. Born in 1839, her life's span extended to 1898, not a long one, but filled with useful service. (299) 300 WOMEN OF HISTORY Her early days were marked by that simplicity and intellectual environment that seldom come to the child of to-day. After her birth her parents, who were edu- cated people of EngUsh lineage, moved to Oberlin, Ohio, and enrolled themselves in that college which has perhaps been the greatest force for real progress of any educational institution in the United States. Too young to profit directly by the college teachings, the child profited indirectly. About this time the father, restless by natm-e, purchased three prairie schooners and moved westward. Chicago was exam- ined and dismissed as hopeless, and the family passed on to Janesville, Wis., where the girl was given the education in EngUsh poetry, prose and history gathered up by the parents in their four years at OberUn. At seventeen Frances went to Milwaukee Female College, and later completed her education at the Northwestern Female College at Evanston, 111. At the age of twenty-one she became a school teacher, that occupation which has been the stepping stone to so many lofty careers in the United States. From pubUc schools to the presidency of the Woman's College at Evanston her way was marked by repeated successes. But it was not imtil she was thirty-five years old that she found her real life work. Then, under the influence of Neal Dow, Mary A. Livermore and Lillian M. N. Stevens, she took up the fight upon Uquor. The National Union was the original name of the organization which later became the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and in the service of which Miss Willard ended her life. Doubtless Neal Dow and Mrs. Livermore influenced FRANCES E. WILLARD 301 her much, but from her earliest days she had been taught to hate all alcohol. In the family Bible appeared this pledge in doggerel signed by father, mother and the three children: A pledge we make no wine to take, Nor brandy red that turns the head, Nor fiery rum that ruins home, Nor whiskey hot that makes the sot, Nor brewer's beer, for that we fear. And cider, too, will never do — To quench our thirst we'll always bring Cold water from the well or spring; So here we pledge perpetual hate To all that can intoxicate. The organization built up by Miss Willard became the most powerful engine for temperance in the world. At the present moment it has more than 12,000 local unions, with a membership of over half a miUion. Mainly devoted to pressing the cause of temperance. Miss Willard swung it into political lines, encounter- ing some serious criticism because of her declaration that votes for women would be the greatest aid possi- ble to the enforcement of anti-liquor laws. Moreover, at the time of the Armenian atrocities Miss Willard, then being in Europe visiting her devoted friend. Lady Henry Somerset, hurried to Marseilles, France, and did much to alleviate the sufferings of the refugees there. In all works of good she was pre-eminent. "" Frances Willard was nothing if not practical. No one hated the liquor trafl&c more than she, but none recognized more clearly that to some extent social con- ditions, notably poverty and dread for the morrow, had much to do with keeping it alive and prosperous. 302 WOMEN OF HISTORY She confessed herself unable to determine dogmatically whether poverty created drunkenness or drunkenness poverty. Her pubhc addresses exceeded in number those of any pubhc speaker unless perhaps John B. Gough, Moody or Henry Ward Beecher. Between 1878 and her death she addressed audiences in every town of 10,000 inhabitants or more, covering all the states and many foreign countries. So Ijusy a brain in a frail body could but bm-n itself out. Broken down nervously and physically, she planned to go to Europe in 1898. Her journey reached only as far as New York, where, on February 17th of that year, the last summons came. With the words, "How beautiful it is to be with God," she passed away. ANNE HUTCHINSON (1591-1643) AN EAKLY DEFENDER OF FREE SPEECH THE story of Anne Hutchinson is difficult of understandiug by our generation. We take our religion more lightly — but perhaps not less reverently and lovingly — than the gaunt and stern Puritans who came from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in order that they might have liberty to worship God as they thought fit and power to deny like Uberty to everybody else. Anne Hutchinson's revolt was not against the accepted creed. She was as much a Puritan as Roger Wolcott, the governor who exiled her, or John Cotton, the minister who excommunicated her. But she was a type of woman becoming constantly more plentiful. She wanted to bear an equal share with men in the great affairs of the moment, and it happened that at that moment the great affair was splitting theological hairs, even though the neighboring Indians were employing the rougher argument of the tomahawk to split the Puritan head. In its essentials, however, the fight of Anne Hutchinson against the Puritan theocracy was a fight for freedom of thought and of speech. '■■ In 1634 Boston might fairly be described as a meeting (303) 304 WOMEN OF HISTORY house surroiinded by a rough sea of theological con- troversy. There were not many people in the infant settlement, but all who were there were theologians. Indeed, the very name of the village commemorated an ecclesiastical quarrel, for Master John Cotton, the assistant pastor of the colony had suffered sore perse- cution in his native town of Boston in Lincolnshire at the hands of Archbishop Laud. The colonists who had crossed with John Winthrop in the Mayflower wanted the stout Puritan divine with them, and per- haps to attract him, named their settlement after his mother town. He crossed the ocean in 1633 and though the chief pastorate of the New England church was already filled by the Rev. John Wilson, Cotton became his associate with the title of "the teacher," and such was his intellectual despotism he became "the unmitred pope of a pope-hating commonwealth," and ruled as an autocrat for niueteen years. To this new Boston came in the ship Griffin in 1634 a woman of forty-three, Anne Hutchinson with her husband William. She was as ardent a doctrinal disputant as puritanism could produce, and unluckily for her later comfort, whiled away hours of the tedious voyage by expounding her beliefs to the Rev. Zechariah Symmes. This reverend gentleman seems to have been as harsh and narrow as his name, for his first act on landing was to denoimce Mrs. Hutchinson as a "prophetess" — seemingly a dire accusation — and out of his malice, which he probably referred to as his devo- tion to the Lord, he warned the governor and the deputy against her eccentricities of beUef. As a result there was some delay in her admission to church membership, which vexed her pious soul. ANNE HUTCHINSON 305 In reading of the Boston of that day one wonders how the inhabitants found time amidst their theological discussions to plant maize, catch codfish and repel the Indian forays. The Sunday reUgious services occupied from three to five hours in one protracted service. Much of the merit of a preacher was judged from the number of trips the sexton had to make to the pulpit to tiu-n the hoiu" glass whose fleeting sands measured the verbosity of the exhorter. But this was not enough. In the middle of the week were held meetings, from which women were excluded, to review and discuss the sermons and criticize the doctrines expounded. That exclusion of women roused Anne Hutchinson's wrath. A true forerunner of the nineteenth centm-y women who threw open the colleges and the professions to their sex, she revolted and estabUshed her own weekly meetings which speedily became popular. In conducting them, however, she manifested two weaknesses which the ungallant would describe as feminine — she did most of the talking herself, and she held her friends in the pulpit, among whom where John Cotton and her brother-in-law Joseph Wheelwright, immune from the criticisms she lavishly heaped upon the other clergymen. The latter being but hiiman, resented this discrimi- nation. With her arch-enemy Rev. Zechariah Symmes in the lead, the outraged clergy moved on their enemy and also on the beneficiaries of her fatal favor. Brother- in-law Wheelwright was first censured and then ban- ished. Some members of the church who protested agaiast this action were deprived of their arms and ammunition, being thus exposed helpless to the red 306 WOMEN OF HISTORY men, while others were banished. John Cotton was subjected to mortifying inquisitions and only saved himself by explanations and apologies that put him outside the Hutchinson party. The authoress of all this tiu'moil was finally put on trial before the General Com-t of Massachusetts. On the bench sat Governor Winthrop, grave, strong and courteous, prepared to listen to a case on which his mind was already determined. There too was John Endicott, who, as Hawthorne wrote, "would stand with his drawn sword at the gate of heaven and resist to the death all pilgrims thither except they traveled his own path." Others of the judges bore names honored in Boston to-day, but all were equally determined to convict the woman who, without counsel or support- ing friends, confronted that bench filled with the ablest minds of the colony. Of course she was convicted, and sentence of ban- ishment was pronounced upon her. "I desire to know wherefore I am banished?" said she, sturdily facing the court. With lofty superciUousness Winthrop repUed, "Woman, say no more; the court knows wherefore and is satisfied." If the court did know, its reasons have ever been unintelligible to later generations. It is enough to say that the most autocratic of tyrants, the Puritan minis- ter of colonial Massachusetts, had felt his autocracy menaced by the progress of thought among his parish- ioners, and therefore struck and struck hard. After going on a few weeks later to admonish Mrs. Hutchin- son for heresy, the ministers sought to turn her husband against her. His response bespoke the true man. ANNE HUTCHINSON 307 He was, so he declared, "more nearly tied to his wife than to the church, and he thought her to be a dear saint and servant of God." Hand in hand the twaia went into banishment. For a time they settled at Aquidneck, in Rhode Island, where Roger Williams had established rehgious free- dom. There Mr. Hutchinson died and his widow unhappily determined to move to the Dutch colony, the New Netherlands. With her children she settled at what is now New Rochelle, a suburb, almost a part of Greater New York, but then a settlement of sixteen souls iQ a dense wilderness. The Indians soon after took the warpath, raided the village and Anne Hutch- inson and all her children save one perished in their blazing cottage. When the tidings reached Boston, brought thither by Anne Hutchinson's eight-year-old daughter whom the Dutch sent back, the cold and barbarous clergy fairly rejoiced over it as proof positive of her guilt. "The Lord," said Welde, one of her reverend perse- cutors, "heard oiu: groans to Heaven and freed us from our great and sore affliction." However, the cause of clerical tyranny for which Welde fought is dead, while the cause of freedom of worship and of thought for which Anne Hutchinson died lives triximphant. LUCRETIA MOTT (1793-1880)' A QUAKEK PEEACHEE OP FREEDOM'S TRUTHS LUCRETIA MOTT was a Quaker by birth, by marriage and by life-long affiliation with that ^ church. She was also one of the gentlest of womankind. Her habit was quiet drab or gray, her voice subdued, her manner self-effacing. All the same, her life was one long battle against the forces of slavery first, then for the advancement of women, then against the liquor power. She stood unafraid before raging mobs, and held a meeting direct to its duty though windows were smashing and missiles hurtling in the air. Her faith and creed were justi- fied, for she never sustained bodily harm while her influence in furthering the causes she upheld was more effective than that of some who believed in fighting violence with violence. She was bom in 1793, the same year that Madame Roland died on the scaffold in the name of liberty. After her marriage to James Mott, a cousin, her home was in Philadelphia, a city which still remembers her as one of its illustrious dead. The war of 1812 brought depression in trade and a measure of poverty to the young couple, but poverty in early Ufe is readily borne and is no bad stimulant. Lucretia for a time practi- (308) LUCKKTIA MOTT LUCRETIA MOTT 309 cally supported the family by teaching, but, as the need passed, gave it up and began the study of theology and the Scriptures. In 1818 at the age of twenty-five she was ordained a preacher in the Society of Friends. In this capacity she traveled much in New England and some of the Southern states. It was no part of her duty to preach against slavery and intemperance, but on these subjects she could not keep silence. While in the main the sympathy of her church was with her in her endeavors, there was some opposition to her "lugging in" the sub- ject of slavery in sermons supposed to preach the moral code and expound the reUgious dogmas of the Society of Friends. In those days the traveling preacher took from one meeting to another a "minute" or letter of introduction, and at one time there was serious discus- sion of depriving Mrs. Mott of this document. About this time arose the schism in the Society which led to the breaking away of the faction called the Hicksites. Elias Hicks, whose preaching caused the division, was a powerful advocate of aboUtion, and in general advocated the discussion of moral issues rather than theological dogmas. Naturally Mrs. Mott went with his party. Never for a moment did she waver in her adhesion to the Quaker creed, but she put the war upon slavery first in her list of personal duties. As she herself expressed it: "The millions of downtrodden slaves in our land being the greatest sufferers, the most oppressed class, I felt bound to plead their cause in season and out of season, to endeavor to put myself in their souls' stead and to aid all in my power, in every right effort for their immediate emancipation." 310 WOMEN OF HISTORY It was not mere lip service that the Motts — James and Lucretia — gave to the cause of anti-slavery. They proved their words by their deeds. After their early experiences with poverty the husband had finally built up a profitable buskiess in the domestic commis- sion trade, which included, unhappily, cotton goods which were the product of slave labor. The advanced abohtionists pledged themselves to "touch not, taste not, handle not" anything made by the enforced labor of the slave, but James Mott could not conduct his business without handling cottons. It was a struggle such as any self-supporting man will appreciate, but in the end he gave up his profitable trade and embarked anew in the wool commission business. It is a comfort to know that in this, after initial reverses, he made a competency. Following the dictates of conscience is seldom, in the long nm, costly. This abstinence from all things tainted with slavery was embarrassing to the housekeeper, and probably the rule was innocently broken many times. Even to-day it would be difficult to find coffee not picked by the hands of slaves. In the days of Lucretia Mott's activities sugar was the chief perplexity, for beet sugar was practically imknown. Nearly all tropical products were "taboo," and we find James Mott thanking his father for a keg of rice which, he says, he "will reUsh better than that which is stained with blood." The fervor of the abolitionists led to the found- ing of so-called "free stores," but their wares, though untainted, must have been sometimes unsatisfactory. For example, a lot of motto candies, bought for a chil- dren's party, and supposed to have deHghtfuUy silly LUCRETIA MOTT 311 and sentimental verses under their parti-colored wrap- pers, emitted, when opened, such virtuous counsels as this: If slavery came by color, which God gave, Fashion may change and you become the slave. Quaker as she was, Lucretia Mott braved violence in her chosen work. In 1838 Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia, which had been dedicated to "Liberty and the Rights of Man," was burned by a mob a few hours after the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women had ended its sittings in it. While the meeting was in session the mob packed the surrounding streets and smashed the windows, hooting and yelling threats. Later the mob marched toward the Motts' house with the intention of burning it. The family were prepared for the invasion, and having sent some clothing and furniture to a neighbor's, sat serenely in the parlor awaiting fate. But the rioters were diverted from their course by a young man, who, mixing with the leaders and crying, "Follow me to the Motts!" led them off by the wrong streets and in confusion they disbanded. Many similar instances of almost providential escape from danger were related by her. It was Mrs. Mott's good fortune to live to witness the complete triumph of her greatest cause. Some humor attended the victory. The simple-minded blacks knew her for a benefactor and were disinclined to limi t her benefactions. They dubbed her "The Black Man's Goddess of Liberty," named colored babies galore after her and established to her horror and amusement an order called "The Rising Sons and 312 WOMEN OF HISTORY Daughters of Lucretia Mott." "Don't laugh too much," she said to her secretary. "The poor souls meant well." But probably even her kindliness must have been sorely strained by an individual who urged her to support with influence and money an invention "to take the kink out of the hair of the negro," on the ground that it would do more than any educational or political advantage to further his independence. With the cause of anti-slavery triumphant, Mrs. Mott turned to labor in the cause of the advancement of women — though indeed she had pleaded both causes at once. She was at one with such leaders as Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stan- ton. Into the story of her activities in this line it is impossible to enter now. It was the autiunn of her life but her zeal was like the new life of spring. Mrs. Mott died November 11, 1880, and was laid away in the Friends' Burying ground at Fair Hill, near Philadelphia. Reverent thousands gathered at the place of interment. Save for a few words by Rev. Henry T. Child, all was conducted in profoxmd silence. But from those standing at the open grave there arose suddenly a voice saying, "Will no one say anything?" And another made reply, "Who can speak? The preacher is dead." MARY BAKER EDDY (1821-1910) THE FOUNDER OF A NEW FAITH THE fierce tumult of religious controversy resounds so thunderously about the fabric that Mary Baker Eddy raised in the name of Christian Science that it is obviously not yet the time to estimate finally the worth of her contribu- tion to the world's thought and the world's religion. It is not, however, too soon to note the tremendous material proportions of the edifice that has risen upon her foundation, and to indicate all too incompletely something of its spiritual effect upon the minds and lives of men. It is fair to date the life of the Christian Science cult from the first publication of the text book "Science and Health" in 1875. Prior to this time Mrs. Eddy had indeed preached her doctrines, instructed a few students and demonstrated the faith that was within her by healing a few invalids. When the text book was published "Science" had one refuge, a Httle two- story house in Lynn, Mass., with a sign over the door, "Christian Science Home." To-day its churches are scattered all over the world. There are 1,306 ' ' Churches of Christ, Scientist," all branches of the stately mother church at Boston which is one of that city's chief (313) 314 WOMEN OF HISTORY architectural monuments. The ministers, or as they are termed in the church, "readers," number 2,612. The communicants regularly enrolled exceed 85,000 and the total number of attendants upon the services exceed 1,500,000, The great disproportion between the size of the congregations and the number of com- mtmicants is due to the fact that church membership involves certain preliminaries in the way of study which all are not willing to undertake. In the United States, at least, these congregations in hundreds of instances meet in handsome church edifices of a uni- form style of architecture, and all imder the discipline of the central or mother church. South Africa, China, New South Wales and all the countries of Europe appear in the list. If we set aside the effect of Mrs. Eddy's teachings upon the spiritual sense of man, the creation and per- fection of this wonderful church organization in one Ufetime is sufficient to bring fame to its creator. Mary Baker was born in Bow, N. H., July 16, 1821. Her family was of the famiUar New England type, of revolutionary ancestry, neither rich nor poor, intellect- ually alert and joining in the chief mental diversion of the day, namely, theological discussion. Her early education was better than that of the average girl of the time, her brother, Hon. Albert Baker, representa- tive in Congress from New Hampshire, giving much attention to giiiding her school-girl endeavors in the classic tongues. In her later years the fierce detractors of her creed attacked her family and her education, saying that her people were adventurers and she her- self illiterate. Yet after the death of her first husband. MARY BAKER EDDY 315 Col. George W. Glover, of North Carolina, she earned for a time her livelihood by writing. If portions of her book, "Science and Health," seem difficult reading it must be remembered that metaphysics was never light hteratm-e, and that the most diflScult of all lit- erary tasks is for the speculator in that field to remem- ber that his readers' minds do not easily follow his own mental processes. According to Mrs. Eddy's own story her conception of Christian Science sprung from her having healed, without premonition of her power, a fittle child of threatened blindness. Herself ill, she had been study- ing the Scriptures, experimenting with spiritualism, dallying with mesmerism and in a vague way striving to find some mental or spiritual cure for disease. That such a cure existed she was svue, but how to find it? It was at this period of her life that she came into contact with some of the curious characters — mesmer- ists, spiritualists and other seekers after the occult — whose names were used in later days to bring a measure of discredit upon hers. But all these schools she dis- carded after testing them. She says that it was after three years of uninterrupted study of the Scriptures and reflection thereupon that she formulated the answer to the problem of life and called it Christian Science. The nature of that answer and the creed developed from it cannot be more than indicated here. Perhaps a fair, brief and dispassionate statement of Mrs. Eddy's position is this one, formulated by a brilliant journalist, not himself a believer in Christian Science: " In substance Mrs. Eddy's doctrines merely take literally this verse from the fourteenth chapter of John: 316 WOMEN OF HISTORY " 'Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.' John XIV, 12. "It is difficult to see why taking literally a statement which this nation as a whole endorses should be construed into a hallucination." The rapid progress of the form of worship preached by Mrs. Eddy awakened bitter clerical antagonism. The estabUshed chm-ches everywhere antagonized it, though for what reason it is difficult to understand, as it is based wholly on the teachings of the Bible. Mrs. Eddy's books, and other publications of the church brought in a great revenue, and many well- meaning people were much distressed lest this revenue be misappUed. Her son, in her old age, sought to have her set aside as incompetent and have her estate admia- istered by trustees, but his chief attorneys, after exam- ining into her methods of handling her property and her provisions for its future disposition, withdrew from a hopeless case. In the end, after providing hand- somely for the son who had long been estranged from her, she left the great bulk of her property to the church. Mrs. Eddy's last years did much to demonstrate the power of her faith which inculcates calmness and good cheer under all distressing circmnstances. Never was a woman of more than eighty so harried. News- papers and magazines were filled with savage denun- ciations of her preachments, some of the most eminent men joining in the chorus of invective. Through all she was cahn, steadfast in her faith, seeing her friends and communicating with those for whom she cared. Death came to her in her home in MARY BAKER EDDY 317 Boston in 1910 and it is safe to say that no woman of her century left more sincere mourners. Creeds and faiths, it is true, are for eternity, but even for them the test of time is vaUd. To this test we may leave Mrs. Eddy's doctrine of Christian Science, but reser- vation of judgment in this does not preclude admira- tion for the genius and devotion of the woman who built up so magnificent a religious structure from so slight a beginning and in so brief a time. HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802-1876) THE WEITER OF POLITICAL ROMANCE IN the United States to-day there is probably not an editor, not a pubUsher, who would consider for a moment the publication of stories of the sort that made Harriet Martineau famous, lifted her from abject poverty to wealth and made her the most discussed Enghsh woman of letters of her century. And if editor or publisher were found with a sufficient devotion to the pubUc weal to pubUsh a little book of profitable tales about political economy it may well be doubted whether an eager pubHc would clamor for it to the extent of editions of 30,000. Just imagine as a parallel Booth Tarkington giving us a "best seller" based on the horrors of Schedule K, or George Randolph Chester turning aside from "WaUingford" and "Blackie" to weave romance about the confidence game perpetrated when the "Dutch Standard" was interpolated in the sugar schedule. Harriet Martineau was born to poverty and ill health, and achieved fame despite her handicaps. She was plain, undersized, short-sighted and so deaf that an ear trumpet was necessary. She early began to dream of writing for the press, and first won the joy of being "in type" in an article for the Monthly Repository. (318) II A R r: kt ?ii a rt in e a u HARRIET MARTINEAU 319 Neither article nor paper was of much importance, but it happened to delight her brother Thomas, who, all ignorant of the authorship, read it aloud with the remark, "They have had nothing so good as this for a long tine." When she confessed its origin he said gravely, hand on her shoulder: "Now, dear, leave it to other women to make shirts and darn stockings; and do you devote yourself to this. " "That evening," she said later, "made me an authoress." It made her rather a journaUst, for she was best at the timely article, the story with a purpose, the leader (or what in the United States we call editorials). Of the latter she boasts in her autobiography of having written 1,600 for the London Daily News at the rate of six a week — a very moderate schedule it would be thought in an American newspaper oflSce. ' Her first slight measure of success came when a Unitarian association offered three prizes for three essays intended to convert CathoUcs, Jews and Moham- medans. Harriet tried for and won all three prizes — a total of 45 guineas (about $225). How many of the faithless were converted is not recorded, but success put new heart into the author, who redoubled her efforts. It was a day of economic and poUtical storm and stress in England. The agitation of the reform bill was on, and the repeal of the corn laws was looming on the horizon. Miss Martineau diverted her talents from theology to pohtical economy. Her project was to teach the truths of property, taxes, wealth, finance and aU that pertaias to good government imder cover of entertaining tales. In brief, she planned the Rollo Books of political economy. 320 WOMEN OF HISTORY ' With two stories completed, she went to London to seek a publisher. With one accord all bowed her out. In the end she found a young and imknown bookseller ready to undertake the enterprise if she would supply the manuscript and save him from all danger of loss — not an unusual method among publishers of encom-aging budding genius. The book became instantaneously suc- cessful. Her first letter from her pubUsher began coolly. A postscript, however, gave the glad tidings that an edition of 3,000 copies would be needed; a second postscript raised this to 4,000 and a third to 5,000. The penalties of fame came to her. Members of Parhament so bombarded her with Blue Books and suggestions for other stories that her postmaster sent word that he would. not deUver her mail any longer, for it "could not be carried without a barrow." Shortly thereafter a society instituted for the pubh- cation of what we would now call progressive Uterature, contracted with her for a number of books of from 120 to 150 pages each, to be furnished once a month. Some of the subjects of these books seem enough to baffle any novelist. One wove fiction aroimd bills of exchange with the scene laid in Holland. Another, called a "Guide to Service," impressed its readers with the conviction that Miss Martineau had indeed been a London "slavey." One dealt with over popu- lation and ndght be reprinted now as an antidote to Col. Roosevelt's attacks on race suicide. But her tri- umphs wer^ not without reverses. Her three volumes of "Forest and Game Laws" did not sell well, for the British pubUc, devoted to first preserving and then killing animals, did not relish her sharp criticism of HARRIET MARTINEAU 321 the laws that sent a boy mto penal servitude for snar- ing a hare. Some of her most ardent friends became her bitter enemies. The Czar at first ordered copies of her books for all the Russian schools, but had them gathered up and burnt when in "The Charmed Sea" she wrote of Polish exUes in Siberia. He ordered that she never be permitted to set foot on Russian terri- tory, in which he was imitated by Austria. These nations having assassinated the Polish nation, were a trifle sensitive on the subject. In 1834 she visited the United States. Few foreign visitors have ever looked about them to more purpose. She remained here two years, meeting the most dis- tinguished men of the age and writing books which were pronounced the best of the time except those of de Tocqueville. Her view of American manners did not coincide with that expressed later by Mrs. Trol- lope. "The manners of the Americans," she wrote, "are the best I ever saw. . . . They have been called the most good-tempered people in the world; and I think they must be so." This kindly judgment was probably formulated before she saw that famous "mob of gentlemen" drag William Lloyd Garrison through the streets of Boston with a halter about his neck. That spectacle, however, had much to do with her hatred of slavery, against which she delivered effec- tive blows. Miss Martineau was a true crusader, a valiant fighter for freedom of trade, for freedom of the slave, for the freedom of women. Some of her writings on the last subject would well repay study in the present earnest discussion of the right of women to share in the 21 322 WOMEN OF HISTORY government. It seemed that no revolt against preju- dice or tyranny could be obscure enough to escape her notice. From London she looked over at OberUn College trying to break down race and sex privilege, and wrote of it in an Enghsh review. Throughout the dark days of our Civil War her pen was with us, and her work in the London Daily News almost offset the malignant hostility of The Times. Born a Unitarian, her philosophy of life and death was purely material, not to say dismal. "I see every- thing in the universe go out and disappear," she wrote less than a month before her death in 1876, "and I see no reason for supposing that it is not an actual and entire death, and for my part I have no objection to such an extinction. I well remember the passion with which W. E. Forster said to me, 'I had rather be damned than annihilated.' If he once felt five minutes of damnation, he would be thankful for extinction in preference." CHARLOTTE CUSIIM..N From Hie painting by Cliappel CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN (1816-1876) ameeica's most famous tragedienne IN the annals of the American stage the name of Charlotte Cushman stands unique and alone. We have produced our great tragedians — Forrest, Booth, Barrett, McCullough, to mention only those who are gone. We have welcomed royally the foreign tragediennes from Rachel to Bernhardt who have brought their art to us. But in Charlotte Cush- man alone among bygone tragediennes can the United States boast a feminine genius indigenous to our soil and challenging, for the elevation of its tragic expression, the admiration of the world. Bom in Boston, Charlotte was not designed for the stage. Her parents were for a time in comfortable circumstances and not until she had entered upon her "teens" did there seem any hkelihood that the girl would ever have to earn her living. Then disaster came upon the family. She had a promising contralto voice, which, after due cultivation, she employed in teaching, choir, concert and opera singing. But a sore blow fell upon her. When singing in opera in New Orleans her voice suddenly failed her — she had over- strained it in the upper register and her voice was gone. Often it happens that what we think irrevocable (323) 324 WOMEN OF HISTORY disaster turns out a beneficent act of providence. "You ought to be an actress, not a singer," said Cald- well, the New Orleans theatrical manager, of whom she sought advice in this cruel hour. "If you will study a few dramatic parts I will get Mr. Barton, the tragedian of our theatre, to hear you and take an inter- est in you." So deUghted was Barton by her trial performance that he immediately asked her to play Lady Macbeth at his forthcoming benefit. Though this part is known among actors as the most exacting and difficult that can fall to an actress, she accepted without hesitation. Miss Cushman made a hit at the benefit and played out the season in New Orleans, thus lightly and suc- cessfully turning from an operatic to a dramatic career. Returning to New York, she made an advantageous three-year contract with the manager of the Bowery Theatre, who had heard of her success in the Crescent City. Always generous, she brought her mother and several members of her family to New York to share her new prosperity. But just at that moment fate reached forth and clutched her by the throat. Illness cut her New York engagement to one week. Then as the company was about to go on tour the theatre burned down, bankrupting the manager and destroy- ing all Miss Cushman's costumes. In debt for the costmnes, with her family on her hands and without employment, her case seemed desperate. However, the crisis was weathered. A place to play minor parts at the Park Theatre was offered, and in it she remained three years, working toward that mastery of stage detail and business which is the equipment CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 325 of the great actor. Even in these lesser parts she began to attract attention, and at last, when John Braham was producing a dramatization of Guy Mannering her chance came. Going on as an understudy to play the part of Meg Merrilies — which she had only an hour or two to study — she put such fire and force into the part that the star himself was echpsed. He showed none of the professional jealousy, however, and at the conclusion of the play came running to her dressing room. ''I have come to thank you, Miss Cushman," he cried, " for the most veritable sensation I have experi- enced for a long time. I give you my word when I turned and saw you in that first scene I felt a cold chill run all over me." Meg MerriHes was not designed to be the star part in Guy Mannering, but Miss Cushman's genius made it so; it was not her favorite part, but the public was clamorous for it and she played it hundreds of times. There are still hving veteran playgoers into whose memory is burned indelibly the terrifying weird- ness of her impersonation of the witch. The coming to the United States in 1843 of Macready, the great English tragedian, marked the real fixing of Miss Cushman's professional status. Prior to that time she had played parts of every sort, turning lightly from Nancy Sykes to Lady Gay Spanker, and follow- ing the haggard witch, Meg Merrilies, with "breeches parts," more fitted to Peg Woflfington. With Mac- ready she played tragedy only — save for a rather unsuc- cessful essay at Beatrice in " Much Ado About Nothing" — and she won from the great tragedian hearty sjma- pathy. As a result she went to London. There wag 326 WOMEN OF HISTORY delay in securing an engagement, and the round of sightseeing so depleted her pocketbook that she and her maid were reduced to living in lodgings on a single chop a day! When the engagement came it was to support Edwin Forrest, but first she was given a single night with her- self as the star. Her success was immediate. The lordly Times declared that for "real, impetuous, irre- sistible passion," Miss Cushman was unapproachable. Later she played Romeo to the Juliet of her sister, Susan, at the Haymarket. The supporting company rebelled at the idea of a feminine Romeo, and refused at first to undertake the performance, but it made a hit, and the critic of the Times said, "Miss Cushman's Romeo is a creation; a living, breathing, animated human being." Indeed, she made of Romeo a mili- tant gallant, a pugnacious lover, who might resort to force should Juliet refuse to marry him. ^ Once when a fellow in the audience interrupted the performance with a resonant sneeze, obviously not natural but designed as an interruption. Miss Cushman in hose and doublet strode to the footUghts and declared, "Some one must put that person out or I shall be obliged to do it myself." With a laugh the disturber was ejected. Thereafter Miss Cushman's career flowed smoothly. All honors that a player might win were hers. Pros- perity abode with her ever. When the time came for her to retire — though her farewell performances were painfully recurrent — the occasion was made one of state. She had played Lady Macbeth at Booth's Theatre in New York, and when the curtain fell upon CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN 327 the last act the audience remained to witness another spectacle. The curtain arose again, disclosing on the stage a distinguished company, among whom were Dion Boucicault, Lester Wallack, Joseph Jefferson, John Gilbert and William Cullen Bryant. When the actress entered the very walls of the theatre trembled with the applause. An ode was read by Richard H. Stoddard, and the venerable Bryant presented her with a crown of laurel. Li her dignified response she said, "Art is an absolute mistress; she will not be coquetted with or slighted; she requires the most entire self-devotion, and she repays with grand tri- umphs." By this code she lived, and Lawrence Barrett said at her death, which occurred in 1876, "bigotry itseK must stand abashed before the life of our dead queen, whose every thought and act were given for years to an art which envy and ignorance have battled against in vain for centuries." NELL GWYN (1653-1691) "PEETTY NELLY," THE ORANGE GIRL IF in this day of a more superficial, or, it may be actual, morality, a girl could come from the slums of New York, proceed through the stages of street peddler, orange girl in the theatre, be an inmate of a brothel and finally wind up as the mistress of|a king, and possibly his wife, the world would stand aghast. Yet this, put in a few blunt phrases, is the life story of Nell Gwyn. Her biography has been written by some of the foremost hterary men of England. It was not a particularly stimulating life. If written of a woman of to-day it would be held a squalid record of immorality leading up to place and power. Yet, as the phrase goes, "Other times, other manners," and Nell Gwyn, rising slowly from the position of a mere pretty girl of the London slums to the power of a king's favorite, foimd no personal antagonism among even the more prudish members of the king's court. Even old Samuel Pepys, in his immortal diary, tells of meet- ing "pretty Nelly," and of her sprightly and clever talk. The period was one of exceeding levity and frivol- ity — Charles II, returning to power after the execu- (328) XKI.L GWVX Front III'. iiniidiNij hi/ Si.r I'dir /.' //y, XnUunnl I'uiirni! iJnWrij NELL GWYN 329 tion of his father, and the time of the commonwealth, had estabhshed the most profligate court in all Europe. It was the time when the theatre was at the point of its lowest degradation both in the character of its plays and of its actresses. For some reason oranges were sold in all parts of theatres as in our days boys hawk "books of the opera" or somebody's chocolates. But the oranges were sold by young and pretty girls who, while the acts were in progress, stood in a semicircle about the proscenium inviting attention. Out of this circle Nell advanced to a very enviable place on the stage. After playing several leading roles she was lured from the stage by offers of a fine house, servants and jewels by Lord Buckhurst. Within a year she proceeded to the lofty station of favorite of the king — that same king who, according to the famous couplet. Never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one. No one can study the career of Nell Gwyn without discovering that something more than her beauty led to her success — for in that era of easy morals her career was held successful. She had wit, good humor and an admirable ■ charity. In fact, the founding of Chelsea Hospital, a home for old soldiers in their declining years, is popularly attributed to her. King Charles II was captivated by these qualities rather than by her physi- cal charms, and it is worth while saying that during her ascendency over the mind of this monarch she never used her'power for purposes of personal hatred or for revenge. She did, however, use it for her own Ixixurious desires. 330 WOMEN OF HISTORY The girl born in poverty and brought up in the Coal Hole, one of London's most notorious slums, the orange girl at Drury Lane, learned quickly the love of luxury and demanded that it be satisfied. More than that. She asked for her two sons by the king the same titles, honors and estates that were conferred by him upon his other illegitimate sons. The dukedom of St. Albans, one of the richest in all England, is held to-day by descendants of Nell Gwyn. It includes rich property in London, castles and fertile fields in the country districts. It came to her son only after a most melodramatic attack upon the king. He was passing through the street in which she lived at the head of an impressive company of lords and gentlemen. Leaning out of a third-story window she waved the baby over the head of the king and threatened to drop him unless he was recognized and given a title. Charles, always the good humored, agreed and the boy was made duke of St. Albans and provided with suitable estates. It seems to have been easy for kings in those times to toss the public prop- erty to favorites. There are dukes of St. Albans now in England drawing huge revenues from their estates, but they owe their wealth, their castles and their votes in the house of peers to Nell Gwyn, reared in the Coal Hole, orange girl at Drury Lane Theatre, and ulti- mately the most widely known of the many favorites of Charles II. Unlike most of his favorites, she was not only faithful to him during his life, but to his memory after death. That she who had perhaps loved him the most unsel- fishly and unobtrusively of all had inspired a deep affec- NELL GWYN 331 tion in his heart is shown by the fact that with his dying breath he said to his brother, "Don't let poor Nelly starve." Nell Gwyn survived her king but a short time, dying in her thirty-eighth year. Dr. Thomas Tenison, after- ward archbishop of Canterbury, preached her funeral sermon, and she was buried in St. Martia's-in-the- Fields. American tourists will remember this St. Martin's-in-the-Fields as a church which for two hundred years has never seen a field. It is directly opposite the National Gallery, close to Trafalgar Square. JENNY LIND (1821-1887) "the SWEDISH nightingale" JENNY LIND was born to poverty and obscurity; she achieved wealth and world-wide fame. Her father was a good natured incapable; her mother supported the family by keeping a school at Stockholm. But the school did not succeed and the household was broken up. The mother went out as a governess and the grandmother was sent to the widow's home, taking the child with her. Here a providential thing happened. Jenny had a pet cat with which, after the blessed fashion of childhood, she could for- get her dismal surroundings. Her favorite pastime was to sit with this cat in a deep window looking out upon a crowded street and sing to it — for even from her fourth year she was always singing and she was now nine. People used to stop in the street to look at the picture and to listen to the sweet childish voice. Among others the maid of Mile. Limdberg, a dancer at the Royal Opera, heard the singing and told her mistress of it. As a result the little girl was brought to sing before Mile. Limdberg, who said at once, "The child is a genius; you must have her educated for the stage." Herr Croelius, singing master of the Royal Theatre, was sought out, and in a letter of later years Jenny (332) JENNY LIND 333 Lind recalled that he was moved to tears by the simple songs she sang. He took her to Count Puke, head of the theatre, and recommended that she be enrolled as a pupil. "How old is she?" asked the count. "Nine years." "Nine!" thundered the great man. "This isn't a nursery. This is the king's theatre." But he consented to hear her sing, was instantly captivated, admitted her to the school, and for the ensu- ing twenty years she was drilled in singing, educated and brought up at government expense. They do these things better abroad. With us genius must care for itself or starve. Almost immediately upon her admission to the school Jenny began acting, taking, of course, childish parts. By the time she was fifteen her voice had begun to find itself and she sung in concerts with enough success to win some reputation outside of Stockholm. At seven- teen the theatre manager concluded that her services were insufficiently rewarded by her board and clothes and gave her a salary in addition of about sixty pounds ($300) a year. Twelve years later in the United States she was sometimes getting $2,000 for a single concert. Until 1840 Jenny Lind sang only in Stockhohn, tak- ing part in the operas produced at the Royal Theatre. Then she made a brief concert tour in the provinces, earning thereby enough money to take her to Paris for additional study. "Study" was her watchword and coimtersign. She was fond of saying that God gave her her voice, but she certainly left nothing undone to improve the gift. Once a friend left her alone prac- 334 WOMEN OF HISTORY tising the single German word "zersplittre" on a high B flat as it occurs in "Norma." Returning hours later she found Jenny still industriously singing the same word. Arrived at Paris she encoxmtered a terrifying shock. Manuel Garcia was the greatest singing master of the age and him she sought out. "It would be useless to teach you, Mademoiselle," said he gruiHy after Hsten- ing to her sing Lucia. "You have no voice left." Years after she told Mendelssohn that she suffered more agony in that moment than in all the rest of her life. But brave, though tearful, she pleaded with the master. Grudgingly he told her to go away, sing no more and talk but httle for three months, then to return. She obeyed literally, spending the time in studying French. On her return her voice was so greatly restored that Garcia accepted her as a scholar. She studied with him for ten months, but though she credited him with teaching her "some important things," she always insisted that "I sing after no one's method; only as far as I am able after that of the birds; for their master was the only one who came up to my demands for truth, clearness and expression." Finished with Garcia she was fairly launched in the world of opera and concert. Popularity and prosperity came at once. The theatre at Stockholm tripled her salary, and soon she mustered courage to sing outside her native country. Copenhagen went wild over her; serenades and torchlight processions were given in her honor. It was there that she began a long career of charity by giving a concert for a children's aid society of which Hans Christian Andersen, inspired teller of JENNY LIND 335 fairy tales, had told her. At the instance of Meyer- beer she went to Berlin, where she sang in "Norma" and other operas, but was barred from Meyerbeer's own new masterpiece by the jealousy of a rival prima donna. By this time what was called the "Jenny Lind madness" was sweeping over Europe, and wher- ever she went she received more than royal ovations, while her houses were crowded and seats sold at a heavy premium. In her own country she was treated like an empress, and when she left Stockholm for Lon- don thousands lined the streets to see her pass and the warships in the harbor were dressed, their yards manned and all fired salutes as though the king himself were passing. And aU for a bird-like voice and an unspoiled singer! Greatest perhaps of aU her triumphs was that accorded her by the United States, whither she came imder the management of P. T. Bamum. Nothing in the life of that "prince of showmen and of humbugs" became him so well as the generous fashion in which he treated Jenny Lind. He contracted with her for 150 concerts at $1,000 each, with all expenses for herself, a companion and secretary, a servant, horses and a carriage. Of his own volition he later changed the con- tract so that'whenever the receipts of a concert exceeded $5,000 she should share equally with him. Bankers from whom he sought to raise his capital laughed at him. "You wiU rum yourself," said one. "I don't believe you will ever take in $3,000 at a concert." But Jenny land's share of the proceeds of the first two con- certs was nearly $10,000, which she gave to the mayor to be divided among the city charities. New York 336 WOMEN OF HISTORY went wild at her arrival. Thousands greeted her at the dock and Broadway was spanned with triumphal arches in her honor. She sung in old Castle Garden, now the Aquarium, and an inspired hatter bought her first ticket for $640 and retired rich as a result of the advertisement. In all American cities she visited these scenes were repeated. For her ninety-two concerts imder Bammn's management she received $176,675. Sixty more were given under her own management. They lacked the master hand of Bamum, but netted enough to bring her total American earnings up to at least $250,000. Of this she gave away in this country about $40,000, and the rest was retained intact as a charity fund to be distributed at her death. No woman ever gave away so much of her own earnings; her total beneficences are estimated at over half a million dollars. In the United States she met and married Otto Gold- schmidt, an accomplished musician twelve years her junior. Her marriage was happy to the end of her days. For a quarter of a century after her American torn- Jenny Lind lived the ideal life of a great artist, singing in the chief cities and courts of Europe and idoUzed by all peoples. If any great woman ever reaped heaven's reward for goodness, benevolence and sim- plicity, surely it was she. She saw her children grow to maturity and felt her grandchildren clustering about her knee. In November, 1887, she died, and almost on her last day, as her daughter threw open the bhnds and let in the sun, she raised herself on her pillow and in a voice still sweet sang a song she loved, "An den Sormenschein." MADAME RISTORI (1822-1906) . THE COLUMBUS OF ITALIAN DRAMATIC ART ^DELAIDE RISTORI was born to the stage. ZJk At three months of age she appeared in what -*- .^ had been planned to be a thinking part of which she made a speaking one — for the baby, extracted from a basket of eggs, fowls and vegetables, set up a bitter wail that sent the audience into roars of laughter. Venice was her birthplace, her parents actors of the strolling class. The footUghts furnished most of her dayUght, and the musty odor of the stage her favorite atmosphere. At sixteen she had mastered so much of the technique of dramatic art that she was offered the place of leading lady in a creditable stock company. Her father evidently did not believe in the role of infant phenomenon, for he declined the offer for his daughter. Shortly thereafter he placed her in a company of higher class, which played before the King of Sardinia. Here she played the parts for which her age fitted her and studied the minutise of her profession. Though naturally a gay girl, fond of playing tricks on her fellow players, she was early attracted to tragic roles, though but few were given her to act. Among her pleasures were visits to insane asylums to study the 22 (337) 338 MADAME RISTORI manifestations of madness in the inmates, or to ceme- teries, where she read the more lugubrious epitaphs. These rather abnormal and imhealthy diversions she put aside as she grew older. The hold that Ristori had upon the Italian theatre does not seem to have been attained by any single spectacular trimnph. Her art and her popular favor grew with her years, until she had won first place among ItaUan tragediennes. She herself hardly appre- ciated the importance of the position to which she had risen. In the midst of her trimnphs she married the Marquis de Grillo, and calmly contemplated leaving the stage for a qiiiet matrimonial life. One victory, however, she sought to win before retiring. She wanted to defend on the Paris stage the laiu-els won by ItaUan actors. Until her day no Italian actor had ever carried his art north of the Alps. She was the first of that procession, which later in- cluded Duse and Salvini, to visit the United States. But in 1858, when she fiirst broached the proposition of taking the Royal Sardinian Company to Paris, the proposition was looked upon as chimerical. However, she carried her point and won. She had played but a brief time in Paris before the critics and dramatists were at her feet. Her audiences were riotous with applause. Without decrying the genius of Ristori, it may be pointed out that the moment was most propitious for her to invade Paris. Rachel, the pet of the boule- vardiers and the acknowledged tragedy queen, had just announced her purpose of making a tour of the United States, and the sensitive Parisians construed this as WOMEN OF HISTORY 339 disloyalty to their city. Moreover, the journals pro- fessed to see ia the appearance of this challenging star a bold defiance of Rachel. Meddlesome first nighters rushed from seeing Ristori to stir Rachel's jealousy with accounts of the Italian's genius, or vice versa. The enemies of Rachel used Ristori to annoy and crush her, as in later days Duse was employed against Bern- hardt. The two principals bore themselves with the hauteur of contending generals. Each wanted peace, but neither wished to make the overtures. A dressmaker finally bridged the bloody chasm by conveying mes- sages from one to the other. Each saw the other act and sent, in writing, polite compliments. The Pari- sian journalists breathed again and Rachel sailed for the United States. But the two actresses never met. A modern press agent would give a fortune for such a farcical war. With Paris conquered, Ristori played Dresden, Berlin and Vienna, returned for a time to Italy, and then again visited Paris. While in Italy she was so carried away with the simulated wrath of the heroine Phedre that she fell in a fit into the footUghts and was severely cut and burned by the kerosene lamps which were used for that purpose. In Paris on her second visit she made her first essay in playing in a foreign tongue. Legouve, in whose drama "Medea" Ristori had won a triumph after it had been rejected by Rachel, fairly adored the Itahan actress. He was eager that she should learn to play in French, but she ridiculed the idea. With clever tact he first persuaded her to recite for him alone 340 MADAME RISTORI some French verses he had written. Assuring her that her pronunciation was admirable, he got her to repeat them in the theatre, where the audience ap- plauded warmly. Later he wrote a one-act play which she performed in French, and in time she employed the French language altogether when on the French stage. In later years she mastered English also and played Lady Macbeth with Edwin Booth in that tongue in New York, and Mary Stuart with a German speaking company at the old Thalia Theatre in the Bowery. It is cxu-ious that although an ItaUan of Italians, many of Ristori's best parts depicted English char- acters — the two mentioned above and Queen Elizabeth. In Spain the great popularity of the actress brought her a most curious experience. Before one of her performances a deputation of citizens called upon her to beg her intercession in behalf of a soldier sentenced to be shot. Spurred on by compassion, the tragedienne during an entr'act threw herself at the feet of the Queen of Spain pleading for his pardon, which was granted. The act of mercy produced its embarrass- ments, for the warrior, who had been taking the last sacrament of his church when the pardon arrived, sat in the same seat at each of her Madrid performances and shouted "Vive Ristori!" until his neighbors thought him mad. But her influence was sought for even higher ends. Cavour, greatest of Italian statesmen in the nineteenth century, wrote her: "Do use that authority of yours for the benefit of oiu; country and I will not only applaud in you the first actress of Europe, but also the most WOMEN OF HISTORY 341 efficacious co-operator with our diplomatic negotia- tions." There was some reason in the premier's sug- gestion, for Ristori became a world-wide traveler, always entertained by the governing classes. From St. Petersburg to Madrid, and Vienna to London in Europe she carried her art, then to the United States, Brazil and other South American countries. New Zealand, Australia, Ceylon and Egypt she visited. "Who was it discovered real art to the Americans at a time when to cross the ocean meant to make one's will?" asked a Uvely Italian journaUst. "Ristori! Hm-rah then; let us call her the Columbus of Italian Dramatic Art." Wearied with much travel, Ristori retired to private life in 1885 while her powers were yet imabated — earlier in life, indeed, than the period at which Bernhardt descended to vaudeville. She died in Rome in 1906, having spent her last years in the scholarly circles she loved and in the very heart of the land she had done so much to honor. MRS. SIDDONS (1755-1831) "the teagic muse" A FAMILY of strolling players of the eighteenth century was stranded once in a Uttle Welsh village. The name of Brecon would long since have been forgotten save that July 5, 1755, in a chamber under the thatched roof of the village inn, "The Shoulder of Mutton," was born the girl child destined to be known wherever the EngUsh drama is known as Mrs. Siddons, "The Tragic Muse." From "The Shoulder of Mutton" to the palaces of Mayfair and Belgravia is an ascent more difficult than that of the Matterhorn, but this girl Sarah Kemble accomplished it, not, though, without attend- ant sufferings and faltering by the way. The folk of whom Sarah Kemble was sprung were strollers, of course, "barnstormers" we would call them to-day, but yet of a superior type. For that matter the general intellectual average of the stage was higher perhaps than now, for Roger Kemble, her father, and his company played the great classic tragedies on circuits which nowadays demand "Belles of the Bowery" or "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and are scarce satisfied unless the latter is embelUshed with two Topsies. (342) .MUS. SIDDOXS From lilt jiinidtny bij Sir Jn.-ihiin Lit ijiiobls MRS. SIDDONS 343 Growing up in the environment of the strollers — a people forced to be clannish because of the good- natured contempt with which they were treated by those about them — the girl naturally became herself an actress. Furthermore, being personally attractive, both in face and figure, she made an early marriage — and, after the fashion of pretty actresses, a foolish one. Henry Siddons, whom she married in 1773, was an actor in her father's company — that is, imtil Roger Kemble discovered he was making love to Sarah, when he was incontinently "fired" and the girl exiled to Warwickshire, where she became a lady's maid to a lady of quahty. Poor Siddons was not a bad, only a commonplace, actor, and at this jimcture must have been a lad of some spirit, for he rescued his fair one from personal servitude in the country and married her in Coventry. Thereafter for some time the twain went up and down the provinces playing everything from pantomime to Shakespeare. Siddons may be dismissed now with the statement that he grew not a whit by the practice of his art, and when his wife attained greatness settled down placidly to the position of an actress's husband, mu-sing the children and speculating, always disastrously, with her earnings. In the England of that day success at Drury Lane was the sure pathway to national eminence on the stage. Mrs. Siddons had her opportunity in 1775 and faUed dismally. She had not attained the full fruition of her genius, nor did she, or the manager, Garrick, understand at that time that her talent lent itself to the stateUness and majesty of tragedy and not to comedy. Sorely grieved by this reverse, she 344 WOMEN OF HISTORY went back to the provinces and played for four seasons at an average wage of £3 (115) a week. Notwithstanding the pessimistic poem of the late Senator Ingalls, opportunity does knock more th]an once at each man's door. Its second call to Sarah Siddons came in the shape of an offer from the new manager of Drury Lane, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Forgetting her past failure, she hastened to London and in 1782 began rehearsing the part of Isabella in Garrick's version of "The Fatal Marriage" — a play of compelUng pathos, now practically forgotten. Not unnaturally the ordeal for which she was preparing filled her with apprehension. Of a placid, almost phlegmatic, temperament, she became a prey to ex- treme nervousness, even, as the moment for the first production approached, losing her voice for none but nervous causes. "On the morning of the 10th" (the day of the pro- duction), she writes, "my voice was, most happily, perfectly restored, and again 'the blessed sun shone brightly on me.' On this eventful day my father arrived to comfort me and be a witness to my trial. He accompanied me to my dressing room at the theatre and then left me; and I, in one of what I call my desperate tranquillities, which usually impress me under terrific circumstances, there completed my dress, to the astonishment of my attendants, without uttering one word, though often sighing most pro- foundly." Enough now to say that her audience was swept away. Tears attended her sadly solemn scenes, to be succeeded by cheers as the cvutain fell. She awoke MRS. SIDDONS 345 the next morning to find herself the talk of the town — the most sought after woman in London. People fought for seats; even breakfasted near the theatre to be sure of getting good places. "Madam," said Dr. Johnson, when she called at his always ill-furnished lodgings, and he was somewhat put to it to find her a chair, "you who so often occasion a want of seats to other people will the more easily excuse the want of one yourself." From one of the annoyances of a successful actress her stateliness and demeanor, tragic as well off the stage as on, protected her. "I'd as soon make love to the Archbishop of Canterbury as to Mrs. Siddons," said Sheridan once, when accused of over-devotion to his star. This deportment was no pose, but the natural effect of a mind continually occupied with high thoughts upon the body it dominated. The story goes that, buying a piece of cahco, she inquired in tones so deep and tragical, "Will it wash?" that the affrighted shop- man started back, falling in collapse against his shelves. "Witness truth!" she cried laughingly, when told this story, "I never meant to be tragical." But there was in her at all times something of the tragedy queen. On the stage her intensity sometimes wholly unmanned the actor playing opposite to her. Young, one of the best of her support, was struck dumb by her vehemence in a certain part and had all he coiild do to finish his act; while another actor, coming trembling and immanned from the stage, said, "That woman plays as though the thing were in earnest. She looks me so through and through with her black eyes that I would not for the world 346 WOMEN OF HISTORY meet her on the stage again." Perhaps the one tune she met her match was when a guileless caUboy she had sent for a pot of porter wherewith to restore her- self after the sleep-walking scene in "Macbeth," brought the foaming beaker, not to the dressing room, but to her on the stage in full view of the audience, which roared. Even then she regained her dignity and won her auditors back to the mood of terror which that scene compels. Mrs. Siddons lived a long Ufe full of honors, dying at the age of seventy-six. She retired from the stage at fifty-seven, but truth compels the statement that her farewell performances were almost as many as those of Patti or of Bernhardt. It is hard for those who have known the limelight ever to forego it. The poet Rogers told how, sitting with him one afternoon, the old lady said with a sigh: "Oh, dear! This is the time I used to be thinking of going to the theatre. First came the pleasure of dressing for my part, and then the pleasure of acting it. But that is all over now." Sir Joshua Reynolds was inspired by Mrs. Siddons to one of his finest portraits, which he inscribed to her as "The Tragic Muse." At her request Dr. Johnson inscribed his name at the edge of the portrait. "I would not lose," he said, "the honor this opportunity afforded me for my name going down to posterity on the hem of your garment." PEG WOFFIXGTON From the painting by James Latliant "PEG" WOFFINGTON (1720-1760) "queen of all heakts" BORN in a squalid court of Dublin "with the trowel and the wash tub for a coat of arms" (for her father was a mason and her mother a washwoman), a hawker of salads and oranges on the street at six and a child acrobat at ten, Mar- garet WoflBngton, whom men preferred to call "Peg," came to lead the EngUsh stage, entrancing men with her beauty and dramatic art in the theatre, dazzUng them with her ready wit in private, and it must be confessed amusing them with her matter-of-fact and multitudinous immoraUties. Her career was not unlike that of Nell Gwyn, save that "pretty Nelly" found safe harbor at last imder the protection of a king, while Peg, constant to no one, went onto the rocks at last. Her first serious essay in acting was with a company of children, all imder ten years old, in the Beggars' Opera. Showing signs of promise in this, she was instructed by friends in dramatic art and made a hit as OpheUa in 1736. Supposing the commonly accepted date of her birth, 1720, to be authentic this would argue singular precocity, but some writers aver that this was the date fixed in later years by the successful C347) 348 WOMEN OF HISTORY actress not anxious to grow old too speedily and the true date was several years earlier. Be that as it may, her girlish manner and her beauty won all her auditors, even when she appeared in parts unfitted to her years. But it was in what were then called "breeches parts" that she really capttired all behold- ers. Her figure, a veritable model of perfection, and her genius for aping the manners and carriage of the sterner sex charmed the town of Dublin, then esteemed as great a dramatic centre as London itself. After she had won a triumph as Sir Harry Wildair, in "The Constant Couple," a Dublin bard broke forth into poesy thus: That excellent Peg; Who showed such a leg, When lately she dressed in men's clothes A creature uncommon. Who's both man and woman The chief of the belles and the beaux! A less kindly comment upon her success as a male impersonator was expressed by James Quin, an actor with whom she was continually sparring. She came off the stage in London with the theatre ringing with applause for her Sir Harry Wildair. "Mr. Quin," she cried in elation, finding him sitting in the greenroom, "I have played this part so often that half the town believe me to be a real man." , "Madam," said Quin gruffly, "the other half know you to be a woman." Poor Peggy! She was not offended. Ideas of con- ventional morality and propriety were as foreign to her as to the islanders of the South Seas a century ago. "PEG" WOFFINGTON 349 In the height of her DubUn season she disappeared — gone to London with the handsome son of an Irish lord. In idyllic but unhallowed bliss the couple lived for some months, when Peggy discovered that her protector was planning to marry an heiress. : Wrought up by jealousy and pique, she put her dramatic talent into play to circumvent the villain of her domestic drama. Assuming the name of "Mr. Adair," she swaggered about the town attired in "silken hose and satin breeches with broidered waistcoat and wide flapped coat, powdered, painted and bewigged." She sought the new deity of her faithless swain. The lady was found at Vauxhall Gardens, the faithless lover was duly denoxmced and the marriage broken off. Bereft now of a protector. Peg set forth to seek employment. She foimd it after some delay at Covent Garden, where she appeared as Sylvia in "The Recruit- ing Officer." This being in some degree a "breeches part," she made an immediate hit. She became the toast of the town and soon transferred her talents to Drury Lane, where she appeared in all sorts of plays from roaring farces to Shakespearian productions. There, too, she met David Garrick, with whom she formed a connection that lasted for years. They played in DubUn together, winning both guineas and applause. Returning to London, they set up house- keeping together, with the novel agreement that each should pay the bills during alternate months. It is a matter of record that guests found the hospitality more lavish dining Peg's months. For Garrick she seems to have had a more serious affection than for any other of her uncounted lovers. 360 WOMEN OF HISTORY Unquestionably they at one time contemplated mar- riage. Once bounding off the stage with the applause of the house roaring behind her, Peg met Garrick standing in the wings. "Queen of all hearts!" said he in compliment. "Aye, queen of all hearts!" re- torted the WofEngton meaningly, "yet not legal mis- tress of one." Garrick took the hint. Soon after he broached the subject of marriage and even bought the ring. But reflection on Peg's multitudinous affairs of the heart rather cooled his ardor and he confessed as much to her. In high indignation she told him to keep the ring he was then holding in his hand, and never expect to have anything to do with her except in a business way at the theatre. To this determination she adhered despite Garrick's appeals for a renewal of their friendship. With all her laxity of morals the Wofiington was strictness itself in keeping up her work on the stage. Most actresses, tenacious of their own dignity, refuse to take parts they think beneath their talents. Not so Peg. Somebody called her "an actress of all work" for the cheerfulness with which she would fill in. Per- haps it was this which made her so widely popular. But the best critics of the day conceded to her talent, even genius. Her chief weakness, one which wovild have been fatal to any one not possessing surpassing dramatic art, was a harsh, shriU voice. She knew it, her audiences knew it, but all made allowances for it. In Portia occurs the line, "He knows me, as the blind man knows the cuckoo by the bad voice." When Peg declaimed this in her shrill tones the audience laughed and she joined good humoredly in the laughter. "PEG" WOFFINGTON 351 With her hold on her audiences continually increas- ing, the end came in dramatic, almost tragic, form. One night in 1758 she was playing Rosalind at Covent Garden. All day she had complained of feeling ill, but her fixed determination never to disappoint her audiences carried her through the play and into the epilogue. This she had just begun to repeat when she staggered, clasped her hands over her eyes and, crying, "My God! My God!" tottered to the wings. The friendly audience strove to call her back, but she never trod the boards again. A paralytic stroke had felled her and Peg Wofl&ngton never acted more. In a villa at Teddington she lived out the remainder of her days — about three years. Her old wit clung to her. Once a noble lord with whose son her sister — a famous beauty — had eloped, called on her to com- plain. Her charm of manner enraptured him and he began to express his satisfaction with the match. "My lord," said she, "I have much more reason to be offended at it than your lordship, for whereas I had but one beggar to support, I now have two." To the very day of her death, which occurred in March, 1760, efforts were made to induce her to return to the stage without avail. "I will never," she is reported to have said, "destroy my reputation by clinging to the shadow after the substance is gone. When I can no longer boimd on the boards with at least some show of youthful vigor, and when the enthusiasm of the pubhc begins to show signs of decay, that will be the last appearance of Margaret Wof- fington." And she kept her word. SARAH BERNHARDT A STAGE IDOL FOR FIFTY TEARS I IKE the other great French tragedienne, Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt was bom a Jewess, though -^ she was educated in the Roman Cathohc faith. Her parentage was somewhat obscure — not to say mysterious. She describes her mother as a Dutch Jewess, but of her father she spoke little and seemingly knew less. It is fair to presume that he was a French- man and a Catholic. This composite parentage some- times proved embarrassing. After the Franco-Prussian War Bernhardt's enemies charged that she was a German — an assertion which her accent seemed to strengthen. She had to vaunt her mother's Holland descent to escape hissing. In Russia, where rehgious prejudice runs high, she was accused of being a Jewess anc^ was forced to call upon the shade of her Catholic l-ioher to rescue her popularity. Whatever her ancestry, Sarah was bom for the stage. She herself seldom doubted this, though she did remark contemplatively that she intended to be a nun imless she could be an actress at the Com6die Frangaise. But the coulisses claimed her and the convent lost a most remarkable novice. When barely fifteen she was entered as a student at the Conservatoire, the great dramatic school of (352) SARAH BERNHARDT 353 Paris, and within three years made her d^but at the Com^die Frangais. Though horribly frightened, ac- cording to her own report, she made a moderate hit. That is to say, the dramatic .critics, those arbiters of French dramatic success, all mentioned her name and were not particularly ill-natured in their references to her acting, though the audience laughed at her thin arms. But her stay at the Com^die was brief. In a fit of temper of the sort that characterized her through life she slapped the face of the leading lady. Leading ladies are not made to be thus used and the presumptuous girl was promptly banished. In 1880, her association with the Com^die having been renewed, she broke it again in a rage, sacrificing some $20,000 in penalties. But she never worried about money. Often "broke," she could always replenish her purse by tours abroad. The Paris theatres were, of coiu"se, ever open to her, but the two Americas were her El Dorado. Her earnings there were pro- digious and through South America, where the Galhc strain was strong, her progress was fairly regal. The heroines of the French classic drama and the modern, and perhaps more morbid types, like Camille and La Tosca, engaged her genius, and every great French dramatist from Racine to Rostand has foimd her his most briUiant mterpreter. Committing a thousand foUies, she has won ten thousand triumphs. In her autobiography — ^which reads suspiciously like the handiwork of a Parisian jom-nahst— she re- peatedly declares that she never cared for the theatre. Yet when advancing age compelled her to give up sustained performances she "went into vaudeville." 23 354 WOMEN OF HISTORY There is a curious similarity in the parts she has chosen for herself since she was strong enough to choose. As one critic puts it, "In all her dramatic fhghts Sarah has courted death. Throughout her astounding career she has died in all styles. She has jumped into the river and ended; she has been extinguished by poisons; she has succumbed to tuberculosis; she has been shot into kingdom come. She has rarely elected to survive in any of her plays. The idea of living happily ever afterward was invariably repulsive to her." A restless many-sided character is Sarah. Not content with dramatic triumphs, she essayed sculpture and painting and won high praise. She was as apt with her own tongue as in mouthing the utterances of great characters. In the United States a clergy- man pleasantly referred to her as "an imp of dark- ness, a female demon sent from the modern Babylon to corrupt the New World." Sarah responded with the retort com-teous thus: "My dear Confrere: "Why attack me so violently? Actors ought not to be hard on one another. "Sarah Bernhardt." Hers was the genius of advertising. Her quarrels with the Comedie, the faces she slapped, her swoons, her emotions on essaying a new part were all grist for the press agent's mill. She took two young lions for pets and her picture with the two cubs — no more feline than she — ^was scattered over the world. She had her coffin made and professed to sleep in it to the joy of newspaper makers and readers the world over. SARAH BERNHARDT 355 For the coffin story M. Edmond Rostand, the author of Cyrano de Bergerac, refused to stand. "I never made the acquaintance of the Sarah with the coffin," he wrote, and thereupon gave his description of the Sarah he did know in phrase as nervous as she was, thus: "A brougham stops at a door; a woman enveloped in furs jumps out, threads her way with a smile through the crowd attracted by the jingling of the bell on the harness, and mounts a winding stair; plunges into a room crowded with flowers and heated hke a hothouse; throws her Uttle beribboned handbag with its appar- ently inexhaustible contents into one corner and her bewinged hat into another; takes off her furs and instantaneously dwindles into a mere scabbard of white silk; rushes on to a dimly hghted stage and immediately puts life into a whole crowd of listless, yawning, loitering folk; dashes backwards and for- wards, inspiring every one with her own feverish energy; goes into the prompter's box, arranges her scenes, points out the proper gesture and intonation, rises up in wrath and insists on everything berag done over again; shouts with fury; sits down, smiles, drinks tea and begins to rehearse her own part; draws tears from case-hardened actors who thrust their en- raptured heads out of the wings to watch her; returns to her room where the decorators are waiting, de- molishes their plans and reconstructs them; collapses, wipes her brow with a lace handkerchief and thinks of fainting; suddenly rushes up to the fifth floor, invades the premises of the astonished costumier, rummages in the wardrobes, makes up a costume, 356 WOMEN OF HISTORY pleats and adjusts it; returns to her room and teaches the figurantes how to dress their hair; has a piece read to her while she makes bouquets; hstens to hundreds of letters, weeps over some tale of misfortune, and opens the inexhaustible little clinking handbag; con- fers with an English perruquier; retm-ns to the stage to superintend the lighting of a scene, objurgates the lamps and reduces the electrician to a state of tem- porary iusanity; sees a super who has blimdered the day before, remembers it, and overwhelms him with her indignation;" — ^but enough! We cannot follow the Parisian to the end of his brain storm. Let us dismiss the subject of this sketch with Mark Twain's simpler comment on her entire imiqueness: "There are five kinds of actresses, bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses and Sarah Bernhardt." ,-~ f J- - sm Ihp ^^ ^f ■ 1 I Wl ^*« f ^ 1 ^^^ - ^. "7', I^K'^'^^lk nM^ -■' \ i^K.r~'' '"''■^libii '"*^ S^ 1 \ '^P' "^k I ' M .^Pm"* ''-^*' ""^p. ^ff"" '' ''■''_ :| ADELINA PATTI ADELINA PATTI THE QUEEN OP SONG ylDELINA PATTI was bom to the opera stage L\ and narrowly escaped being born on it, for her -*- -^ mother was singing in Norma, at Madrid, in 1843 when the first warning of the coming birth came to her. "Scarcely had they returned from the theatre to the hotel," said Patti in relating the event to the Queen of Spain years afterward, "than she could whisper to her deUghted husband, 'I am a mother,' words which a few hours before was Norma's last confession to her father the Arch-Druid." Father and mother alike were opera singers, and of high standing in their profession. The child was able to sing aU kinds of operatic airs at the age of six. She had been nurtured in a musical atmosphere, heard artists of every degree at practice and music bubbled from her throat as naturally as clear water from a spring. In tastes and pleasures she was like other children, even though she made her concert d^but at the age of seven. It is recorded that on one occasion in Cin- cinnati her manager, Strakosch, had promised her a doll and then — ^man fashion — had forgotten aU about it. Not so the child. The time for her appearance on the platform arrived, but no doll. Without it she (357) 358 WOMEN OF HISTORY would not budge. Vainly did the manager promise indescribable things in the way of dolls after the per- formance. Adelina wanted one doll first. At last a frantic rush was made for the nearest toy shop and a doll procured. Then full of joy she mounted the platform and sang so that her audience was enraptured. Thus early in life she learned the simple way of coercing managers and in her later years not infrequently employed it to bring to light, instead of dolls, dollars that she feared might be inconveniently overlooked. For a great part of her career Patti was looked upon as an American prima donna, though she was bom in Spain of Italian parents and adopted the ItaUan manner in her singing. This proceeded from the fact that her earlier days were spent in this country, where her father, Salvatore Patti, was striving with scant success to interest Americans in Italian opera. In 1850 at a concert at New York she made her d^but by singing the last rondo of La Sonnambula, and the "Echo Song" which Jenny Lind had Just made famous. Until she was eleven she traveled under the manage- ment of her brother-in-law, Strakosch, in a concert company in which the other leading attraction was the vioUnist Ole Bull. Her operatic debut was made in New York in the part of Lucia di Lammermoor. The Herald in a somewhat guarded criticism said, "Every- one predicts a career for this young artist, and who knows but the managers may find in her a long-looked- for sensation." Two years later she took London by storm at Covent Garden and ever thereafter she was the Queen of Opera until her retirement to her castle in South Wales, Craig-y-Nos (The Rock of Night). ADELINA PATTI 359 No opera singer ever held her voice or her pubUc so long as Adelina Patti. None ever was paid such prices for individual concerts or rolled up such colossal earnings in a lifetime. Covent Garden paid tribute to her for twenty-five consecutive seasons. After remaining away from the United States for twenty-two years, she returned in 1881 to receive a truly royal greeting. In his memoirs Col. Mapleson says of her San Francisco reception at this time: "On the day of the performance it took the whole of the police force to protect the theatre from the overwhelming crowds pressing for tickets, although it had been announced that no more were to be had. Long before daylight the would-be purchasers of Patti tickets had collected and formed a line reaching the length of some three or four streets, and from this time until the close of the engagement some four weeks later that line was never broken at any period of day or night. A brisk trade was done in hiring camp stools, for which the modest sum of four shillings ($1) was charged. A similar amount was levied for a cup of coffee or a sUce of bread and butter. Ticket specu- lators were now offering seats at from four poimds ($20) to ten pounds ($50) each, places in the fifth row of the dress circle fetching as much as four pounds, being 400 per cent, above the office price." The popularity of Patti measured by the vulgar yardstick of dollars and cents was amazing. For the concerts under Mapleson's management she received $5,000 each, and for those in South America, where she went in 1888, the same amount plus a share in the profits when they exceeded $10,000. In Chicago 360 WOMEN OF HISTORY once she was paid $4,000 for singing "Home, Sweet Honxe," in the Auditorium. The list of diamonds and other jewels bestowed upon her by sovereigns and other dignitaries is fairly dazzling. Indeed, it is im- probable that any woman not of royal birth ever enjoyed intimacy with so many crowned heads. Her castle is fairly crowded with rare gifts and portraits bearing the autographs of European sovereigns. To one who marveled that her throat and vocal cords had so well resisted the strain of half a century of concert and operatic singing Mme. Patti said, "I have never tired it. (Speaking of her voice.) I never sing when I am tired, and that means I am never tired when I sing, and that I have never strained for high notes. I have heard that the first (Question asked of new vocalists nowadays is, 'How high can you sing?' But I always thought that the least important matter in singing. One should sing only what one can sing with perfect ease." As a result of this method Sir Morel Mackenzie, the world's greatest throat specialist, was able to say of her throat when she was fifty, "That great singer has the most wonderful throat I have ever seen. It is the only one I have ever seen with the vocal cords in absolutely perfect condition after many years of use. They are not strained or warped or roughened." Patti was thrice married. In 1868 she wedded the Marquis de Caux, an equerry of Napoleon III and a well known figure on the Paris boulevards. The marriage was unhappy. Rouge et noir claimed too much of the diva's earnings, for the husband was a passionate gambler. They were in the end separated, ADELINA PATTI 361 at last divorced, and Patti within a year married Nicolini, an erstwhile blacksmith who had won high fame as a tenor. This was the more amazing marriage of the two, for the singer had long expressed contempt and hatred for the tenor, and had used every effort to avoid appearing with him. His boasts of conquests over women affronted her, yet in the end she was conquered. ■ After a few years of wretched wedded life Nicolini died and his widow married Baron Ceder- strom, a Swede who became a naturalized Enghshman. With him she retired to her queenly estate in South Wales and the pubUc thereafter heard her but little. After her d^but at Covent Garden the life of Adehna Patti — save for her matrimonial misadventures — ^was a primrose path through the pleasant places of Europe and America. Kings and queens loved to honor her and to shower upon her rich gifts of precious gems. All mankind wooed her like another Danae with showers of gold. In luxury, in state and in the adulation of men the Queen of Song has had nothing to ask of any other monarch. LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832-1888) THE "jo" OF "little WOMEN " IN this day and age when women, having won their place in the industrial and economic life of the nation, are attacking the political stronghold of masculiae privilege, it is fitting to note that Louisa Alcott, the inspired writer of "Little Women," was a very practical suffragist herself. Surely she had every reason to be. Not only was she the architect of her own fortunes, but she supported in comfort a family which her father, kindly, gentle and intellectual to the point of super-refinement as he was, could not maintain. As she could not shoulder a musket in the war between the states, she nursed in the military hospital at Washington and sacrificed her health to her duty. It was but fitting, therefore, that toward the end of her life we find her describing how she "drove about and drummed up women for my suffrage meet- ing" in Concord, and announcing with lofty defiance: "I for one do not want to be numbered among idiots, felons and minors any longer, for I am none of them." It is not, however, of the mihtant Louisa Alcott that history will have most to say, but rather of the woman whose first essay in the way of an extended work of fiction sold by the hundreds of thousands and (362) LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 363 is still selling. Its initial success, too, was won in a day when the reading public was vastly smaller than now and the present art of handling a new book like a circus had not been invented. The parents of Louisa Alcott, who was born in Ger- mantown. Pa., were people of no ordinary mould. Her mother was of the best New England lineage, a Sewall by birth, connected with the Hancocks and the Quincys. Her father, Bronson Alcott, was a man in whom pure intellect had swallowed up all other quaUties. He was a student, an inspired teacher, a philosopher of moods so abstruse that few could grasp his meanings. Poverty of a sort was long with the Alcotts, but it did not crush them as a like degree of penury would a similar family to-day. At that time it was not quite "the thing" to be rich. The idea of a Tom Lawson or a Carnegie setting up as a writer or a patron of literature would have been inconceivable in the circles in which moved Whittier, Emerson, Hawthorne, Channing and Alcott. But if none of their associates were rich the Alcotts were downright poor and the philosopher could do nothing to reUeve their poverty. A school he foxmded in Boston, in which he had for assistants Miss Peabody, afterward Hawthorne's wife, and Margaret Fuller, lost two-thirds of its pupils when he pubUshed a most unorthodox work, "Conversations on the Gospels," and the rest disappeared when he took a httle negro girl into his classes. He was left with fom: white pupils, of whom three were his own daughters. At sixteen Louisa began to contribute to the family 364 WOMEN OF HISTORY income by teaching school. Her own education had been wholly unsystematic, entirely haphazard and therefore good for the career Fate had in store for her. An outdoor life had given her a rugged constitution — she used to say she would not have a playmate who could not cUmb a tree. Ceaseless association with books and with cultivated people gave her command of language, and her mother's insistence that all of her children should keep journals taught her the art of expression. The very first story she wrote, at the age of sixteen, though not sent out until she was twenty, was published and, what is more remarkable, paid for. "I can't do much with my hands," she wrote in her journal about this time, "so I will use my head as a battering-ram to make my way through this rough- and-tumble world." She used it to some purpose, writing at this time ten or twelve stories a month, most of which were pubhshed in the Boston Evening Gazette. When the editor found they were written by a woman he sought to cut down her pay, but she defied him and won her point. So for some years she went on writing short stories for continually increasing prices, though up to 1857 her highest figure was $10. But in 1859 the Atlantic, the goal of aU ambitious New England writers, paid her $50 for a story, and the next year, which she labeled in her journal "A Year of Good Luck," her prices soared to $75 and $100, and her hterary earnings for the year were $600. After getting a $100 fee unex- pectedly she wrote in her journal, "I went to bed a happy millionaire to dream of flannel petticoats for my blessed mother, paper for father, a new dress for May and sleds for my boys." LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 365 Then came the storm of civil war, and Louisa went into the hospitals at Washington as an army nurse. "I like the stir in the air," she writes, "and long for battle like a war horse when he smells powder." Her experiences she welded into a book,"HospitalSketches," which was eagerly bought by a pubHc hungry for everything about the war. It brought her only $200, but gave her a reputation and a pubUc. Publishers wrote for manuscript and in response she sent out the manuscript of a book, "Moods," she had written foxir years before and laid away. "Genius burned so fiercely," she says, speaking of the composition of this work, "that for four weeks I wrote all day and planned all night, being quite possessed by my work. ' ' The book was a success and widened her pubUc. The money it brought justified her taking a vacation, and she went abroad for a year as companion to a Uterary lady. On her retm-n fortune smiled. She had become a regular contributor to the Atlantic, and was made editor of Merry's Magazine at $500 a year. But, above aU, the great opportunity knocked at her door in the request of Roberts Brothers for a book for girls. Her response was "Little Women," which was instantane- ously successful. "The first golden egg of the ugly duckling," she called it, for out of it she made her fortune. The story was veiled autobiography; the characters were her sisters and her playmates. She herself was "Jo." "We really lived most of it," she said, "and if it succeeds that will be the reason of it." After this victory she went abroad again. No invaUd to care for went along this time but her artist sister May, and the twain spent several Olympian 366 WOMEN OF HISTORY months in France, Switzerland and Italy. En voyage she received a pleasing statement from her publisher, giving her credit for $6,212, but it did not lure her to idleness. She put the story of the trip into a chatty book, "Shawl Straps," which, like all she wrote, was successful. Henceforward the life of Louisa May Alcott was that of a hard-working and successful woman of letters. With passing time her responsibilities were lessened. Her talented sister May married abroad. Her mother, at the age of seventy-seven, passed away, having for years led the quiet, restful life that Louisa had coveted and earned for her. Her father's greatest ambition she gratified by setting up his School of Philosophy at Concord, where, in the open air like the peripatetic philosophers of Athens, he preached metaphysics. "He has his dream at last, and is in glory with plenty of talk to swim in," she wrote. In 1888 her gently incapable father fell ill and died on the 6th of March. Louisa visited him, caught a cold and betwixt that and her grief, passed away two days later. The Rev. C. A. Bartol, lifelong friend of the family, said tenderly as he stood at her open grave, "The two were so wont to be together, God saw they could not well live apart." JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817) A BEILLIANT CHRONICLER OF THE COMMONPLACE 4( A ■ AHE appreciation of Jane Austen," writes I one of her eulogists, " has come to be one -•- of the marks of literary taste." Perhaps it was always so, although George IV — "the First Gentleman of Europe" and incidentally one of its greatest blackguards — was so captivated by her writings that he graciously invited her to dedicate one of her novels to him. But over against the rather undesirable admiration of this cock-fighting and woman- chasing prince we may set the tribute of really great critics of Uterature. Goldwin Smith compares her to Shakespeare. Her hand, he says, "could have drawn Dame Quickly and the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet." Sir Walter Scott said, with graceful and semi- humorous disparagement of himself, "That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feeUng and characters of ordinary Ufe which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me." "First and foremost," said George Eliot, "let Jane (367) 368 WOMEN OF HISTORY Austen be named as the greatest artist that has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery over the means to her end. . . . Only cultivated minds fairly appreciate the exquisite art of Jane Austen." Seldom has so harmonious a chorus of voices of the great been raised in praise of an author. Dr. Johnson once remarked with characteristic vigor, "No man ever wrote except for money." This particular inducement did not influence Jane Austen in writing the series of novels which won for her a measiu-e of immortaUty. She began writing in her "teens" and was so little affected by the author's normal eagerness to see herself in print that her first book lay unpubUshed for eleven years. Her entire receipts from authorship hardly exceeded $3,500, and for "Sense and Sensibility," one of her most successful books, she was paid $750. She remarked that it seemed a lot of money for so little trouble — the work having occupied about a year of her time. "Northanger Abbey" was sold for $50, but the publisher evidently repented of his bargain, for he put it away in a drawer, and after many years sold it back for the identical sum he had paid for it. By some oversight he neglected to charge the author interest for the use of the money meanwhile. She wrote whenever and wherever the fancy seized her. In the family circle of the rectory — her father was a clergyman of the Church of England — she would sit writing while those about her gossiped. Appar- ently her pen sped on as steadily, as little vexed by the chatter, as the knitting or embroidery needles. Only JANE AUSTEN 369 when some guest dropped in was her work interrupted. It was not quite good form in Enghsh country circles at that time for a young woman to write. How indeed could she describe affairs of the heart, and even domestic difi&culties, unless in secret she had had a long and dark experience of them? So in the presence of the stray caller a discreet sheet of blotting paper hid Jane's clear and regvilar manuscript and she joined in the village small talk just as if some terrible literary tragedy had not been interrupted on the unfinished page. Jane Austen was born in 1775 at Steventon, seventy miles from London; she died in 1817. During her brief span of life — forty-two years — the American revolution was fought out and the United States created; the French revolution, the black nightmare of the terror, the glory and the downfall of Napoleon, all figured on the world's stage. But though she kept a diary, no echo of the stirring events of the great world appeared in it or in her letters; though she wrote novels, they dealt only with the tea-table life of a httle town and with only so much of that as found its way into the maidenly circles of a rural rectory. And that was precisely Jane Austen's strength. She left to others "the big bow-wow," as Sir Walter Scott put it. Not for her the clatter of poHtics or the bray of bugles. She knew the life about her and she pictured that with the truthful precision of a miniature. It was an age when one could live almost within the sound of Bow Bells and yet be farther from London than the Chicagoan is from New York to-day. Without steam carriage, by rail or river travel was slow and arduous. It was the event of the year when the squire 24 370 WOMEN OF HISTORY went up to town. Without telegraphs, with posts few and expensive, with Mr. Addison's Spectator — which Jane primly condemned as "coarse"— the only type of newspaper,' the dwellens in the country were out of the world.' ' Of a life so uneventful as hers there is little to be told. She might perhaps have been a literary lioness had she chosen to follow her novels and reputation up' to London. But while she expressed pleasure on learn- ing that some of the great ones of the world admired her writings, she gently repelled efforts toward personal acquaintance. She declined to meet Mme. de Stael because that vivacious lady had expressed a desire to meet the author of "Pride and Prejudice" instead of making known her wish to know Miss Jane Austen. It was a Httle like Harriet Martineau declining to attend a reception given by the wife of the prime minister because she thought that lady was extending hospitality to the authoress instead of to the gentlewoman. It is a nice point of personal sensitiveness which celebri- ties every now and then raise anew. Perhaps Miss Austen's fame is the more secure, for that it does not rest on any popular pedestal. Her vogue is the very reverse of popular. But her public if small is select. It is made up of those who admire the handicraft of the author, fidelity to truth, rigid abstention from exaggeration or pathos, himior which stops far short of horseplay and realism which does not seek the abnormal for its object. Her death came early after a quiet life. Something of the esteem in which she was held by the world of which she knew nothing is expressed by the comment JANE AUSTEN 371 of Prof. Goldwin Smith on a familiar story. "She was buried under a flat slab of black marble in Winchester Cathedral near the center of the north aisle," writes Prof. Smith. "The verger who showed the cathedral once asked a visitor to tell him 'whether there was anything particular about that lady, as so many persons had asked to see where she was buried.' Had he thought of asking the inquirers themselves he might have learned that much of what was most illustrious in English hterature, and not a little of what was most illustrious in English statesmanship had come to pay its homage at that lowly tomb." ROSA BONHEUR (1822-1899) THE FEIEND AND PAINTER OP ANIMALS IN one of the most picturesque positions in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York hangs a picture of colossal size, recognized at once by every visitor as Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair." Few paintings are more widely known. Before reach- ing its present abode it had been exhibited for a fee in many of the cities of the world. The artist herself dupUcated it no less than four times, producing copies of varying sizes now hanging in European galleries. It has, moreover, been repeatedly engraved and reproduced by almost every known process. There are few to whose minds the mention of the "Horse Fair" does not call up a very real and graphic picture. The financial history of this picture curiously par- allels the story of the vicissitudes of the artist — or, for that matter, of any other artist. Though it was painted after Miss Bonheur had attained fame and high standing aniorig artists, it was hawked for several years about the galleries of Europe, retm-ning to the artist with medals and ribbons, but, alas! without a pur- chaser. This was probably due in part to its colossal size, which unfitted it for any except the largest gal- leries. At last it was sold for 40,000 francs (about (372) ROSA BONIIEUU From Uie 'painting by Dubufe ROSA BONHEUR 373 SSjOOO). Even this does not measure the value which the artist put on her work. She had been about to sell the picture to the municipality of Bordeaux for 12,000 francs, and holding it unfair to accept the 40,000 offered by the actual purchaser, painted for him a small replica which he afterward so used as to reduce the cost of the large painting to something like $3,000. Its next sale was to an American for $6,000, but the French seller was allowed to retain the picture for exhi- bition purposes for two or three years — which suggests that the exhibition rights had decided value. Next it went to A. T. Stewart, then equipping that "marble palace" which many New Yorkers of a generation ago thought equal to Versailles or Windsor. The dry goods king's death threw his art collection on the market and this picture was sold for $50,000, finding a fit pm-chaser in Commodore Vanderbilt, whose love for horses was almost as passionate as that of Rosa Bonheur herself. The commodore presented it to the Metro- poUtan Museum, where it will rest as secure in its place as its creator is in her fame. The story of this painting, which, after bringing $3,000 or thereabouts to its creator, foimd its final purchaser at a price of $50,000, expresses in the vulgar language of dollars and cents something of the life of the artist. Dying a chevaher of the Legion of Honor of France, surroimded by medals and trophies won by the skUl of her brush, possessed of a sufficient fortune, which would have been a great one but for her boundless charities, Rosa Bonheiu" grew up in a garret and was apprenticed to a seamstress that she might learn to earn the living which her father's circumstances could 374 WOMEN OF HISTORY not guarantee her. Yet the father was himself a painter of merit, but he had fallen on evil times and was com- pelled to make a slender livelihood giving drawing les- sons at Bordeaux, where on the 16th of March, 1822, Rosa was bom — the eldest of four children. Her childhood was chiefly notable for an intense aversion to school — ^not an imusual trait — and an even more passionate devotion to nature and particularly to animal nature. In her tenderest years she spent in her father's studio all the time she could not be outdoors, and there tried to model in clay and to draw. Artist though he was, Raymond Bonheur, the father, was slow to discern signs of promise in these childish efforts and Rosa was well into her twelfth year when her pertinacity forced it upon his attention that she was not the ordi- nary jeune fille, and that the project of making out of her a seamstress was merely criminal. Amazed at his discovery, the father set about trans- forming his ugly duckling into a swan. Henceforward his life was devoted to developing and directing the talent he had been so slow to recognize. In her seventeenth year Rosa was working busily and contentedly at copying without having chosen, or thought of choosing, any particular specialty. Land- scape, classical and genre painting all engaged her attention. But the story goes that having one day made a striking study of that most unromantic animal, a goat, all her old devotion to animal nature came over her with a rush. She determined to drop copying at once and go direct to nature for her subjects. Daily she plodded out into the country, sketching views and animals. Sometimes with canvas and colors, at others ROSA BONHEUR 375 with a lump of clay, for she loved modehng, she set out early in the morning, returning at night tired and often muddy and wet, but rejoicing in a day of hard study. But within walking distance of a great city the beasts of the field are not so easy to find. Rosa thereupon adopted an expedient which it would seem must have been trying to an artistic temperament. She began to haunt the abattoirs of Paris — the stock yards and the slaughter houses of the city. There she would spend the day painting the cattle, sheep and swine, not merely in the crowded pens where they dumbly awaited an unknown fate, but in the shambles them- selves that she might note their attitudes under the agony and terror of the final stroke. Nor did she neglect the arduous study of anatomy by dissections and from charts. "You must know what's under their skins," she would say, "otherwise it will be a mat rather than a tiger." From this she turned to visiting the stables of the city and the fairs held in its neighborhood. It was in the course of this work that she came to adopt the masculine costume for the freedom and protection it gave. But it was not without its embarrassments when some horse dealer, flattered by her pictures of his animals, would insist on sharing a bottle of wine or something stronger with her, or some maid in a village inn opened a hopeful fhrtation with the pink-cheeked boy, who talked so quietly and painted so well. With such hard and practical work it is not remark- able that Rosa Bonheur's talents ripened early. She was but nineteen when in 1841 she made a hit with 376 WOMEN OF HISTORY two paintings in the fine arts exhibition of that year. Thereafter she exhibited continually, winning in 1849 the gold medal of the Salon, with her picture "Cantal Oxen," which admitted her to the first rank of French painters, her position being still further but- tressed by the triumph of her "Horse Fair" in 1853. The latter by all precedents governing the relations between French art and the government should have secured for her the Legion of Honor. This, however, was twice refused her by the emperor on the ground that she was a woman. Years afterward this gross injustice was repaired by Empress Eugenie, who drove to her home and personally decorated her with the coveted red ribbon. Her death came suddenly. As her nephew, HyppoUte Peyrol, put it: "Her hfe was quietly extinguished like a lamp without oil." Though a nation mourned her there were no more sincere mourners than her dogs when her body was borne through the courtyard where they were gathered. Their evident distress would have pleased the dead mistress, who was fond of saying, "the canine race is more humane than inhuman humans." Sentiment had Uttle part in the life of this world famous woman. "Nobody ever fell in love with me," she said. "Nor have I ever truly loved." A pretty story, however, tells of a workman to whom she had rendered some service, and who spent his surplus earnings thereafter in buying engravings of her pictures and photographs of herself until his room resembled a museum. "I am an earthworm," said he, "in love with a star." ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1809-1861) A POET AND A POET'S BRIDE Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers. And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows. The young birds are chirping in the nest; The young fawns are playing with the shadows. The young flowers are blowing toward the west But the young, young children, O my brothers! They are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the playtime of the others In the country of the free. SELDOM, perhaps, has the world been given a more impressive example of a great mind in a fragUe body, a soul which rose superior to all that sought to cabin and confine it, than that offered by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A poet whose most exquisite thoughts were those of love and aspira- tion, she could nevertheless sound the trumpet blast of assault upon vested wrongs as in the stanza di- rected against child labor, with which this article is headed. A frail woman, condemned by her father and her physicians to hfe-long invalidism, she had yet the courage to run away with the man of her choice (377) 378 WOMEN OF HISTORY and the physique to bear a son. Long as in youth she wavered between life and death, and spent her maidenhood in almost cloistered solitude, she blossomed out at last in intellectual and wifely triumph. E. C. Stedman, best and kindliest of American hterary critics, put the substance of her life into this poetic simile: "She was like the insect that weaves itself a shroud, yet by some inward force, after a season, is impelled to break through its covering and come out a winged tiger moth, emblem of spirituality in its birth and of passion in the splendor of its tawdry dyes." Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1809, her father being a wealthy West Indian merchant of Eng- land. As a child she was singularly precocious, not merely in her early passion for rhyming, for nearly all children brought up in a bookish atmosphere have that, but in her taste for studies of the sort that com- pel hard work. She mastered Greek early in life, and in later years teUs of reading "the Greek Bible from Genesis to Malachi and not being stopped by the Chaldee." Not unnaturally this hectic activity of mind was attended by a lassitude of body. Always she was frail, and her fragility was increased when being in residence at the Enghsh resort, Torquay, for ^her health, she saw her adored brother drowned be- fore her eyes. Then for long years she lived, as Miss Mitford tells us, "confined to one large and com- modious, but darkened chamber, admitting only her own affectionate family and a few devoted friends; reading almost every book worth reading, in almost every language, and giving herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess." ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 379 Into the solitude of the darkened room, however, entered Cupid — under the circiimstances a most un- expected guest. The god of poetry invited the winged god of love, for some verses of Miss Barrett's attracted the attention of Robert Browning, six years younger than she, but already one of the great poets of Eng- land. He sought her out, and on his first visit, in the presence of her nurse, poured out his tale of love. He was promptly and naturally refused — "with all my will, but much against my heart," as she afterward wrote. But going away he renewed his entreaties by letter. It was long before any encouragement was given him. The woman he sought knew the physical frailty from which she suffered and hesitated to shackle the strength and abridge the Uberty of her hero with an ailing wife. This hesitation she has chronicled with but sHght concealment in her "Sonnets from the Portuguese." Browning's ardor overcame this im- pediment only to be confronted with another. Mr. Barrett, though in most respects a kind and indulgent father, was firm ui his conviction that none of his three daughters should marry. Elizabeth Barrett was well aware of this belief of her father's and for a long time the wooing of her accepted lover had to be done by post lest the obdurate parent discover it. One result of this was a series of love letters, poetic it is true in diction, but so intimate and fervid in expression that the taste of the son in permitting their later publica- tion was seriously criticized. In 1846 the two poets were secretly married in the parish chiu-ch of St. Marylebone. For a week the bride remained in her father's house, nursing her 380 WOMEN OF HISTORY secret; then taking her maid and a pet dog (even poets have their eccentricities) she joined her husband, and they set out for the continent. Never again did she enter her girlhood home; never again see the father who had been indulgent and loving until the moment when she stood with all her womanhood against his selfish whim. He was as good — or rather as bad — as his word, and never forgave her. Though she wrote letters stained with tears beseeching forgiveness, they were never answered, and in time were returned to her unopened. Jt is pleasant to record that the love of the hus- band, for whom she had given up her home, never burned less, and that their lives together form one of the idyls of married life. Happily Robert Browning had a competence of his own. Though in the end his writings and those of his wife turned that competence into a large fortune, the young couple might have starved while awaiting the belated financial returns of poesy. Meantime seeking a mild chmate and places where folks of their slender means might live, they sought out Italy and left their imprint upon Florence, Pisa, Siena, Venice and Rome. It was at Pisa that their son was born, and in Venice the gondoliers still point out to you on the Grand Canal the home he occupied after his parents' death. But Florence, the home of art, poetry and history, was their abiding home. There Mrs. Browning wrote most of the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," which her husband did not see until long after at Pisa, when he insisted on their publica- tion. "I dared not," he said, "reserve to myself the ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING 381 finest sonnets written since Shakespeare's." This burst of husbandly enthusiasm may be pardoned even though we remember Keats and Wordsworth. The long list of Mrs. Browning's poems need not be recounted here. Those by which she attained her highest standing as a poet are "Sonnets from the Portuguese" and "Casa Guidi Windows." About "Aurora Leigh," a novel in verse, critics differ yet. In its time it had a vogue like that Owen Meredith's "LuciUe" won later. So long did the Brownings Hve in Florence and so earnestly did both with their pens labor for that unity of Italy which has since become a fact, that the Flor- entines placed a tablet to her memory above the door of the house they occupied. Near the Pitti Palace, whither aU tourists turn their steps, you will find her "Casa Guidi," and above its door this inscription in Itahan : "Here wrote and died EUzabeth Barrett Browning, who to the heart of a woman joined the science of a scholar and the spirit of a teacher, and who made, with her golden verse, a nuptial ring between Italy and England. Grateful Florence places this memorial." It was there in "Casa Guidi," where her happiest hours had been lived, that Elizabeth Barrett Brown- ing died. The vision of the poet was with her to the last, and, djdng, she seemed to gaze upon some scene of heavenly glory. So, gazing, she cried aloud, "It is beautiful," and thus passed away. MARY ANN EVANS (1819-1880) "geokge ELIOT," England's most famous woman NOVELIST RARELY has a great novelist developed so tardily as George Eliot. Ordinarily the '- imaginative faculty, like the poetic aspiration, is a gift of nature. Great novelists, like great poets, as a rule, are bom, not made. But at thirty- five years of age this one was translating Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico Politicus" and believing that in that sort of grubbing lay her life's work. Two years later all England was reading "Amos Barton" and other stories from the "Scenes from Clerical Life" and wondering who was hiding behind the pseudonym "George Eliot." It is curious that among all who entered this literary guessing contest Charles Dickens was the only one who tenaciously insisted that the writer must be a woman. Mary Ann Evans — she ultimately combined the first two names into "Marian" — ^was born in War- wickshire, England, of parents in comfortable circum- stances. Her father was agent for a large estate and many of the scenes and characters in her novels were drawn from the places and playfellows of her youth. Particularly to her early environment was due her (382) GEOKCK ]:i,l()T From Vie pdinting bij Frcdtrid.: Biirlun, A ulujinil I'oilniil Oiilh ri/ MARY ANN EVANS 383 accurate knowledge of the character, habits and dialect of the EngUsh peasant. Her parent's means were sufficient to secure for her a thorough education, particularly in modern languages, which she supple- mented by omnivorous reading. The first hterary work of Miss Evans was the trans- lation into EngUsh of the "Life of Christ," by David Strauss. This task took three years and we are in- formed that it was "a remarkable success." As we fiirther learn that for the work she received $100 and twenty-five copies of the book, we are moved to wonder at the elastic meaning of that word "success." For nearly five years she seems to have done no literary work, but in 1851 she was invited to become assistant editor of the Westminster Review. Though she wrote but little for the Review, her work being editorial chiefly, she was brought into contact with the most eminent Hterary figures of the day. One article of hers on women noveUsts is readable to-day. It pre- dicted great success for women writers of fiction, though at the moment she could hardly have dreamed that she herself would be one of the most successful; and she declared that while women might excel in the Uttle domestic lovelorn and pathetic novels, they were "unequal to such an effort of imaginative history as 'Ivanhoe' or 'Old MortaUty.' " The latter judgment falls rather flat in view of her own magnificent his- torical presentment of the life of Florence in "Romola." Shelley says that men "Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 384 WOMEN OF HISTORY Marian Evans had to learn romance to write ro- mance. The divine fire of love came to her in the person of George Henry Lewes, an editor, critic and literary worker of high intellect and wide culture. But he was already married. Because of his wife's notorious misconduct he had long ceased to live with her, but the English law of that time made divorce possible only to people of large means. For a time the clash between man-made morals and an affection which later proved to be as pure and stimulating as the world ever knew seemed irrepressible. In the end the pair quietly ended the difficulty by pronouncing vows to each other and holding themselves as truly married as though by a canon of the church. Whatever moralists may say of the affair, it is the fact that but for this association the world would probably never have known the George Eliot novels. It was Lewes who first suggested to her that she try her hand at fiction, and stood by with cheer, sugges- tion and friendly criticism when, reluctantly and full of doubt, she made the effort. Her first book was "Amos Barton," which Mr. Lewes sent to the Blackwood house as an anonymous publication, one of a series yet to be written. Black- wood promptly recognized it as a masterpiece. Thack- eray and Dickens applauded it warmly, and the suc- cess it made was maintained by the others in the series, "Scenes from Clerical Life." By this time Blackwood, though still ignorant of the identity of his author, was clamorous for a long novel. She responded with "Adam Bede." Her earlier stories had appeared in magazines before book publication, MARY ANN EVANS 385 but this time she wished to go straight to the pubHc vpith the regulation three-volume edition. The pub- lisher demurred, but finally yielded. The novel was an instant success. Blackwood had agreed to pay $4,000 for the book, but its sales were so great that he actually paid $8,000. For "The Mill on the Floss" which followed, he paid $10,000, and a like amount for "Silas Marner." For her last book, "Daniel Deronda," George Smith, the publisher, offered $100,- 000, but she preferred serial publication first, saying a serious book was better judged by readers who obtained it in the leisurely month by month publica- tion in a magazine. Accordingly she sold him the book rights alone for $35,000. Besides these simis, Harper & Bros, paid for the American rights, in ac- cordance with their honorable practice, though there was then no international copyright, the following amounts: "Mill on the Floss," $1,500; "Middle- march," $6,000; Daniel Deronda, $8,500. In all, her literary earnings for twenty years approximated $150,000 — a considerable growth from the $100 paid for the translation of Strauss, which occupied three years. Her effort to remain imknown was frustrated by a pious fraud, the Rev. William Liggins, who, when the George Eliot novels became widely popular, pro- claimed himself the author. So cleverly did he sup- port his claim and so plausible was his evidence that he was gaining wide fame and social honors when the true author saw fit to divulge her identity. The in- telligence was a bit of a shock to her publisher. "I called her 'Dear George,' " said he later in speaking of his correspondence with his unknown author, "and 25 386 WOMEN OF HISTORY employed some expressions such as a man only uses to a man. After I knew her I was a little anxious to remember all I might have said." After her first success with "Adam Bede" the lot of George Eliot was cast in pleasant places. Lewes was widely popular, an ideal host, and a man of thor- ough cultivation. When we think how much of George Ehot's career was due to his incentive, one wonders how much more he himself might have been, had he not concentrated his efforts on her advance- ment. Their home was a center for London literary folk — the men chiefly, of course, for the women per- sisted until the end in regarding Miss Evans as a declassee. It was an age — or a moment — of extreme feminine priggishness, the era when Harriet Martineau declined an invitation to be the guest of honor at the Prime Minister's because his wife had not called on her "as a lady." In 1878 Lewes died. Little more than a year after, the brilhant woman, who had so long lived as his wife, amazed her friends by marrying, at the age of sixty-one, a gentleman named Cross, several years her junior. Though in no sense literary Mr. Cross sympathized sincerely with his wife's tastes, and after a long stay in Venice they returned to London and began again the Sunday afternoon receptions in which she dehghted. This happiness, however, she was not destined to enjoy long, for in December of 1880 she died after a brief iUness. MARGARET FULLER (1810-1850) AN INSPIEED CONVEBSATIONALIST TO win national fame and even a certain measure of immortality merely by brilliant conversa- tion is a triumph granted to but few — and those few chiefly women. One of these was Margaret Fuller, whose name is known in every cul- tivated household in America, but whose books repose dusty and forgotten on the shelves. I doubt whether one could be procured in any book store, other than those which make a feature of antiquarian literature. Yet Margaret was the friend and intellectual companion of Emerson, Thomas Wentworth Higgiason, Long- fellow and Hawthorne. Probably it was largely to her association with this Olympian company, to which may be added such lesser lights as James Freeman Clarke, Horace Greeley, George WiUiam Curtis and WiUiam Henry Channiug, that she owes her measure of fame. A man is known by the company he keeps, and Margaret's company was so distinctly literary that when a famous Boston pubhshing house planned a series of biographies of "American Men of Letters," the name of Margaret Fuller, with a fine disregard of sex, appeared early in the list of volumes. Besides, Hawthorne saw (387) 388 WOMEN OF HISTORY fit to draw from her the character of Zenobia in his "Blithedale Romance." Margaret Fuller was born in Cambridge in 1810. Her family were typical Bostonians. Her father, a "Jeffersonian Democrat," was a devoted adherent of John Quincy Adams, and represented the Middlesex district in Congress for one term. For the rest he was a moderately prosperous lawyer with what was then considered a gentleman's taste for the classics — a taste which has disappeared before golf and the magazines. Accordingly he set Margaret to studying Latiu at six, permitting as light reading Shakespeare, Cervantes and Molilre. Some portions of Shakespeare were held to be frivolous and Margaret records having been sent to bed in disgrace when detected in reading "Romeo and Juliet" on Sunday. In later years, Avriting of this severe intellectual regimen for a child not yet ten years old, Margaret said, "I certainly do not wish that instead of these masters I had read baby books, written down to children, but I certainly do wish that I had read no books at all till later — that I had lived with toys and played in the open air." Naturally precocious and forced by this hothouse training, Margaret had a miserable time when she left the home tutelage and went to school. She was intel- lectually in advance of her playmates and socially far behind those with whom she recited. "My book life and lonely habits had given a cold aloofness to my whole expression and veiled my manner with a hauteur which turned all hearts away." ' In effect Margaret had no childhood' whatsoever. At sixteen she was associating on terms of intellectual MARGARET FULLER 389 equality with that group of New England writers who still stand for all that is best in our national literature. From them we learn all that is worth knowing about her, as from her books we learn nothing. "Her pen is a non-conductor," said Emerson, expressing the idea that she was utterly unable to transmit to paper the brUliant ideas that continually flowed from her lips. Dr. Hedge, another contemporary, says of her: "She was always conspicuous by the brilliancy of her wit, which needed little provocation to break forth in exuber- ant saUies that drew around her a knot of Hsteners and made her the central attraction of the hour. One could form no adequate idea of her abihty without hearing her converse. . . . For some reason or other she could never deliver herself in print as she did with her Ups." And Emerson again, after she had paid him a visit, wrote, "I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked . . . She had an incredible variety of anecdotes, and the readiest wit to give an absurd turn to whatever passed; and the eyes which were so plain at first, soon swam with fim and drolleries and the very tides of joy and superabxmdant life." You may scan her writings in vain for any sign of that wit or humor. Reaching the years of womanhood, Margaret began the usual career of the New England spinster — she became a teacher. That her mental attainments were wide is sufficiently shown by the list of languages she taught. Latin and French at the school, and French, German and ItaHan to private classes were her tasks. She must have taught successfully, too, and not in the 390 WOMEN OF HISTORY i perfunctory fashion in which languages are so often taught to-day, for she "thought it good success when at the end of three months a class of begiuners could read twenty pages of German at a lesson, and very well." For light reading at home she chose Homer in the Greek. Yet she was not oblivious to the lighter things of Ufe. An anecdote is current of a visit which she paid ia company with Ralph Waldo Emerson to the theatre to see a famous French danseuse. The baUet was not then quite a common spectacle in Bos- ton, and the New England conscience looked askance on pink fleshings. But in the midst of the pas seule Emerson turned to his companion: "Margaret, that is poetry," said he. "No, Ralph," she responded, "it is religion." In 1846 Margaret went to Europe — the fulfilment of a life-long desire. There she met men and women of genius, such as Thomas Carlyle and George Sand — "a long, lean, Ultiag old maid," the Chelsea philosopher called her. More important, however, she also met her fate in the person of the young Marquis Ossoli, to whom, after a romantic courtship, she was married. He was a Catholic, and such inheritance as he expected might have been lost to him had the fact of his marriage been known, so it was concealed even after a child had been bom. The times were turbulent. The Italian revolution of 1848 was in progress, and Ossoli was a captain in the Civic Guard stationed in Rome. Mar- garet retired to a country place in the Apennines at the time of the birth of her child, but returned just in time to be caught in the siege of the Imperial City by the French, who were there to re-establish the authority MARGARET FULLER 391 of the pope. Ossoli was on duty with his corps; Mar- garet worked as a nurse in the hospital. All the while she was gathering material for a his- tory of the Italian struggle for independence, and when the war ended in failm-e she repaired to Florence and there wrote a large part of the book. It soon became evident that a visit to the United States would be necessary to secure a pubhsher, and with her husband, child and nurse she took ship for home. Running into a gale off the treacherous shoals of Fire Island the ship became a total wreck and aU the passen- gers — the OssoUs and a brother of Senator Sumner — perished in the sea. The destruction of the bark was hastened by the fact that in its hold was carried the sculptor Powers' statue of John C. Calhoun, now in Charleston, S. C. The Ossolis had been warned that so heavy a bulk of marble might endanger the ship, but had persisted in making the voyage. It is probable that in no society except that of Bos- ton in the first half of the nineteenth century could a fame like that of Margaret Fuller have been builded. Nothing she did was permanent. Her books are for- gotten and the Dial, which she edited, stands only on the shelves of professed bibUophiles. The manuscript of her most ambitious work, a history of the Italian revolution, was lost with her in the shipwreck. Yet she had the utmost faith in the power of her mind and the solidity of her reputation. To the astonished Emerson she once remarked, "I now know all the peo- ple in America worth knowing, and I find no intellect comparable to my own." And yet that dazzling intellect has left no monument. CHARLOTTE BRONTE (1816-1855) THE CREATOR OF JANE EYRE A BLEAKER home scarce could be painted than the rectory of Haworth, in which Charlotte '^ Bronte, with her talented sisters Emily and Anne, grew to maturity, aspired, toiled and won each her measure of fame and died. Cresting a gray hill, with a gray church to one side and the churchyard with gray tombstones on the other, its front windows looked down upon a little gray village, while on every side the moor rolled away to the horizon on gray biUows dotted here and there with gray patches that told of the grazing sheep. The thought of this broad, free moor and upland was ever with Charlotte, and in her pages one breathes; " . . . the breath of the moors fresh blown O'er leagues of clover and cold gray stone." In this bleak house abode for a time six children, scions of an Irish rector whom it would be the part of charity to call eccentric. Their mother died early; the father, a man of moods, and wholly self-centered, gave but Uttle thought to the youngsters and what he gave was scarce stimulating. Having all his own meals served in the privacy of his study, he imposed (392) CHARLOTTE BRONTE 393 upon them the strictest vegetarianism, potatoes and porridge being the extent of their feasts. Simplicity in dress he also enforced by such drastic measm-es as throwing out of the window a pair of bright-colored shoes, the gift of a neighbor, or tearing an offending silk dress to shreds and thrusting it into the fire. However, the children loved him, and it is not for a mere observer of their household life to condemn. Certain it is, however, that something about his paternal methods was fatal. Two of the five girls died early, fairly starved and chilled into consumption at a cheap school to which their father had sent them, and which, to judge from their brief references to it, must have resembled somewhat the famous — or infamous— Dotheboys Hall. The home circles then consisted of Charlotte, Anne, Emily and the brother, Branwell, a bright lad of whom much was expected, but upon whom fate descended with a heavy hand and who, after a life of dissipation somewhat due to a disgraceful and miserable love affair, died as the result of delirium. Curiously enough, on the day of his death his mind was normal, his conduct calm. Conscious that a weak will had led to the waste of his Ufe, he insisted on showing his final wiU power by dying standing, and he did thus face death on his feet, his blind father praying in a comer, his sisters weeping and imploring him to return to his bed. Of the three girls, all were unusual, all perhaps touched with genius, though whence it came or how it was nurtured cannot be discovered by a study of the crotchetty father or the narrow horizon that bounded their youth. All wrote and well. Emily's novels 394 WOMEN OF HISTORY "Wuthering Heights," has a terror and an unfolding of passion that keep it aUve to-day. Anne's novel, "Agnes Grey," was successful at the moment, but possessed less of permanent power than the writings of the other sisters. It is, however, with the most notable of the three sisters, Charlotte, that this sketch has chiefly to do. Older than the other two, she had shared with them the chill gray life of the Haworth vicarage, and with Emily had enjoyed a taste of school days in Brussels, whither the two went to fit themselves to open a girls' school at their home. The girls' school never materialized, to their pitiful disappointment. Despite ardent endeavors, pupils could not be lured to that lonely moor. But the taste of a wider life in Brussels broad- ened their minds and furnished the theme for Char- lotte's "Villette," which some esteem her best romance. Writing continually, the three girls kept the post busy with outgoing manuscripts — the pubhshers kept it equally busy bringing them back. But one day a much battered MS., "The Professor," by Charlotte, which had made the rounds, came back from Messrs. Smith & Elder, declined again to be sure, but accom- panied by so kindly a letter of appreciation that she vowed to write a book that should not be declined. She outlined the plot to her sisters that very night: "You can't make a book successful with a homely heroine," said one. "I will," responded Charlotte emphatically, "I'll show you a heroine as plain and small as myself who shall be as interesting as any of yours." From that resolve proceeded "Jane Eyre," and very CHARLOTTE BRONTE 395 quickly all England was reading the book and wonder- ing who was the "Currer Bell" who signed it. Critics were in the main kindly. "How well I remember," wrote Thackeray, "the delight, wonder and pleasure with which I read 'Jane Eyre/ sent to me by an unknown author whose name and sex were then alike miknown to me, and how, my own work pressing upon me, I could not, having taken the volmnes up, lay them down until they were read through." Her father, confronted^with the volume, and earnestly assured that his daughter had not been obliged to pay for its publication — the sisters had shortly before paid $150 for the pubUcation of a volume of verse — retired to his study to read it. When he emerged it was with this verdict: "Girls, do you know Charlotte has been writing a book and it is much better than likely!" The success of "Jane Eyre" brought Miss Bronte to the attention of the literary world, but her retiring disposition debarred her from much society. She called on Harriet Martineau, who remarks, "I thought her the smallest creature I ever saw (except at a fair) and her eyes blazed, as it seemed to me." Thackeray she met at a reception. "He is a man of very quiet demeanor," she wrote. "He is, however, looked upon with some awe and even distrust. His con- versation is very peculiar; too perverse to be pleasant." However, her social activities were few; by taste she preferred the quiet of Haworth. She did not feel with Mrs. Browning, ' "How dreary 'tis for women to sit EtiU On winter nights by solitary fires And hear the nations praising them, far off." 396 WOMEN OF HISTORY To her solitary fire came first death, for her two remaining sisters died a scant half year apart; then love, for the curate of her father's parish sought her in marriage. The blind and selfish father would not for a time hear of it, but in the end consented. Happy she was in the new hfe, but the happiness was short- Hved, for, wedded in June, she died in March. When one has read of the cheerless life she had led and the sore measure of affiiction that entered into it, one reads with sympathy her assurance to a friend, "I find my husband the tenderest nurse, the kindest support, the best earthly comfort a woman ever had." Harriet Martineau summed her up as one with "the deep intuition of a gifted woman, the strength of a man, the patience of a hero and the conscience of a saint," HARRIET liEECHiai .ST(J\\ HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896) THE LITTLE WOMAN WHO CAUSED A BIG WAE THE life story of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is one of those that carry a measure of consolation and of hope to the Hterary aspirant who has reached middle age devoid of either fame or fortune. For Mrs. Stowe was past forty when her trumpet blast against slavery set her in the front ranks of the world's army of progress and lifted her from a state of financial distress which at times narrowly approached absolute penury. Of her early Ufe there is little to say. Its story is as short and simple as the annals of the rest of God's poor. But she had in it the advantages of an educa- tion and continual association with people of cultiva- tion and of intellectual activity. Her father was a famous preacher and theologian, a quality which in that New England day was quite compatible with pov- erty. It was a time when the chief intellectual interest was theological, and the nature of the Uttle girl's edu- cation is somewhat indicated by a letter in which her sister noted that Harriet, then in her fifth year, had "committed to memory twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters from the Bible." We do not find this exploit mentioned in Harriet's own memoirs, but she (397) 398 WOMEN OF HISTORY does chronicle with some glee the discovery of a copy of the Arabian Nights at the bottom of a barrel of sermons and the perpetual joy with which she pored over it. In 1832 Dr. Beecher went to Cincinnati — then the "far west" — to. become president of a theological school. His daughter accompanied him, and for a time taught in a school for girls, but soon fell in love with the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, a professor in the theo- logical school. Professor Stowe was all that a husband should be save what the flippant call a "good pro- vider." His salary was $1,200, paid most irregularly; at one time his wife notes: "Six himdred is the very most we can hope to collect from our salary, once $1,200." But he encouraged her literary efforts as far as he could without giving her leisure for them, for children came fast and Mrs. Stowe was a devoted mother and housewife. Under such conditions she could write but little, yet what she did write was sala- ble and helped to prepare her for the moment when inspiration should break over her in such a storm as to carry away all other thoughts and duties. It was the acute period of the anti-slavery agitation. Cincinnati lay on the border line between the North and the slave-holding South. Through the city — through the Stowes' house, in fact — ran the "under- ground railroad" by which so many slaves were spirited away to Canada and freedom. Mrs. Stowe talked with many of the fugitives; she saw at first hand the scenes of slavery; she visited a Kentucky estate, afterward described in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as "Col- onel Shelby's plantation;" she witnessed anti-slavery HARRIET BEECHE R STOWE 399 riots in Cincinnati, and saw her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, then a young abolitionist editor, go heavily armed for fear of pro-slavery violence. Her friends and family were all abolitionist agitators, and when her sister said, "Now, Hattie, if I could use the pen as you can, I would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is," she registered a vow that that service she would perform. Sitting iQ church — and paying, it is feared, lax atten- tion to the sermon — the plan of her book flashed upon her. On her retm-n to her home she sat down at once and wrote out the chapter on Uncle Tom's death, thus beginning her work curiously enough with what was practically its close. When she read it aloud to her boys, ten and twelve years old, they burst into tears, and one cried out, "Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cruel thing in the world." Forged at white heat, "Uncle Tom" first saw the hght in the New Era of Washington. For this publica- tion the author received $300. Many other papers copied it and it had soon attained such a measure of national fame that a Boston pubUsher put it into book form and sold 300,000 copies the first year. His first payment on account of fom- months' royalties was $10,000, the equivalent of the joint earnings of Profes- sor and Mrs. Stowe for about ten years. In England, where no copyright protectedjthe pubHshers, it was issued by eighteen houses in editions ranging in cost from 6d. (12 cents) to 16s. ($4) a copy, and in twelve months more than a miUion and a half copies were sold. It was translated into nineteen languages, drama- 400 WOMEN OF HISTORY tized and people are still viewing it on the stage. It is impossible to estimate the number of people who have laughed at Marks, the lawyer, and Topsy; shud- dered at Legree and wept with Uncle Tom and Little Eva, The author herself was dazed at its success. "I the author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin ' ? " she exclaimed. ' ' No, indeed. The Lord himself wrote it, and I was the hum- blest of instruments in His hand. To Him alone should be given all the praise." Eidogized at home and abroad — ^for twice in the next five years she visited Europe — Mrs. Stowe now came to know fame and prosperity that might well blot out the recollection of her early privations. Presented to Abraham Lincoln, the tall, gaunt President looked down upon her quizzically and exclaimed, "Is this the little woman that caused the great war?" In England she was Uonized as foreign royalty never had been. At Glasgow she drank tea with 2,000 people by her own account. At Edinburgh she was presented with a "national penny offering, consisting of a thousand gold sovereigns on a magnificent silver salver." Every English city had for her a new ovation. Returning home she settled down to creditable and profitable Uterary work. Though none of her subse- quent books could equal the triumph of her first, yet "Dred," "The Pearl of Orr's Island," and "The Mm- ister's Wooing," formed a vital part of the literatm-e of the day. When the thunderblast of civil war had passed by she bought an orange grove on the St. John's River and settled down there to a life of scholarly lei- sure. The coming on of old age and death, which for her came in 1896, she viewed with calmness. HARRIET BEECHER STQWE 401 "I feel," she wrote, "like a poor woman I once read about: "'Who always was tired 'Cause she lived in a house Where help wasn't hired,' and of whom it is related that in her dying moments 'She folded her hands With her latest endeavor, Saying nothing, dear nothing, Sweet nothing for ever.' " as MADAME DUDEVANT (1804-1876) ONE must put in quotation marks the name "George Sand," known wherever romance is read, and explain laboriously that the real name of the woman who bore it and made it famous was Amandine Lucile Aurore Dudevant. How the woman whose books enraptured the world came to adopt a man's name for her nom de plume may well be told at the very opening of this sketch of her career. Mme. Dudevant, separated from her husband and suppUed by him with an .allowance of $600 a year for herself and two children, was living in the Latin Quarter of Paris and using her best endeavors to eke out that slender income by painting china, writing for the Figaro at seven francs a column, turning her hands and mind to anything she could do. Her first month's earnings in the practice of journalism amounted to $3. Naturally her circumstances were decidedly straitened. It was at this time she adopted man's clothing — not in any radical revolt against woman's garb, but merely for reasons of economy. She tells the story herself in her autobiography: "My thin boots wore out in a few days. I forgot to hold up my dress, and covered my petticoats with (402) In, nil III, ,lr,i,rlii,j I,,/ I. Cil,, iimll.i MADAME DUDEVANT 403 mud. ... I generally returned from the expedi- tions I took, dirty, weary and cold, whereas my young men acquaintances had none of these inconveniences to submit to. I therefore had a long gray cloth coat made with waistcoat and trousers to match. When the costume was completed by a gray felt hat and a loose woolen cravat no one could have guessed that I was not a young student in my first year." It was the real life of a student of the quarter she led in those Bohemian days following her separation from her husband. Among its incidents was a liaison with one Jules Sandeau, with whom she shared the authorship of two books which created little stir, but served her for a literary apprenticeship. The pair also shared the same garret in the easy-going student quarter of the left bank of the Seine, but this partner- ship was abruptly broken off when after a brief visit to the coimtry she returned to find her place occupied by a lady following the inartistic vocation of a laimdress. The dissolution of the literary co-partnership followed that of the more tender one. It is curious to consider the philosophy with which this was accomplished. The two novels written in collaboration bore the name of Jules Sand. When Mme. Dudevant went for her outing a new novel was planned to be called "Indiana" and which they were to write together. When she returned with her share finished she foimd that Sandeau had not touched pen to paper. When he read her chapters he declared the book to be a masterpiece, as did the pubHsher to whom it was presented. But what should be the name of the author? Mme. Dudevant was for the old partnership name, but Sandeau, though 404 WOMEN OF HISTORY sadly indiscreet with his laundress, was still a man of honor in literary affairs. He had written none of the book, and would not accept even the slender fame that woidd accrue from the use of the old nom de plume. So, as it was St. George's Day on which this dis- cussion arose, the publisher suggested that George be substituted for Jules, and with the name of George Sand thus fixed upon, Mme. Dudevant conquered the world of letters. Heredity may have played some part in vesting George Sand with the singularly elastic code of morals vmder which she lived — for Sandeau was neither the first nor the last of her affinities. The bar sinister appeared in her ancestry, her father being the son of an illegitimate daughter of Marshal Saxe. But one is inclined rather to ascribe her vagaries to the worthless- ness of the husband, Casimir Dudevant, to whom she was married at the age of eighteen. In her earlier years the girl, Aurore Dupin, had lived with her grand- mother, who was something of a free thinker, and was educated by a tutor who, having been a priest in youth, had become a devoted follower of Rousseau. On the death of her grandmother, and finding life with her mother insupportable, she married, expecting little affection and finding none. Curiously enough, the husband, too, was of illegitimate parentage. Their life was miserable. His tastes were for the hunt and the table. He would be gone for days, chasing stags or shooting pheasants. On his return he would spend most of his time feasting with his fellow huntsmen on the trophies of the chase and drinking deeply. It is no wonder that a young wife, whose siupassing intellect rose above vulgar things, finally repudiated him. MADAME DUDEVANT 405 Her married life ended when she was definitely divorced from her husband. By this time she had written the novel "Indiana" and had become one of the personages of Parisian literary society — a society not paralleled anywhere else, for it brought her into touch with Balzac, Felix Pyat, de Musset, Chopin, Matthew Arnold, our own American Margaret Fuller, Gustave Flaubert and more of the great minds of literature than can here be noted. Nothing in her early training, in her husband's treatment, in her struggles in the Latin Quarter, made for the sort of morals to which we Americans hold. Chopin and de Musset followed Sandeau. The tender care she took of Chopin in Italy when he was slowly dying of consumption, should surely excuse a love imblessed by churchly observance. Writing in these later days, when excuse is seldom made for such lapses as George Sand was guiltj of, it is impossible to explain adequately the position she held in her time. The greatest folk of the moment forgot her Liszt, her Chopin, her de Musset. They recognized her mind and forgot her morals. Matthew Arnold, one of the finest examples of the EngHsh imi- versity prig, in a moment of unusual hberahty, said of her, "Her passions and her errors have been abundantly talked of. She left them behind her, and men's memory will leave them behind also. . . . There will remain an admiring and ever widening report of that great and ingenuous soul, simple, affectionate, without vanity, without pedantry, human, equitable, patient, kind." Her books? They are many — too many to catalogue 406 WOMEN OF HISTORY here. "Consuelo" is the chief one. "Indiana" and "La Comtesse de Rudolstadt" the next in order of interest. These are easily obtainable at any public library in translations and are certainly better reading than some of the machine-made novels of this decade. In her later years George Sand led a life ideal for the literary worker and which helped to make up for the vicissitudes of her youth. Venice and Florence knew her well, and wherever she was she wrote and wrote with an industry that betokened love for literary expression as well as the need of money to support her not simple tastes. In a letter to her friend Louis Aulbach in 1869 she wrote: "I have earned about a million with my writings (she refers to francs, being about $200,000); I have not put away a single sou. . . . I have always lived from day to day from the fruits of my labor, and that I consider as insxn-ing the most happiness. I thus have no pecuniary anxiety and I do not fear robbers." June 8, 1876, George Sand died peacefully, and with her last hoiu-s in full accord with her favorite maxim, "Calme, toujours plus de calme." Her last days were as quiet as her early ones had been stormy. About her were gathered the friends she liked best — the great ones of the world's literature. MLLE. DE LA RAMEE (1839-1908) THE "oUIDA" beloved OF SCHOOL GIRLS THE average reader who listlessly turns the pages of the professional literary critics must wonder if to be merely entertaining is not a grave crime in an author, while to write books of really engrossing interest, stories that grip your attention and hold it to the last page, is not a positive crime to be expiated by a period in the critical stocks. It is only the literary caterer who is thus harshly judged for recognizing that different tastes demand different viands. Nightingales tongues doubtless formed a very appetizing dish in the palace of Heliogabalus, but shall we scorn an extra porterhouse in a real chop house with sporting prints and a sanded floor? Or, to carry our simile to its intended conclusion, because Mrs. Browning was delicately poetic and George Eliot staidly intellectual, may we not gallop madly with "Bertie" or die nobly with "Cigarette" in Ouida's "Under Two Flags"? What glorious hard riding, heavy gambling, madly loving men were "Ouida's" moustached guardsmen, who would toss away a title and a career rather than compromise in public a woman whom in private they had more than compromised ! If none such ever existed (407) 408 WOMEN OF HISTORY they should have, and we thank the more her imagi- nation for creating them. If not true to life, she beUeved they were; and her knowledge of guardsmen was not limited. Indeed, her acquaintance with the great soared even higher. "I am the only woman," she once said to Oscar Wilde, who had enquired the secret of her literary success, "who knows how two Dukes talk when they are alone." Perhaps the testi- mony of the Dukes might be worth while, but at any rate the conversations as she reported them always satisfied the zest of her readers for ducal dialogues. Mile, de la Ramee — the "de la" being perhaps her earliest essay in fiction, as it was lacking in her father's name — systematically enshrouded in mystery all details of her early life, and would have been equally secretive about her later days had it been possible. "The interviewer," she once remarked, "is the vilest spawn of the most ill-bred age that the world has ever seen." So out of the dimness of her past we gather only that she was born in St. Edmimds early in 1839, grew up in Paris, where she was the constant companion of her father, who was passionately fond of gambling. "Ouida" inherited this taste: her knowledge of the gambhng hells of Paris and London is encyclopedic, and the gentle whirr of the roulette ball and the cry of the croupier efiho constantly in her pages. Early in the sixties Mile, de la Ramee and her mother went to London to live. The girl had already done some writing of fiction that showed quality. One of her earhest stories, written when she was barely seventeen, appeared in a "Service" magazine, and this fact may have led her to look to the army for MADAME DE LA RAMEE 409 heroes and for readers alike. She had hardly settled in London before she began writing systematically, brilliantly and voluminously. During the sixties she published in rapid succession "Strathmore," "Chan- dos" and "Under Two Flags," and had become both famous and wealthy. With her mother she lived at the Langham Hotel, entertaining brilliantly, among her literary guests being Sir Richard and Lady Bur- ton, Tom Taylor, of Punch, Whyte Melville and Ser- geant Ballantine — a highly literary company, indeed, but one cannot but suspect that "Ouida" preferred the scarlet coats of her heroes the guardsmen who flocked in throngs to do her honor. The time was favorable for "Ouida's" peculiar art. The flood of translations of French fiction had not yet begun, and such books as were translated were expiurgated to the point of inanity. She introduced the French method into English fiction. There was none quite like her in the English field, for she brought to her readers ideas, manners and morals — or immorals — which were familiar to readers of Continental liter- ature. She hated English fiction, wrote as unlike its school as possible, , and succeeded amazingly. Her books sold by the millions and her wealth seemed to her unlimited and inexhaustible. Unhappily those are excellent qualities which wealth seldom possesses, as poor "Ouida" was destined to learn. When her vogue was at its highest she went to live in Florence, where one may stUl hear stories of her ridiculous extravagance. They tell of her "driving daily through the streets in an orange-colored dress, with a black mantilla of lace, her carriage lined 410 WOMEN OF HISTORY with turquoise-blue leather." It was the high noon of her prosperity. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, writing of poverty and poesy, said: "A man should live in a garret aloof, And have a few friends, and go poorly clad. With an old hat stopping a chink in the roof To keep the goddess constant and glad." Prosperity and profligacy did not agree with "Ouida's" goddess of fiction. Critics generally agree that the quality of her work began to deteriorate after "Under Two Flags." Even her style changed. Pub- lished anonymously the work of the same author would have been detected in "Chandos" and "Under Two Flags," but they have few points in common with "In a Winter City" or "Moths." Perhaps an unfortimate love affair with an Italian gentleman may have insensibly affected her thought. She was all devotion, even passion. He was coldly indifferent, a fact which she attributed to the machinations of ene- mies. To throw off depression she plunged into count- less extravagances. She was as splendid in her follies as one of her own heroes. Never was what the French caU a debacle — a smash- up — ^more complete. The brilliant woman, deserted by false friends — ^for in Florence she had fallen into the hands of spurious aristocrats who preyed upon her — was reduced to abject poverty and became the object of friendly contributions. In this fallen state she died in Italy, January 25, 1908. HELEN HUNT JACKSON (1831-1885) THE Indian's devoted friend THE friend of the Indian, the author of a "Cen- tury of Dishonor", and a poet and noveUst of high achievement, is not to be looked upon as a woman of one book. Yet after all it is probably as the author of "Ramona," that beautiful and pathetic story of the redman's wrongs, "the Uncle Tom's Cabin of the Indian," that she will chiefly be remembered. And that doubtless is due to the essen- tial, nay even the literal, truth of the story. As lately as 1907 the kindly CathoUc priest who gently led the author to tell the tale, and who himself figured in its pages as "Father Caspar d" the bearded priest, "more a soldier than a man of God," was laid to his long rest in a San Diego churchyard. Father Ubach had known the hapless pair whom Helen Htmt depicted in her romance. He had been confessor, comforter and counsellor to Ramona and Alessandro. He married them in the ancient adobe mission church at old San Diego, guided and aided them through life, and blessed the grave in which Alessandro was laid away, the victim of a land pirate's greed. Throughout Ramona's widowed life the good priest stood her friend, and her story, full of the wrong- (411) 412 WOMEN OF HISTORY dping of the white oppressor and the sufferings of the Indian maid, he told to the white weaver of tales. Mrs. Jackson, always a wide traveler, had visited San Diego for her health when she met the priest. Her Uterary laurels were already thick and well won. Born in Amherst, Mass., educated at the famous school of the Abbott brothers in Union Square, New York, married happily to an army officer, Major Edward B. Hunt, she had thought of literature only as a study and a pastime until sorrow came into her life. Her hus- band was killed while experimenting with a submarine gun of his own invention. Two years later her little boy died, saying with his last breath, "Promise me. Mamma, that you will not kill yourself." Death came very close to her in the days of her sorrow and it was perhaps her turning to creative literature that some- what stilled her grief and saved her life. At thirty-four she took up painstaking literary work. She held it an art to be mastered — not a matter of sud- den inspiration. Of one book, "Outdoor Papers," by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, she said, "It has been my model for years. I go to it as a text-book, and have actually spent hours at a time, taking one sen- tence after another and experimenting upon them; trying to see if I could take out a word or transpose a clause and not destroy their perfection." Study of this sort gives the author faciUty in handling his tools — words and phrases — but does not supply the elevated thoughts they are employed to express. These thoughts nature had given her. The poems she published over the initials "H. H." were eagerly looked for in humble cottages and in the HELEN HUNT JACKSON 413 studies of poets and philosophers. Someone asked Emerson if he did not think her the first of American woman poets, and he answered musingly, "Perhaps we might as well omit the woman." She began early the publication of fugitive essays, and travel articles chiefly in the Independent. She was peculiarly happy ia descriptions of life in foreign lands, or of scenery and conditions in portions of our own country like Colorado, New Mexico and California, which in her day were not on the tourist route. I thiak that even in this sophisticated day, when everybody has been everywhere, and all-knowing magazine editors say that travel sketches are no longer read, any reader will be well repaid who gets her volume, "Glimpses of Three Coasts," and tastes its quality. To the art of the poet and the essayist she added that of the writer of fiction. The world will never know if she wrote the stories signed "Saxe Hohn" which created so much interest in the last half of the nineteenth century. That is one of the best-kept literary secrets of the age. Claimants to the honor there were in plenty — one for example claiming to have dropped the MS. in the street and demanding of the editor of Scribner's that it be returned to him. He, however, was put to flight by the bland request that he write and exhibit some poetry as good as that in "Draxy Miller." H. H. always denied the authorship — if untruthfully, no one, not even her dearest friends, could say why. Yet acute critics saw traces of the same hand in these tales and in her acknowledged writings Hke "Mercy Philbrick's Choice," "Hetty's Strange History" and some of her poems. Moreover, 414 WOMEN OF HISTORY the title of one of the "Saxe Hohn" stories, "The One- Legged Dancers," appears in her "Bits of Travel." At any rate her denials were naet with incredulity, but the secret is a secret still and bids fair to be one to eternity. In 1876 Mrs. Hunt married William Sharpless Jack- son, a gentleman of culture, and went to live at his home in Colorado Springs. Then she first began to observe the innumerable injustices and cruelties the nation was inflicting upon the Indians. Individual instances coming imder her observation horrified her and enlisted her in a fight for justice. From a poet she became a crusader — not an uncommon transi- tion, by the way, as the one must needs possess many of the quaHties of the other. Seeing with her eyes what was being done about her, she determined to see with the eyes of others what had been done ia the past and in other sections. So, forsaking her beloved Colorado home, she immured herself in the Astor Library in New York and after three months of toil emerged with "A Century of Dishonor" — the damning record, of the treatment of the Indians. A copy of this book she sent to every member of Congress, receiv- ing therefor "more kicks than half -pence." Her hterary study of the Indian question she sup- plemented by personal observation — visiting their villages, staying in their tents, attending their camp- fires and hstening to their recoimtals of their suffer- ings. She won their confidence — no easy thing with the American aborigine — and in many villages they called her "queen". Then, at the instance of the good priest of San Diego, came "Ramona". The book was HELEN HUNT JACKSON 415 instantly successful and years after her death was selling largely. Of it she said when facing death, "I am heartily, honestly and cheerfully ready to go. In fact I am glad to go. My 'Century of Dishonor' and 'Ramona' are the only things I have done of which I am glad now. They will live and they will bear fruit. They already have. The change in pub- lic feeling on the Indian question in the last three years is marvelous; — an Indian Rights Association in every large city ia the land." She died August 8, 1885, and lies buried near the top of Cheyenne Mountain, four miles from Colorado Springs, in a spot of her own choosing, lonely as the grave of some chieftain of that red race she served so well. MARY LAMB (1764-1841) CHAKLES lamb's ADORING SISTER FRENCH literature with its romantic loves of Aucassin and Nicolette, or Paul and Virginia, or for that matter French history with its half- legendary record of the joys and woes of Abe- lard and Heloise, can tell no such simple tale of pure and spiritual affection as that of Charles and Mary Lamb. Nor can the hterature of any land, or the annals of any age, record so pleasant a tale of simple happi- ness, snatching from distress, and straitened means amounting at times to poverty, every opportunity for quiet pleasure and making the most of the good the gods allowed. As Charles Lamb put it, they were "determined to take what snatches of pleasure we can between the acts of our distressful drama, like those, as it has been finely said, who have just escaped from earthquake or shipwreck find a thing for grateful tears in the mere sitting quiet at home, under the well 'til the end of days." Their "distressful drama," as readers of "Elia" know, was the recurrent madness of the sister, which, hitherto imsuspected, broke forth one day at table when she seized a carver and thrust it into her mother's side, killing her instantly. Hurried to an asylum Mary (416) MARY LAMB 417 slowly recovered her reason, and was released only upon her brother's promise to personally watch over her. The evil was recurrent. When the brother and sister made their holiday journeys a strait-jacket was always part of the provision taken, for, strangely enough, the outbursts of madness seemed always to attend some moment of especial pleasure. Happily the preliminary symptoms could be discerned by the victim, who was thus enabled to warn her brother in time, and friends more than once met them with stream- ing eyes walking across the fields to the little private asylum whither Mary resorted at such times. Natu- rally it was difficult for them to live in the coimtry because of neighborhood gossip, and out of that fact Lamb conjured one of his wisest reflections — "we can nowhere be private except in the midst of a great city." He who best knew and loved his London was clearly able to discern the essential solitude of city life. The Temple, that green oasis, that almost cloistered retreat walled in by gray buildings, entered by an arch- way leading off the roaring Strand and Fleet Street, was the scene of many of the acts in the lives of the Lambs. There Mary was born in 1764, and there, too, Charles first saw the light ten years later. They were the children of genteel poverty — an estate only too weU known in England and from which escape is nigh impossible. The story of Charles Lamb's long service as a clerk at India House is familiar, and the essay in which he tells of his strange sense of exile when, being retired on a pension, he no longer of a morning climbed his high stool and addressed himself to his ledger, is one of his best bits of quaint humor. 27 418 WOMEN OF HISTORY Charles was essentially a literary man. He loved writing for writing's sake, for the sense of creative ability it gave him. Not so Mary. The keen prompt- ings of poverty impelled her to write, and, without begrudging her a high order of talent, her own story leads us to believe that the gentle touch of her brother had much to do with the quality of her Shakespearian tales. Of these she wrote: "Charles has begun some- thing which will produce a Httle money, for it is not well to be very poor, which we certainly are at the present writing." And later, when the "Tales" had begun to produce revenue, she wrote in glee, "I go on very well and have no doubt but I shall always hit upon such kind of a job to keep going on. I think I shall get fifty pounds (1250) a year at the lowest calcula- tion." Yet she neither "hit upon" nor sought another such job. The "Tales," besides bringing in some money, introduced Charles to the pubhc, so that he was able to earn enough for their needs, and she wrote little more. Was this from indifference to literary work, or from a sisterly self-sacrifice and the wish to let her brother enjoy the literary distinction alone? I incHne to believe the latter the case. Like George Henry Lewes, who subordinated his own Uterary talent to stimulate that of George Eliot, Mary Lamb may have stifled her own genius that her brother's might shine without rivalry in his own home. With added prosperity the pair moved back again to the Temple which they had for a time abandoned. Charles Lamb loved the quaint retreat. "In my best room," he writes, "is a choice collection of Hogarths, MARY LAMB 419 an English painter of some humor. In my next best are some shelves containing a small but well-chosen library. My best room commands a court, in which there are trees and a pmnp, the water of which is excel- lent cold, with brandy, and not so very insipid with- out." The accident of a cat crying behind a wainscot fur- nished them with more rooms and without, as Mary notes, the trouble of paying rent for them. For on tearing away the paneling of the old house four unten- anted, unowned rooms were discovered of which they gradually took possession. One of these Mary decreed shovild be the work room, and furnished it usefully but not sumptuously with a kitchen table and chair. "But ... he could do nothing in that dull, imfurnished room." So "my brother and I almost covered the walls with prints, for which pm-pose he cut out every print from every book in his old Ubrary, coming in every now and then to ask my leave to strip a fresh poor author — which he might not do, you know, without my permission, as I am elder sister." To this room came an Olympianjcompany on "the Lambs' Wednesday nights." Coleridge, Talfourd, HazUtt, Godwin — all the Uterary crew whose names, have become famous. It was not all feast of reason and flow of soul. A participant tells of "cold roast lamb or boiled beef; the heaps of smoking roasted potatoes and the vast jug of porter, often replenished from the foaming pots which the best shop of Fleet Street suppUed." For Coleridge was perhaps a small decanter of the juice of the poppy, for that philosopher shared with De Quincey the doubtful fame of an opium 420 WOMEN OF HISTORY eater. The spring water cold with brandy was there and "Miss Lamb . . . turned now and then an anxious, loving eye on Charles, which was softened into a half-humorous resignation to the inevitable as he mixed his second tumbler." As for the goddess herself, she took snuff — and prodigiously. As years passed on, Mary's fits of madness became more frequent, so that Charles wrote sadly that their recurrence "might help me to sustain her death bettei than if we had no partial separation." But in the end he died before her, though they had felt that she, being ten years the elder and thus afflicted, would pass away first. To the aid of the bereaved sister, almost help-r less in her affliction, came hosts of friends and she was tenderly cared for for thirteen lonely years, when in 1841 she too passed away and her body was laid to rest beside that of her brother in a grassy churchyard of Edmonton. FRANCES TROLLOPE (1782-1863) WHOSE BOOK ON AMERICA ENRAGED A NATION BEING fifty years old, never having written a line for publication, but being in the American idiom "stone broke," it occurred to Mrs. Thomas Anthony TroUope, an English woman of good family, to recoup her fortunes by writing a book about the "Domestic Manners of the Ameri- cans." Her qualifications in the way of observation were that she had spent three days in New Orleans and rather more than two years in Cincinnati, with brief visits to New York and Washington, about 1830. By way of fitting her to be judicial and fair she had lost her last dollar in a "bazaar" she thought to establish in the Ohio city. The book, however, though the reflection of untrained Uterary endeavor, insufficient observation and a nat- ural bitterness against the land which had devoured the remnant of her savings, made a colossal hit. The British, hating us, bought it eagerly. The Ameri- cans, touched on the raw by her criticisms, many of which were wholly just, purchased it privily and denounced it savagely. Every cry of rage sold more books, and the good lady who had been counting her pennies now began drawing her royalties by the (421) 422 WOMEN OF HISTORY thousands of dollars. Exultant with success, she embarked on a literary career, and though beginning at fifty years of age, departed this life with one hundred and fifteen volumes to her credit — ^all of which, save the one which founded her fame and her fortune, are forgotten. No candid American who will read Mrs. TroUope's much berated book to-day, and compare it with the writings of some of our own historians, notably Pro- fessor McMaster, will deny that the measure of truth in what she wrote was exceedingly large. The outcry of the Americans of the day must have been based on the abandoned doctrine "the greater the truth the greater the libel." Their provincialism was indeed made even more manifest by their supersensitiveness than by Mrs. Trollope's criticisms. Their defense was often worse than the offense. Mrs. Trollope had seen fit to smile at the prudery which led the maids and matrons of Cincinnati to turn their heads away from the opera stage and simu- late a blush when the ballet appeared. It is indeed an affectation of modesty most excellently cured by the stage of to-day, which perhaps might be better for some shred of it. Present-day readers of the North American Review, however, can hardly imagine even that staid periodical condemning Mrs. Trollope's flippancy, and denouncing the ballet first, "because females not lost to shame could be found to perform it on the stage; and second that they could find men and women of character to sanction the exhibition in the boxes." Mrs. Trollope further laughed at the hesitation of a too prudish miss to mention so intimate FRANCES TROLLOPE 423 a garment as a shirt in masculine presence. The Review upholds the young lady, assuming somewhat the austere mood of Mr. George Sampson's prospective mother-in-law when that embarrassed young gentle- man sought to excuse his improper mention of an under petticoat with the plea, "After all, ma'am, you know we know it's there." Most of Mrs. Trollope's comments on the manners and customs of the Americans she saw were just, and are so admitted by Americans to-day. Her error lay in taking her limited horizon to be coincident with the boundaries of the nation and in accepting Cin- cinnati in 1830 as the most typical town, whereas it was really only the greatest market for hogs. The stately life of the planters of Virginia and of Kentucky she had no opportunity to see. New England, then the intellectual stronghold of the land, she never visited. A "reduced gentlewoman" of England, broken in pocket by an imhappy speculation in commerce, she was not at all likely to be at home in the better circles of New York or Philadelphia. No doubt she saw all she described, and for that matter we can in a later day see it for oiu-selves in some of om- not wholly rural commimities. The curious awkwardness which divides the sexes into two hostile camps at social gatherings is not imcommon at rural "parties" to-day. Neither is it unknown in England, if Mr. Arnold Bennett's novels have truth. Nor are we quite purged of tobacco chewers and their target practice, of voracity at public tables, or of the overuse or misuse of the table knife. And per- 424 WOMEN OF HISTORY chance there are those amongst us who will sympathize with her wonder expressed over long sermons on hot summer Sundays by preachers carried away with vanity and verbosity. But enough. Perhaps Mrs. TroUope's scolding did us good. Certain the clamorous retort of oiu" press andlpeople did her good. She carried back to England nothing but 600 pages of a manuscript diary, but it proved a greater fortune than any nugget found in CaHfornia's sands. With it she put her unpractical husband on his financial feet once more; educated her son Anthony and launched him on a Hterary career more creditable than her own; and established her- self as a woman of letters. Her daughter-in-law writes of her: "She had never before earned a shilling. She almost immediately received a considerable smn from the publishers — amounting to two sums of £400 ($2,000) each — within a few months, and from that moment until her death, at any rate for twenty years, she was in receipt of a considerable sum from her writings." I have noted the fact that once fairly fallen into a sort of hterary frenzy, Mrs. Trollope abated nothing of her activity until 115 volumes stood listed in her name on the pubhshers' catalogues. Such literary fecundity is terrifying. It suggests the need of an authors' trades imion for the regulation of hours and of output. A writer in a London weekly observed at the time of her death: "The reckless production of books seems to the literary artist almost as immoral as the reckless pro- duction of children does to the sociologist. Thus the FRANCES TROLLOPE 425 story of Frances TroUope and her 115 volumes per- petrated in twenty-four years arouses the same sen- sation in the reader as a newspaper report of the birth of triplets." Personally Mrs. TroUope seems to have been a woman of great charm. She was adored by her sons, and one of these sons, Anthony, the more distinguished one, put what we may take as the fairest estimate of his mother's first book thus : "No observer was certainly ever less quaUfied to judge of the prospect or even of the happiness of a young people. No one could have been worse adapted by nature for the task of learning whether a nation was in a way to thrive. Whatever she saw she judged, as most women do, from her own standing point. If a thing was ugly to her eyes, it ought to be ugly to all eyes. . . . What though people had plenty to eat and clothes to wear, if they put their feet upon the tables and did not reverence their betters? The Americans were to her rough, uncouth and vulgar — and she told them so. Her volumes were very bitter, but they were very clever and they saved the family from ruin." MARTHA WASHINGTON (1732-1802) IT is a little startling, when you stop to consider the fact, how few of the wives of great men in American history are really entitled to rank as famous women — that is, have attained a degree of fame that make well-informed people instantly think of them when the subject of famous women is mentioned. Dolly Madison is one of these, and I am not sure but that her fame — outside of books — transcends that of her husband. Few people, however, would grant individual fame to the wives of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, U. S. Grant, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster or Andrew Jackson. Even the mention of the husband's name does not at once conjure up the image of the wife. There is no other such partnership so generally accepted as equal as that of George and Martha Washington. Just what she did to merit this eminence is difficult to tell. Given her own way, she would have lived quietly at Mount Vernon or some similar stately home of a planter, dispensing hospitahty, but far removed from the turmoil of camps or the etiquette of courts. But like most of us, she was not given her own way and four-fifths of her life was spent in pubhc station, (426) MARTHA ^^■A,SIIL\t;T(JX From Ihc engraving by J no. M'oohi.'iton MARTHA WASHINGTOiq 427 for she was devoted to her husband and stayed as faithfully by his side through the winter of discon- tent at Valley Forge as later in the somewhat provin- cial splendors of the early presidential mansions at New York, Philadelphia and Washington. George Washington's fame as a real man instead of a pompous marionette was much enhanced when his biographers timidly admitted that he swore like a trooper at Gen. Charles Lee for running away from the British at Monmouth. It will hardly suffer from the further admission that, good soldier as he was, when he was twenty-fovir years old he allowed the charms of a pretty woman to delay him several hours on his mission of delivering dispatches from the seat of the French and Indian War to the colonial governor of Virginia. It does not appear that the progress of the war was affected by this derehction, but yoimg Col. George Washington gained thereby a young and beautiful wife and a large estate, while the still un- thought-of United States of America gained their nearest approach to a queen in the person of Lady Martha Washington. The woman destined to be the wife of the first President of the United States was born in 1732, the daughter of a wealthy planter. She enjoyed the rather limited education granted to girls in that day when too much learning on the part of a woman brought upon her the opprobrious name "bluestocking." But her real education came from constant association with cultivated people, for, provincial though it was, Vir- ginia in that day cultivated the social graces. Her early home was in Williamsburg, the colonial capital. 428 WOMEN OF HISTORY the seat of William and Mary College and the scene of Virginia's greatest social gayety. There she married John Custis, a man of substance, but of twice her age. Four children came to them, of whom two died in infancy, one daughter died at Mount Vernon at the age of twenty, while one son passed away before York- town where he was serving as General Washington's aid. This son had married early and his children formed part of the family which by intermarriage linked George Washington and Robert E. Lee — both of whom in their day were bitterly denounced as rebels. John Custis died after seven years of married life and left his widow one of the richest women in colonial America. Two years after his death she was visiting the family of a Mr. Chamberlayne, whose stately home stood far from the residences of other planters, but close to a ferry on the direct road between Fred- ericksburg and Williamsbiu-g. It was the hospitable practice of the Virginian to watch the ferry and if he saw a traveler alight whose looks bespoke the compan- ionable gentleman, he would beseech him to stop and refresh himself at the mansion. One day he discovered an oflScer in fatigue imiform, attended by a servant, who at first pleaded extreme haste as he was carrying dispatches. But on Mr. Chamberlayne adding to his m-gency the plea that he had a charming yotmg widow at his house, the soldier capitulated. When he pro- duced his card his host was delighted to find that the guest was Colonel Washington, who had already won some mifitary fame by saving the remnants of Brad- dock's army after the defeat at Fort Duquesne. Colonel Washington found the widow no less charm- MARTHA WASHINGTON 429 ing than his host had promised. Instead of riding on as he had intended he stayed over night and proceeded late the next day, only to return to the White House, the residence of the widow. Very speedily they were engaged, and after the young soldier had finished the campaign against the French and Indians they were married in 1759. The union of his property with that of Mrs. Custis made Washington one of the richest Americans. He was presently elected a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, holding that place xmtil the beginning of the Revolution, when he was chosen Conamander-in- Chief of the patriot armies. In 1775 he took command under that famous old elm still standing at Cambridge, Mass., and a few months after Mrs. Washington joined him. Farewell then to that quiet life in the great Vir- ginia plantation houses she so loved. For her thence- forth the hardships of the tented field, and later the ceremonious life of the Executive Mansion. Of her life with the army Mrs. Washington has left few memorials. She was not the jom-nal-writing type, and of her few letters preserved, most are given over to reflections on human life in general, rather than to graphic descriptions of her life in particular. But we get glimpses of her occasionally through the letters of visitors to the camp. At Morristown, where she nursed the General through a grave illness, she was something of a social queen. "Lady Washington" the other ladies of the town called her, and indeed her manner always compelled deference. Yet she was simple as was befitting to a soldier's wife in the field. When some ladies paid her a visit in their "best bibs 430 WOMEN OF HISTORY and bands, and most elegant silks and ruffles," they found her dressed very plainly. "She received us," said one, "very graciously and easily; but after the compHments were over she resmned her knitting. There we were without a stitch of work and sitting in state; but General Washington's lady was knitting stockings for herself and husband." From that time work for the soldiers rather than fine clothes were the fashion in Morristown. In the darkest days of the Valley Forge winter Martha Washington was at her husband's side. Indeed, she once said that she always heard the first and last guns of every campaign. There was never a busier woman than she in that dismal winter. She went from hut to hut carrying dehcacies for the sick and consola- tion to the dying. Her own quarters were filled day after day with the wives of officers knitting stockings and fashioning garments for the soldiers. But when better times came with the spring and the time of semi- starvation was over, she led in such gayety as the camp could furnish. The Washington cabin was the seat of as open hospitality as the case permitted and Mrs. Washington presided at the table with grace and good cheer. Entertaining was a second nature to her, and her husband noted later at Mount Vernon that "after they had been home for more than a year, for the first time he and Mrs. Washington dined alone." Mount Vernon was ever her ideal. With joy she returned to it when the war ended, and when her hus- band two years later bade farewell to his generals and returned to his estates she expressed fervent thank- fulness that the day of quiet home life had at last dawned for her. MARTHA WASHINGTON 431 At Mount Vernon, Mrs. Washington was the typical housewife of the time. The great estates were then wholly seK-supporting. The food for the table and the clothing for the family were in the main produced on the plantation. There was a great workroom in which slaves, directed by the mistress, worked at cut- ting out and sewing up the dozens of articles of clothing needed by the scores of hands upon the place. Every- thing worn by the General and Mrs. Washington, too, except their very best raiment, was made there. She herself was always knitting, and in her workroom she received the ladies of her acquaintance, but her needles cUcked as the talk went on. One such guest reports her as inculcating the habit of industry thus: "She points out to me several pairs of nice colored stockings and gloves she had just finished, and presents me with a pair half done which she begs I will finish and wear for her sake." There is indeed lingering a tradition that Mrs. Washington was apt to teach Uttle moral lessons in this way, and sometimes enforce her preachings with just a spice of temper, from which even the General was not exempt. As she brought him one of the largest estates in Virginia she may have felt justified ia assert- ing herself. This period of domesticity so ardently desired lasted just six years— then General Washington was called to the presidency of the infant nation. "I little thought," she wrote in the stilted phrase which she affected, "when the war was finished that any circum- stances coiild possibly happen which could call the General into public hfe again. I had anticipated that from that moment we should be suffered to grow old together in solitude and in tranquillity." 432 WOMEN OF HISTORY This savors a little of preaching. Tranquillity usually abode with Washington, for his disposition was calm and staid, but sohtude was no part of his plan of life. He was an inveterate entertainer and his board was ever thronged by guests. His style of life as President hardly comports with that idea of simplicity to which every now and then our chief magistrates are besought to return. His servants were all in livery as gorgeous as that of Jeames Yellowplush. White faced with scarlet were the General's colors. For Mrs. Wash- ington was a chariot with four horses and suitable liveries; for himself a six-horse coach with cream- colored steeds and negro postilions in livery. Needless to say, the servitors of the champion of freedom were all slaves. The last six years of Washington's administration were passed at the new capital city, the site for which he had selected, and which was widely known as the raggedest, most squalid and muddiest of all capitals. The dignified mansion at Mount Vernon received the pair when Washington set the precedent for all time by refusing a third term in office. Their quiet domestic Ufe was not of long duration, for in the third year of his retreat the General died. "Lady Martha." sat on his bed as the supreme moment arrived. "Is he gone?" she asked the attending physician as she noted a sudden change. "Then all is over! I shall soon follow him. I have no more trials to go through." She Uved, in fact, two years longer, passmg away in 1802, and now lies buried by his side in the simple brick tomb on the estate of Mount Vernon they both MARTHA WASHINGTON 433 loved so well. In life she was a typical American woman, fond of kome and husband, but able to adapt herself alike to the miUtary rounds of a camp or the ceremonials of court. She was rich without ostenta- tion, dignified without hauteur. Uncompromising in her love of country, she would not buy EngUsh fabrics and kept sixteen spinning wheels busy at Mount Vernon. She even manufactured the cloth for one of General Washington's inauguration suits. Under her management the plantation was a little principahty producing all that those who lived upon it needed. The woman who could be a queen in the White House was a thrifty manager in her own home. 28 DOLLY MADISON (1768-1849) THE WHITE HOUSE HEROINE OF 1812 OF course her name was Dorothea, but the world knows her as "Dolly." A typical Virginian, accident caused her to be bom in North Carolina. Famous for gayety and splendor of dress, she was born a simple Quakeress, and bred religiously to the bonnet and the drab kirtle. Destined to be the first lady of the land, she for some time kept a boarding house in Philadelphia. Reduced to poverty because her father's Quaker faith impelled him to seU his slaves, she returned to wealth when she married James Madison, whose slaves were counted by scores. Marrying twice for purely practical reasons, she learned to love both husbands dearly; risking her life to caress one dying of yellow fever, and becom- ing the greatest aid and mainstay of the second when he became President of the United States. / With this brief summary of some of the points of Dolly Madison's career, let us teU in more detail of her Ufe after being left a widow at twenty-four, she with her mother set up a boarding house in Philadel- phia, then the national capital, for such statesmen as could be lured from the grosser joys of the tavern. Her beauty attracted attention wherever she went. (434) DOLLY MADISON 435 "Really, Dolly," said a discreet Quaker friend, "thee must hide thy face; there are so many staring at thee." Among the starers was James Madison, a substantial Virginia planter, member of Congress and a man of such mark in the constitutional convention that men called him "the Father of the Constitution." Among those who knew Dolly socially was Aaron Burr, also a member of Congress and a gentleman of charm- ing manners destined later to win unsavory renown. In Congress Burr and Madison were sworn foPs, but love that laughs at locksmiths ignored that politi- cal feud and Madison procured Burr to introduce him to the deity. "Aaron Burr says that the great little Madison has asked to be brought to me this evening," wrote pretty Dolly all in a fluster. Madison was forty-three, a bachelor, scholarly but not slow in lovemaking. News of his suit came to the ears of Lady Martha Washington, who sent for the Widow Todd. "Dolly, is it true," she asked, "that you are engaged to James Madison?" "I — I think so," answered Dolly with becoming hesitation. "If it be so do not be ashamed of it. We both approve. He wiU make thee a good husband and be the better for being so much the older." With this approval from royalty, the courtship pro- gressed apace and a scant year after her first husband's death Dolly was again a bride. An end then to all Quaker simplicity. Mr. Madison wanted her to shine in society and she, nothing loath, became gayest of the gay. At the presidential mansion in the later 436 WOMEN OF HISTORY years of Washington's administration she was the favored guest. But his rejection of a third term sent her back to retirement at her husband's noble estate of Montpelier in Virginia, for John Adams, the next President, was too sturdy a Federalist to have the Republican Madison about his councils. The retirement was scarce long enough to teach her the pleasiu-es of a great Virginia estate. Thomas Jefferson was elected President and Madison recalled as secretary of state. The President's wife was dead; his daughters married and living far away. He made the charmiag Dolly, now approaching her fortieth year, mistress of the White House. Such gayety as she could arouse in Washington— a straggling village, with a lane of mud connecting the capital and the White House, a capital where people Hved and enter- tained ia taverns, and cattle and swine roamed the streets — such gayety as could be aroused in such a town she evoked. The President was devoted to her, too much so at times, for he once took her in to a state dinner and seated her at his right hand, while the wife of the British minister, to whom those honors were due, bridled with rage at the snub. Poor lady! Perhaps she lived to find consolation when during the War of 1812 the British drove Dolly in flight from that very White House and devoured with complacency a dinner of forty covers she had prepared for other diners altogether. Madison succeeded Jefferson in the presidency. His wife continued her social triumphs. She had the knack not merely of making people seem at ease, but of leading them to put forth the best that was in them, DOLLY MADISON 437 so that at her parties folk scintillated who elsewhere were bores. Without the dignity of Martha Wash- ington or the intellect of Mrs. Adams, she had enough of the one to maintain her position and of the other to be a true help to her husband. She said she was no pohtician, but of her James G. Blaine wrote: "She saved the administration of her husband; held him back from the extremes of Jeffersonism, and enabled him to escape the terrible dilemma of the War of 1812. But for her De Witt Clinton would have been Presi- dent in 1812." During that war the American people suffered the ignominy of having a foreign invader in their capital — and the British generals inciu-red the infamy of wan- tonly burning an enemy's unfortified city. There was practically no defense of Washington when the British marched upon it. Such feeble resistance as there was was at Bladensburg and thither President Madison went ia person while Mrs. Madison remained in the White House, preparing that dinner of forty covers, and packing up in case of need. The need came. With a carriage load of cabinet papers and all the White House silver she departed, knocking off with an axe the frame about Stuart's portrait of Washington and taking that along. "I longed rather," said she with spirit, "to have a cannon at every window of the White House." In time the British retired. In further time the war was ended by the treaty of Ghent, not knowing of which Andrew Jackson prodigiously slaughtered the British at New Orleans when peace should have abode with them. The President and his family returned 438 WOMEN OF HISTORY to Washington and made their home within sight of the smoking walls of the White House in a structure known as "the Octagon House" which still stands. There the treaty of peace was signed, and there was held a great reception in honor of the event. Observed of all observers was Mrs. Madison, who circulated among the brilliant uniforms and gay dresses, as blithe and debonair as though she had never been driven from the White House and refused admission to a tavern because she was wife to "Jinrniy Madison who brought on this damnable war." "Mrs. Madison was every inch a queen," said the new British minister. Followed then a time of pleasant retirement at Mont- peUe", then the death of her husband and new sorrow brought upon her widowhood by her son, Payne Todd, who gambled away his own fortune and the greater part of hers. In her later days MontpeUer was lost to her and she lived in a house fronting on Lafayette Park in Washington, now occupied by the Cosmos Club. A sum of $20,000, paid by Congress for her husband's manuscripts and tied up so that her son could not get it, furnished her means of life. In her old age she was described as supremely lovely, with a complexion as fresh and fair as that of an English girl. Folk went from the White House to her home, as from the palace of a reigning monarch to that of the dowager queen. Her last public appearance was on the arm of President Polk at a White House reception, and she who had trod those halls on the arm of Jeffer- son then passed out of them forever. JOAN OF ARC From Ulc painting hij Ingres JOAN OF ARC (1412-1431) SBEE, SOLDIER, LEADER OF MEN, MARTYR IN a little farm-yard hard by the village of Dom- remy, ia Lorraine, a peasant maid of some sixteen years was wont to sit and sew or knit on pleasant afternoons when she was not out in the meadows herding the sheep. Not miUke her fellows was this petite bergerette, this Uttle shepherdess. Blue- skirted, bare-legged, shod with great wooden shoes, she was just a little French villager. Like her fellows, she was fair, straight-limbed, hardy as a boy. Unlike them, she had the two gifts of imagination and faith — and who has these gifts may go far. The time was one of peril to France — or rather to the warring factions into which France had been broken. Charles VII should have been king, but was so hard pressed by foes that he could not enter Rheims to be anointed with the holy oil of consecra- tion as had been the custom of centuries. The troops of Henry V of England were on French soil, and in their project to make Henry VI, then a boyish Eng- hsh prince, king of France, had the aid of powerful Frenchmen such as the Duke of Burgundy. His soldiers sometimes would sweep through quiet little Domremy frightening the peaceful peasants and rifling (439) 440 WOMEN OF HISTORY their homes. In the quiet of her garden the girl, Jeanne, the villagers called her, sometimes Jeanne d'Arc, for her father Jacques had come from Arc, a neighboring hamlet, would sit and think over the disordered state of France that set loose these swash- buckling soldiers on peaceful folk. She could not read nor write, could Jeanne (or Joan, as we of the English tongue call her), but she could imagine the young king kept out of his coronation city, and the invading British making ready to divide France up among themselves. One day as she sat among the flowers, with the buzzing of the bees and the soft tones of the distant church bells in the air, there seemed to her to be a great shining light in the air, bright as the summer afternoon already was. And out of the light spake a voice saying, "Jeanne, sois bonne et sage enfant: va souvent d I'eglise" — "Joan, be a good, wise girl; go often to church." Not a very original or stirring message to come from a supernatm-al brightness on a summer's day, but she held it the voice of an angel and felt herself in touch with the Most High. Other manifestations appeared in later days imtil at last came a winged warrior, wearing a crown, who told her the story of her country's woes and said, "Joan, it is you who shall give the King of France back his kingdom." She knew this knightly visitor for St. Michael, as she says, "after he had instructed her and shown her many things." Moreover, a stained glass window in the church showed the saint in all his trappings and the vision took that form. With silence the heavenly visitor heard her plead JOAN OF ARC 441 that she was but a simple, ignorant village maiden \mfit to midertake so great a task. Commending her to the Captain of Vaucoulexirs for earthly aid, and to the spiritual guidance of St. Margaret and St. Cath- erine, the vision vanished. That is the simple story of the beginning of the most marvelous and almost the most pathetic career that history has recorded for us. It is the story as told and lived by its central figure, the girl Joan of Arc, later called the Maid of Orleans, and in time known to all Frenchmen as the Maid {la Pucelle) as though in all the land she were the only one. For nearly four years the visions were constantly with her. When at last she mustered courage to tell her parents she was roundly ridiculed, and, as she per- sisted, they called the parish priest to drive out the devils that possessed her, just as in our day we would have summoned a doctor to test her sanity. In time she prevailed on her uncle to tell her story to the Captain of Vaucouleurs while she awaited near by the summons she was saie would come. But the cap- tain's response was a biu-st of coarse laughter and the advice, "box her ears and send her home." Her faith was imabated. It was of the sort that will move moimtains. Before long she silenced the ridicule of the vaUant captain and had found an escort to take her to the king. Her story had become widely known and the inhabitants of Vaucouleurs bought for her a boy's traveling suit and a horse, while Baudricourt gave her a sword. Thus caparisoned, with a knight on either hand and a small guard of soldiers who alternately thought her a saint and a 442 WOMEN OF HISTORY devil, she set forth for Chinon to find the dauphin whom she was determined to make king. That prince awaited her coming with mingled emo- tions. His counselors differed widely. Some thought the girl either mad or indeed an instrument of Beelze- bub. But the case of France was desperate and even so frail a weapon as this peasant maid was not to be lightly rejected. In the end the dauphin consented to receive her, but before her arrival removed all insignia of his rank and took station among the gentle- men of his covut. "If she be of God," thought he, "she will come direct to the only one having royal blood." And the maid in her travel-stained boy's dress walked straight through the richly garbed throng and falling on one knee before him said, "Gentle Prince, God give you new life." "But there is the king over yonder," said Charles, thinking to put her still further to the test. "By my God, gracious prince," responded Joan, "you are the king and none other." And therewith she told him that she had come to open the way whereby he might be crowned and consecrated at Rheims. Still harried by doubt, the king sent her to Poitiers that she might be questioned by the learned clergy of the University. One of these asked for a proof, a sign that she could win mighty victories. "By my God," again she swore, "it is not to Poitiers I have been sent to give signs; take me to Orleans with as few soldiers as you please. The sign I am to give is the raising of the siege." In the end her faith and persistence triumphed. She was given armor, a standard, a body guard and JOAN OF ARC 443 put in command of a portion of the army. The armor was of silvery white in token of her purity, but she wore no hehnet and her girhsh head crowned with fair hair was a more glorious orifianune than any white plimae of Navarre. In a vision she was told that a sword lay in a tomb near the high altar of St. Cath- erine's church. That saint was her patron — the sword must be hers. So the tomb was opened and the sword found. Duly cleaned and in a scabbard of crimson velvet broidered with the liUes of France, it was hung by her side. Her standard was of white, sprinkled with the fletu- de lys and bearing a golden figiu:e of the Christ with adoring angels on either hand. ■ Strictly she held to her behef that hers was a holy war and should be waged in Godly wise. Stout old OUver Cromwell long afterward discovered that God- fearing men made the best soldiers, but the Maid of Orleans anticipated him. Her soldiers beUeved|in her and while she led no curse nor blasphemy rose from the ranks. Cards, dice and the implements of the sorcery practised in that superstitious age disappeared from the camps. Priests and exhorters followed the army. Never did the churches so resoimd with the clash of arms; never were the confessionals so^ crowded with suppliants for forgiveness. The first point in Joan's campaign was Orleans. In it the Bastard of Orleans, called Dunois, lay sore besieged by the Enghsh and nearly out of food. Joan accomplished the revictualing and re-enforcement of the city, and challenged the English to battle. They for a time held back. But one night as the maid lay sleeping she suddenly awoke. "Arm me! Arm me!" 444 WOMEN OF HISTORY she cried to her astonished squire, "I am commanded to attack the enemy. Great God, the blood of France is flowing! Why did you not call me sooner?" Her retinue amazed, for no alarm had reached them, fitted her for the field, and faring forth, she found the armies engaged. Her presence inspired the French and they beat back the English. And she fought. Hers was no empty parade of leadership. In one sortie she received an arrow full in the shoulder, the barbed shaft stand- ing out behind a hand's breadth. At the moment she was placing a ladder against the rampart, but the shock of the wound bore her to the groimd, seeing which, the EngUsh rushed out to capture her. A valiant French knight bestrode her body, battle axe in hand, beating back the foe and calling to his fellows to return. In the end Joan was rescued and taken to the rear, where her wound was dressed. She wept at the sight of blood, but shed fewer tears than she was wont to let fall by the litters of her wounded soldiers. The crimson flow was scarcely stanched when she caught up her silken banner with the golden lilies and made again into the hurtling storm of arrows and of javelins. Up and over the wall the assailants went "as if it had been a stair," wrote one witness, and the day was won. In eight days the English destroyed their works and retreated and the long siege was ended. This was Joan's first triumph and she had trouble enough in getting opportunity for another. The king was idle, pleasure-loving, indifferent to the progress of the war so long as the gayety of his court, carefully established far from the battlefields, was unabridged. JOAN OF ARC 445 Joan pleaded for action and cried with prophetic truth, "I shall only last a year; take the good of me as long as it is possible." Bedford, whom the English had named regent of France, wrote home that his disasters were "caused in great part by the fatal faith and vain fear that the French had of a servant of the Enemy of Man, called the Maid, who used many false enchant- ments and witchcraft, by which not only is the number of our soldiers diminished, but their courage mar- velously beaten down and the boldness of our enemies increased." At last the king set out for Rheims. On the journey a band of the Domremy villagers came to see their petite Jeanne pass, and marveled much at her shining armor and prancing charger. "Hast thou no fear of arrow or bullet?" asked one. "I fear naught save treason," repUed Jeanne with fatal foresight. In the great gray chiu-ch of Notre Dame at Rheims Charles was crowned with due pomp and ceremony. To him the great and haughty bowed low, but about Joan the soldiers clustered, kissing her standard, and women and little children flocked about reverently touching the hem of her garment. At the end she knelt before Charles. "0 gentle King!" said she, "now the wiU of God is accompUshed. He com- manded me to lead you to Rheims to receive your crown. Behold, you are King, and France will become subject to your sway." With tears she now begged to be sent home, but the king thought her presence with the army too useful and he refused. Loyally she took up her task again, 446 WOMEN OF HISTORY but no longer with that implicit faith that had worked such marvels. Omens of ill befell her. In endeavor- ing to save a peasant girl from the violence of some soldiers she broke the sword of St. Catherine. The king again became indolent, lolling in the pleasures of dissipation. In an attack on one of the gates of Paris she was wounded and her troops suffered a bloody- defeat. Her enemies even set up a rival "inspired maid" to supplant her. In the face of so much evil she laid her armor and battle axe on the tomb of St. Denis in the cathedral and sought to retire, but was coaxed back by the king and generals. In a few weeks, abandoned by her men in an assault at Com- peigne, she was taken by the enemy. Great was the exultation of the English. From their joy one might have thought they had conquered all France. Abysmal was the woe of the French people — though the court hardly seemed to share it. In great cities pubUc prayers and processions were organ- ized for her deUverance. At Tours the people marched barefoot through the streets, with streaming eyes, chanting the Miserere. Gloom enveloped the land and the poor bitterly accused the lords and generals with having betrayed the holy Virgin who had been sent by God. The court of Charles VII was singularly indiEferent to the Maid's fate. She was entitled to ransom, but none was offered, and she passed from hand to hand among her captors until at last the Inquisition of Paris demanded her that she be tried for witchcraft. Once in the hands of the Inquisition, Joan's life was one continued torture. She was beset by spies. JOAN OF ARC 447 surrounded by cross-examiners, guarded by soldiers who did not confine their brutality to obscene words, but actually resorted to violence to do her evil. At Beaurevoir, having a measure of freedom, she threw herself from the top of a tower, but escaped death. Thereafter she was more closely guarded and three soldiers slept in her chamber. She wore male clothes for protection, and this was construed by her judges as a sin. Then she donned women's raiment and it was promptly stolen. Finally she was placed like a wild beast in an iron cage, and at times was chained upright to its bars by ankles, wrists and neck. Pale from long imprisonment, clad in her worn boy's suit, she faced the inquisitors. The story of that girl- ish sold upon the monastic rack cannot be told here. When they had failed to wrest from her any con- fession of witchcraft, any repudiation of her story of the voices in the garden, they led her out into the cemetery and showed her the towering scaffold and the stake at which she had to die imless she abjmred her faith. Weakness came upon her as it might upon any girl confronted with so gruesome a sight and, as the recording clerk noted it, "at the end of the sen- tence, Jeanne, fearing the fire, said she would obey the church." And later in her cell the persecuting bishop extorted from her the admission that her beloved and revered voices had lied to her. But later in open court she most pitifidly but bravely repudiated these recantations. To the stake they sent her on a bright May day in 1431. In a cemetery back of the church de St. Ouen, at Rouen, a spot now called the Place de La Pucelle, 448 WOMEN OF HISTORY they had reared the scaffold and piled the fagots about the sinister stake. Thither was the Maid brought in a cart, the populace silent or tearful, held in check by the English soldiery. Though she had been tried and condemned by the French clergy, the EngUsh, under the implacable Lord Warwick, executed the sentence with open glee. No crucifix was given her until in response to her appeals an English soldier bound two twigs together in the form of a cross and handed it to her. But as the fire rose the monk Isam- bert, one sympathetic soul among her executioners, ran to the neighboring church and bringing the proces- sional cross held it high above smoke and flames that her eyes might rest upon it. About the girlish figure, clad in spotless white, the flames rose and crackled. Out of the miu-k and the noise came a cry, "My voices were of God. They did not deceive me!" And after this last brave reitera- tion of her faith her soul passed away while her lips formed the word, "Jesus, Jesus." An Enghsh cardinal caused her ashes to be scattered upon the Seine that France might be purged of this heretic. But to-day the girl who there suffered is esteemed a saint and the saviour of France, while the cardinal's own land unites with the world in revering her memory The EifD.