Margaret of Parma

“ When Margaret was not more than fourteen or fifteen years of age, she began to be very celebrated for her beauty and accomplishments, and for the charming vivacity of her conversation and her demeanor. She resided with her mother in different families in Lorraine and in other parts of France, and was sometimes at the court of the Queen of France, who was her near relative. All who knew her were charmed with her. She was considered equally remarkable for her talents and for her beauty. ”

“ Rushmore with firmness, 'I don't, and I think it very strange that a clever girl like you should be so easily taken in by a foreigner. Much worse than a foreigner, my dear! A Greek is almost as bad as a Turk, and we all know what Turks are! Fancy a decent young woman trusting herself alone with a Turk! I declare, it's not to be believed! Your dear mother's daughter too! You'll end in a harem, Margaret, mark my word.'
'And be sewn up in a sack and thrown into the Bosphorus,' laughed Margaret, trying to get away. ”

“ As the little girl grew out of babyhood, people noticed that her mother's aquiline features were softened in her face by the look and smile of her gentle father, and that in her character his delicate and benevolent nature qualified the love of learning and capacity for devotion which her mother gave her. More intense than he, more refined and unworldly than Louisa, the little Margaret displayed a singular and beautiful personality. ”

“ Once, when Margaret was supposed to be dying, the queen dowager found Lewis attempting to succour her; she feared for him the melancholy sight of his wife's death, which seemed fast approaching, and, taking him by the hand, to lead him away, said, in an awful tone, "you are always here."—"Ah," cried Margaret, sorrowfully, who saw only cruelty to her in this maternal anxiety, "will you never let me see my dear lord, either in life or death?" and, on the king's leaving the room, fainted away: he was soon recalled, and Margaret restored to life. It was thus that this amiable monarch was beloved. ”

“ The carriage rolled through the pretty woods of Fausses Reposes, and the sweet spring breeze fanned Margaret's cheeks in the shade. But she felt fever in her blood and her heart beat fast and angrily as if it were a conscious creature imprisoned in a cage. She was angry with herself and with every one else, with Logotheti, with Mrs. Rushmore, with poor Lushington for making such a fool of himself just when she was prepared to like him better than ever. She was sure that she had good cause to hate every one, and she hated accordingly, with a good will. ”

“ Margaret was, to persons younger than herself, a Makaria and Natalia. She was wisdom and intellectual beauty, filling life with a charm and glory "known to neither sea nor land." To those of her own age she was sibyl and seer,—a prophetess, revealing the future, pointing the path, opening their eyes to the great aims only worthy of pursuit in life. To those older than herself she was like the Euphorion in Goethe's drama, child of Faust and Helen,—a wonderful union of exuberance and judgment, born of romantic fulness and classic limitation. ”

“ Yet something more attractive than mere beauty must have distinguished the Princess Margaret, for two men of the most opposite dispositions to have borne her image on their hearts till death, and for her husband—a man capable of abject superstition, and with his hot-headed youth far behind him—to have braved all the thunders of Rome, rather than put her away. ”

“ She longed for even one day in which she would have no problems to solve, no misery to try to alleviate—one day in which she might be the old care-free Margaret. She reproached herself bitterly for all this, however, and accused herself of being false to her work and her dear people; but in the next breath she would deny the accusation and say that it was only because she was worn out and “dead tired.”
“When the people do get home,” she said to Bobby McGinnis one day, “when the people do get home, we’ll take a rest, you and I. We’ll go up to Hilcrest and just play for a day or two. ”

“ For home was still to Margaret in France. She had no children in her Castles of Béarn. Her little son had died soon after birth. Her daughter, Jeanne, was not quite two years old when Francis placed the poor solemn baby in a castle of her own at Plessis-les-Tours, afraid to leave her with her parents, lest Henry d'Albret should betroth her to a prince of Spain. Margaret was childless, and her husband was unfaithful. ”

“ Margaret of Alençon, from the fief of her first husband; Margaret of Navarre, of which country, like her grand-niece, she was queen, by her second marriage with Henry d’Albret; and even Margaret of Orleans, as belonging to the Orleans branch of the royal house. She was not, like her nieces, Margaret of France, as her father never reigned, and Brantôme properly denies her the title, but others sometimes give it. When it is necessary to call her anything besides the simple “Margaret,” Angoulême is at once the most appropriate and the most distinctive designation. ”

“ Francis, with his ideas of splendour and chivalry, desired a different queen for his sumptuous court. And her he found in Margaret, a woman then of three-and-twenty, both learned and witty, and with a charm more attractive than beauty in her slender carriage and tender smile—Margaret, young, de moult joyeuse vie, et la meilleure compagnie possible. Margaret was virtually the Queen of France. ”

“ That was the first time that I saw Margaret.
“The poor child was, of course, heartbroken and inconsolable; but her grief took a peculiar turn. The mere sight of me drove her almost into hysterics. She would have nothing whatever to do with me, or with any of her stepfather’s people. She reasoned that if her mother had not married, there would have been no wedding journey; and if there had been no wedding journey there would have been no accident, and that her mother would then have been alive, and well.
“Arguments, pleadings, and entreaties were in vain. ”

“ Margaret was in great distress. Even for her brother's sake she could not counsel the surrender of Burgundy. And yet, unless she could satisfy Charles, there seemed nothing but perpetual imprisonment for Francis. No other king would come forward as a champion. Soliman as yet had made no sign, nor would he be likely to leave Turkey in the winter; and before another summer came her brother might be dead. Louisa, at home, had concluded a peace with Henry of England; but that wary king would only risk his moral support. ”

“ She does not look much like the mother of the tall girl whom we saw at Brighton, as she sits at the head of her breakfast-table in the daintiest of morning gowns—a marvelous combination of silk, muslin and lace and pale pink ribbons—with a tiny white dog reposing in her lap. She is a much smaller woman than Margaret, and darker in complexion: it is from her, however, that Margaret inherits the large, appealing hazel eyes, which look at you with an infinite sweetness, while their owner is perhaps thinking of the menu or her milliner's bill. ”

“ For them, Queen Margaret writes with affectionate urgency to that sort of sire who is apt to say of a suitor to his daughter, who is unwelcome to himself, ‘I can’t imagine what the girl can see in such a fellow, to like him!’ To such stern fathers Margaret of Anjou writes like a wise and affectionate woman. She may be called a ‘matchmaker,’ for she seems to have gone to the work of coupling with great alacrity, but we are sure that many a young couple, in those turbulent times, owed to her a happiness and a harmony in their married life which poor Margaret never enjoyed in her own. ”

“ A letter from Margaret, charmed to be at Rome, “that fatherland of sorrow.” Amid the ruins of the queen of cities she walks with her immense disappointment. Oh! what trial. No woman better deserves to be loved. Do you remember Mère Athanase saying of Margaret: “Beautiful as Eve in Paradise, attractive as Rachel, a musician like Miriam the sister of Moses, she is also learned as Anna Comnena, and a poetess like Marie de France”? I answered: “May I be the good Samaritan to this wounded soul!” ”

“ The king was pleased to welcome his sister-in-law and his nephew. Friendly faces were not always plentiful, and the fierce energy of his wife, queen Margaret, had often hindered rather than helped his cause. With the countess of Richmond he had many tastes in common; both loved books, and would spend many hours poring over the pictured scrolls of the monks, and although she had been married so young, and was 159 even now but seventeen, Margaret had the name of being the most learned as well as the best lady in the whole of England. ”

“ Margaret was seated in a magnificent litter, surrounded by a guard of twenty-four archers on horseback, dressed in black suits edged with velvet, and followed by a train of ladies mounted on palfreys. At the abbey, where rooms had been retained for her and her ladies, she alighted, and awaited the arrival of the queen-regent. Two hours later Louise of Savoy made her entry, accompanied by her daughter, the Queen of Navarre, and the Countess of Vendôme; and were immediately conducted to Margaret's apartments, where they remained in conversation with her for two hours. ”

“ The gentleman, believing what she said, was exceedingly well pleased, and began to amuse himself with the other ladies until he should see her gone, and might quickly follow her. But she, who lacked naught of woman’s craftiness, betook herself to my Lady Margaret, daughter of the King, and to the Duchess of Montpensier, (2) to whom she said—
“I will if you are willing, show you the fairest diversion you have ever seen.”
2 The former is Margaret of France, Duchess of Savoy and Berry. Born in June 1523, she died in September 1574.— Queen Margaret was her godmother. ”

“ The sad little romance presents Margaret as a dignified great lady, who for one short space allowed herself to be simply a trustful woman in love, only to find that to such as she duty must be paramount over the promptings of the heart, and that a wooer, though he may be a duke, is not always a gentleman. Thenceforward, for many years, Margaret's life was that of a wise Vice-Regent for the Emperor whom she had reared from his childhood; until death relieved her from the task to which she devoted the best of her life. ”

“ The alliance was openly countenanced by Louis XII., and the young Duke of Valois—as Francis of Angoulême was now called—readily acceded to it. Margaret brought with her a dowry of sixty thousand livres, payable in four instalments, and Charles, who was on the point of attaining his twenty-first year, was declared a major and placed in possession of his estates. (1) The marriage was solemnised at Blois in October 1509.
1 Odolant Desnos’s Mémoires historiques sur Alençon, vol. ii. p. 231
Margaret did not find in her husband a mind comparable to her own. ”

“ Margaret of Austria, Anne of Brittany, Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I., writes the historian, "cousant, filant, lisant, ces trois fatales Parques ont tissu les maux de l'Europe" (sewing, spinning, reading, these three fatal Parcae were the misfortune of Europe) , and the student of French history will follow the career of all three with interest after the clue here given them. Margaret, bitter, vindictive, and designing, seems to have had one poetic thread in her life only, namely, her passion for her husband, whose beauty lives in marble before us. ”

“ Margaret’s elder sister, Yolente, survived her two years; she had a beautiful daughter called Margaret of Anjou the younger. Maria Louisa, Napoleon’s Empress, possessed the breviary of this Princess, in which there is one sentence supposed to have been written by the once beautiful, powerful, and admired Margaret, Queen of England, her aunt:
“Vanité des vanités, tout est vanité.” ”

“ View larger image
Unfortunately we cannot thus trace the history of all Margaret's collection. Her library at Malines 279 was hung with family portraits, from Charlemagne on through many Dukes of Burgundy—her grandfather, the Emperor Frederick; her parents, Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy; her brother Philip; her husband Philibert, Duke of Savoy; her nephews and nieces, at different ages, were all portrayed; and there was also a portrait of herself as a girl. ”

“ During the battle Margaret did not know that her husband was on the ground. But at night, as soon as Henry's keepers had abandoned him, a faithful serving-man who remained with him ran into Margaret's camp, and finding one of the nobles in command there, he informed him of the situation of the king. The noble immediately informed the queen, and she, overjoyed at the news, flew to the place where her husband lay, and, on finding him, they embraced each other with the most passionate tokens of affection and joy. ”

“ She saw Margaret first, as the latter rose to meet her. Margaret felt as if the world itself were putting huge arms round her and kissing her on both cheeks. The embrace was of terrific power, and a certain amount of grease paint came off.
'Little Miss Donne,' cried the prima donna, relaxing her hold on Margaret's waist but instantly seizing her by the wrist and turning her round sharply, like a dressmaker's doll on a pivot, 'that is Schreiermeyer! The great Schreiermeyer! The terrible Schreiermeyer! You see him before you, my child! Tremble! ”

“ In the face of so overwhelming an array of evidence, Margaret almost lost her fears—marriage might be very desirable, after all. And so it was a very happy little girl that left Elmhurst on the day before Christmas and, in care of one of the teachers, journeyed toward Houghtonsville, where were waiting the play room, the great stone lions, and the wonderful wedding, to say nothing of the dear loving mother herself. ”