Richard Bentley first edition - 1844
Although James' subtitle is A Romance from English History, I must admit I thought it was the least romantic tale of his that I have read so far! Perhaps it is because he stuck more closely than usual to the actual historical 'facts'; that he allowed his emotions to get the better of his telling (nearly all the main characters were either irredeemably black or white), which led this reader to feel it was a straightforward tragedy, rather than a romance. The final scenes set in the Tower of London, where first Sir Thomas Overbury is poisoned then suffocated, whilst Arabella herself slowly and remorselessly declines, conjures in this reader praise for the quality of the writing but also a profound feeling of sadness and bitterness.
To deal with the malign characters first. The author has no time at all for James I, who he says, in his Dedication, has been pourtrayed [sic] by Sir Walter Scott with skill, to which I can in no degree pretend, but with a very lenient hand. He here appears under a more repulsive aspect, as a cold, brutal, vain, frivolous tyrant...my conviction, however, is unalterable, that James I was at once one of the most cruel tyrants, and one of the most disgusting men, that ever sat upon a throne. The king is first encountered on his way South from Scotland: a somewhat corpulent and heavy-looking man, on horseback, riding with a slouching and uneasy air, coarse in feature, clumsy in person, with his broad lips partly open, and the tip of his tongue visible between his teeth...
James VI and I
G.P.R. returns to the attack in a long paragraph at the start of Volume II. What satisfaction could you derive from pictures of a court full of venality and corruption? - What satisfaction would it be either to the writer or the reader to look into the pruriences of the most disgusting monarch that ever sat upon the English throne? We will not therefore attempt to paint him to you, either in his villainous efforts to crush the liberties of his people, and to establish the tyranny of prerogative upon the ruins of the English constitution; or, in his pitiful pedantry, erecting himself into an Ecclesiastical judge, and setting himself up as the Pope of Great Britain. We will not represent him in his unjust and illiberal prodigality, stripping the crown of its wealth, robbing his subjects of their property, and despoiling the best servants of the State of their just reward, to bestow with a lavish and a thoughtless hand the plunder of the people upon the unworthy heads of base and ill-deserving favourites. Although the author never writes the word, the monarch's homosexuality is clearly as abhorrent to him as his tyranny.
Queen Anne of Denmark
Queen Anne of Denmark, James' wife, fares better in the author's estimation, having not only a strong but a somewhat passionate spirit.
Robert Carr
For the majority of the period in question, the ill-deserving favourite par excellence, is Robert Carr. The author does not introduce the reader to him until Chapter II of Volume II. ...one of the first minions whom the king thought fit to honour in England, afterwards Earl of Rochester, one of the most despicable of those who were proud to fill the infamous place of king's favourite...the dignity of knighthood was almost immediately profaned to do honour to this deedless and unworthy person. At least (as far as we know) there was no private passage linking the bedchambers of the king and Carr - unlike that found during the restoration of Apethorpe Palace between 2004 and 2008, which revealed such a route for James and his subsequent favourite George Villiers (created the Duke of Buckingham).
Frances Howard
Linked closely to Carr, both in the novel and in real life, was
Frances Howard, the Countess of Essex, She hates her husband and spurns the approaches of the king's eldest son,
Prince Henry (who was to die tragically young),
not, indeed, that her bosom was the abode of any pure feelings of high principles, but because she had already conceived a passion for another, to which she was ready not only to sacrifice every moral obligation, but to violate common decency... With the king, Carr and Frances are the two evil characters in the tale, particularly the latter. The author wrote:
I shall probably be accused of having drawn an incarnate field; but I reply that I
have not done it. Frances is the prime mover in ensuring the death by poison of Sir Thomas Overbury, a humourless, self-seeker who attaches himself to the coat-tails of Carr in the hopes of preferment at Court. He makes the mistake of warning his master against entanglement with the Countess. Carr's hold over the king and Frances' hold over Carr, ensure Overbury is sent to the Tower and certain death. The latter bitterly says of Carr,
"On my life, this feeble-minded favourite is as base as shrewder men! 'Tis safer by far to serve a sensible villain than a weak fool." The author turns
to the more criminal personages of our tale, and trace them in that rapid down-hill road, where vice treads upon the the steps of vice, and iniquity upon iniquity, till they are hurried on into the yawning gulf of destruction and despair.
Frances had been determined that Overbury should return no more to this stage. She had Sir William Wade, the honest Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, removed to make way for Sir Gervase Helwys; and a gaolor, Richard Weston, of whom it was ominously said that he was a man well acquainted with the power of drugs, was set to attend Overbury. Weston, afterwards aided by Mrs. Anne Turner, the widow of a physician, and by an apothecary called Franklin, plied Overbury with sulphuric acid in the form of copper vitriol. All these pond life are described in a masterly fashion in G.P.R. James' account and meet deserved ends. Carr and Frances, by this time married, fall out of favour with the king and in late May 1616, the couple were found guilty of Overbury's murder and sentenced to death. They remained prisoners in the Tower until eventually released in 1622. By this time, George Villiers was firmly in the seat of power.
What of Lady Arabella herself, who the author talks of bringing out the brightness of that sweet lady's mind, and the gentleness of her heart? Considered a possible successor to Elizabeth I, her 'danger' to James I was heightened by her secret marriage to William Seymour in June 1610 at Greenwich Palace. Arabella was 4th in line to the throne and William was 6th, so one can understand the king's paranoia. James chronicles their relationship and the couple's attempts to escape abroad - Seymour's being successful (he was a Royalist commander in the Civil War, was created Marquis of Hertford by Charles I in 1641, and had his great-grandfather's Dukedom of Somerset, forfeited in 1552, restored to him by Charles II in 1660. He died in November that year.) Over 100 letters written by Arabella have survived and, in 1993, a collection of them was published. The author's Arabella hovers dangerously close to being a milksop (although I can entirely sympathise considering the woman's dreadful life). She suffers: "This long absence from my husband, the difficulties and dangers of this enterprise, the long, wide-spread, misty blank of the future, all rise up before my mind, and agitate and terrify me." And, again: Her spirit was one that had never through life indulged in sanguine expectations; and with her brightest and most cheerful feelings there had always mingled a shade of melancholy, as if she were forewarned by some internal voice of the sad fate before her. The heart-rending scenes, where the author charts her physical and mental decline and has Seymour smuggled into the Tower (probably fictitious) to be with her at her death, are sympathetically well written.
Two important (but fictitious?) characters are Sir Harry West - veritable roast beef of olde England! - and Ida Mara : she was lightly but beautifully made; and, though her complexion was somewhat dark, her skin seemed smooth and soft, her features fine, her hair rich and luxuriant, and her hands and feet small and delicate. Milanese by birth, purchased from her parents by an English perfumer and charlatan, she had been brought to England for him to make use of her talents as a singer and lute player. Sir Harry rescues her and gains her undying devotion. By the end of the story, after her long and loyal service to Arabella, on the latter's death, although Sir Harry is in his mid 60s and she just over 20, they marry! Both had been undying in their support for Arabella.
James stuck closely to the actual events and the majority of the characters are historical. He clearly despised James I, as he did Charles II in his novel Russell - had he an inbuilt animus against the Stuarts? I must admit, I will not look on James again in the same light. It is of some comfort to know that William Seymour married again - Lady Frances Devereux in March 1617 - and had at least eight children. One of his descendants was Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, the 'Queen Mother' and, thus King Charles III.
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