II.
With all that she was a prude.
It was the fashion.
Remember Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was of a type that prevailed in England for threecenturies--the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth. Elizabeth wasmore than English--she was Anglican. Hence the deep respect of theEpiscopalian Church for that queen--respect resented by the Church ofRome, which counterbalanced it with a dash of excommunication. In themouth of Sixtus V., when anathematizing Elizabeth, malediction turned tomadrigal. "_Un gran cervello di principessa_," he says. Mary Stuart,less concerned with the church and more with the woman part of thequestion, had little respect for her sister Elizabeth, and wrote to heras queen to queen and coquette to prude: "Your disinclination tomarriage arises from your not wishing to lose the liberty of being madelove to." Mary Stuart played with the fan, Elizabeth with the axe. Anuneven match. They were rivals, besides, in literature. Mary Stuartcomposed French verses; Elizabeth translated Horace. The ugly Elizabethdecreed herself beautiful; liked quatrains and acrostics; had the keysof towns presented to her by cupids; bit her lips after the Italianfashion, rolled her eyes after the Spanish; had in her wardrobe threethousand dresses and costumes, of which several were for the characterof Minerva and Amphitrite; esteemed the Irish for the width of theirshoulders; covered her farthingale with braids and spangles; lovedroses; cursed, swore, and stamped; struck her maids of honour with herclenched fists; used to send Dudley to the devil; beat Burleigh, theChancellor, who would cry--poor old fool! spat on Matthew; collaredHatton; boxed the ears of Essex; showed her legs to Bassompierre; andwas a virgin.
What she did for Bassompierre the Queen of Sheba had done forSolomon;[11] consequently she was right, Holy Writ having created theprecedent. That which is biblical may well be Anglican. Biblicalprecedent goes so far as to speak of a child who was called Ebnehaquemor Melilechet--that is to say, the Wise Man's son.
Why object to such manners? Cynicism is at least as good as hypocrisy.
Nowadays England, whose Loyola is named Wesley, casts down her eyes alittle at the remembrance of that past age. She is vexed at the memory,yet proud of it.
These fine ladies, moreover, knew Latin. From the 16th century this hadbeen accounted a feminine accomplishment. Lady Jane Grey had carriedfashion to the point of knowing Hebrew. The Duchess Josiana Latinized.Then (another fine thing) she was secretly a Catholic; after the mannerof her uncle, Charles II., rather than her father, James II. James II.had lost his crown for his Catholicism, and Josiana did not care to riskher peerage. Thus it was that while a Catholic amongst her intimatefriends and the refined of both sexes, she was outwardly a Protestantfor the benefit of the riffraff.
This is the pleasant view to take of religion. You enjoy all the goodthings belonging to the official Episcopalian church, and later on youdie, like Grotius, in the odour of Catholicity, having the glory of amass being said for you by le Pere Petau.
Although plump and healthy, Josiana was, we repeat, a perfect prude.
At times her sleepy and voluptuous way of dragging out the end of herphrases was like the creeping of a tiger's paws in the jungle.
The advantage of prudes is that they disorganize the human race. Theydeprive it of the honour of their adherence. Beyond all, keep the humanspecies at a distance. This is a point of the greatest importance.
When one has not got Olympus, one must take the Hotel de Rambouillet.Juno resolves herself into Araminta. A pretension to divinity notadmitted creates affectation. In default of thunderclaps there isimpertinence. The temple shrivels into the boudoir. Not having the powerto be a goddess, she is an idol.
There is besides, in prudery, a certain pedantry which is pleasing towomen. The coquette and the pedant are neighbours. Their kinship isvisible in the fop. The subtile is derived from the sensual. Gluttonyaffects delicacy, a grimace of disgust conceals cupidity. And then womanfeels her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry whichtakes the place of scruples in prudes. It is a line of circumvallationwith a ditch. Every prude puts on an air of repugnance. It is aprotection. She will consent, but she disdains--for the present.
Josiana had an uneasy conscience. She felt such a leaning towardsimmodesty that she was a prude. The recoils of pride in the directionopposed to our vices lead us to those of a contrary nature. It was theexcessive effort to be chaste which made her a prude. To be too much onthe defensive points to a secret desire for attack; the shy woman is notstrait-laced. She shut herself up in the arrogance of the exceptionalcircumstances of her rank, meditating, perhaps, all the while, somesudden lapse from it.
It was the dawn of the eighteenth century. England was a sketch of whatFrance was during the regency. Walpole and Dubois are not unlike.Marlborough was fighting against his former king, James II., to whom itwas said he had sold his sister, Miss Churchill. Bolingbroke was in hismeridian, and Richelieu in his dawn. Gallantry found its convenience ina certain medley of ranks. Men were equalized by the same vices as theywere later on, perhaps, by the same ideas. Degradation of rank, anaristocratic prelude, began what the revolution was to complete. It wasnot very far off the time when Jelyotte was seen publicly sitting, inbroad daylight, on the bed of the Marquise d'Epinay. It is true (formanners re-echo each other) that in the sixteenth century Smeton'snightcap had been found under Anne Boleyn's pillow.
If the word woman signifies fault, as I forget what Council decided,never was woman so womanlike as then. Never, covering her frailty by hercharms, and her weakness by her omnipotence, has she claimed absolutionmore imperiously. In making the forbidden the permitted fruit, Eve fell;in making the permitted the forbidden fruit, she triumphs. That is theclimax. In the eighteenth century the wife bolts out her husband. Sheshuts herself up in Eden with Satan. Adam is left outside.