1) My friend Miss Percy reminded me that today is the anniversary of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, when he sent this article from the NYT about recently decoded letters of hers discovered in France. Of course the first thing I thought of was the notoriously funny “Death of Mary Queen of Scots” by Monty Python, to which I was introduced by friends in college. “Aw thynke she’s daid.” “No Ay’m nawt.”
2) But my love of Mary goes back much further and is more serious than that. When Mother and Daddy got us the World Book Encyclopedia in 1972 or 1973, I learned about not just the Presidents and First Ladies, but also Mary. My vague memories of what interested me about her then were her becoming queen as a baby six days old, being raised in France and then returning to Scotland as a widow, her second marriage to Darnley, deposition, being forced to accept the “hospitality” of Elizabeth, and of course her execution.
3) My father’s parents were not readers, but I have their copy of Best Loved Poems of the American People, which included “Mary, Queen of Scots,” by a Scottish poet, Henry Glassford Bell. (I believe, in fact, that it’s the only reason his name remains known to history.) The pictures he painted of Mary’s life — growing up in a French convent with her four friends, her marriage to Francis, the murder of Rizzio, etc. — enchanted me as a boy. Also his device after the first stanza of beginning all the others “The scene was changed.”
3a) A sample of his product: “No marvel that the lady wept? it was the land of France,
The chosen home of chivalry, the garden of romance!
The past was bright, like those dear hills so far behind her bark;
The future, like the gathering night, was ominous and dark!”
3b) Later, of course, one discovers that he didn’t have all his facts quite straight, but perhaps not badly enough to revoke his Poetic License.
4) In college I haunted Boston Book Annex near Park Drive; indeed, I still have several of the books I bought there then. After I had devoured Stefan Zweig’s Marie Antoinette: Portrait of an Average Woman, I was thrilled to stumble upon his Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles. Now we get more into the jeweled fiery heart of the matter! Zweig paints a dramatic picture of all Mary’s life — the treachery of the Scottish lords and her illegitimate half-brother the Earl of Moray, the splendor of Elizabeth I and her dark plotting with her court, Mary’s infatuation with tall, slim, blond, possibly bisexual Lord Darnley (who at least for a while shared a bed with David Rizzio), the malign domination of the Earl of Bothwell, and all that came after.
4a) But especially riveting is Zweig’s account of Mary’s execution and her preparations for it. Good stage management makes such a difference on these occasions. “Mary allotted the minutes of her remaining hours with far more thoughtfulness and circumspection than had been her wont in ordinary life. As a great princess, she wished to die a great death; and, with the immaculate sense for style which had always characterized her, with her native artistry and her inborn talent for seemly behaviour on solemn occasions, Mary prepared for her exit from life as one prepares for a festival, a triumph, a grand ceremony. Nothing was to be improvised, nothing was to be left to chance. Every effect was to be calculated; all was to be regal, splendid, and imposing. The details were to be as carefully thought out as the words of one of those heroic sagas that depict the exemplary death of a martyr.”
4b) I’ll spare you the details of her scaffold wardrobe, which are well known. But I’ve always remembered what happened immediately afterward: “At length, however, when the executioner lifted up the head and shouted: ‘God save the queen!’ the Dean of Peterborough summoned up courage to say: ‘Amen! Amen! So perish all the queen’s enemies.’ The Earl of Kent came up to the dead body and, with lowered voice, said: ‘Such end happen to all the queen’s and Gospel’s enemies!’ Turns out I’ve been misquoting every time I’ve said “Thus to all the Queen’s and Gospel’s enemies!” whenever some evil person has been thwarted. Oopsie.
4c) The most horrifying detail is about Mary’s devoted little dog. “Unnoticed, Mary’s Skye terrier had crept beneath her petticoat. Now the little beast sprang forth “embrued in her blood.” Afterwards, “it would not depart from the dead corpse, but came and lay between her head and shoulders.” By force it was taken away and sent to be washed.”
5) Alison Weir’s Mary, Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley added more depth to my understanding of her second marriage and its explosive conclusion. Also, who knew that venereal disease was then treated with mercury (!), which resulted not least in bad breath?! This was Darnley’s problem, not Mary’s, but my goodness — one more reason they were all painted with their mouths closed.
6) Eventually the 1936 Mary of Scotland fell under my eye. But as Betty Schaefer said in Sunset Boulevard, “I wouldn’t bother. It’s from hunger.” Even Katharine Hepburn, who starred as Mary, later said she’d have preferred to play Elizabeth, and I’m like “Gurrrrllllll, you should have.” With Frederic March as Bothwell, John Carradine as Rizzio, and a cast of actors only I would remember, not to mention costumes by Walter Plunkett — what a wasted effort.
7) When I was in London in 2019, I was surprised and excited to see an exhibition of Mary’s embroidery of animals, her pastime in captivity. I wish I could find those photos.
8) So those are the sources of my love for Mary, Queen of Scots. “Then weigh,” as Mr. Bell concludes his poem, “against a grain of sand the glories of a throne.”
9) And now, Radio Four will explode.
