The Queen's Bed: An Intimate History of Elizabeth's Court (48 page)

The Queen’s considerable vanity and her political insecurity meant she found her ageing appearance hard to accept. According to one source, if she saw her reflection by accident in a looking glass she would be ‘strangely transported and offended’ because it did not show what she had once been. Her ladies would often hide their mirrors and ‘sometimes for haste broke them’.
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On a cold December afternoon in 1597, André Hurault, Monsieur de Maisse, ambassador to Henri IV of France, disembarked from the royal barge at the privy stairs of Whitehall Palace. He had come to talk with Elizabeth on the subject of war with Spain. The extraordinary detail with which he described his subsequent audiences has left a vivid pen portrait of the Queen at sixty-four. Here we see the Queen’s bejewelled extravagance, her clothes, her undiminished wit, her love of music and dancing, and we glimpse a new vulnerability that has come with age.

On arriving at the palace, de Maisse was led along corridors, past huge stone chimneypieces gaudy with heraldry, through the Guard’s Chamber and into the Presence Chamber, where he sat down upon a cushion to await the Queen. On the walls hung huge tapestries in bright blue, reds and burnished golds; there were thick Persian and Indian carpets draped over every table, and soft rugs on the floors.
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Displayed about the room were various oddities including ostrich eggs, coconut cups and earthenware objets d’art that had been given to the Queen by foreign visitors and dignitaries.

After a while the Lord Chamberlain came and led the Frenchman along a dark passage into the Privy Chamber where he saw a number of lords and ladies and, seated on a low chair, the Queen herself. As de Maisse entered, Elizabeth rose and came forward to embrace him. She apologised for not granting him an audience sooner, but explained that ‘the day before she had been very ill with a gathering on the right side of her face’, and that ‘she did not remember ever to have been so ill before’. De Maisse described how the Queen was splendidly yet strangely dressed in a nightgown, albeit one of ‘silver cloth, white and crimson’. Perhaps having noticed the ambassador’s reaction, Elizabeth turned to her councillors and, gesturing to de Maisse and those that accompanied him, said, ‘What will these gentlemen say to see me so attired? I am much disturbed that they should see me in this state.’

As Elizabeth sat back down on her chair and gestured for a stool to be brought, de Maisse delivered the French King’s good wishes and desire to ‘learn the news of her well being and health’. With the Queen sitting before him, the ambassador described how Elizabeth ‘kept the front of her gown open’, so that he could see ‘the whole of her bosom’ which he described as ‘somewhat wrinkled’, although he added, ‘lower down her flesh is exceeding white and delicate, so far as one could see’. She was heavily bejewelled, with a string of pearls around her neck, and on her head a red wig with ‘a great number of spangles of gold and silver’, worn to signify virginity.
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As for her face, ‘it is and appears to be very aged’, wrote the ambassador. ‘It is long and thin, and her teeth are yellow and unequal, compared with what they were formerly, so they say, on the left side less than on the right. Many of them are missing so that one cannot understand her easily when she speaks quickly.’

When de Maisse tried to raise the subject of peace-making with France, he was struck by the Queen’s restlessness and the fact that she never seemed to sit still. At first she had sat in her chair, twisting and untwisting her fingers around the fringe of her gown. Then she got up and began pacing around the room, trembling with a nervous energy, all the while opening and shutting her gown. The fire was too hot, she complained, it was hurting her eyes. She called for her servants to put it out, and de Maisse then had to wait while buckets of water were poured over the sizzling logs. As de Maisse prepared to leave, Elizabeth once again expressed her distress that all the gentlemen whom the ambassador had brought should see her in that condition. She called them to her and ‘embraced them all with great charm and smiling countenance’.

A week later, when de Maisse was to meet with the Queen a second time, she again displayed vulnerability about her appearance. De Maisse recounted how, just as Elizabeth was about to send a coach to bring him to the palace, she cancelled, having looked into a mirror and announced that she was ‘too ill’ and was ‘unwilling for anyone to see her in that state’. The following day, they met, and de Maisse noticed that ‘she looked in better health than before’. She was wearing a beautiful black taffeta dress, a petticoat of white damask, girdled and open at the front, as was her chemise. The ambassador was again struck by how often she opened her dress and described how ‘one could see all her belly, and even to her navel’.
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It is a bizarre, youthful and provocative image; Elizabeth perhaps seeking to demonstrate to de Maisse and to herself, her continued attractiveness and allure with such provocation. The claim that Elizabeth exposed her breasts was repeated by a number of foreign dignitaries at court.

The ambassador described how the Queen greeted him with ‘very good cheer’ and sat on her chair of state and called for a stool to be brought for him. She referred to herself as ‘foolish and old’, lamenting that ‘after having seen so many wise men and great princes’, the ambassador should come to see ‘a poor woman and foolish’.
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De Maisse responded with suitable flattery, ‘telling her the blessings, virtues and perfections that I had heard of her from stranger Princes, but that was nothing compared with what I saw’, which clearly pleased the Queen. De Maisse noted how she always responded contentedly when anyone commended her for ‘her judgement and prudence, and she is very glad to speak slightingly of her intelligence and sway of mind, so that they may give occasion to commend her’. However, of her looks, ‘she says she was never beautiful, although she had that reputation thirty years ago’; yet De Maisse noted, ‘she speaks of her beauty as often as she can’. Elizabeth, always proud of her long, slim fingers, then removed her glove to show de Maisse her hand. As he later commented in his journal, ‘it was formerly very beautiful, but is now very thin, although the skin is still most fair’.

Elizabeth was, as de Maisse presented her, an ageing sinewy woman in her sixties, not the majestic, eternally youthful beauty of the state portraits. Yet there was also clearly something about Elizabeth that remained striking, even beautiful. She was ‘tall and graceful’ and ‘as far as may be she keeps her dignity, yet humbly and graciously withal’. As to her ‘natural form and proportion’, the envoy wrote, ‘she is very beautiful’. He added, ‘save for her face, which looks old, and her teeth, it is not possible to see a woman of so fine and vigorous disposition both in mind and body’.
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Integral to the construction of the Queen’s image was her wardrobe. As Elizabeth aged her clothes became more elaborate and a means of diverting attention away from her flesh. De Maisse had been amazed to learn that she had over 3,000 dresses, all housed in the Great Wardrobe in the Palace of Westminster. These included some 102 ‘French gowns’, 100 ‘loose gowns’, and 67 ‘round gowns’, 99 robes, 127 cloaks, 85 doublets, 125 petticoats, 126 kirtles.
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Her clothes were made from extravagant fabrics and were richly embroidered with roses, suns, moons and planets, pomegranates, (another symbol of virginity), serpents (representing wisdom), and hawthorns (a symbol of purity and prudence). As such, the Queen’s gowns were an important mode of communicating certain messages or celebrating her virtues. Her ostentatious clothes, like her portraits, were a means by which the growing tension between the Queen’s two bodies could be smoothed.

In 1593, when John Aylmer, Bishop of London, had preached on ‘the vanity of decking the body too finely’, he had incurred Elizabeth’s ‘great displeasure’. She told her ladies that, ‘if the Bishop held more discourse on such matters she would fit him for Heaven, but he should walk thither without a staff and leave his mantle behind him; perchance the Bishop hath never seen her Highness wardrobe, or he would have chosen another text.’
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Indeed, as Sir John Harington observed, if the bishop had first enquired as to the extent of her Majesty’s wardrobe, he would have chosen to preach on a different topic.
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De Maisse’s final audience with the Queen was on Christmas Eve 1597. He arrived in Elizabeth’s chamber as she was having the spinet played to her. When she looked round he ‘feigned’ surprise and apologised for disturbing her. She told him ‘that she loved music greatly and that she was having a pavane played’, to which he answered that she was a ‘very good judge and had a reputation of being a mistress in the art’. He described how Elizabeth took great pleasure in music and watching her ladies dance and how, ‘although she was extremely tired’, she ‘smiled at the ladies’ who would often go before her and ‘make their obeisance’ before falling back into the dance.
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As de Maisse prepared to depart, he asked Elizabeth what he should say to King Henri on her behalf. Drawing close to him, she told him to say that there was,

no creature on earth … who bore him such affection or so greatly desired his good and prosperity as she, but that she begged him to consider the position in which she was placed; that she was a woman, old and capable of nothing by herself; she had to deal with nobles of diverse humours, and peoples, who, although they made great demonstration of love towards her, nevertheless were fickle and inconstant, and she had to fear everything.

Whilst the English people still professed love for her, the sentiments of the nobility were such that ‘the English would never again submit to the rule of a woman’.
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She then talked of ‘the attempts that had been made against her life as against her state’ and explained how she found it ‘marvellous strange that the King of Spain should treat her in a fashion that she would never have believed to proceed from the will of a prince; yet he had caused fifteen persons to be sent to that end, who had all confessed’.

Elizabeth was beginning to fear for the future. She spoke of how she stood ‘on the edge of the grave’. It was a moment of genuine candour and realising what she had said to a visiting ambassador, she quickly checked herself and added, ‘I think not to die so soon, Master Ambassador, and am not so old as they think.’
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Mask of Youth

The thwarting of the plots against Elizabeth and defeat of the Armada gave further impetus to the fashion among courtiers and nobles for wearing some token of loyalty and love for the Queen, and she in turn gave miniatures of herself as demonstrations of her affection. However, as the demand grew, so too did the need to control the images reproduced, to ensure that the reality of Elizabeth’s advanced years was never depicted. In art, as in all other propaganda, her features were transformed into those of a much younger woman. Elizabeth’s government had been concerned to regulate the production and dissemination of the royal image from the earliest years of her reign. In 1563 a draft proclamation was drawn up by William Cecil which addressed the grievous and offensive ‘errors and deformities’ in widely available representations of the Queen:

Forasmuch as through the natural desires that all sorts of subjects and people, both noble and mean, hope to procure the portrait and picture of the Queen’s majesty’s most noble and loving person and royal majesty, all manner of painters have already and do daily attempt to make in short manner portraiture of her Majesty in painting, graving and painting, wherein is evidently seen that hitherto none hath sufficiently expressed the natural representations of her Majesty’s person, favour or grace, but that most have so far erred therein as thereof daily are heard complaints amongst her loving subjects.

It was proposed that until such time as a specially commissioned painter might be permitted to have a sitting with the Queen, and ‘to take the natural representation’ of her, then no other persons might ‘draw, paint, grave or portray her Majesty’s personage or visage’.
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The 1563 proclamation almost certainly remained in draft but nevertheless it demonstrates that the ‘natural representation’ of the Queen was the primary goal of early state portraiture.

Now, more than thirty years later, the government had again become concerned about representations of the Queen’s image and the 1596 proclamation, which was issued, delivered a strong and urgent message. Any ‘unseemly and improper’ portraits of the Queen would be destroyed.
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Not only were painters who were unable to produce a true likeness of the Queen merely errant, as the 1563 proclamation implied, but they were also considered to be abusive. Now it was no longer the Queen’s subjects but the Queen herself who took ‘great offence’ by the presentation of such images.

The purpose of the royal portrait, and with it the definition of what was considered acceptable, had changed. Artists were no longer merely required to achieve ‘the natural representation of her Majesty’s person, favour or grace’, but in representing ‘her Majesty’s person and visage’ were obliged fully to convey ‘that beautiful and magnanimous Majesty wherewith God hath blessed her’. All images produced would be vetted by the Sergeant Painter, George Gower, to ensure they conformed to the officially approved face pattern.
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Nicholas Hilliard was called upon to evolve this formalised timeless mask of the Queen’s face which would then be used in subsequent images. Each time a new portrait of Elizabeth was created, this new face pattern would be inserted into different arrangements of hair, dress and jewellery.
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It is very unlikely that Elizabeth ever sat for another painting and Hilliard’s face pattern became the official public statement of the Queen’s appearance in the final years of the reign. Elizabeth’s face appears radiant and moon-shaped, in stark contrast to the contemporary accounts of her long, thin, wrinkled face in the last decade of her life.