Monday, Dec. 31, 1928
Old Hen, Great Snake
ELIZABETH AND ESSEX, A Tragic History--Lytton Strachey--Harcourt Brace
($3.75).
The Portrait Gallery. Elizabeth.
"Only a woman could have shuffled so shamelessly, only a woman could have abandoned with such unscrupulous completeness the last shreds not only of consistency, but of dignity, honor and common decency, in order to escape the appalling necessity of having, really and truly, to make up her mind. Yet it is true that . . . male courage, male energy . . . she also possessed. . . .
"She was mistress of six languages besides her own, a student of Greek, a superb calligraphist, an excellent musician. She was a connoisseur of painting and poetry. She danced, after the Florentine style, with a high magnificence that astonished beholders. Her conversation, full, not only of humor, but of elegance and wit, revealed an unerring social sense, a charming delicacy of personal perception. It was this spiritual versatility which made her one of the supreme diplomatists of history. . . .
"In spite of superficial resemblances, she was the very opposite of her most dangerous enemy--the weaving spider of the Escurial. Both were masters of dissimulation and lovers of delay; but the leaden foot of Philip was the symptom of a dying organism, while Elizabeth temporized for the contrary reason--because vitality can afford to wait. The fierce old hen sat still, brooding over the English nation, whose pullulating energies were coming swiftly to ripeness and unity under her wings. She sat still; but every feather bristled; she was tremendously alive. . . ."
Essex. "Leicester . . . appointed him General of the Horse. The post was less responsible than picturesque, and Essex performed its functions perfectly. . . .
"His spirit, wayward, melancholy, and splendid, belonged to the Renaissance--the English Renaissance, in which the conflicting currents of ambition, learning, religion, and lasciviousness were so subtly intervolved. . . .
"He turned aside suddenly from the exciting whirl of business and politics to adore alone, in some inner room, the sensuous harmonies of Spenser. He dallied dangerously with court beauties; and then went to meditate for hours upon the attributes of the Deity in the cold church of St. Paul. . . ."
Francis Bacon. "He was no striped frieze; he was shot silk. The detachment of speculation, the intensity of personal pride, the uneasiness of nervous sensibility, the urgency of ambition, the opulence of superb taste--these qualities, blending, twisting, flashing together, gave to his secret spirit the subtle and glittering superficies of a serpent. . . . The music sounds, and the great snake rises, and spreads its hood, and leans and hearkens, swaying in ecstasy; and even so the Lord Chancellor, in the midst of some great sentence, some high intellectual confection, seems to hold his breath in a rich beatitude, fascinated by the deliciousness of sheer style. . . ."
Robert Cecil. ". . . his presence was sweet and grave. . . . He was all mild reasonableness--or so it appeared, until he left his chair, stood up, and unexpectedly revealed the stunted discomfort of deformity. Then another impression came upon one--the uneasiness produced by an enigma: what could the combination of that beautifully explicit countenance with that shameful, crooked posture really betoken? He returned to the table, and once more took up his quill; all, once more, was perspicuous serenity. . . ."
The Significance. Lytton Strachey proclaims no novel theory regarding the
Virgin Queen--delicately he even grants her her virginity. But to Lytton Strachey no meretricious novelty is necessary, such is the compelling freshness of his interpretation, and such the uncanny vitality of his art. Elizabeth has always made engaging reading, but from Strachey's pages she emerges in all her living bizarre glamor to fascinate a jaded 20th century as surely as she fascinated the sensitive enthusiasts of her day. And it is not the youthful Elizabeth, but Elizabeth in her triumphant old age--her enemies outplayed and outlived; her darlings still vying for her favors. In vivid galaxy enemies and darlings alike surround her, each one scheming deliciously to control her feminine humors.
In his study of Queen Victoria, Strachey crystallized a period of history; in his portrait of Elizabeth he creates a symbol of sovereignty, withal flesh and blood.
The Author. Synonym of biography in the new manner, Strachey takes his work far more seriously than the host of whippersnappers who have travestied his methods in the six years since Queen Victoria was published. Three years' solid work expended on that book resulted in what the author called "suffering from mental prostration"--horrible to consider what effect the present more brilliant volume will have.
For "solid work" Mr. Strachey betakes him and his gangling bones to the country, to escape, not so much the London noises, as the distracting society of Bloomsbury literati--VirginiaWoolf, Clive Bell, Osbert Sitwell (TIME, Oct. 22).