It will be an everlasting glory of the movement we call humanism that its apostles insisted upon familiarity with the arts even among those whose mission it was to move in the highest circles. We can hardly think of any other period in history than the epoch then dawning, in which not only men of station, but noblewomen as well, were expected to be highly educated. Like Mary of England and her half-sister Elizabeth, Mary Stuart had to become familiar with Greek and Latin, and, in addition, with modern tongues, with French, Italian, English and Spanish. Having a clear intelligence and a ready wit coupled with an inherited delight in learning, these things came easily to the gifted child. When she was no more than thirteen (having been taught her Latin from Erasmus’ Colloquies) she recited, in the great gallery of the Louvre, before the assembled court and the foreign ambassadors, a Latin oration of her own composition, and did this so ably, with so much ease and grace, that her uncle the Cardinal of Lorraine was able to write to Mary of Guise: “Your daughter is improving, and increasing day by day in stature, goodness, beauty, wisdom and worth. She is so perfect and accomplished in all things, honourable and virtuous, that like of her is not to be seen in this realm, whether among noble damsels, maidens of low degree, or in middle station. The King has taken so great a liking to her that he spends much of his time chatting with her, sometimes by the hour together, and she knows as well how to entertain him with pleasant and sensible subjects of conversation as if she were a woman of five-and-twenty.”

In very truth Mary’s mental development was no less speedy than it was thorough. Soon she had acquired so perfect a command of French that she could venture to express herself in verse, vying with Ronsard and du Bellay in her answers to their adulatory poems. In days to come, when most sorely distressed, or when the fires of passion must find vent, she would by choice use the metrical form; and down to her last hour she remained true to poesy as the most loyal of her friends. In the other arts she could express herself with extraordinarily good taste: she sang charmingly to the accompaniment of the lute; her dancing was acclaimed as bewitching; her embroideries were those of a hand gifted no less than trained; her dress was always discreet and becomingly chosen, since she had no love for the huge hooped skirts in which Elizabeth delighted to strut; her maidenly figure looked equally well whether she was clad in Highland dress or in silken robes of state. Tact and a fine discrimination were inseparable from her nature, and this daughter of the Stuarts would preserve even in her darkest hours, as the priceless heritage of her royal blood and courtly training, an exalted but nowise theatrical demeanour which will for all time endow her with a halo of romance. Even in matters of sport she was well-nigh the equal of the most skilful at this court where sport was a cult. An indefatigable horsewoman, an ardent huntress, agile at the game of pall-mall, tall, slender and graceful though she was, she knew nothing of fatigue. Bright and cheerful, carefree and joyous, she drained the delights of youth out of every goblet that offered, never guessing that this was to be the only happy period of her life. Mary Queen of Scots at the French court comes down to us as an unfading and unique picture. There is scarcely another woman in whom the chivalrous ideal of the French Renaissance found so entrancing and maidenly an expression as in this merry and ardent daughter of a royal race.

She had barely left childhood when, as a maid in her teens and later as a woman, the poets of the day sang her praises. “In her fifteenth year her beauty began to radiate from her like the sun in a noontide sky,” wrote Brantôme. Du Bellay was even more passionate in his admiration:

En votre esprit le ciel s’est surmonté.

Nature et art ont en votre beauté

Mis tout le beau dont la beauté s’assemble.

(Heaven outdid itself when it created your mind. Nature and art have combined to make your beauty the quintessence of all that is beautiful.) Lope de Vega exclaimed: “From her eyes the stars borrow their brilliancy, and from her features the colours which make them so wonderful.” Ronsard attributes the following words to a brother of Charles IX:

Avoir joui d’une telle beauté,

Sein contre sein, valoit ta royauté.

(To have enjoyed such beauty, heart to heart, was worth your regal crown.) Again, du Bellay sums up all the praise of all the poets in the couplet:

Contentez-vous, mes yeux!

Vous ne verrez jamais une chose pareille …

(Rest content, my eyes! Never will you see again so lovely a thing.) Poets are prone to let their feelings run away with them; especially is this so in the case of court poets when they wish to sing the merits of their ruler. With the greater curiosity do we turn to the portraits left to us by such a master as Clouet. Here we suffer no disappointment, indeed, and yet we cannot altogether agree with the paeans of the poets. No radiant beauty shines down from the canvas, but, rather, a piquant little visage, a delicate and attractive oval, a slightly pointed nose, giving the features that charming irregularity which invariably renders a woman’s face so attractive. The dark eyes are gentle, mysterious, veiled; the mouth closed and calm. It must be admitted that each feature is finely moulded, and that nature had made use of her best materials when she was fashioning this daughter of many kings. The skin is wonderfully white and smooth, shimmering like nacre; the hair is abundant and of a chestnut colour, its beauty of texture being enhanced by the pearls entwined in its strands; the hands are long and slim, pale as snow; the body tall and straight; “the corselet so cut as to give but a glimpse of the snowy texture of her breast; and the collar raised, thus revealing the exquisite modelling of her shoulders.” No flaw is to be found in this face and figure. But precisely because it is so cool and flawless, so smooth and pretty, the face is lacking in expression. It seems to be a fair, clean page on which nothing personal, nothing characteristic of the young woman herself, has yet been inscribed. There is something indecisive and vague in the lineaments; something that has not yet blossomed, is awaiting the moment of awakening. Every portrait produces an impression of flatness and debility. Here, one feels, the nature of the real woman has still to be revealed; perhaps the true character of the sitter has never been given the chance to develop along its own lines.