The life of Queen Henrietta Maria by Taylor Ida A. (Ida Ashworth)

Author:Taylor, Ida A. (Ida Ashworth)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Henrietta Maria, Queen, consort of Charles I, King of England, 1609-1669
Publisher: London : Hutchinson
Published: 1905-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

From the picture by Van Dyck at Windsor Castle. Photo by Franz Hanfstaengl. CHARLES II. AS PRINCE OF WALES.

HENRIETTA AND HER SISTER 151

nursery must have been full enough to give her ample occupation when the round of court entertainments afforded her leisure to attend to it. Besides her two elder sons and her daughter Mary, Elizabeth and little Anne were added to the list before the close of this period of tranquillity ; and her voice—of rare beauty, but never used in public—would be sometimes heard as she sang to her babies. Rumours of gathering and increasing discontent outside the circle of the court will have penetrated but faintly to her ears, and all have seemed to her to be going very well.

Yet there must have been times when the French Queen felt herself to be a foreigner in a strange land. Not one of her relations appear to have yet crossed the narrow seas to visit her ; whilst her correspondence with her sister, Christine, married in 1619 to the Duke of Savoy, and from whom Henrietta had finally parted as a child of ten, testifies to her clinging to ties of blood and to the warmth and tenacity of her affections. To the sister whom she would not have recognised had they met she writes with eager and overflowing sympathy, whether in the time of the Duchess's prosperity or during the sorrows by which she was overtaken. She is, as it were, at home in the nursery at Turin, and with the children she has never seen. "Je suis amoureuse de ma niepse," she says, thanking Christine for the portraits she has sent, " et pour vostre petit fils, je ne 1'oserais louer, car il resemble trop au mien." Upon another occasion a lock of the little Italian niece's curling hair had been sent to the unknown aunt, in full confidence of her interest in its beauty. When, on the death of her husband, Christine was surrounded by intrigues and conspiracies, Henrietta's sympathy was no less great. She wished it were in her power to go

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