Amenable Women Read online

  This did not altogether enlighten the eyes of the group or its formidable leader. They remained silent and unflinching though their eyes had returned to their sockets. ‘Sometimes,’ said Flora, sticking out her chin and turning her gaze back to the portrait, ‘experts forget to link their eyes with their hearts.’ As Flora stared again at that painted face it stared back at her. Flora could almost read her thoughts. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘if Anna of Cleves is to be known as the Flanders Mare, then you can say without fear or favour that she is a very fine piece of horseflesh.’ Flora studied Miss Murdoch’s badge. Then looked into Miss Murdoch’s eyes. ‘Well, Miss Murdoch?’ She was pleased to see that some of the group returned to the portrait with a kinder look.

  Flora might, she considered afterwards, be going mad. But it seemed, as she stared, that the portrait breathed. Caught in paint before her was a much maligned woman. And she, Flora, empathised. That was all. Anna of Cleves looked out of the frame as a young woman with something to say. After five hundred years of such calumnies, if she didn’t have something to say it would be very surprising. So, thought Flora, let her say it. And if she can’t, then let Flora say it for her.

  Yes – there – no doubt about it – the face of the portrait smiled.

  Just at that moment – at that very split second when Flora thinks she could reach out and take the young woman’s beringed hand – she sees something out of the corner of her eye.

  The group also turns, Miss Murdoch turns – Flora has the strangest sensation of fright – for coming through the door are what you might expect to see if you had gone suddenly mad – coming through the door are two men in white coats. They are wearing sinister white gloves and one of them carries, rolled beneath his white-coated arm, what Flora – for one incredible moment – thinks must be the straitjacket. The two men are smiling which is even more sinister. They move the beige crowd away, they move Miss Murdoch away, they advance towards Flora – and – well – her knees nearly crumple – maybe Anna felt like this when they told her of the King’s loathing – but then the men also move Flora away. What they have come for – is the painting.

  This is where her fluent French helps. Once she has recovered herself she asks the men who are busy taking the portrait down and tucking it up in rudimentary packaging so that they can carry it away without damage, why they are doing so. The face on the portrait may even look a little startled as Flora sees it disappear under a soft and heavy grey cloth wrap. They laugh – the men in white – they recognise that even though she speaks their language she speaks it with an English accent. They tell her, between guffaws as they make the portrait secure enough to go down to the storeroom, that the painting is to go to England. Yes, it is to go to England and be part of a bigger exhibition of this and other portraits. But this portrait, they tell her, and they say it with the pride of Frenchmen, this portrait will be the jewel in the show.

  And with that, they hoist Anna of Cleves, gripped tight at the corners, shrouded in soft grey cloth with her edges protected, away down the gallery and out of the door. The attendant gives them no more than a nod as the men pass by. And then it is all over. Flora looks at Miss Murdoch, the group stare amazed at the blank on the wall. ‘Well,’ says Miss Murdoch with high good humour, ‘we managed our talk just in time.’ She casts a not very nice little smile in Flora’s direction. ‘And they’ve taken your sister away. For cleaning, I expect.’

  ‘No,’ says Flora triumphantly. ‘They are taking her away for an exhibition. Because she is an important portrait painted by an important painter. It will be like 1540 all over again. Anna of Cleves is once more setting out for England.’ Flora laughs at Miss Murdoch’s slightly sour expression.

  ‘Bon voyage,’ says Flora, watching the men walk away into the distance with the portrait. ‘See you in England.’

  7

  Setting Out and Arriving

  Well, well. Modern times. Why mock when a woman calls another woman sister? We called each other sister and it was a form of endearment, of support, of closeness. Why laugh? A sister would, surely, defend another sister from a scornful tongue and hurtful sayings. If the woman in grey wishes to speak so unkindly about me, as many before her have spoken, then it seems to be a very wonderful thing that someone – like a good sister – should defend me. There have been enough degradations, enough unkindnesses, enough speculations about my honour since I first set foot in England, now let there be some credit.

  Do those who make these unjust assertions and speculations think I have no need for truth because I am made of paint? Truth is never unwelcome and now that I am to return to England it is as good a time as any to speak out. I hope, Flora Chapman, that we do meet again. I might have need of you. It is not a happy memory, my previous arrival. Not an occasion on which to look back fondly. If this time my portrait is as badly received as I was then, it will bring no shame on me but on those who will not look, those who still prefer mockery to enlightenment. All the same, Flora Chapman – England again . . .

  When Hans Holbein came to paint me I had no idea that he was considered a genius and that through his painting I would capture the King’s heart. I was not at all worldly and had, until then, been my mother’s companion and helper. If I could not play the lute and dance and construct poetry I did at least have a disposition to be a good wife and a good mother. The requirement for queenliness I already had, the rest would follow. Certainly I had no misgivings, nor did my family. How could we know that such perversity and cruelty existed within a Royal Prince? In Cleves I lived a life that was – thank God – free from the cruelties of religious intolerance. I was a happy young woman, brought up formally, and quite content to stay with my mother at the Court of Cleves. But the Envoys from England, looking for marriage with me or my sister Amelia, changed everything. I was the elder, twenty-three years old, the portrait was painted, and I was chosen. Perhaps I should have been better informed about the English court before I set out on that journey – I might have understood better what was to come. But none of that was spoken about, all was assumed. Princesses of Cleves were not expected to ask questions about their marriages. My older sister Sibylla, Duchess of Saxony, was a renowned beauty and much celebrated and I had no fears it would be different for me. Henry was described to me as a most noble prince and I had no cause to doubt that. I would manage my marriage quite as well as Sibylla.

  There had been one previous attempt to wed me to a suitable husband, the son of the Duke of Lorraine. I was eleven at the time and he was two years my junior. It was a good match but nothing came of it and, in the way of these ironies, many years later, after Henry’s proposal was refused by the sixteen year-old widowed (sixteen, Flora, and twice married to old men) Christina of Denmark, Duchess of Milan, so that he chose me instead, the then Duke of Lorraine, my one-time betrothed, married her – Henry’s first choice. These things both amuse and give pause for thought. The circle of suitable spouses for Royal Houses was always small. Particularly for a King whose wives seemed to die quite regularly.

  Once the King had made up his mind I was sent for at once. Oh, Flora, I should have guessed that Henry’s thoughtlessness to have me travel during the winter was a sign – but then I saw it only as exciting, even romantic. The impatient and imperative King of England would have his way and my entourage assembled in the worst months possible for such a long journey. But my head was high and my heart was happy. I set out regally, a Princess of Cleves, with an escort of three hundred men and women, all richly attired, and I had such gowns made for me that I could only gasp at the sight of them – and gold and jewels, too. My brother William spared nothing for the honour of Cleves and it is both wrong and arrogant to suggest our court was coarse or boorish or impoverished. My royal blood was kin with the Grand Court of Burgundy and as such our heredity was greater and infinitely more noble than the upstart Tudors. It is true that the Duchy of Cleves in which I grew up was sober and formal compared with the French and English courts, but boorish? Never.


  So much fool’s nonsense has been invented over the centuries about my state of mind and heart at the time I left Cleves. There have been suggestions that I was already in love with someone else in Cleves and never wanted to go to England – this was portrayed in a film called The Private Life of Henry VIII – in 1933 and I have known people stand in front of my portrait and declare it a true story. Where such an idea came from is a mystery. As far as I know there is nothing in my life to warrant such an invention. There was no chaster court than Cleves. The possibility of any kind of dalliance, even innocent, was too remote to contemplate. The very idea that I left a lover behind is absurd.

  Then there was a book, My Lady of Cleves, and that is even more absurd. It suggests that I had an affair with the King’s painter, Hans Holbein, which is why he painted me to look more beautiful than I really was – an apologia for my apparent plainness this was – by suggesting that it was beauty in the eye of the loving beholder rather than in the flesh that he painted. Flora, you were quite right, I am straightforward, guileless and as if I could possibly hide – or want – something so intrinsically dangerous – and beneath me – as an affair with the King’s Painter. Even had I been goose enough to be attracted to him,

  Hans Holbein was much too ambitious in the matters of Henry’s court to have anything to do with such a madness. Heads rolled, men were quartered and had their bowels burnt before them for a great deal less. Besides – the very idea that I a Daughter of Cleves – could stoop so low – and with a mere painter from Augsburg, even if that painter was Hans Holbein is impossible.

  The truth, Flora, is simple. I came to England a virgin, pure in body and mind. Of course I did. But I was neither slow-witted nor ignorant, though it was useful in those dark first days of my arrival to be thought incapable of understanding much of the English language and incapable of understanding what was happening all around me. A little more good sense and a little less arrogance might have told my new acquaintances that a princess of royal blood would hardly remain idle in learning the language of her new home nor would she be stupid. Many a woman, it seems to me, has survived by holding her tongue and looking meekly downwards. Besides which, for the duration of the journey to England Henry sent a Mrs Gilmyn to be my female escort and educator in the English tongue and Tudor courtly ways. She was not idle.

  The simple fact is that Hans Holbein painted a good likeness of me, a true likeness. Others said as much. I saw the portrait for the first time when I came to England and it was truthful. When Henry’s envoys came to Cleves they met a quiet, dutiful young woman, eyes modestly downcast, good at her needle, able to read her Bible in German, swathed in demure Brabantine fashions and beloved by her mother. A young princess who was happy in her family – certainly a young woman who would prefer amenability over controversy. They would, with all that I have endured, find me very different now. Indeed, even within six months of arriving in England, and with the humiliating divorce behind me, I was no longer the modest, trusting young woman who first stepped on to English soil. I was alert and – to be truthful once the settlement was made and I was safe – I was excited again. I blossomed.

  Nearly five hundred years of surviving fashion in art, which moves in and out like breathing, serving fashion in all things, has taught me much about the world. I have lived through half a millennium of eavesdropping and most of what I have heard about myself, about Hans Holbein, about this portrait, about Henry and the whole Tudor and Cleves business – is invention. May we please, on the occasion of this second visit to England Flora, make this right?

  So then, without any doubts about Henry’s affection or his character, I set off for England. And, Oh that first journey when I still was wide-eyed and willing was more exciting than anything I ever knew – or expected to know. It was both romantic and a little dangerous for although I remained a Catholic – I was educated to read the Bible in my own language and I believed that others should be free to do so – I came from a religiously reformist court and my brother the Duke was a Lutheran and no friend to the Emperor. I remained true to the Old Faith and was a Catholic on the day I died. Henry, too, remained a Catholic all his life. The English Religious Revolution effected the overthrow of the rule of the Pope, not the overthrow of the Catholic faith. We were in harmony on such matters at least.

  We travelled throughout late autumn and into the dead of winter and even though we took the direct route it was still arduous in both its length and in the pomp and ceremony that heralded every stopping place. Given the upheaval of the times it was not without its dangers. We might have our progress barred as we travelled towards the sea – barred at the very least if not attacked – on the long, landlocked journey to the coast. But the Queen of Hungary, the Catholic Emperor’s Regent, in her sisterly way, gave us safe passage across the shortest route and we chose to trust her word. The alternative was longer and harder and Henry, I was told, was hourly more eager to be my bridegroom. You may imagine the thrill I experienced at such a thought. To be setting out to marry the Golden Prince of England who was eager, eager, Flora, to marry me? It was as if I were Queen already. From being a quiet, respectful Daughter of Cleves, I was now a celebrated Princess. There were no restrictions, no Puritanism then, all was lavish and gorgeous and all for me. I was entertained beyond anything I had seen before, at so many towns – Antwerp, Bruges, Dunkirk – by the time we came to Calais, which was English then, and the ships that would bring me to England, it was cold, very, very cold, and I was weary – but I was also alive to it all, as eager to reach my new country as Henry was to have me there. If some of his accompanying people wrote to the King of me that I was handsome – which they did – then part of that was due to the elation I felt. I was young and naïve and in a maiden’s state of nerves – full of hope and willing to please. Whatever love was, I was ready to embrace it.

  I reached Calais on 11 December 1539, by now accompanied by an English as well as a Cleveian escort. It was my first connection with an English town. And the people who came out to meet me were so delighted, so warm in their welcome, it made me confident of my acceptance. They wanted a Queen and it seemed to them that I was the right mettle for it. I took them to my heart and they took me to theirs and the English nobles accompanying me were so very pleased at the fine way we all behaved. Flora, at no time then was there any mention of my not being handsome or fair. Good feelings abounded and the warmth of everyone I met made up for the exceptionally cold, raw air. They took me to their hearts and I took them to mine. With the people it was a true love-match and I dared to expect the same from the King.

  And then, alas, we were prisoners of the elements. At Calais the weather, which had not been good for the whole of the journey, was worse, much worse, and we could not sail. I was feasted, entertained, made to go out and about to see various people and – despite my years – by then I was exhausted with it all. What I really wanted and succeeded in as much as possible, was to prepare myself for the English court with good Mrs Gilmyn’s help. I wanted to learn the language, learn to write the language, learn the games of cards that my future husband enjoyed so much – know more about music and all the courtly elegances – poetry, even dancing – and generally become immersed in English ways for him. And I did. The Envoys accompanying me wrote of me favourably, praising me to the King. Strange, then, Flora, how such views seemed to change so completely after my meeting with Henry.

  In Calais I was considered quick of mind. If I am nowadays described as dull or stupid, if it is believed that later divorce negotiations foundered on my lack of English it is conveniently forgotten that my escort, the Earl of Southampton, thought I did very well until his royal master told him to think something different. He wrote, I was told, to Henry from Calais saying that I had quickly picked up the game of Cent which His Majesty enjoyed so much and that I had ‘played as pleasantly and with as good a grace and countenance as ever in all my life I saw on any noblewoman’. The Earl was not a man to mince his words if he found faul
t. Henry, like many a bully, had a selective memory.

  In the end I was lucky that the English court decided to believe me to be such a dullard. Very soon after my arrival, I dared not be seen to be otherwise.

  There were some fifty stormbound ships waiting in the harbour at Calais. Two of them, the greatest, were covered in gold and silk flags and banners while others were covered with streamers and more banners and men, hundreds of men, all cheering and waving their hats, and buffeted and wetted by the weather. It was breathtaking and designed to be so – Henry loved his navy and his ships. I responded with genuine delight and this pleased everyone. At that moment and in the following days everyone, everyone was pleased with the Princess of Cleves.

  The storms kept us there for over two weeks and when they finally cleared, and the sea calmed, we sailed for England in the grandest pair of decorated ships that I had ever seen or believed possible. I felt honoured and loved and pleased to have been Mrs Gilmyn’s excellent pupil.

  I was – if not proficient – then able to speak more than a little English, write a little English and understand almost everything. Mrs Gilmyn not only helped me with my English speech and English manners, she knew which were the fashionable perfumes and all the other little pleasures and nuances that would make the passage of my arrival and marriage the smoother. And I was willing to do anything and everything to make my husband happy. Sinful though these delights were after my life in Cleves – where we had no such frivolities – I revelled in these new forms of entertainment. I very quickly learned to love music and to observe, if not yet participate, in dancing. On my arrival Mrs Gilmyn faded most usefully from all memory as my new English Ladies-in-Waiting came to take up their duties which allowed the perceptions of me as ignorant and unsophisticated to continue unchallenged. Had she been with me she would, most likely, have reported to her master that I knew a great deal more than they gave credit for. Nor did I take offence when she told me, in the most genteel terms, that perhaps my gowns and my caps would not suit the taste of my new husband and I prepared myself to change them when I arrived in England.