fearful debaucheries. The question is what to believe, for much that we
have heard about her is almost certainly apocryphal.
The author from whom Montaigne took his facts is the elder Pliny, who,
in his Natural History, Book X, Chapter 83, says, “Other animals become
sated with veneral pleasures; man hardly knows any satiety. Messalina,
the wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking this a palm quite worthy of an
empress, selected for the purpose of deciding the question, one of the
most notorious women who followed the profession of a hired prostitute;
and the empress outdid her, after continuous intercourse, night and day,
at the twenty-fifth embrace.”
But Pliny, notwithstanding his great attainments, was often a retailer of
stale gossip, and in like case was Aurelius Victor, another writer who
heaped much odium on her name. Again, there is a great hiatus in the
Annals of Tacitus, a true historian, at the period covering the earlier
days of the Empress; while Suetonius, bitter as he may be, is little more
than an anecdotist. Juvenal, another of her detractors, is a prejudiced
witness, for he started out to satirize female vice, and naturally aimed
at high places. Dio also tells of Messalina’s misdeeds, but his work is
under the same limitations as that of Suetonius. Furthermore, none but
Pliny mentions the excess under consideration.
However, “where there is much smoke there must be a little fire,” and
based upon the superimposed testimony of the writers of the period, there
appears little doubt but that Messalina was a nymphomaniac, that she
prostituted herself in the public stews, naked, and with gilded nipples,
and that she did actually marry her chief adulterer, Silius, while
Claudius was absent at Ostia, and that the wedding was consummated in the
presence of a concourse of witnesses. This was “the straw that broke the
camel’s back.” Claudius hastened back to Rome, Silius was dispatched,
and Messalina, lacking the will-power to destroy herself, was killed when
an officer ran a sword through her abdomen, just as it appeared that
Claudius was about to relent.
“THEN SPAKE YE DAMNED WINDMILL, SIR WALTER”
Raleigh is thoroughly in character here; this observation is quite in
keeping with the general veracity of his account of his travels in
Guiana, one of the most mendacious accounts of adventure ever told.
Naturally, the scholarly researches of Westermarck have failed to
discover this people; perhaps Lady Helen might best be protected among
the Jibaros of Ecuador, where the men marry when approaching forty.
Ben Jonson in his Conversations observed “That Sr. W. Raughlye esteemed
more of fame than of conscience.”
YE VIRGIN QUEENE
Grave historians have debated for centuries the pretensions of Elizabeth
to the title, “The Virgin Queen,” and it is utterly impossible to dispose
of the issue in a note. However, the weight of opinion appears to be in
the negative. Many and great were the difficulties attending the
marriage of a Protestant princess in those troublous times, and Elizabeth
finally announced that she would become wedded to the English nation,
and she wore a ring in token thereof until her death. However, more or
less open liaisons with Essex and Leicester, as well as a host of lesser
courtiers, her ardent temperament, and her imperious temper, are
indications that cannot be denied in determining any estimate upon the
point in question.
Ben Jonson in his Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden
says,
“Queen Elizabeth never saw herself after she became old in a true glass;
they painted her, and sometymes would vermillion her nose. She had
allwayes about Christmass evens set dice that threw sixes or five, and
she knew not they were other, to make her win and esteame herself
fortunate. That she had a membrana on her, which made her uncapable of
man, though for her delight she tried many. At the comming over of
Monsieur, there was a French Chirurgion who took in hand to cut it, yett
fear stayed her, and his death.”
It was a subject which again intrigued Clemens when he was abroad with
W. H. Fisher, whom Mark employed to “nose up” everything pertaining to
Queen Elizabeth’s manly character.
“‘BOCCACCIO HATH A STORY”
The author does not pay any great compliment to Raleigh’s memory here.