Brief Gaudy Hour

Margaret Campbell Barnes

Description

The story of Anne Boleyn as mistress-turned-queen to Henry VIII is well-known. However, much less well-known is any evidence of her personal stance on the situation and the state of her heart. Margaret Campbell Barnes allures readers with an introspective view of Anne Boleyn in "Brief Gaudy Hour".

"Brief Gaudy Hour" focuses on Anne Boleyn's relationship and love for Henry Percy. In Barnes's novel, Anne doesn't strive for the King's bed or to necessarily rise on the Court ladder. Nor does she instigate Henry's divorce from Queen Katherine with Henry VIII already following that path on his own. It is quite refreshing to not have Anne be either too much of an angel or oppositely too much of a whore, as most novels depict her. This is one of the strongest novels in terms of depicting Anne as a 'real person'.

Sujets

• Historical
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 26 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456636289
• Langue: English

Extrait

Brief Gaudy Hour
by Margaret Campbell Barnes
Subjects: Fiction -- Historical.

First published in 1949
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Brief Gaudy Hour


by

Margaret Campbell Barnes
To
MY HUSBAND
AUTHOR’S NOTE

In Tudor times so many parents called their children after royalpersonages that it gave rise to a confusing repetition of such namesas Henry and Mary. In order to avoid this, it has seemed advisable toalter the Christian names of one or two minor characters in this book.
Epsom.
Wellow, Isle of Wight.
“ Verily,
I swear, ’tis better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perk’d up in a glist’ring grief
And wear a golden sorrow. ”

Anne Bullen
in Act II, Scene III, of Shakespeare’s KING HENRY THE EIGHTH

CHAPTER ONE
“Nan! Nan! Come in and be fitted for your new dresses to goto Court!”
“Nan! Come and answer your father’s letter.”
“Nan, child, don’t stand toute égarée in the garden. Your turn hascome.”
Simonette’s sharp French voice shrilled first from one open casementand then from another as she bustled through the Castle roomsstirring up waves of preparation for the launching of her pupil onthe chancy sea of life. Simonette, in the Boleyns’ service, was theperfect governess. For her, this day, years of exasperation anddevotion were terminated in triumph. Tears might come after. Buthere was the proud moment in which to produce the young thingshe had made.
Yet the girl to whom she called still lingered on the terrace watchingthe giddy flight of butterflies above the drowsing knott garden.For her, as for them, the gaudy hour of life was being born. Brightas their painted wings, heady as the hot perfume of the flowers. Fullof golden promise, and transient as the summer day.
All that was spirited in Anne Boleyn thrilled to the prospect of thebrilliant future; but, being intelligent and sensitive beyond her years,she spared an ungrasping moment for a savouring of the past. Thehappy, innocent past—so wisely filled with graceful pursuits andthe joy of burgeoning appreciations. Before the flurry of dressmakersand the glitter of courts obsessed her, she must look her fill upon thisKentish garden, stamping the impress of its happy recollectionsupon her heart. The lovely lawns where she had been wont to playwith her brother and sister, the stately trees beneath which herfather walked, the yew arbours cunningly devised for dalliancewhere her cousin, Thomas Wyatt, read aloud his poems and madelove to her.
To Anne the gardens of Hever meant more than all the statelyancestral pleasances of Blickling Hall, or her late mother’s home atRochford. They would be as a salve when she went forth into theunknown, and something beautiful to come back to. She would sitsometimes and remember them when she was in France.
For Anne was fiercely sure now that she would go to France.
In his letter from London, her father did not actually promise it.He merely summoned her to Court, saying that Queen Katherinewould be graciously pleased to receive her. But when he was lasthome he had hinted that he was striving for this honour to begranted her—the honour of being chosen to go to Paris in the trainof the King’s sister, who was betrothed to Louis the Twelfth. Itseemed an incredible thing to happen when one was barely eighteen.But Sir Thomas Boleyn was Henry Tudor’s ambassador to theFrench Court, and ambitious for his children. And, of them all,Anne had his heart.
Goaded by the urgency of her governess’ voice, Anne turned atlast. Her dark eyes were starry with excitement, and her right handclutched the Ambassador’s parchment to her bosom. But her lefthand lay quietly hidden in the green folds of her gown.
As she went up the wide steps and through the great hall, theolder servants smiled at her indulgently. Already there was a greatcarrying hither and thither of chests and coffers for her journey.George Boleyn, her brother, brushing aside a welter of hounds,caught her boyishly by the shoulders and hugged her. “Your turnat last!” he exulted, just as Simonette had done. “And I am to takeyou to London.”
That was the keystone to her happiness. At present there wouldbe no pain of parting from her youthful circle, no loneliness to marher good fortune. Of all creatures in the world, this brother, but afew years older than herself, was dearest. His was the laughter, thecrazy gaiety that had leavened the cultured companionship of theirmutual friends. They would all be there; not in the gardens atHever, but at Greenwich, Windsor or Westminster. For a little whilelonger they would be together—with their swift wit, their sharedpassion for music, their versifying, their dancing, and their endlessdiscussions. Thomas Wyatt and George and their friends who alreadyhad places about the King, Wyatt’s sister Margaret and herown sister Mary, who was more beautiful, if a little more stolid,than the rest.
“Why should Mary, who is younger, have gone first?” demandedGeorge, following the trend of her unspoken thought.
Anne shrugged. She knew that the same resentment had beensmouldering in her governess’ breast during these last few monthsof quiet preparation. But now, today, it mattered nothing. “Marywent first,” she said. “But I may go farther.”
“You mean with the royal bride to France?”
To save her face in case of any future contretemps, Anne laugheda gay denial of her hopes. “Oh, I have been promised nothing!” shetemporized.
The glances of brother and sister met and held with that intimateunderstanding which was between them. Then the young man’s eyesshifted and were momentarily hooded. “Mary has blossomed out.She has been noticed at Court,” he remarked uneasily.
But Anne’s thoughts were centred on her own destiny. She tooklittle heed of his unwonted gravity. “It is scarcely surprising. Ourmother was accounted one of the loveliest women present whenthe Queen first came from Aragon,” she reminded him lightly, alittle enviously perhaps. For although Anne was by far the moreaccomplished of the Ambassador’s two daughters, Mary was theacknowledged beauty.
Back in the room where she worked at her books, Anne unrolledthe letter which had so suddenly changed her quiet life. “May Ianswer it myself, Simonette?” she asked gravely of her waitinggoverness.
“ Bien sûr, ma chère. ”
“In French or English?”
“They say that the Princess Mary, although but a child, writesequally well in either, as well as in Spanish. The Tudors like theirwomen to be educated. And you know which his Excellency, yourfather, would prefer.”
Anne assimilated the hint that, with an eye to advancement, herletter might be shown in higher circles. “And you think my Frenchis good enough?” she enquired anxiously.
The tall, shrewd woman standing by the writing desk smiledwith the assurance of one whose task has been conscientiously performed.“I have every confidence in your ability, Nan. And whoknows but what one day you may have to write to yet more importantpeople?”
With a deft movement of her right hand Anne jerked the blankwaiting parchment towards her and took up a quill. Seated withthe sunshine illuminating her dutifully bent head, she poured outher filial gratitude, understanding fully for the first time why SirThomas and Simonette had made her work so hard at music andat languages. In her letter she expressed eager appreciation of thepromised privilege of conversing with so great a queen as Katherineof Aragon. And, mindful of the difficulties and temptations thatbestrew a young girl’s path in such exalted places, she made aspontaneous promise to her father. “I am resolved to lead as holya life as you may please to desire of me,” she wrote. “Indeed, mylove for you is founded on so firm a basis it can never be impaired.”
It never occurred to her to question what he might desire of hernor what vast forces might shake the basis of that love, and littledid she realize, as her quill moved on, the solace her naïve promisewould be to an affectionate man caught in the net of his ownworldly ambitions. A man who already knew parental qualms forhis younger daughter.
When the letter was sealed and dispatched, Anne delivered herselfup to the chattering seamstresses. Half-basted dresses hadalready been cut from materials far finer than any she had previouslypossessed. Brocades and velvets had been reverently lifted fromthe dower chests of her Howard ancestors, and refashioned to thefull, flamboyant mode. Anne thought they made her look tallerand her waist yet more slender. They seemed to lend her a sombredignity, accentuating the wealth of her raven hair, the delicate highmoulding of her cheekbones and the pallor of her skin. But she,herself, knew that once she began to talk and laugh with people,something would come to life in her, lending animation to the paleoval of her face; and the thing which Thomas Wyatt called witcherywould take possession of her slanting, almond-shaped eyes.
The seamstresses went on working by candlelight, but when Annebecame weary, Simonette sent her to bed. And when her tiring maidhad turned down the covers and pulled the embroidered shift fromover her head, Anne knew that like that—with the alabaster of herbody half hidden in the warm night of her hair—she was lovelierthan she would ever be in any dress.
Only now there was nowhere to hide her left hand.
Anne looked down at it, as she always did, with reluctance. Uponher little finger grew a second nail, almost a second finger, an abnormalityfrom birth. Something of which she was ever conscious.And the consciousness was like a secret sting,