Historic Shrews.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 229, 19 November 1887, Page 3

Historic Shrews.

/^p OME o( the shrews have had as WM\ enduring a record in history as some of the beauties, though owing their fame to a very opposite quality. England and France supply the most prominent specimens. Royalty first, however. Matilda, Empress and claimant against JCingStephen for the crown of England, has left a fair claim to a masterful temperament. Queen Elizabeth, great as she was, exhibits herself in some of her letters and actions, as when she boxe<s" Essex's ears, as a right royal shrew. So was Catherine de Medici. So emphatically was Christina of Sweden, who caused her chamberlain, Monaldeschi, in right of her prerogative, to be strangled in a palace of the King of France. So was Catherine of Russ'a a shrew, who had absolute power to back up her shrewishness. In Henry VIII. ; s reign, Lady More, wife of the great and good Sir Thomas, stands out as a very definite shrew who ruled her husband and children alike with much austerity. But she does not, though she liked her own way, appear, as far as we ran see, in any way, to come up to Lady Coke, in James I.'s reign. This lady drove her husband, the terrible chief justice (of whom James himself said, c Nay, mon, if Coke sends for me I must go '), nearly frantic. The subject was their daughter's marriage. Lady Coke was furious, indefatigable, resolute, and a most accomplished scold. Now for a French one little known to English readers in general. This was Madame De Vervins, who, in the seventeenth century, was a fine specimen of the species. She told her servants to kill those of a lady whom her Jackeys insulted for venturing to defend their mistress. She bullied her husband incessantly, and on one occasion in a quarrel used her riding whip as an argument. She habitually beat her servants violently. She scolded her acquaintances for the least difference of opinion, unfavourable ciiticism, or most minute slight offeitd to her, or fancied by her, and plotted their assassination if they opposed her imperious and arbitral y nature. Another woman of the same type, who loved to play the shrew in public, and specially at balls and parties, was Madame d'Urgeval. She lived in the same time as Madame de Vervins. Madame d'Orgeval gave great entertainments, but she and her daughter, according to the French memoirs, chiefly loved doing insolent things in a polite manner. On all occasions Madame d'Orgeval's temper was furious if any lady danced better or oftener than her daughter. In one instance of this she told the lady who offended her that if she continued dancing she would stop the ball She bullied her guests with vigour, and demanded her own way in everything. Returning to England, our gallery of portraits must not omit Sarah, first Duchess of Maryborough, whose violent temper made her generally dreaded. She had the good quality of loving her husband, the famous general, and thinking him the foremost of men. But to everyone else she could be a shrew on occasion. Poor Queen Anne was afraid of her. She bullied her as: if she were a nobody. And in the MSS. room at the British Museum much contemporary light is thrown on this subject by a remarkable letter to be seen there, | written at the time, and describing an order sent to the Duke and Duchess to give up their insignia of office without notice, and telling the latter she was not to come to the queen, who, no doubt, was afraid of her. This was at the time when her enemies' intrigues (led by her own cousin, Miss Masham, whom she had placed at court in her interest) were successful. Nor must we omit another lady of the eighteenth century who seems to have been a shrew, if the exculpatory letters of a very clever man be any test. This was the wife of Sir Richard Steele. Poor, lovable dissolute, kindhearted, drinking, clever 'Dick Steele 1 idolized his • Prue/ and wrote her all sorts of repentant, affectionate, and imploring notes from taverns and coffee-houses after his revels ' with his boon companions. But the lady, though handsome, seems to have been of a very scolding temperament, though doubtless Dick gave her ' cause. Lastly may be mentioned, as embodying a model definition of a shrew, the wife of that Scotch judge who, on his butler giving notice to leave on account of his ( not being able to bear her ladyship's temper,' answered, ' Hoot, mon ! ye may be thankfu' ye're no married toher!"