Volume V
November, 1877, to November, 1878

by
Mary Mapes Dodge

King Richard II. and his Child-Queen.

A Child Queen
by Cecilia Cleveland

I wonder how many of the little girl readers of St. Nicholas are fond of history? If they answer candidly, I do not doubt that a very large proportion will declare that they prefer the charming stories they find in St. Nicholas to the dull pages of history, with its countless battles and murdered sovereigns. But history is not every bit dull, by any means, as you will find if your elder sisters and friends will select portions for you to read that are suitable to your age and interests. Perhaps you are very imaginative, and prefer fairy tales to all others. I am sure, then, that you will like the story I am about to tell you, of a little French princess, who was married and crowned Queen of England when only eight years old, and who became a widow at twelve.

This child-sovereign was born many hundred years ago — in 1387 — at the palace of the Louvre in Paris, of whose noble picture-gallery I am sure you all have heard, — if, indeed, many of you have not seen it yourselves. She was the daughter of the poor King Charles VI., whose misfortunes made him insane, and for whose amusement playing-cards were invented, and of his queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, a beautiful but very wicked woman. Little Princess Isabella was the eldest of twelve children. She inherited her mother’s beauty, and was petted by her parents and the entire court of France.

King Richard II. of England, who was a widower about thirty years old, was urged to marry again; and, instead of selecting a wife near his own age, his choice fell upon little Princess Isabella.

“She is much too young,” he was told. “Even in five or six years she will not be old enough to be married.” The king, however, thought this objection too trifling to stand in the way of his marriage, and saying, “The lady’s age is a fault that every day will remedy,” he sent a magnificent embassy to the court of France, headed by the Archbishop of Dublin, and consisting of earls, marshals, knights, and squires of honor uncounted, with attendants to the number of five hundred.

When the embassy reached Paris, and the offer of marriage had been formally accepted, the archbishop and the earls asked to see the little princess who was soon to become their queen. At first the French Council refused, saying so young a child was not prepared to appear on public occasions, and they could not tell how she might behave. The English noblemen were so solicitous, however, that at last she was brought before them. The earl marshal immediately knelt before her, and said, in the old-fashioned language of the time: “Madam, if it please God, you shall be our lady and queen.”

Queen Isabeau stood at a little distance, curious and anxious, no doubt, to know how her little daughter would answer this formal address. To her great pleasure, and the great surprise of all present, Princess Isabella replied:

“Sir, if it please God and my father that I be Queen of England, I shall be well pleased, for I am told I shall then be a great lady.”

Then, giving the marshal her tiny hand to kiss, she bade him rise from his knees, and leading him to her mother, she presented him to her with the grace and ease of a mature woman.

According to the fashion of the time, Princess Isabella was immediately married by proxy, and received the title of Queen of England. Froissart, a celebrated historian living at that epoch, says: “It was very pretty to see her, young as she was, practicing how to act the queen.”

In a few days, King Richard arrived from England with a gay and numerous retinue of titled ladies to attend his little bride. After many grand festivities they were married and were taken in state to England, where the Baby Queen was crowned in the famous Westminster Abbey.

I must not forget to describe the magnificent trousseau that the King of France gave his little daughter. Her dowry was 800,000 francs ($160,000); her coronets, rings, necklaces, and jewelry of all sorts, were worth 500,000 crowns; and her dresses were of surpassing splendor. One was a robe and mantle of crimson velvet, trimmed with gold birds perched on branches of pearls and emeralds, and another was trimmed with pearl roses. Do you think any fairy princess could have had a finer bridal outfit?

When the ceremonies of the coronation were over, little Isabella’s life became a quiet routine of study; for, although a reigning sovereign, she was in the position of that young Duchess of Burgundy of later years, who at the time of her marriage could neither read nor write. This duchess, who married a grandson of Louis XIV. of France, was older than Queen Isabella — thirteen years old; and as soon as the wedding festivities were over, she was sent to school in a convent, to learn at least to read, as she knew absolutely nothing save how to dance. Queen Isabella, however, was not sent away to school, but was placed under the care of a very accomplished lady, a cousin of the king, who acted as her governess. In her leisure hours, the king, who was a fine musician, would play and sing for her, and, history gravely informs us, he would even play dolls with her by the hour!

But King Richard’s days of quiet pleasure with his child-wife were at last disturbed, and he was obliged to leave her and go to the war in Ireland. The parting was very sad and affecting, and they never met again.

While King Richard was in Ireland, his cousin, Henry of Lancaster, afterward Henry IV., took possession of the royal treasury, and upon the return of Richard from his unfortunate campaign, marched at the head of an army and made a prisoner of him, lodging him in that grim Tower of London from which so few prisoners ever issued alive.

Meantime, the poor little queen was hurried from one town to another, her French attendants were taken from her, and the members of her new household were forbidden ever to speak to her of the husband she loved so dearly. Finally, it was rumored that Richard had escaped. Instantly, this extraordinary little girl of eleven issued a proclamation saying that she did not recognize Henry IV. (for he was now crowned King of England) as sovereign; and she set out with an army to meet her husband. The poor child was bitterly disappointed upon learning that the rumor was false, and her husband was still a prisoner, and before long she also was again a prisoner of Henry IV., this time closely guarded.

In a few months Richard was murdered in prison by order of King Henry, and his queen’s childish figure was shrouded in the heavy crape of her widow’s dress. Her superb jewelry was taken from her and divided among the children of Henry IV., and she was placed in still closer captivity. Her father, the King of France, sent to demand that she should return to him, but for a long time King Henry refused his consent. Meantime, she received a second offer of marriage from — strange to say — the son of the man who had killed her husband and made her a prisoner, but a handsome, dashing young prince, Harry of Monmouth, often called “Madcap Hal.” Perhaps you have read, or your parents have read to you, extracts from Shakspeare’s “Henry IV.,” so that you know of the wild exploits of the Prince of Wales with his friends, in turning highwayman and stealing purses from travelers, often saying,

“Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, Jack?”

and finding himself in prison sometimes as a result of such amusements? Isabella was a child of decided character, and truly devoted to the memory of her husband, and much as she had enjoyed her rank she refused to continue it by marrying handsome Madcap Hal, although he offered himself to her several times, and even as she was embarking for France.

Poor little Isabella, who had left France so brilliantly, returned a sad child-widow, and all that remained to her of her former splendor was a silver drink-cup and a few saucers. As Shakspeare says:

“My queen to France, from whence set forth in pomp,
She came adorned hither like sweet May,
Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day.”

She was received throughout France with joy, and tears of sympathy.

When Isabella was eighteen. Madcap Hal again offered his hand to her, supposing she had forgotten her former prejudice, but although she married again she was so far faithful to the memory of her English husband that she would not accept the son of his murderer. Some years later, when Prince Hal was king, he married her beautiful sister Katherine.

Isabella’s second husband was her cousin, the Duke of Orleans, whose beautiful poems are considered classic in France. Again she was the joy of her family and the pride of France, but all her happiness was destined to be fleeting, for she survived her marriage only one year. Her husband, who loved her fondly, wrote after her death:

“Alas!
Death, who made thee so bold,
To take from me my lovely princess,
Who was my comfort, my life,
My good, my pleasure, my riches?
Alas! I am lonely, bereft of my mate —
Adieu! my lady, my lily!
Our loves are forever severed.”

And in another poem, full of expressions that show how very devoted was his affection for her, he says:

“Above her lieth spread a tomb
Of gold and sapphires blue,
The gold doth show her blessedness,
The sapphires mark her true.

“And round about, in quaintest guise,
Was carved — ‘Within this tomb there lies
The fairest thing to mortal eyes.’”

Farewell, sweet Isabella! — a wife at eight, a widow at twelve, and dead at twenty-two, — your life was indeed short, and, though not without happy days, sorrow blended largely with its joy!

Chased by Wolves
by George Dudley Lawson

Some forty years ago the northern part of the State of New York was very sparsely settled. In one of the remote counties, which for a name’s sake we will call Macy County, a stout-hearted settler, named Devins, posted himself beyond the borders of civilization, and hewed for his little family a home in the heart of a forest that extended all the way from Lake Champlain to Lake Ontario. His nearest neighbor was six miles away, and the nearest town nearly twenty; but the Devinses were so happy and contented that the absence of company gave them no concern.

It was a splendid place to live in. In summer the eye ranged from the slope where the sturdy pioneer had built his house over miles and miles of waving beech and maple woods, away to the dark line of pines on the high ground that formed the horizon. In the valley below, Otter Creek, a tributary of the St. Lawrence, wound its sparkling way northward. When Autumn painted the scene in brilliant hues, and it lay glowing under the crimson light of October sunsets, the dullest observer could not restrain bursts of admiration.

Mr. Devins’s first attack on the stubborn forest had been over the brow of the hill, some four miles nearer Owenton, but his house was burned down before he had taken his family there from Albany. He had regretted that he had not “pitched his tent” on the slope of Otter Creek; so now he began with renewed energy his second home, in which the closing in of the winter of 1839 found him. He had sixty acres of rich soil under cultivation at the time of which we are to speak, his right-hand man being his son Allan, — a rugged, handsome, intelligent boy of sixteen.

The winter of ’39 was a terrible one; snow set in before the end of November, and, even in the open country, lay upon the ground until the beginning of April, while in the recesses of the forest it was found as late as the middle of June. There was great distress among the settlers outside of the bounds of civilization, to whom the deep snow was an impassable barrier. The Devinses neither saw nor heard from their nearest neighbors from the first of December till near the beginning of February, when a crust was formed upon the snow sufficiently firm to bear the weight of a man, and a friendly Cayuga Indian brought them news of how badly their neighbors fared.

Mr. Devins was especially touched by the bad case of his friend Will Inman, who lived on the nearest farm. The poor man lay ill of a fever; Mrs. Inman was dead and temporarily buried, until her body could be removed to the cemetery in Owenton, and all the care of the family devolved upon Esther, his daughter, fourteen years old. After a short consultation, the next morning breaking bright and clear though very cold, it was determined to allow Allan to go over the hill to Inman’s, bearing medicine, tea, and other little necessaries for the family. He was impressively warned to begin his return at so early an hour that he might reach home before the short day’s end, especially because of the danger from wild animals. The severity of the winter had made the wolves more venturesome and dangerous than they had been for many years. Mr. Devins had lost several sheep and hogs, and deemed it unsafe for any of his family to be caught far from the house at night.

Allan armed himself with his light rifle, put some biscuits and cold meat in a pouch strapped to his waist, mounted one of the strong farm-horses, and set out on his journey. The road through the forest was better than he expected to find it, as the snow had been drifted off, but at the turns, and in the thickest part of the wood, his horse floundered through drifts more than breast high; and more than once Allan had to dismount and beat a path ahead. Therefore, he did not reach Inman’s till two o’clock, and, by the time he had helped Esther about her work, assisted her young brother to get in a good supply of wood, and made things more comfortable for the invalid, it was almost sundown. He stoutly refused to wait for supper, declaring that the luncheon still in his pouch would serve, and started just as the short twilight came on. He was a brave lad, and, with no thought of peril, went off, kissing his hand gayly to Esther.

It took him an hour to traverse the first three miles, and then he came to a stretch of comparatively bare ground leading through his father’s old clearing, and almost to the top of the hill back of Mr. Devins’s house. He was just urging old Bob into a trot, when a long, clear howl broke upon his ear; then another and another answered from east and south. He knew what that meant. It was the cry of the advance-guard of a pack of wolves.

The howling sounded near, and came swiftly nearer, as though the wolves had found his tracks and scented their prey. Old Bob trembled in every limb, and seemed powerless to move. Allan realized that he could not, before dark, reach home through the drifts ahead, and the increasing cold of the advancing night would render a refuge in a tree-top probably as deadly as an encounter with the pack.

Presently there came a cry, shriller and sharper than before, and Allan, looking back, saw a great, lean, hungry gray wolf burst from the underbrush into the road, followed by dozens more; and in a moment the road behind him was full of wolves, open-mouthed and in keen chase. Their yells now seemed notes of exultation, for the leader of the pack — the strongest, fleetest, hungriest one among them — was within a dozen yards of Allan, who was now riding faster than ever old Bob had gone before or ever would go again. Excitement made the lad’s blood boil in his veins, and he determined to show fight. The moon had risen, and the scene was almost as light as day. Now he could count the crowding host of his enemies, and just as he broke from the forest road into the old clearing, he turned in his saddle and fired. The foremost of the pack rolled over and over; the rest gathered around and tore their leader in pieces.

By the time they resumed the chase, Allan was a hundred yards ahead with his rifle loaded. He determined to make a running fight of it to the hill, where he was sure of meeting his father, or could take to a tree and shoot until help came. This had hardly flashed through his brain when, right ahead of him, a detachment of the pack sprang into the road and answered with double yells the cries of the rest coming up behind. The horse wheeled suddenly, almost unseating Allan, and dashed across the clearing toward the wood; but he had not taken a dozen bounds when a wolf sprang upon him. Old Bob reared and fell, pitching Allan nearly twenty feet ahead, and was covered with wolves before he could regain his footing. That was the last of poor old Bob.

“Old Bob fell, pitching Allan ahead.”

But Allan! What of him? When he recovered from the effects of the shock, he found himself over head and ears in snow. He had no idea where he was, but struggled and plunged in vain endeavors to extricate himself, until at last he broke into a space that was clear of snow, but dark as Erebus, damp and close. Feeling about him he discovered over his head logs resting slantingly against the upper edge of a pit, and then he knew that he was in the cellar of the old house his father had built, and which had been burned down nine years before! The cellar was full of snow, except at the corner roofed over by the fallen logs, and Allan, bursting through the snow into the empty corner, was as secure from the wolves as though seated by his father’s fireside. It was not nearly as cold in there as outside, and he found a dry spot upon which he lay down to think.

He was in no danger of freezing to death, his food would keep him from starvation a week at least, and Allan concluded that, with the first glimpse of dawn, his father would be in search of him, and, following the tracks, find old Bob’s bones, and quickly rescue him from his predicament. He reasoned wisely enough, but the elements were against him. Before sunrise a furious storm of wind and snow had completely obliterated every trace of horse, rider and wolves.

At home, as the night wore on, the anxiety of the family had increased. While they were watching the gathering storm, they heard the long, dismal howl of the wolves coming over the hill. The chill of fear that they should never see the boy again settled down upon all their hearts, until the house was as dreary within as the winter waste and gloomy forest were without.

Meanwhile the brave youth was sound asleep, dreaming as peacefully as though snugly resting with his brother in his warm bed at home. He slumbered on unconscious of the raging storm without, and did not awake until late the next forenoon. It took him several seconds to realize where he was and how he came there, but gradually he remembered his ride for life, the falling of his horse, his struggle in the snow, and his breaking into the protected space where he lay.

The storm lasted all day and far into the succeeding night. Allan ate slightly, quenched his thirst with a few drops of water obtained by melting snow in the palm of his hand, and began casting about for means to get out. He soon found that to dig his way up through the mass of snow that filled the cellar was beyond his powers. If he could have made a succession of footholds, the task would have been easy; but all his efforts only tended to fill his retreat, without bringing him nearer the air. As soon as he saw this, he gave himself up to calmly waiting for help from without.

The second morning of his imprisonment broke clear and cheerful, and Mr. Devins set out to search for traces of his boy. He visited the Inmans’ and learned the particulars of Allan’s stay and departure, then mournfully turned his face homeward, his heart filled with despair. When he emerged from the forest into the clearing, he met the Indian who had visited him a few days before, and he told the red man of Allan’s loss. The Indian stood a moment in deep thought, and then asked:

“No horse, no boy back there?” pointing to the road just traversed by Mr. Devins.

“No. I have looked carefully, and if there had been a trace left by the recent storm I should have detected it.”

“Ugh! well, me come over the hill; nothing that way either; then they here.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Ah! me know wolves. When Allan come to this place they ahead; horse turn; wolves caught ‘em this side woods; we look there,” and Tayenathonto pointed to the very course taken by the horse and rider.

It so happened when Allan was thrown from the horse’s back that his rifle flew from his hand and struck, muzzle down, in a hollow stump, where, imbedded in the snow, it stood like a sign to mark the scene of the last struggle of the lost boy. The snow had whitened all its hither side. When the Indian came abreast of it, he cried: