Part 37

Shortly after the closing of the university, he was summoned to court to be in attendance on her majesty, and to take a place among the gay company with which she was surrounded. This was considered a marked advancement for him, and, at once, all thought that the queen would specially honor him on account of his being nephew to the prime favorite, Leicester.

The queen did favor Sidney--in her own capricious, selfish way--and he shortly became the youngest darling of the court. He was only seventeen when he took his place among Elizabeth's courtiers, but he was well grown, and was exceedingly talented and handsome.

The power to win stanch and loving friends was inborn in him, and when he left the quiet halls of Oxford for the frivolous court of Queen Elizabeth, there was more than one heart that was anxious for him. The Irish Sea lay between him and his sober, upright father; while the voluptuous and insincere Earl of Leicester was to be his patron, and all the hollow, glittering, pleasure-loving men and women of the court were to be his daily companions. No wonder his friends watched the young courtier's career with anxiety! But time soon showed how truly the young Philip was stanch old Sir Henry's son. As was natural, Sidney loved the brilliant Leicester, and failed to see his uncle's vices as plainly as he might have seen another man's, but he did not make those vices his own. It was natural, too, that he should feel a youthful enjoyment in the gayety and glitter about him, but he somehow kept himself unstained by what lay beneath.

There were two influences at work in the youth which, together, saved him from the follies about him: first, and greater, the nobleness of character which was his by heredity; and, second, the high ideals formed in his boyhood.

Sidney had dreamed of a truth unsullied, of a manhood devoted to high and noble deeds, of a faith that was stronger than death. He waked to find himself, in satin and gold lace, dawdling about a vain and licentious court.

Fortunately for the ambitious youth, a change now took place in his affairs which enabled him to see something of the world, and to pursue his studies further. Before he had been a year at court, he was sent to Paris in the train of the Earl of Lincoln, whose mission it was to arrange a marriage between the English queen and the Duke d'Alençon, brother to King Charles IX. of France.

A clause from Sidney's passport, issued in the queen's name, shows for what purpose her young courtier was sent abroad: "Her truly and well-beloved Philip Sidney, Esquire, licensed to go out of England into parts beyond the seas, with three servants, four horses, and all other requisites, and to remain the space of two years immediately following his departure out of the realm, for his attaining the knowledge of foreign languages."

For reasons of Church and State, Lincoln's mission to France failed, and Sidney was left free to spend the time of his voluntary exile at his own discretion. He wisely chose to remain abroad, and spent nearly three years traveling in France, Germany, and Italy. But these three years were not given up to sight-seeing and social enjoyment. Sidney devoted his time to studying literature, science, music, foreign languages, and the politics of the day.

For two great reasons this last subject was of most vital interest to him: it was the time of a great religious upheaval throughout Europe, and also the time of the ambitious aggressions of Spain under Philip II.

Sidney, an ardent adherent of the Church of England, conceived the idea of championing his beloved faith, even as the knights of old had championed theirs. Then, too, his whole heart was with his native country in her rapid rise to a place of power among the nations of earth, and he recognized Spain as an ever-present menace to her advancement.

His sympathies were especially aroused for the condition of the harassed Netherlands, to the complete subjugation of which Spain was then bending her strongest efforts. Then it was that Sidney's chivalric spirit took fire with hope,--the hope that his beloved England would rise and deliver the oppressed, and that he, her son, would be allowed to be her humble instrument in the great and glorious work.

All that was seething in his fertile brain he wrote from time to time to England; and he kept her statesmen informed of the state of foreign politics in a time when newspapers and telegraph lines had not been dreamed of. All unconsciously, he was making a name for himself in England; and when he returned, at the age of twenty-one, he found that he had established for himself a reputation as politician, statesman, and man of letters.

While abroad, Sidney had been associated with "many men of many minds." He had learned to think and feel deeply on deep subjects, and had formed definite ideals as to a man's proper part in life. He came back to his native land with his young heart filled with hopes that were never to be realized--at least, not in the way that he had conceived. It is true that he was one of a brilliant circle of men who made the England of Elizabeth's time great by the very greatness that was theirs; but the England of Elizabeth's time was not the England of Sidney's hopes, and a courtiership under the virgin queen was the vanity of vanities to his heroic spirit. From that time on, life was a struggle to him--a struggle to live nobly amid a court given over to pleasure; a struggle to revive the spirit of chivalry among men who were already forgetting the very name.

Shortly after Sidney's return from abroad, and while he was in high favor at court, it pleased the queen to make a "royal progress" through a portion of her realm. These "progresses" were journeys through certain parts of the kingdom, broken by visits to favored nobles at their magnificent castles or halls. On these tours, the queen was always brilliantly attended by ladies and gentlemen of her court; and the subjects whom she pleased to visit devised for her the most gorgeous and sumptuous entertainment.

Sidney had the good or bad fortune to be in attendance on her Majesty during this progress, for it was then that he first met and admired little Penelope Devereux. It was while her Majesty and train were stopping to visit the Earl of Essex at Chartley Castle that the meeting between the two young people took place. Lady Penelope, daughter of the Earl of Essex, was then only twelve years of age, but she was a maiden well grown for her years, and extremely beautiful; so it is not to be wondered at that Sidney--so old in worldly wisdom, but so young in years--should have been fascinated by the little maid's grace and beauty. The two frolicked and danced together at Chartley, and though there were no vows of love exchanged between them then, that visit was the beginning of a friendship which was to ripen into the passion of Sidney's life. It was also the beginning of another friendship, and one which proved far happier for Sidney. The Earl of Essex conceived a deep love and admiration for him, and invited him often to Chartley, making him--young though he was--his bosom friend.

Afterwards, when Essex incurred the deep displeasure of Queen Elizabeth, Sidney was one of the few courtiers who dared to show him open friendship,--thus tacitly condemning the action of the queen, who, in truth, was at fault.

During his visits to Chartley Castle, Sidney became more and more in love with the little Penelope; but when he declared his passion, she held him off, like the coquette that she was, while she took pains to spin the web of her fascination more hopelessly about him.

The earl, her father, was always in favor of a marriage between the two; and at his death, which took place in Penelope's fourteenth year, he said of Sidney:--

"Oh, that good gentleman! have me commended unto him. And tell him I send him nothing, but I wish him well,--so well that if God do move their hearts, I wish that he might match with my daughter. I call him son--he is so wise, virtuous, and godly. If he go on in the course he hath begun, he will be as famous and worthy a gentleman as ever England bred."

Two years after Essex's death, his widow was secretly married to Sidney's uncle, the Earl of Leicester. This made a sad change in Philip Sidney's fortunes. As long as Leicester was unmarried and childless, Philip Sidney, as his natural heir, was a man of great prospects and a very desirable match; but Leicester, married, with the probability of children to inherit his titles and wealth, left Sidney only a poor commoner.

With Sidney's prospects ruined by her own marriage, Penelope's mother decided that her daughter should make a more ambitious match, and betrothed her to the powerful and cruel Lord Rich. Too late, the little maid realized the value of the love with which she had been playing. When she could no longer look forward to a match with the noble young Sidney, she waked to the knowledge that her whole heart was bound up in him; and she protested, even at the altar, against the marriage into which her mother was forcing her. "Being in the power of her friends," as the Earl of Devonshire afterwards wrote concerning her, "she was by them married against her will unto one against whom she did protest at the very solemnity and ever after."

His love for Penelope was the supreme passion of Sidney's life. His was a heart too true to change. And as Orpheus gave to his harp his love for the lost Eurydice and charmed all nature into silence, so Philip Sidney, bereft of the woman he loved, poured out his soul in poems that still touch every loving heart.

From politician and courtier, Sidney rose to be one of the most distinguished poets of his day. He wrote many poems which are still considered of high order, but his "Astrophel and Stella," which contains the story of his love for the Lady Penelope, is his most popular work.

Though possessed of all the grace and elegance of an Elizabethan courtier, as well as of a gentle and artistic temperament, Philip Sidney was no weakling. Under the costly trappings of his court finery beat a heart as bold and passionate as King Richard's own.

Throughout all his varied experiences, public and private, he did not once relinquish his double hope of aiding the Netherlands and crippling the overshadowing power of Spain. Still did he implore help for the oppressed. Long did he carry in his heart a picture of the queen--whom he adored in spite of her unworthiness--as the zealous and devoted champion of a great cause. But Elizabeth was no zealot, nor could she be made one. When Sidney at length realized that the queen could not be induced to move in the cause of the Netherlands, he made up his mind to go as a volunteer to the assistance of William, Prince of Orange, ruler of that country.

The idea had to be abandoned, however, for a while; for Sir Henry Sidney--still too honest to please the queen--was again having stormy times with her Majesty, and appealed to his son to assist him in bringing her to a right view of his Irish policy. Sidney espoused his father's cause with his characteristic boldness. Shortly after his arrival at court he was met face to face by the Earl of Ormond,--a bitter enemy to his father, and the man who had traduced Sir Henry to the queen. Ormond approached Sidney with a suave and condescending greeting, but the young courtier only stared at him coldly for a minute, then turned his back squarely on him. As Ormond was one of the peers of the realm, and Philip Sidney but a plain commoner, this was a most daring act. But this was not the limit of his daring. Incensed at the injustice done his father, Sidney indited a most memorable letter to the queen, which was at once a masterly defence of Sir Henry and a trenchant attack on the queen's favorite, Ormond. Strange to say, Queen Elizabeth seemed to be influenced by Sidney's plain and fearless statements, for she sometime thereafter treated his father with more consideration.

But a greater trouble than that in connection with his father's business now stirred the passionate Sidney to the depths. The Duke d'Alençon, who had become the Duke of Anjou, renewed his proposition of marriage to the English queen. Sidney despised the private character of the duke, and he had, besides, come to object to the proposed alliance for deep and patriotic reasons; so he opposed the projected union with all the fearless strength that was his.

As by far the greater number of Elizabeth's advisers approved of the match, and the queen herself inclined to it, Sidney's position soon made him unpopular with both queen and court. Another thing happened about this time that rendered his relations at court exceedingly strained. The Earl of Leicester's secret marriage with the widowed Countess of Essex, a twelvemonth before, now came out in a storm of gossip, and threw the jealous queen into a rage. Leicester was dismissed from court; and Philip Sidney, as his nephew, though not actually exiled from the queen's presence, received treatment at her hands that was far more galling to his proud spirit than would have been dismissal.