THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE CASKET LETTERS

The casual treatment of the Casket Letters by Mary’s accusers, and by the English Commissioners, is demonstrated by an inspection of the texts as they now exist. One thing is absolutely certain, the Letters were produced, at Westminster and Hampton Court, in the original French, whether that was forged, or garbled, or authentic. This is demonstrated by the occurrence, in the English translation, of the words ‘I have taken the worms out of his nose.’ This ugly French phrase for extracting a man’s inmost thoughts is used by Mary in an authentic letter.[423] But the Scots version of the passage runs, ‘I have drawn all out of him.’ Therefore the English translator had a French original before him, not the French later published by the Huguenots, where for tirÉ les vers du nez, we find j’ay sÇeu toutes choses de luy.

Original French letters were therefore produced; the only doubt rests on part of Crawford’s deposition, where it verbally agrees with Letter II. But we may here overlook Crawford’s part in the affair, merely reminding the reader that the French idioms in that portion of the Letter (Scots version) which most closely resembles his very words, in his deposition, may have come in through the process of translating Crawford’s Scots into French, and out of French into Scots again, to which we return.

The Casket Letters were produced, in French, on December 7 and 8. On December 9, the English Commissioners read them, ‘being duly translated into English.’[424] We are never told that the Scottish Lords prepared and produced the English translations. These must have been constructed on December 7 and 8, in a violent hurry. So great was the hurry that Letter VI. was not translated from French at all: the English was merely done, and badly done, out of the Scots. Thus, Scots, ‘I am wod;’ English, ‘I am wood.’ As far as this Letter goes, there need have been no original French text.[425] In this case (Letter VI.) the English is the Scots Anglified, word for word. The same easy mode of translating French is used in Letter V.; it is the Scots done word for word into English. In Letters I. and II., M. Philippson makes it pretty clear that the English translator had a copy of the Scots version lying by him, from which he occasionally helped himself to phrases. M. Cardauns, in Der Sturz der Maria Stuart, had proved the same point, which every one can verify. Dozens of blunders occur in the English versions, though, now and then, they keep closer to the originals than do the Scots translators.

Of this we give a singular and significant proof. In the Scots of Letter I. the first sentence ends, ‘Ze promisit to mak me advertisement of zour newis from tyme to tyme.’ The next sentence begins: ‘The waiting upon yame.’ In the English we read ‘at your departure you promised to send me newes from you. Nevertheless I can learn none:’ which is not in the Scots, but is in the published French, ‘et toutes fois je n’en puis apprendre.’ The published French is translated from the Latin, which is translated from the Scots, but each of the French published letters opens with a sentence or two from the original French: thus the published French, in one of these sentences, keeps what the Scots omits.

Therefore, the Scots translator undeniably, in the first paragraph of Letter I., omitted a clause which was in his French original, and is in the English translation. Consequently, when, in the same short letter, the English has, and the Scots has not, ‘to Ledington, to be delivered to you,’ we cannot, as most critics do, and as Herr Bresslau does, infer that Lethington had that mention of him deliberately excised from the Scots version, as likely to implicate him in the murder. It did not implicate him. Surely a Queen may write to her Secretary of State, on public affairs, even if she is planning a murder with her First Lord of the Admiralty. When the Scots translator omits a harmless clause, by inadvertence, in line 6, he may also, by inadvertence, omit another in line 41.

From these facts it follows that we cannot acquit Lethington of a possible share in the falsification of the Letters, merely because a reference to him, in the original French, existed, and was omitted in the Scots text. He need not have struck out the clause about himself, because the Scots translator, we see, actually omits another clause by sheer inadvertence. In the same way Mr. Henderson’s text of the Casket Letters exhibits omissions of important passages, by inadvertence in copying.

Again, we can found no argument on omissions or changes, in the English versions. That text omits (in Letter II.), what we find in the Scots, the word yesternight, in the clause ‘the King sent for Joachim yesternight.’ M. Philippson argues that this was an intentional omission, to hide from the English commissioners the incongruity of the dates. The translators, and probably the commissioners, did not look into things so closely. The English translators made many omissions and other errors, because they were working at top speed, and Cecil’s marginal corrections deal with very few of these blunders. On them, therefore, no theory can be based. Nor can any theory be founded on clauses present in the English, but not in the Scots, as in Letter II., Scots, ‘I answerit but rudely to the doutis yat wer in his letteris,’ to which the English text appends, ‘as though there had been a meaning to pursue him.’ This, probably, was in the French; but we must not infer that Lennox had it suppressed, in the Scots, as a reference to what he kept concealed, the rumour of Darnley’s intention to seize and crown the child prince. The real fact is that the Scots translator, as we have seen, makes inadvertent omissions.

The English text is sometimes right where the Scots is wrong. Thus, Sir James Hamilton told Mary, as she entered Glasgow, that Lennox sent the Laird of Houstoun to tell him that he (Lennox) ‘wald never have belevit that he (Sir James) wald have persewit him, nor zit accompanyit him with the Hamiltounis.’ The English has what seems better, ‘he,’ Lennox, ‘wold not have thought that he would have followed and accompany himself with the Hamiltons.’ In the end of a paragraph (3), the Scots is gibberish: Scots, ‘nevertheless he speikis gude, at the leist his son’: English (Henderson), ‘and they so speakith well of them, at least his sonne,’ ‘and then he speaketh well of them’ (Bain). The English then omits (Scots) ‘I se na uthir Gentilman bot thay of my company.’

In the next line (Scots) ‘The King send for Joachim yesternicht,’ the English omits ‘yesternicht,’ probably by inadvertence. The word has a bearing on the chronology of the Letter, and its omission in the English text may be discounted. It is a peculiarity of that text to write ‘he’ for ‘I,’ and a feature of Mary’s hand accounts for the error. Where Darnley, in the Scots, says, ‘I had rather have passit with yow,’ the sentence follows ‘I trow he belevit that I wald have send him away Presoner.’ This is not in the English, but recurs in the end of Crawford’s Deposition, ‘I thought that she was carrying him away rather as a prisoner than as a husband.’ Probably the sentence, omitted in English, was in the French: whether derived from Crawford’s Deposition or not. Presently the English gives a kind of date, not found in the Scots. Scots, ‘I am in doing of ane work heir that I hait greitly.’ The English adds, ‘but I had begun it this morning.’ Now, to all appearance, she had ‘begun it’ the night before. How did ‘but I had begun it this morning’ get into the English? For the answer see page 300. Even in the first set of Memoranda there are differences: Scots, ‘The purpois of Schir James Hamilton.’ English, ‘The talk of Sir James Hamilton of the ambassador.’

There are other mistranslations, and English omissions: the English especially omits the mysterious second set of notes. What appears most distinctly, from this comparison, is the hasty and slovenly manner of the whole inquiry. The English translators had some excuse for their bad work; the Scots had none for their omissions and misrenderings.

Letter III. (or VIII.) and Letter IV. I have translated, in the body of this book, from the copies of the French originals.

In Letter V. the copy of the French original enables us to clear up the sense. It is a question about a maid or lady in waiting, whom Bothwell, or somebody else, wishes Mary to dismiss. The French is, ‘et si vous ne me mondes [mandez] ce soir ce que volles que j’en fasse, Je mendeferay [m’en deferay] au hazard de la fayre entreprandre ce qui pourroit nuire À ce À quoy nous tandons tous deus.’ The Scots has ‘I will red myself of it, and cause it to be interprysit and takin in hand, quhilk micht be hurtful to that quhair unto we baith do tend.’ The English is the Scots, Anglified.

The real sense, of course, is ‘if you do not let me know to-night what step you want me to take, I shall get rid of her, at the risk of making her attempt something which might harm our project.’ We have no other known contemporary English translations. Of the four known, two (I. II.) are made with a frequent glance at the Scots, two are merely the Scots done into English, without any reference to the French. Nothing but the hasty careless manner of the whole inquiry accounts for these circumstances.

The most curious point connected with the translations is Crawford’s deposition. It was handed in on December 9, 1568. Whoever did it out of Crawford’s Scots into English had obviously both the Scots and English versions of Letter II. before him. Where the deposition is practically identical with the corresponding passages of Letter II., the transcriber of it into English usually followed the Scots version of Letter II. But there is a corrected draft in the Lennox MSS. at Cambridge, which proves that the Angliciser of Crawford’s Scots occasionally altered it into harmony with the English version of Letter II. Thus, in the first paragraph, the original draft of Crawford in English has, like the Scots version of Letter II., ‘the rude words that I had spoken to Cunningham.’ But, in the official copy, in English, of Crawford, and in the Lennox draft of it, ‘rude’ is changed into ‘sharpe wordes,’ and so on. The part of Crawford which corresponds with Letter II. is free from obvious literal renderings of the French idiom, as Mr. Henderson remarks.[426] These abound in the English version of the corresponding part of Letter II., but are absent here in the Scots translation. It is, therefore, open to argument that Crawford did make notes of Darnley’s and Mary’s talk; that these were done into ‘the original French,’ and thence retranslated into the Scots (free from French idiom here) and into the English, where traces of French idiom in this passage are frequent.