Universitätsbibliothek HeidelbergUniversitätsbibliothek Heidelberg
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OLD WORLD MASTERS

felt hat with a white plume, lace collar and a kerchief over her shoul-
ders with two pink bows in front. Beautifully painted frills of lace
adorn the elbow sleeves. With her left hand she touches a stiff fold
in her dress and with her right hand she caresses a little brown monkey
perched on the shoulder of Jeffrey Hudson, the famous dwarf. The
little dwarf is about thirteen years of age and is much under size.
He has light hair and the slightly wizened face that usually goes with
this kind of freak. Indeed our little Jeffrey looks not unlike the pic-
tures of the famous “Gen. Tom Thumb” of Barnum days in the mid-
Nineteenth Century. Jeffrey Hudson wears a suit of brick-dust red
velvet, a lace collar, and long, brown boots.
In the background, to the left, there is a stone wall and upon it a
flower-pot holding an orange tree, and farther away we note some trees
and, still farther beyond, the sky. To the right of the fluted pillar on
the right, there is a sort of ledge or shelf covered with a brilliant
orange silk curtain on which rests a crown of gold studded with pearls,
which informs us of the presence of Royalty.
Queen Henrietta Maria was born in 1609, the year before her father,
Henri IV, King of France, was assassinated. In 1624, when she was
about fifteen, the Prince of Wales offered marriage; and this was con-
sented to by her brother, Louis XIII, on condition that the English
Roman Catholics should be relieved from the enforcement of the
penal laws. In June, 1625, Henrietta Maria was married by proxy
and went to England, thus encumbered with political and religious
pledges that were certain to bring unpopularity upon everybody con-
cerned. The Prince of Wales had now become King of England and
he soon found an excuse for breaking his promise to relieve the Eng-
lish Roman Catholics. This course of action offended the Queen
deeply. The early years of Charles’s married life were very unhappy
and the favorite, the dashing Buckingham, fanned the flames of the
King’s discontent. After the assassination of Buckingham in 1628,
the King and Queen became deeply attached to each other; and from
that moment the bond of affection that united them was never
loosened.
For a number of years Henrietta Maria’s chief interests lay with
 
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