At his opening lecture at the Royal Institution on "The Privave Character of Queen Elizabeth," Professor Frederick Chamberlin, the American historian, advanced views which are contrary to those of most historians.
Instead of being the exceptionally strong woman represented, Mr. Chamberlin declared that Elizabeth was a woman of the poorest health and bad nerves all her life. She had many dangerous illnesses, and some chronic diseases which attacked her early in life and recurred at later intervals. She had nervous fits, was extremely—hysterical, swooned periodically, and remained unconscious and lifeless in appearance for many hours.
For the whole of the 10 years prior to her accession, he said, Elizabeth was ill from some disease which permanently took all colour from her face, and she was pitted with suiall pox before she was 20, sand was for years expected to dic at practically any time.
By way of explaining these conditions, the lecturer referred to events in her early history, and said that the execution of Seymour, the knowledge that her mother was killed by her father, and the general conditions under which she lived, induced abnormal gravity, aniounting almost to melancholy. She was, however, extremely accomplished, and could speak and write six languages at a very early age. She once told the French Ambassador that there was no difficulty in teaching a woman to talk—the difficulty was to teach her to hold her tongue.
The lecturer showed lantern slides giving samples of Elizabeth's penmanship, which, he said, was incomparable in one of her age. He quoted the views of eminent medical experts, based on authentie aiedical records as to the Queen's health, supporting his conclusion that instead of being the Amazon or masculine creature she was supposed to be, she was at best an intermittent invalid. Elizabeth's confinements at the Tower and elsewhere served only to accent tualte her physical and nervous disa¥ilities, and the lecturer drew a pathetic picture of the effect
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.