My Lady of Cleves: Anne of Cleves (45 page)

These Tudors had adopted and absorbed her. It needed no conceit to know that they would all be heartbroken if she went.

And she wanted to stay and see what happened to each of them; whom they would marry and which of them would reign. Would Edward grow up pompous? And would he marry his studious, stumpy little cousin Jane? Or, like his uncle Arthur, would he not grow up at all? And if so which of his sisters would be hoisted by her religious party to the throne? Self-controlled, conscientious Mary who would fight courageously in a minority for a faith that was feared, Mary who was a good woman but who might not be so good for England? Or Elizabeth who had her father’s “common touch”— that strange mixture of splendid egoism and wholesome vulgarity on which the people throve? “Call her Elizabeth and be done with it!” he had raged as soon as she had been born a girl. But had they— had the world—done with her? Elizabeth who was so utterly English that everything she did was bound to bolster up their insular conceit. Elizabeth who would fleece and cheat and bully them to buy herself lovers and finery and all the pomp she had been starved of, and yet fight for them in times of stress and go among them with the heart and stomach of a king? For that was just how they behaved—these irritating, incalculable English. Covering the thing they cared for most with an assumption of frivolity so that their enemies believed them to be effete and did not perceive the parlous danger of mocking at them until it was too late…Anne didn’t need books to teach her that; she understood people. And interested on lookers invariably see most of the game. She wanted to see this through. This fascinating game played by people she cared for on the chequerboard of England.

A discreet cough brought poor Sir Anthony to her mind. She turned at once, full of contrition for having kept an elderly man standing. “I am afraid I have tried your patience,” she apologized.

“It is a big decision to make, dear lady; and you your self have been very patient with us for seven years or more,” he said gallantly. “But may I—quite unofficially—beg you to take into consideration that many of us would find England a drearier place without you?”

Anne smiled at him warmly. He was one of Henry’s oldest friends and when people said things like that it made her feel that she hadn’t been such a failure after all.

“Dear Sir Anthony, you must stay to dinner and taste my eel pie,” she said, ringing briskly for the servants. “And I would have you remember me to his young Grace the King, and thank milord Protector for his thoughtfulness. But I pray you tell them I do very well as I am.”

READING GROUP GUIDE

1. Right in the opening scene of My Lady of Cleves we are met by an older but wiser King Henry VIII. How does this first chapter set up his character? What does it lead us to expect of him? In what ways does he meet those expectations throughout the book? In what ways does he surprise us?
   
2. Throughout My Lady of Cleves, we see that Henry is haunted by the ghosts of his past wives, especially that of Anne Boleyn. What are some of the other demons that haunt him?
   
3. When Hans completes the miniature of Anne, he marvels over his achievement: “He had shown a woman’s whole nature in her face.” How does this—the very gift for which Henry had hired him—become his own undoing, both professionally and personally?
   
4. In conjunction, when Anne looks at the painting, “her whole world was changed.” How is this true for her, both personally and publicly?
   
5. In chapter 7, we are given our first introduction to Katherine Howard. What aspects of her character provide us with an insight to the role she will ultimately play and her resulting fate?
   
6. What is the parallel between the bull baiting and Anne’s first meeting with the king in chapter 8?
   
7. When Anne and Henry visit the children at Havering, Anne removes her wig for the first time in front of him. In what other ways is this the first time Henry begins to see the real Anne? In what ways is this a turning point for them?
   
8. In chapter 14, Elizabeth and Mary discuss the prospect of being Queen. How do their differing views and personalities foreshadow the monarchs these women later become? How does Barnes use the lens of history to shape their characters as young children?
   
9. “For a divorced woman she looked remarkably content, and [Henry] didn’t find the inference terribly flattering,” Barnes writes of Anne in chapter 23. Anne does a good job of making the most of her life after her divorce. What aspects of her lifestyle appeal to you? Which appall you?
   
10. Despite what is obvious to everyone else, Henry repeatedly throws Katherine and Culpepper together. Anne asks herself, “Is he blind—or just sure enough of himself to think he can keep her?” Which do you think it is?
    
11. Anne and Mary view Anne’s divorce and Henry’s subsequent remarriage in very different ways—Mary with scorn and outrage; Anne with acceptance and meekness. Whose reaction is more reasonable? Whose is more practical? What differences in personality and history in the two women temper their viewpoints?
    
12. In what ways does Henry set up his marriage to Anne for failure? In what ways does he do the same with his marriage to Katherine?
    
13. At what point, if any, do you think Anne receives vindication for all the suffering and humiliation she has been through?
    
14. In chapter 32, Anne and Thomas Seymour talk speculatively of the possibility of a Queen Regnant. What is the special prophetic significance of their words in regards to each of Henry’s daughters?
    
15. In chapter 7, Barnes alludes to Anne’s “being a part of a page of history.” Though her marriage to Henry was short and remains an anomaly to this day, how is her presence in the history books significant nonetheless? What were some of the far-reaching consequences of her relationship with the Tudors? Based on Barnes’s portrayal of her, how might history have been different had Henry given Anne a chance?
    

Reading Group Guide written by Elizabeth R. Blaufox, great-granddaughter of Margaret Campbell Barnes

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Margaret Campbell Barnes lived from 1891 to 1962. She was the youngest of ten children born into a happy, loving family in Victorian England. She grew up in the Sussex countryside, and was educated at small private schools in London and Paris.

Margaret was already a published writer when she married Peter, a furniture salesman, in 1917. Over the next twenty years a steady stream of short stories and verse appeared over her name (and several
noms de plume
) in leading English periodicals of the time, Windsor, London, Quiver, and others. Later, Margaret’s agents, Curtis Brown Ltd, encouraged her to try her hand at historical novels. Between 1944 and 1962 Margaret wrote ten historical novels. Many of these were bestsellers, book club selections, and translated into foreign editions.

Between World Wars I and II Margaret and Peter brought up two sons, Michael and John. In August 1944, Michael, a lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps, was killed in his tank, in the Allied advance from Caen to Falaise in Normandy. Margaret and Peter grieved terribly the rest of their lives. Glimpses of Michael shine through in each of Margaret’s later novels.

In 1945 Margaret bought a small thatched cottage on the Isle of Wight, off England’s south coast. It had at one time been a smuggler’s cottage. But to Margaret it was a special place in which to recover the spirit and carry on writing. And write she did. Altogether, over two million copies of Margaret Campbell Barnes’s historical novels have been sold worldwide.