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Updated: June 17, 2025
Mahaut, as we have said, was a constant traveller, and though travelling was then no easy matter, the roads could not have been over-much beset with difficulties seeing that she journeyed in all weathers, either on horseback or in a horse-litter, or in a chariot without springs, and with no mean retinue. In truth, her following was like a glorified Canterbury pilgrimage.
Robert seems to have been of a most inquiring and intelligent nature, but when he had scarce passed his seventeenth year, Mahaut, with scant warning, saw this her only son stricken in death just as he was about to enter the ranks of knighthood.
From the accounts it would seem that linseed oil was used to mix with the colours, cherry gum or white of egg being added to make them dry more quickly. Payment for work was made three times a year at Candlemas, Ascension-tide, and All-Saints or by the day or piece, the last being the form preferred by the business-like Mahaut.
Besides it is by means of failure that the grandest successes have ultimately been achieved. See how skilfully that "mahaut" manages his huge yet obedient servant. And cannot we point already in our own ranks to elephants more wonderful that have been tamed and mastered by the goad of love?
But Paris does not seem to have attracted Mahaut as did her castle at Hesdin. Here she was in the midst of her own domains, surrounded by her liegemen and retainers, and able to be in constant touch with her artificers and workers, whatever their art or industry.
She, however, through her extraordinary personality, was able to triumph over all this opposition, which, far from marring, only seemed to add lustre to the work she had set herself to do. Mahaut was religious, artistic, and literary. All these characteristics, together with the circumstance of wealth, she inherited, and right well did she make use of her inheritance.
Of course there was no great choice, but that Mahaut read them and loved them we may be certain, since we know that she took some with her on her journeyings, and to preserve them from the wear and tear of travel, had leather wallets made to protect them.
Mahaut was the daughter of Robert the Second, Count of Artois, a valiant and chivalrous man, and of Amicie de Courtenay, of whom it was said that she was esteemed whilst she lived, and mourned of all when she died. Her brother, Philip, predeceased his father, leaving one son, Robert.
There is no reason for supposing that Mahaut was at the wedding of Blanche’s successor save in the imagination of the artist; but for him the inclusion of such a tragic figure would add a dramatic touch to the representation of an otherwise conventional ceremony. Grandes Chrons. de France, Bib. Nat.
Being literary, Mahaut collected what MSS. and books she could, and the list of them serves to show what might be found in a library of the early fourteenth century.
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