Part 1 (2/2)
George Hamilton, one of the most handsome and fascinating men in England, fared better, but retired from the pursuit of so seductive and tantalising a maid. Still Hamilton was the most congenial playfellow of them all. He was a madcap like herself, always ripe for fun and frolic; and for a time she revelled in his comrades.h.i.+p. He first won her heart in the following fas.h.i.+on. One day old Lord Carlingford was delighting and convulsing her by placing a lighted candle in his mouth, and hobbling to and fro thus illuminated. ”I can do better than that,”
exclaimed the irrepressible Hamilton. ”Give me two candles.” The candles were produced. Hamilton lit them, and thrust the pair into his capacious mouth, and minced three times round the room before they were extinguished, while _La belle Stuart_ paraded after him, clapping her hands and laughing in her glee.
Such a feat was an efficient pa.s.sport to her favour. Rollicking George was at once installed as playmate-in-chief to the spoiled child, and was privileged with a greater intimacy than any of her other favourites had ever enjoyed.
”Since the Court has been in the country,” he confessed, ”I have had a hundred opportunities of seeing her. You know that the _deshabille_ of the bath is a great convenience for those ladies who, strictly adhering to their rules of decorum, are yet desirous to display all their charms and attractions. Miss Stuart is so fully acquainted with the advantages she possesses over all other women, that it is hardly possible to praise any lady at Court for a well-turned arm and a fine leg, but she is ever ready to dispute the point by demonstration.
After all, a man must be very insensible to remain unconcerned and unmoved on such happy occasions.”
It is conceivable that Hamilton, stimulated by such, no doubt, artless encouragement as he seems to have enjoyed, might have made a conquest where so many had failed, had not his future brother-in-law, Gramont, taken him seriously to task and warned him of the grave danger of flirting with the lady on whom the King had set eyes of love, and persuaded him at the eleventh hour to beat a dignified retreat.
Pepys draws a pretty picture of Miss Stuart at this time, as he saw her riding, among the Ladies of Honour, with the Queen in the Park.
”I followed them,” he says, ”up into Whitehall, and into the Queen's presence, where all the ladies walked, talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying one another's by one another's heads and laughing. But, above all, Mrs Stuart in this dresse, with her hat c.o.c.ked and a red plume, with her sweet eyes, little Roman nose, and excellent _taille_, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw, I think, in my life; and, if ever woman can, do exceed my Lady Castlemaine, at least in this dress. Nor do I wonder if the King changes, which I verily believe is the reason of his coldness to my Lady Castlemaine.”
How many hearts Frances Stuart toyed with and broke in these days of her girlish beauty and irresponsibility will never be known; but we know that at least one hopeless wooer committed suicide, and another, Francis Digby, Lord Bristol's handsome son, after years of unrequited idolatry, in his despair rushed away to seek and find death in the Dutch war.
And it was not only over men that Frances Stuart cast the spell of her witchery. One of her earliest and most ardent admirers was none other than my Lady Castlemaine herself, who alone claimed to hold her Sovereign's heart. So secure she thought herself of her supremacy that she not only took the French beauty into favour, but actually encouraged Charles in his pursuit of her, probably little realising how dangerous a rival she was taking to her bosom. It is said that this was but an artifice to divert Charles's attention from an intrigue that she was carrying on with that rakish beau, Henry Jermyn; but, whatever the cause, there is no doubt that for a time she lost no opportunity of throwing her Royal lover and the fair Stuart together. She even looked on smilingly at a mock marriage, at one of her own entertainments, between the pair--”with ring and all other ceremonies of church service and ribands, and a sack-posset in bed, and flinging the stocking, evincing neither anger nor jealousy, but entering into the diversion with great spirit.”
And not only did she thus trifle with fire; for some months she rarely saw the King but in Miss Stuart's presence.
”The King,” to quote Hamilton again, ”who seldom neglected to visit the Countess before she rose, seldom failed likewise to find Miss Stuart with her. The most indifferent objects have charms in a new attachment; however, the Countess was not jealous of this rival's appearing with her in such a situation, being confident that whenever she thought fit, she could triumph over all the advantages which these opportunities could afford Miss Stuart.”
As a matter of fact Charles's _maitresse en t.i.tre_ regarded the ”Mademoiselle” as nothing more dangerous than a pretty, winsome child.
”She is a lovely little thing,” she once said patronisingly, ”but she is only a spoiled child, fonder of her toys and games than of the finest lover in the world.” But she was not long left in this unsuspicious Paradise. There was soon no doubt that the ”child” had made a conquest of the King, and that she, the mother of his children, no longer held the throne of his heart.
Her first rude disillusionment came when Charles was presented by Gramont with ”the most elegant and magnificent carriage (called a 'calash') that had ever been seen.” The Queen herself and Lady Castlemaine each decided that she and no other should be the first to take an airing in Hyde Park in this georgeous vehicle, which was sure to create an unparalleled sensation; and each exerted her utmost arts and eloquence to secure this concession from the King.
”Miss Stuart, however, had the same wish and requested to have the calash on the same occasion. The Queen retired in disdain from such a contest, while the King was driven to distraction between the cajoling and threats of the two rival beauties.”
It was Miss Stuart, however, who won the day, to Lady Castlemaine's unrestrained rage and disgust. The child had scored the first point in the duel, the prize of which was the King's favour.
According to Hamilton, this victory was believed to have cost the ”prude” her virtue; but Miss Stuart had proved again and again that she was no such compliant maid. The only pa.s.sport to her favours, though a King sought them, was a wedding-ring; and amid all the temptations of a dissolute Court, where virtue was as hard to seek as a needle in a a bundle of hay, she adhered to this high resolve. Probably no maid ever found her way with such a sure step through the iniquitous mazes of Charles II.'s Court to an honourable marriage as _La belle Stuart;_ though at one time she so despaired of realising her ambition ”to be a d.u.c.h.ess” that she declared she was ”ready to marry any gentleman of fifteen hundred a year that would have her in honour.”
And never, perhaps, have the designs of a dissolute King been so cleverly and consistently baffled. Charles made no concealment of his pa.s.sion for the beautiful maid-of-honour, and the more coldly she treated his advances, the more marked and ardent was his pursuit.
”Mr Pierce tells me,” Pepys writes, ”that my Lady Castlemaine is not at all set by by the King, but that he do doat upon Mrs Stuart only, and that to the leaving of all business in the world, and to the open slighting of the Queen. That he values not who sees him, or stands by while he dallies with her openly; and then privately in her chamber below, while the very sentrys observe him going in and out; and that so commonly that the Duke, or any of the n.o.bles, when they would ask where the King is, they will ordinarily say, 'Is the King above or below?'
meaning with Mrs Stuart; that the King do not openly disown my Lady Castlemaine, but that she comes to Court.”
Such was the spell which this enchantress cast over the King. Nor were her conquests by any means confined to the circle of the Court in which she moved a splendid, but una.s.sailable Queen, for every man who came within the magic of her presence seems to have lost both head and heart.
One of the most infatuated of all her victims was Phillipe Rotier, the youngest brother of the famous medallists whom Charles had invited to England, and whose first commission was to design a medal in celebration of the Peace of Breda. For the purposes of this medal Miss Stuart was asked by the King to pose as Britannia; and so captivated was Phillipe Rotier, to whom she gave sittings, by the exquisite perfection and grace of her figure, and so entranced by her beauty, that he fell madly in love with her, and narrowly escaped the loss of reason as well as of his heart. Since that day the figure of Britannia has appeared on millions of coins and medals to perpetuate through the centuries the faultless form of the woman who drove artist as well as King to the verge of despair by her beauty and her inaccessible prudery.
It was destined, however, that a prize which had so long eluded the handsomest gallants in England should fall at last to one of the most insignificant of all Charles's courtiers, a man who had neither good looks, intellect, nor character to commend him to a lady's favour. Such a gilded nonent.i.ty was Charles Stuart, Duke of Richmond and of Lennox, who, having buried two wives, now began to cast envious eyes on the maid-of-honour whom his Sovereign could not win.
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