Court Beauties of Old Whitehall: Historiettes of the Restoration

But in turning Madame's indifference to Guiche into prejudice, Vardes made the mistake of keeping his memory alive. Deceived by Vardes' amiable and insinuating manners, and beli...

"The Duke of Bucks," wrote Butler, "is one that has studied the whole body of vice. He has pulled down all that Nature raised in him and built himself up again after a model of...

When Courtin arrived in London the French influence seemed ruined at Whitehall. Every night Charles visited the fascinating Duchesse, and every day on repairing to the Duchess o...

"Ci-dessous gît la Mazarin, Qui des femmes fut la plus belle! Ci-dessous gît la Mazarin! Ses enfants seraient sans chagrin Si leur père était avec elle; Ci-dessous gît la Mazari...

The purpose of this visit was pretty well known to the public, to whom "Madam Carwell" at once became an object of detestation. She was, however, favourably received at Whitehal...

After this exhibition he was admitted to the prude's select coterie, and advanced to the point of persuading her to accept the gift of "one of the prettiest horses in England."...

In this age of the emancipation of women it is amusing to read of the grave scandal the Duchesse de Mazarin caused by leaving her husband. Such an action, which to-day would sca...

The Talbot influence was, however, too strong to be easily broken, and James, having decided to fight for his crown in Ireland, trusted implicitly to the Duke of Tyrconnel, who...

"This is how Gwynn argues: 'That hoity-toity French duchess sets up to be of grand quality. Every one of rank in France is her cousin. The moment some grand lord or lady over th...

Frances Theresa Stuart was one of the daughters of a Scotch cavalier, whose capital consisted of a sword broken in the royal cause and a pedigree dipped in royal blood. After th...

Saint-Simon further declares that a few days before Monsieur married his second wife Louis took her aside and told her these circumstances, assuring her that Monsieur was innoce...

Life, however, was to have others in store for her, and the Frenchman had not long departed when all thoughts of him--the tenderness of which we are inclined to attribute to Cou...

But now his mother, who lived remote from him and had never come into his life but to bring doom with her, like the terrible, mysterious queen in Maeterlinck's _Mort de Tintagil...

The Duke, who had, perhaps, the most brilliant wit of any person of the period and enjoyed that of others, was, in the cynical indifference with which he regarded both vice and...

As for the joke played at Miss Blague's expense, its success was sufficient to complete Miss Hamilton's satisfaction and to divert the whole Court. This silly maid of honour, wi...

The Hamiltons, like the Stuarts of Blantyre, were very poor and very highly connected. Miss Hamilton's father, like Miss Stuart's, was a younger son and a Royalist, and fled, li...

But the Court was not sincere like the people. Courts never are. Those who owed their places and pensions to the Queen Mother and the Queen naturally studied to please them, and...

To enumerate her lovers, the number of whom exceeded the King's, would not only be impossible but scarcely amusing. Of this legion devoted to the worship of Priapus there are a...

If we may believe so eminent an authority as M. Emile Bourgeois, whose "Le Grand Siècle," is a fascinating proof of his statement, "the age we live in delights in inquiry into t...

_Ennui_, however, was not an emotion that even a Duchess of Portsmouth, sated with power, could long experience at such a Court as Whitehall. Shortly after her Vendôme fright ca...