Part 18

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 Whitehall. Dryden, the laureate at the time, and St. Evremond welcomed her in verse, of which the former is too dull and the latter too indecent to quote. At the sight of her Charles at once brightened up, and appointed her to be one of the maids of honour to Queen Catherine, giving as his excuse that it was out of a "decent tenderness" for his sister's memory. Poor Catherine, knowing the purpose for which her new maid of honour had been appointed, disliked her from the first. But Catherine had learnt wisdom in the course of her married life, and though she hated the new favourite as much as she had ever hated the Castlemaine, she accepted her without a protest.

Not so her Grace of Cleveland. She fought with her characteristic fury to retain her threatened power, and owing to the subtle coyness of Louise appeared to keep her ascendency over the King. For the cunning Breton girl understood that to yield to Charles at the first assault was not the way to keep him, so she adopted the tactics of La Belle Stuart and played the prude. But it was some time before this strategy was appreciated by Louis and his creatures at Whitehall. The French Ambassador became alarmed. "I think it safe," he wrote to Louis, "while undermining the Duchess of Cleveland to keep her on our side by appearing to be with her."

The correspondence that passed between the French Ambassador and the French Court on this subject gives a more vivid impression of the way the game of politics was played by the Great Powers at the time of the Restoration than any history on the subject.

At length the Ambassador was able to write to Louvois, "I believe I can assure you that she has so got round King Charles as to be of the greatest service to our sovereign and master, if she only does her duty."

This news revived the drooping spirits of the Court of France, but it was still impatient for some proof of her power. Arlington, one of the Cabal Ministers, who was as much interested in her success as Louis himself, therefore decided to bring about the long-anticipated _dénouement_ by inviting the Court to Euston, his palatial country seat, where by a counter-strategy it was hoped the cautious Louise would be forced to yield. The Ambassador, in imparting this information to Louvois, wrote:--

"Milord Arlington told me to advise Mademoiselle de Kéroual to cultivate the King's good graces, and so to manage that he should only find in her society enjoyment, peace, and quiet. He added that if Lady Arlington took his advice she would urge the new favourite to yield unreservedly to the King or to retire to a French convent.... The King did me the honour yesterday to sup at the Embassy, when he proved to me, by indulging in a gay and unfettered debauch, that he does not mistrust us."

The satisfaction this news gave to Louis may be judged from the following extract from Louvois' reply:--

"His Majesty was vastly amused with all that was in your letter about Mademoiselle de Kéroual, and will have pleasure in hearing the progress she makes in the King's favour. He even jested on the subject, and says there must either be small love felt for the mistress or great confidence felt in you to suffer you to go to Euston in such jolly company."

As may be imagined, the house party at Euston produced the result expected of it, and the way in which this result was effected is as illuminating as the above correspondence. It was quite in keeping with the total absence of morality which characterised all who were engaged in the intrigue. "Lady Arlington," says Forneron, "under the pretext of killing the tedium of October evenings in a country house, got up a burlesque wedding, in which Louise de Kéroual was the bride and the King the bridegroom, with all the immodest ceremonies which marked, in the good old times, the retirement of the former into her nuptial chamber."

As this book is not conceived in a prurient spirit we shall forbear to give the reader a description of the "ceremonies" connected with this mock-marriage. Suffice it to say that the French Ambassador's report of the "nights at Euston" reads like an account of a Palais Royal farce. In an age of such unashamed publicity as the Restoration, no attempt was made to keep the doings of the Arlingtons' house party out of the press; consequently the pamphlets of the day revelled in reporting the spicy details of this Euston saturnalia with as much zest and in the same spirit of hypocrisy as the press of the present takes in a smart society lawsuit. While the coffee-houses, which corresponded to our modern clubs, rung with gossip of the new French mistress of the King, who was reported to have protested to some noble lord against the scurrility to which she was subjected by the public: "Me no bad woman. If me taut me was one bad woman, me would cut mine own trote."

Of course, what happened at Euston was much exaggerated. Evelyn, who was a guest of the Arlingtons, declares that he never witnessed any of the things the newspapers and lampoons reported. Nevertheless, he admits that he was only twice admitted to the royal circle. At any rate, the sequel that occurred nine months later afforded Louis XIV. and "Madam Carwell" the greatest satisfaction. It is well known that next to a mistress Charles loved nothing so much as a child.

After the visit at Euston Louise de Kéroual was the acknowledged _maîtresse en titre_ in place of the termagant Cleveland, retired. Charles appointed her lady of the bedchamber to the Queen, the duties of which post she had the delicacy to abandon to a deputy, and created her Duchess of Portsmouth. At the same time, as there was every prospect that she would hold long what she had conquered, and as a reward for her services, Louis paid her in advance, so to speak, by giving her the title of Duchesse d'Aubigny. As she played the _rôle_ of _maîtresse en titre_ as it was played in France there is nothing in her story henceforth to shock the most modest susceptibilities. All the _grossièretés_ with which the Duchess of Cleveland, whom she supplanted, embellished the post were by her Grace of Portsmouth refined into political intrigues.

Among the many services she was expected to render to her "master," the French King, the principal were:--

1. To induce Charles to declare war against Holland (!)

2. To convert Charles to Roman Catholicism (!!)

3. To persuade the Duke of York, the King's brother and heir to the throne, to marry a French princess.

For Charles to have plunged his newly restored kingdom into a war with Holland, considering the "principles" of the English nation on the subject, would seem incredible. It was, however, the easiest of the Duchess of Portsmouth's tasks. The "principles" were circumvented, reasoned, excused, explained away, conscientiously, be it understood--oh, very conscientiously!--as is always the way with a brave "principle" when confronted with an interest. At the bottom England was jealous of Holland's naval and commercial supremacy. Charles, like the cowboy, knew his broncho; he declared war on Holland to please his mistress and win his French subsidy, and England bucked, and bucked--and fought.

On the other hand, Charles, being no fool, and knowing his broncho thoroughly, was not to be induced to change the form of faith he professed. He had too vivid a recollection of his exile to play any practical jokes on Fortune. If, as is extremely doubtful, he was a Catholic at bottom, it was certainly not from religious conviction. His Huguenot grandfather, Henri Quatre, had said that "Paris was well worth a Mass." Precisely in the same way he reasoned that the throne of England was well worth a confirmation. The Duchess of Portsmouth was far too indifferent herself on this subject to disagree with Charles, and far too cunning to risk her position in England in order to help Louis XIV. weaken the country with another civil war. She therefore made up her mind, says Forneron, "that there was but a single course to follow. It was by slow degrees to habituate the English to a revival of Catholic ideas, rites, and ceremonies." This was but a polite way of telling Louis that if the conversion of England to Catholicism depended on her it would never be converted. Also, knowing the displeasure such a declaration coming from her would create at the French Court, she made it on purpose to show Louis that she was no mere contemptible spy to be ordered about and scolded, but the Duchess of Portsmouth, _maîtresse en titre_ to His Britannic Majesty. This show of independence was based, no doubt, on the certainty of her hold on Charles. For at this time the French Ambassador wrote angrily to Louvois of her Grace: "She has got the notion that it is possible she may yet be Queen of England. She talks from morning till night of the Queen's ailments as if they were mortal."

Scarcely less inferior in importance to Louis than making Charles declare war on Holland and converting him to Popery was the subjection of his heir, the Duke of York. Louis XIV. thought of the future as much as the present. It was above all things necessary to him that if Charles should be unexpectedly carried off his successor should be the friend of France. The surest way of securing this appeared to be by making a match between James, whose wife, Anne Hyde, the daughter of Clarendon, had just died, and a princess of France. Louis, knowing James as well as he did Charles, was aware that he was one of those men who would be governed entirely by his wife. Consequently he proposed a member of his own family, the Duchesse de Guise, the sister of La Grande Mademoiselle and daughter of his uncle, Gaston d'Orléans. But Madame, before her death, had given her brother such an unfavourable account of this widowed princess, who was exceedingly plain, and had "laid in thrice in two years," that James positively refused to consider her. The French Court hereupon got angry at being defied by a stupid Duke of York, and ordered the Duchess of Portsmouth to put on the screw. But here again she was wiser than her employers. For under the pressure of being urged to do what he disliked there was danger that James might suddenly show resentment and marry an enemy of France.

The Duchess of Portsmouth, therefore, suggested that the distinction it was proposed to confer on the Duchesse de Guise should lapse in favour of her own nominee. This was one of the Mesdemoiselles d'Elboeuf, of the princely family of Lorraine. There was no doubt an _arrière pensée_ in this suggestion by which "little Kéroual," as they scornfully called her at Versailles, wished the world to see that she had risen to a height in which she could patronise princesses of Lorraine. Louis, however, had a grudge of some sort against the d'Elboeufs, and Mary of Modena was chosen instead. But the Duchess of Portsmouth refused to give up the cause of her _protégées_ without a struggle, if only to show Louis what a power his spy had become, and quarrelled with the French Ambassador, the Arlingtons, and the French faction generally. It is true peace was made again between the spy and her employers, but she had gained one thing of the greatest importance to her by the quarrel, and that was the recognition by Louis that "little Kéroual" for the future was to be treated with the respect due so great a personage as the Duchess of Portsmouth.

The independence she displayed in this intrigue was made not from any disloyalty to Louis, but from the necessity of enhancing the value of her services--of making hay, as the saying is, while the sun was shining. No one understood better than she the extreme precariousness of her position. Mistrusted and unpopular at Whitehall, and cordially hated by the people, there was nothing between her and ruin but the slippery, fickle King. It was not enough to be Duchess of Portsmouth with ten thousand pounds a year paid out of the wine licenses; if Charles discarded her she would be forced to return to France as poor as she left it, and it was not from the Court of France that she would get protection then. She had to provide against this emergency, and she did it with a cunning and determination for which no one, judging from her "childish, simple, and baby face," as Evelyn described it, would have given her credit. To bleed Louis as well as Charles was her object, and she pursued it with a rapacity that rivalled that of her Grace of Cleveland.

It was comparatively easy to get what she wanted out of Charles. Nell Gwynn had declared that she would be content with five hundred a year, but she managed to mulct the Treasury of sixty thousand pounds in one year and get her son created Duke of St. Albans, with suitable revenues to maintain the dignity. But the spoils of Nell were modest compared with those of the Duchess of Portsmouth. She was never addicted to gambling to the same extent as the Mazarin and the Cleveland, but she could afford to lose five thousand pounds at one sitting, as she once did. The drafts she made on the national exchequer were enormous. Her allowance of ten thousand pounds was generally swollen to forty thousand, and one year she succeeded in drawing the huge sum of £136,668. Like the Duchess of Cleveland, she sold every office that fell vacant; but she went a step further than her Grace, and took commissions on the bribes with which Louis bought his creatures in England, trafficked in royal pardons, and did a good business in selling convicts to West Indian planters. This rapacity never flagged during her reign. Immediately after Charles's death she put in a claim for ten thousand pounds of her pension, which was in arrears, and his successor did not hesitate to pay it.

The furniture that she accumulated in her apartments at Whitehall represented a fortune far greater than her father had amassed in the wool trade.

"Following his Majesty this morning, through the gallery," said Evelyn, who gives a graphic inventory of her sumptuous abode, "I went with the few who attended him to the Duchess of Portsmouth's dressing-room, within her bedchamber, where she was in her loose morning-gown, her maids combing her, newly out of bed, his Majesty and gallants standing about her. But that which engaged my curiosity was the rich and splendid furniture of this woman's apartment, now twice or thrice pulled down and rebuilt to satisfy her prodigality and expensive pleasures, while her Majesty's does not exceed some gentlemen's wives in furniture and accommodation. Here I saw the new fabric of French tapestry" (from the Gobelins looms just founded by Louis XIV.), "for design, tenderness of work, and incomparable imitation of the best paintings, beyond anything I ever beheld. Some pieces had Versailles, St. Germains, and other palaces of the French king, with huntings, figures, and landscapes, exotic fowls and all to the life, rarely done. Then for Japan cabinets, screens, pendule clocks, great vases of wrought plate, table-stands, chimney-furniture, sconces, branches, braseras, &c., all of massive silver and out of number, besides some of his Majesty's best paintings."

Evidently a virtuoso, this mistress-spy, in which connection we cannot help reflecting on the deep and intimate knowledge that Charles, the most cynical and light-hearted of kings, must have had of women. What with meek, faithful Catherines, devoted, antique-chivalrous Flora Macdonalds, coarse, virago Clevelands, neurotic Mazarins, prudish, cunning Stuarts, gay, insinuating Madames, subtle, artistic Kérouals, Nell Gwynns, Moll Davises, Lady Shannons, Lady Dorchesters, and others too numerous to mention, being an intelligent man, his experience of the fair sex must have been wonderfully illuminating.

But even more important to this curious "little Kéroual," of the "childish, simple, and baby face," than the accumulation of plunder in England was the feathering of a nest in France. Much as she valued her English ducal title, in spite of the mockery heaped upon it, there was an honour in her own country that she valued far more. To this thoroughly patriotic Frenchwoman to be Duchess of Portsmouth was a small thing in comparison with the right to a _tabouret_ at Versailles. This was the supreme ambition of a Frenchwoman in the _ancien régime_. Volumes could be written on the intrigues that the desire to obtain this distinction caused. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that some of the greatest events in European history have arisen in the quest of a _tabouret_. "To think," said Sobieski, the hero-king of Poland, who had married a Frenchwoman whose life was spent in the attempt to get this supreme feminine honour--"to think how she longs for that miserable stool on which nobody can sit at ease!"

The intrigues of the Duchess of Portsmouth to win her _tabouret_ at Versailles might be likened to a game of bridge in which she and Charles II.--whose hand she played--were opposed to Louis XIV. and his Ambassador, Colbert de Croissy (a brother of the famous Colbert). In this diplomatic bridge the cards were so evenly distributed that the odd trick was only to be won by the most careful play. In any case, from the start the honours, so to speak, were held by the Duchess and Charles. We have stated that in recognition for her services at Euston, of which the immediate effect was the declaration by England of war on Holland, Louis XIV. had conferred on his spy the title of Duchesse d'Aubigny. The history of this duchy is rather interesting, and the title was an ace in her Grace's hand.

Aubigny was a French ducal fief that two hundred and fifty years before had been conferred by a King of France upon a cadet of the House of Stuart. It was to return to the French Crown on the demise of the last male heir of the line, and this event had just taken place by the death of La Belle Stuart's husband, who was the last Duke of Richmond as well as of Aubigny. The latter title having been conferred on Louise de Kéroual by Louis, and both having for so long been borne by the head of the same family, she determined to secure the former for her son by Charles, who would thus as her heir once more reunite the two. This, in fact, was effected without the least trouble, and the Dukes of Richmond are also Ducs d'Aubigny down to the present day. But the empty title of Duchesse d'Aubigny by no means satisfied this cunning woman. She wished the ducal _terres_ as well. To possess them was to possess the coveted _tabouret_ at Versailles, to win the odd trick in this game of bridge. For to be able to have the sublime distinction of sitting on a stool in the presence of the King of France one must not only be a duchess in name but own one's duchy in fact. This, then, was the manner in which the Duchess of Portsmouth sought to provide against a rainy day at Whitehall.

Considering that, in spite of inducing Charles to declare war on Holland for the benefit of France, she had failed to convert him to Roman Catholicism, and shown an independence, most unwelcome to the French Court, in the Duke of York's marriage affair, Colbert de Croissy did his best to defeat her. Clever diplomatist though he was, the contempt with which she had treated him during the business of marrying the Duke of York secretly rankled, and he could not resist the temptation to thwart an enemy. To describe all the moves and counter-moves in this sordid intrigue is impossible here. Suffice it to say the Duchess was too much for the Ambassador. Louis was obliged to replace him by the more tactful Ruvigny, an honest Huguenot, who found the work he was required to do such a "filthy traffic" that he too was recalled and replaced by the sly Courtin, at the time the Duchesse de Mazarin suddenly alighted at Whitehall and in a trice all but ruined Louis' subtle schemes.

But the very eagerness the Duchess of Portsmouth displayed in regard to the _tabouret_ gave Louis, who had begun to mistrust her independence, an advantage. He promised to gratify her on the condition that she obeyed him unquestioningly for the future, and gave proof of her loyalty by completing some very delicate business he was now engaged in. The business was indeed delicate, but nothing in comparison with the difficulties the spy had to encounter in performing it. With the _tabouret_ in sight, however, she set to work right bravely.

Louis XIV., having taken the opportunity while England and Holland were at war to plunder Spain of Flanders, was now anxious to swallow the Franche Comté and the Palatinate. Hereupon all Europe became terrified, and England and Holland hastened to patch up their differences. All the Ministers and Members of Parliament whom Louis had bought suddenly turned against him. The patriotism of the whole nation was profoundly stirred. Even Buckingham turned Puritan--for a time. With his broncho bucking like this Charles was obliged to exert all his skill to save himself from being thrown. He disbanded the regiments, to keep up which, in case he should need them, Louis had paid him eight million livres. Moreover, at this critical time, when the Duchess of Portsmouth was of the utmost consequence to Louis, she fell seriously ill. The less said of this illness the better, it was anything but creditable to her royal lover. Misfortune seldom comes alone, and to discourage her Grace still more a large sum of money and her jewels were stolen, while at the same time the Duchesse de Mazarin arrived and fascinated Charles. Never had Louise de Kéroual been so near utter ruin. Even Louis began to neglect her now. "She who was so plucky and fertile in resources," says Forneron, "began to lose courage. Courtin wrote to Louis to communicate to him a scene that took place in her apartment. He went to visit her at Whitehall and found her weeping. She opened her heart to him in the presence of her two French maids, who stood with downcast eyes close to the wall, as if glued to it. Tears flowed from their mistress's eyes; sighs and sobs interrupted her speech. M. Courtin stayed with her until midnight, trying to soothe her wounded spirit. Louvois made fun of her troubles, and coarsely wrote that the scene of _la Signora adolorata_ had vastly amused his Majesty."

But perhaps to "little Kéroual," now so sunk in favour, hourly expecting to be dismissed by the fickle Charles, and to be publicly disgraced like Jane Shore, nothing seemed so hard to bear as the ridicule showered upon her by Nell Gwynn.

Nell inspired her with fear as well as hate. In the bottom of her heart Louise de Kéroual knew what she was; every time she looked into her mirror it was not a duchess but a prostitute she saw reflected in it; in many a moment of triumph shame leered at her suddenly from under the flattery of Ambassadors and Ministers, Court ladies and serving-maids. A prostitute and a prostitute's fate haunted her everywhere. It was to escape the terror of this ghost that she tried to disguise herself as a Duchess of Portsmouth and a Duchesse d'Aubigny. The same reason induced her to make people in England believe she was closely related to the illustrious family of Rohan by going into mourning when one of its junior members died. It was also the underlying motive of her desire to possess the right of a _tabouret_, whereby she hoped to strangle the scorn of Versailles. And Nell Gwynn stripped her masks from her and dragged her down to her own unspeakable level in a way that no art could baffle. A specimen of Nell's method of torturing her rival would scarcely be suffered in print nowadays, but some idea of it may be got from the following style in which Madame de Sévigné describes it, taking advantage herself of the occasion to sneer at "Kéroual":--