Part 7

But enough of reflection. To the story, and as the giant Moulineau said on a similar occasion, "_Bélier, mon ami, commencez au commencement_."

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 the capture or execution of King Charles, England being clearly no longer a country in which any one bearing the name of Stuart could live in safety, Stuart of Blantyre fled with his family to France. Broken swords and pedigrees were capital of a sort in those days across the Channel, and the starving cavalier applied for the interest on his to Queen Henrietta Maria. Her exiled Majesty, who was so poor herself that but for the pity of Cardinal de Retz she would have passed a winter without a fire in her apartment at the Louvre, could not do much for the ruined loyalist, but she did what she could. Stuart of Blantyre, like many another, was provided with a new sword by Condé or Turenne, and his year-old daughter, Frances, was adopted by the ex-Queen.

Much water was to flow under the bridge before the Stuarts and their followers were to come to their own again, and it was more French than English that La Belle Stuart arrived at Whitehall in her sixteenth year. As the _protégée_ of Henrietta Maria she had enjoyed superior advantages, and it is not surprising that, brought up at the Louvre in constant intercourse with the best society of France, she should have spoken French as if it were her native tongue, and acquired that breeding and _air de parure_ which in that day of French pre-eminence gave the possessor a peculiar distinction. Perfect manners and a perfect taste in dress have of themselves been known to redeem the looks of many a plain woman, but to these attractions Nature had bestowed on Frances Stuart the most perishable but most highly prized of all her gifts--beauty; beauty in its perfection, exquisite, statuesque, _éblouissante_. There was but one flaw in this _chef d'oeuvre_, according to the critics, and that was the lack of sense. "It was hardly possible," said Hamilton, "for a woman to have less wit or more beauty."

The opinion of this judge, who was capable of twisting, exaggerating, or suppressing the truth if by so doing he could polish a period, has passed unchallenged, presumably because many of La Belle Stuart's actions seem to confirm it. Yet nothing would be easier than to prove the contrary. It is quite true that she lacked the gift of saying smart, witty things, and the ambition to grasp at dazzling shadows, like the majority of her contemporaries. But she never lost sight of the main chance, and as she had the patience to wait for it, the courage to seize it, and the skill to take advantage of it, there is no exaggeration in saying that no more artful and calculating woman stepped at Whitehall than this canny Scot, whose mother, said Pepys, "is one of the most cunning women in the world."

It is quite useless to predict what would have been her fate had there been no Restoration; but from her apparently witless refusal of Louis XIV.'s splendid offer to provide for her suitably if she would remain and adorn his Court instead of returning to England with the Stuarts, it may be taken for granted that the inducement was not as attractive as it seemed. In spite of Louis XIV. and his promises, no one knew better than Frances Stuart and her "cunning mother" that it required something more than a pretty face, a taste in dress, and a _bel air_ to induce a French lord worth having to marry a penniless girl. But in England men were less fastidious, and if she played her cards cleverly there was no reason why her attractions should not secure her the husband she wanted. The Restoration was Frances Stuart's first opportunity, so, gracefully declining Louis' offer and accepting his valuable present, she went to England in the train of Henrietta Maria. Shortly afterward, through her protectress's influence, her own beauty, and her family's claims, she was appointed maid of honour to Queen Catherine. At the Court of Charles II. such an appointment was equivalent to that filled by the houris who luxuriate behind the ivory and ebony lattices of the Imperial seraglio at Stamboul.

Frances Stuart assumed her post at Whitehall with the firm intention of winning a husband; the supreme object of her life was marriage. She did not ask for love, or even great wealth, but rank, prestige. To have lovers galore, or even to be a king's mistress, made no appeal to her. Any woman with a pretty face could have the former and the To-morrows of the latter----!

"I shall be a duchess," decided La Belle Stuart.

Every carnal inclination, if one of so cold and passionless a temperament was capable of being tempted, was subjected to her end. A girl of sixteen who can reason like this may be a coquette, immodest in her actions, impure in her thoughts, and open to slanderous imputations, but she must of necessity be a prude. La Belle Stuart was one _par excellence_; in her the hypocrisy of prudery was double-distilled. The situation in which she found herself was the only possible one open to her. The road to her goal was a filthy and dangerous quagmire; she took it fearlessly, never once lost her presence of mind, and by trusting in a remarkable degree to herself, arrived safely at her destination. Frivolous, shallow, brainless, childish are some of the epithets that have been applied to her; but to us she seems to have possessed an exceptionally subtle intelligence and power of calculation which, as Clarendon declared, she "used for the convenience of her own fortune." No; whatever she was, La Belle Stuart was not a fool.

To Lady Castlemaine belonged the honour of "discovering" the new beauty. Confident of her own charms, and partly from a real liking, partly to use the appearance of friendship to cloak her intrigue with Jermyn, the _maîtresse en titre_ patronised the maid of honour, displayed the greatest fondness for her, and almost forced her upon the King's notice. It was not long before Charles, who knew a pretty woman when he saw her, became "besotted with Miss Stuart" to such an extent that he would kiss her for half an hour at a time, quite regardless of observation. Such proceedings, at Whitehall of all places, afforded the necessary amount of food on which scandal thrives. Lady Castlemaine tore her hair and roundly abused her quondam friend, the "besotted" King became love-sick for the first and only time in his life, and La Belle Stuart defied the one and tormented the other almost out of his senses, staining her reputation, if you like, but keeping her virtue intact. This state of affairs lasted with varying degrees of intensity for about five years. It was like a great war in which battles and sieges, campaigns and winter quarters, followed regularly from year to year.

The political aspirations that spring from the soil on which the vivifying beams of royalty have fallen never lack reapers. The wily crew of sharpers who hung about my Lady Castlemaine for sake of what they could pick up, no sooner perceived the passion that La Belle Stuart had inspired in Charles than they gathered around her. Considering the witless, ingenuous character that, judging from her behaviour, the beautiful maid of honour was supposed to possess, never was there a finer opportunity for those politicians, who, like pickpockets, were planning at Lady Castlemaine's how to steal the seals of office from the statesman Clarendon. Had La Belle Stuart been the fool that they took her for, not only they, but Charles himself might have succeeded. But along the dirty and dangerous road she was going not a pitfall escaped her; to save herself from slipping she shod herself in dissimulation. The little prude, whose indifference of the benefits of the King's passion was only matched by her indifference of Lady Castlemaine's hate, encouraged the King, Lady Castlemaine, and the whole Court to attribute her "simplicity" to lack of intelligence. To save herself from Charles it was not sufficient merely to play the prude, he was capable of overpowering prudery by brute force. La Belle Stuart took advantage of her youth to play the child as well. Never was beauty so silly; she laughed at everything, and affected tastes suited to a girl of twelve or thirteen. "She was a child," said Hamilton, who was duped like everybody else, "in all respects save playing with dolls."

Blindman's-buff and hunt the slipper were her favourite games, and the charm with which she invested these romps gave them a vogue. Pepys saw some of the greatest personages at Court sitting on the floor in the gallery at Whitehall playing at "I love my love with an A, because he is so-and-so," and "I hate him with a B, because of this and that." "Some of them," he added, "were very witty," which we can very well believe. There was, too, not infrequently a dash of malice in her artlessness. It was, perhaps, not altogether for effect that she chose the presence-chamber in which to let her childishness speak for her, by interrupting the deepest play with an ingenuous but imperious command that the cards should be given her to build castles with!

These artifices, which were cleverly designed as an armour for her prudery, increased the King's passion and protected her from it, both of which to one with La Belle Stuart's end in view were necessary aids. To Buckingham and Company the idea of governing such a "simpleton," and thus ingratiating themselves with the King, was enticing. To them the road to power by means of one who appeared to have as little ambition as she had experience, was infinitely more attractive than by means of such a woman as my Lady Castlemaine, whose terms staggered even the Cabal, and who was quite capable of bringing every one of them to the scaffold. The Duke of Buckingham, whose genius was as universal as it was the subtlest of the unprincipled gang of self-seekers at Whitehall, lost no time in cultivating the new favourite.

La Belle Stuart was fond, or pretended to be, of music; the Duke of Bucks had a sweet voice. She, like all prudes, was not averse to scandal; his Grace was both the father and mother of scandal, and gifted with a particular talent of mimicry. He sang to her and told her stories by the hour; and when it came to romping and other childishness, no one could build finer towers of cards. He was equal to every occasion. To outwit such a man was difficult, to fail to was dangerous; one false step, and La Belle Stuart's career at Whitehall would have been ruined irretrievably. The "silly" creature realised this, and did her best, not to win his friendship--that _would_ have been "silly," the Duke of Buckingham had no more principle in friendship than in anything else--but to use him to further her ends. Had it been possible there is no doubt but that she would have married him, and thus gained at once the position she craved. For the Duke of Buckingham was, as far as rank went, a first-class grandee, extremely handsome, and equally fascinating. The Puritan Fairfax had been so charmed with him as to give him his daughter in marriage, to the anger of Cromwell who himself would like to have stood in the same relation to him. La Belle Stuart found him so entertaining that she would send for him to come and "play" with her whenever she felt bored. But, alas, for his too clever Grace! The "simpleton" was so beautiful. In a moment of weakness he discovered a passion himself for his would-be dupe. The repulse he received from the artless child, suddenly turned prude, was so severe as to compromise him with the King. Instead of ruling her, he was forced now to be ruled by her. Poor Villiers! how irksome the building of card-castles must have become!

Nor where Buckingham failed did others succeed. The subtlety with which it was necessary to repulse him would have been wasted on Arlington. So La Belle Stuart treated the attempt of this stupid and unscrupulous mediocrity to make her his political cat's-paw by bursting out laughing in his face. Her exceedingly keen sense of humour--one of her many charms for Charles--was tickled by the absurd gravity with which he played his game. For, said the inimitable Hamilton, "having provided himself with a great number of maxims and some historical anecdotes, he obtained an audience of Miss Stuart, in order to display them; at the same time offering her his most humble services in the situation to which it had pleased God, and her virtue, to raise her. But he was only in the preface of his speech, when she recollected that he was at the head of those whom the Duke of Buckingham used to mimic," and Arlington and his intrigues were laughed away.

That the consummate prude was quite alive to the value of reporting to the King the unsuccessful attempts on her chastity, as well as the political designs on her influence, may be taken for granted. Yet though La Belle Stuart had no inclination for political intrigue--and what is indeed stranger, no greed of gain, though very poor--she was remarkably wide awake where her own advantage was concerned. It is possible that the prudery which kept her virtue safe, while destroying her reputation--the loss of which at such a Court was almost unavoidable--may have been the effect of a temperament incapable of passion. We know that she never loved, and when married never had children. But if naturally prudish, La Belle Stuart made full use of the profit to be derived from such moral infirmity. It certainly never occurred to her, or her cunning mother, when she arrived at Whitehall from France and fascinated Charles, to dream of playing there the _rôle_ of Anne Boleyn. Catherine of Braganza was a young and complaisant Queen, and Charles, though a faithless husband, respected her. But as time passed and the desire of all kings--save Frederick the Great--for issue became more and more remote, intrigue lifted its snaky head and threatened the helpless Portuguese.

The passion of the King for La Belle Stuart, kept at fever heat by her prudish resistance to his advances, made the possibility of Catherine's death a stepping-stone to the throne. During a short and severe illness of the Queen it was openly hinted that Frances Stuart was to be her successor. There can be no doubt but that she, trusting in Charles's absorbing passion and her kinship to the House of Stuart, did at this time hope to step into Catherine's shoes. "She was greatly pleased," said Hamilton, "with herself for the resistance she had made; a thousand flattering hopes of greatness and glory filled her heart, and the additional respect that was universally paid her contributed not a little to increase them."

But the Queen recovered. Charles, however, who saw no means of reducing the fortress of virtue he had so long and unsuccessfully stormed, now began to think of divorce. He went so far as to ask Archbishop Sheldon "if the Church would put any obstacle in the way of his putting away a wife who was sterile." Sheldon promised to consider the matter, but as he was the creature of Clarendon, and the Chancellor was the friend of Catherine, whatever real hope Charles might have had was dashed. Intrigue, however, was still busy. The Duke of Buckingham, who had not yet indiscreetly placed himself in the power of the "simpleton" whose influence he was courting, suggested to the King a plan for abducting the Queen and carrying her off to the West Indies, where it would be easy to get rid of her! Charles, to his credit, instantly scorned the suggestion, and the _rôle_ of Anne Boleyn became less and less possible for La Belle Stuart.

The part she played in this situation, when, surrounded with enemies, one false step might have ruined her utterly, was admirable. She gave no one the slightest opportunity of injuring her, and, whatever her hopes or disappointments, satisfied the Queen at any rate that her intentions were honest. Without doubt, if the road to the throne had been open she would have taken it; but it was not from lack of ability or courage to set out to open it that she failed. It was never really a possibility, and she was cunning enough to appreciate the fact.

During this period La Belle Stuart had to parry the hate with which she was assailed by Lady Castlemaine with all the energy of which that fury was capable. The danger from first to last that she ran from the _maîtresse en titre_ was always more present than the chance of succeeding the Queen. There was but one way for Frances Stuart to crush Lady Castlemaine, and that was at the cost of her virtue. It was the condition on which the King promised to dismiss the termagant. But the beauty, who was as obstinate as she was cunning, was firmly resolved to be no man's mistress, she wished to make a grand match, and it was certainly not at the Court of Charles II. that an ex-mistress was likely to find a duke to marry her. The value she set upon virtue was that of all prudes who angle in a muddy stream. She had her price--it was marriage--and she took care to publish the fact. It was her way of cleansing her reputation of the stains left on it by the King's attentions. So as she elected to put up with Lady Castlemaine she was obliged to continue to defend herself from her. She would not have been human if she had not tried to score off a rival from whom she had to endure so much.

One of their many quarrels convulsed the Court, and afforded Hamilton an opportunity for the display of his caustic wit. It was known as the "Affair of the Calash." This ridiculous feminine enmity, of which the following description by Count Hamilton is not to be improved, was one of the beautiful prude's ways of testing her power over the King:--

"Coaches with glass were then a late invention; that which was made for the King not being remarkable for its elegance, the Chevalier de Gramont was of opinion that something ingenious might be invented, which should partake of the ancient fashion, and likewise prove preferable to the modern; he therefore sent away Termes privately with all the necessary instructions to Paris; the Duke of Guise was likewise charged with this commission; and the courier, having by the favour of Providence escaped the quicksand, in a month's time brought safely over to England the most elegant and magnificent calash that had ever been seen, which the Chevalier presented to the King.... The Queen, imagining that so splendid a carriage might prove fortunate for her, wished to appear in it first, with the Duchess of York. Lady Castlemaine, who had seen them in it, thinking that it set off a fine figure to greater advantage than any other, desired the King to lend her this wonderful calash to appear in it the first fine day in Hyde Park. Miss Stuart had the same wish, and requested to have it on the same day. As it was impossible to reconcile these two goddesses, whose former union was turned into mortal hatred, the King was very much perplexed. Lady Castlemaine was with child, and threatened to miscarry if her rival was preferred. Miss Stuart threatened that she never would be with child if her request was not granted. This menace prevailed, and Lady Castlemaine's rage was so great that she had almost kept her word."

Hamilton added that this triumph was believed to have cost the prude her virtue. But this was merely the malice of gossip. Miss Stuart had the art of granting small favours and of holding out alluring hopes without really conceding anything. Charles, tantalised to desperation, continued more devoted than ever.

Royal admiration, while it invariably serves to recruit desirable _partis_ who might otherwise evince no inclination to confer the blessing of matrimony upon a young and portionless beauty, is not without great disadvantages. In the case of La Belle Stuart the attentions she received from her sovereign tended to defeat the very object for which she was trying to employ them. "_Point de raillerie avec le maître, c'est à dire, point de lornerie avec la maîtresse_" was a maxim particularly applicable to the present situation. For Charles, who laughed cynically at the numerous rivals a Duchess of Cleveland gave him, had no intention of bearing patiently with those a Frances Stuart might offer him. In this instance he let it be clearly understood that he would brook no competitors in the game he had afield. Such suitors as she longed to treat seriously were conspicuous by their absence; fear of incurring the royal displeasure, and perhaps the imputations to which the royal favour had exposed her, prevented those she would have deemed eligible from coming forward. The possibility of a grand match, as time went by, must have seemed to her as remote as that of being obliged to yield to the impatient King must have seemed imminent. In her despair she was reduced to the necessity of declaring that she would marry "any man with fifteen hundred a year who would have her."

Two infatuated younger sons would have been only too willing to take her at her word, and dare the King's rage, if the beautiful prude could have made up her mind to abandon her grand desires, which she never could. One was George Hamilton, a younger brother of the famous Anthony, a brilliant, dashing, devil-me-care Irishman, as poor and blue-blooded as the Stuart herself. The other was Francis Digby, a younger son of the Earl of Bristol. This brave, handsome youth was consumed with one of those ardent and tender passions over which a sentimental world, revelling in romance, always drops a tear. Never was a cause more hopeless, never beauty colder, more obdurate. Digby worshipped his fair for six or seven years as men with strong, deep feelings worship women, and then in his despair, life being no longer tolerable, rushed off to the Dutch War and found the death he recklessly courted in a naval battle. This event and the circumstances which occasioned it were widely known, and Dryden tried to shed some poetical tears over poor Digby in the song, "Farewell, fair Armida." But his attempt at weeping was so poor, that Buckingham, ever seeking some one or something on which to practise his powers of ridicule, burst into mockery of poet, lover, and beauty in his own clever satire "The Rehearsal."

George Hamilton was, however, of the moth species, and after flitting round the flame for a time took de Gramont's advice and flew off before he was even singed. This hare-brained, fascinating young fellow was never happy unless he was in love, but his idea of a passion differed vastly from Digby's. The Irishman's was of the earth. One evening at a party in Frances Stuart's apartments at Whitehall his head was turned by the sight of the beauty's ankles, which in her childish and innocent way she displayed with such an artless lack of reflection as to strike the reckless George, as he afterwards told de Gramont, that "it would not be difficult to induce her to strip naked." He at once conceived one of his daredevil passions for the "inanimate statue," and boldly set out to attract her attention. His means were characteristic. Having noticed that the lady was "like to die with laughing" in her "silly way" at the sight of an old gentleman with a lighted candle in his mouth, young Hamilton, who had a fairly large mouth, "put two lighted tapers into it and walked three times round the room without their going out."