Part 8

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." La Belle Stuart looked her best on horseback. Pepys once had the good fortune to behold her at Whitehall on the return of a Court riding-party, and from some coign of vantage, very modest we may be sure, the chattering snob watched "all the ladies talking and fiddling with their hats and feathers, and changing and trying on one another's and laughing. But it was the finest sight to me, considering their great beauty and dress, that ever I did see in all my life. But, above all, Miss Stuart in this dress with her hat cocked and a red plume, with her sweet eye, little Roman nose, and excellent _taille_, is now the greatest beauty I ever saw I think in all my life."

These riding and hawking parties, of which Miss Stuart was very fond, afforded Hamilton the opportunity of wooing her under the pretext of teaching her how to manage the horse he had given her. Not that the beauty had need of lessons in horsemanship; she had made herself a mistress of the art before she left France, where in those days Frenchwomen were noted for their grace and skill on horseback. Such a flirtation could not pass unobserved, and people who knew the cold nature of the dazzling prude laughed or shook their heads and wondered, perhaps, how long George Hamilton's would be safe on his shoulders. For the wild young Irishman, who had begun his love-making with no more honourable intention than to outwit a beautiful girl and turn marble to life, ended by being enchanted by Armida.

This fatal spell was broken, fortunately, as stated above, by the ubiquitous Chevalier de Gramont, who kept a large supply of charity and good sense under his Joseph's coat of flippancy. Seeing the noose into which the infatuated brother of the future Comtesse de Gramont had thrust his head, he said to him one day with cynical levity, with which, if one wishes to make a present of advice to such a temperament as George Hamilton's, a warning is most effectively wrapped: "Friend George, _point de raillerie avec le maître, c'est à dire, point de lorgnerie avec la maîtresse_. I myself wanted to play the agreeable in France, with a little coquette whom the King did not care about, and you know how dearly I paid for it. I confess she gives you fair play, but do not trust her. All the sex feel an unspeakable satisfaction at having men in their train, whom they care not for, and to use them as their slaves of state, merely to swell their equipage. Would it not be a great deal better to pass a week or ten days incognito at Peckham with the philosopher Wetenhall's wife, than to have it inserted in the _Dutch Gazette_, 'We hear from Bristol that So-and-So is banished the Court on account of Miss Stuart, and that he is going to make a campaign in Guinea on board the fleet that is fitting out for the expedition under the command of Prince Rupert'?" And Hamilton, more lucky than Digby, escaped in time.

But these were not the only men whose heads were turned by La Belle Stuart. Charles, wishing to flatter and soften her in every imaginable way, decided that the memory of her loveliness should be commemorated on the medals and coins minted during his reign. The brothers Rotier, the famous medallists, who at the Restoration had been invited to England by the King and given the post of the Cromwellian Simon at the Royal Mint, received notice to prepare a medal engraved with Miss Stuart as Britannia, to commemorate the Peace of Breda. This commission was executed by the youngest of the Rotiers, Phillipe, an inflammable genius who had but recently joined his brothers. It is not to be supposed that the beautiful, passionless prude who could successfully keep a fascinating King at arm's length, and on whom neither a George Hamilton nor a Francis Digby could make an impression, was the woman to succumb to a medallist of the Royal Mint. La Belle Stuart had not the instincts of a Duchess of Cleveland. During the sittings that she gave the young artist she probably never honoured him with a thought. But he, from gazing upon her, became so devoured with Beauty-hunger as to nearly fit himself for Bedlam.

The medal, like most works of genius conceived in despair, was a _chef d'oeuvre_. Rotier's Britannia became to him what Calais was to Queen Mary. The vision he had had of faultless beauty, at once blessed and baleful, was engraved upon his heart and brain. It stamped itself upon all the fine works that came from his hands, and found its way from that first glorious medal of Breda down to the humblest coins. Britannia has since had various faces and forms, but it is to be doubted if any have been so fair as the original. Poor Rotier's romance is now well-nigh forgotten, but his La Belle Stuart still survives, and is likely to for many a day, in a more or less imitative form on all the copper coinage of the realm.

It was during these very days when she was unconsciously turning the head of the medallist that the chance she had so long and almost hopelessly sought presented itself. Her cousin, the Duke of Richmond, on the death of his second wife made her an offer of marriage. This nobleman, notwithstanding his wealth and lineage, which made his rank second to none, was one of the most insignificant men at Court. To the King, of whom he stood in the greatest awe, he was particularly odious; although Charles, who in case the Duke died childless would as next of kin be his heir, had heaped honours and riches upon him. All the brilliant qualities for which the Stuarts of Richmond-d'Aubigny had been conspicuous had degenerated in this last representative of the line. The present Duke had none of the spirit or sense of his ancestors, and was, moreover, a dipsomaniac. In a Court like that of Whitehall, brimful of wit and malice, such a man was treated as a clown. "To court his Majesty's favour," wrote Hamilton gibingly, "he thought proper to fall in love with Miss Stuart." The fact that his passion, which he divided pretty equally between the beauty and the bottle, should have excited the jealousy of a man so callous as Charles may be taken as a proof of the strength of the spell La Belle Stuart had cast upon the King. But as the Duke of Richmond had a wife he could not be considered an eligible _parti_, and consequently the cunning prude treated her ducal admirer with her customary indifference.

The unexpected death of the Duchess, however, completely altered the aspect of things. Her Grace was scarcely cold when the Duke asked his lovely cousin to be his third wife. The offer was not one that La Belle Stuart had the slightest intention of refusing, but its acceptance, owing to the King's passion for her and dislike of the Duke, made her hesitate like one who _recule pour sauter mieux_. Before pledging herself to her infatuated cousin, to whom love and drink seemed to have lent their audacity for the occasion, she persuaded him to ask the King boldly for permission to marry her. Charles, who knew exactly the state of the Duke of Richmond's finances, concealed his rage under cover of a demand for a settlement that it was beyond the Duke's power to make. To the beautiful maid of honour, who had tantalised him for four years with her prudery and now implored him to allow her to marry honourably--not because she loved the Duke, as she confessed, but from a "desire to reform him"!--the King tempered his refusal with dazzling bribes. She should be a duchess in her own right; she should have her drafts to any amount on the Treasury or Post Office or Customs honoured like my Lady Castlemaine's; she might shop with the Privy Purse; he would send away Lady Castlemaine and give up his Nell Gwynns and Moll Davises; in fine, he would do anything in the world she asked, provided she would consent to be his _maîtresse en titre_. La Belle Stuart's reply is, perhaps, the only instance of the refusal of such an offer on record. "I hope I may live to see you old and willing," retorted the baffled King, from whom consent to this marriage at any price was not to be wrung.

To a man of the mental calibre of the Duke of Richmond the position in which he had placed himself was well qualified to damp his ardour. To prevent such an undesirable eventuality, Miss Stuart, while seeking a happy end to her troubles, was in the habit of giving her ducal lover midnight assignations, which though of a strictly virtuous type, be it understood, kept the heat in him. It was one of these secret interviews that brought matters to a head. For Lady Castlemaine, having learnt from one of her spies, of whom she kept a well-paid staff at Whitehall, of these midnight meetings, made her plans accordingly. One night, as Charles was returning in very ill-humour from Miss Stuart's, who had pleaded a headache as an excuse for refusing to see him, Lady Castlemaine waylaid him and informed him in her vixenish fashion of the cunning with which his "angelic Stuart" was duping him. As the termagant swore she could prove her words, Charles at once returned to the prude's apartments. At his wholly unexpected reappearance some maids opposed his entrance instead of trying to warn their mistress, but the King pushed them aside roughly, and entered La Belle Stuart's bedroom, where he found the Duke of Richmond sitting at her bedside. The anger of Charles was only equalled by the consternation of the others. The Duke, speechless and petrified from the torrent of abuse poured upon him, had thoughts of jumping from the window, but as he reflected that if he did so he would probably fall into the Thames which flowed beneath it, he chose to make a discreet rather than a valorous exit and left the room in silence.

This attack on the Duke gave Miss Stuart time to compose herself, and after his departure, instead of attempting to justify herself, she gave the surprised Charles such a talking to as perhaps he had never had before, save from my Lady Castlemaine. "If," she said, "she were not allowed to receive visits from a man of the Duke of Richmond's rank, who came with honourable intentions, she was a slave in a free country; that she knew of no engagements that could prevent her from disposing of her hand as she thought proper; but, however, if this was not permitted her in his dominions, she did not believe that there was any power on earth that could hinder her from going over to France and throwing herself into a convent to enjoy there the peace which was denied her in his Court." And she ended by asking him to be good enough "to leave her in repose, at least for the remainder of that night."

Such effrontery dumfounded the King. He went off in a towering rage. We are not told what sort of, if any, "repose," after such a scene, the maid of honour got that night; but the next morning, with a craft worthy of a Madame de Maintenon, she appealed to the Queen with the due tears to help her to retire to a convent. So well did she play her part that Catherine, who had every reason to hate her, wept with her; but reflecting that if she were to have a rival, such an innocent Magdalene as Miss Stuart would be infinitely preferable to a Lady Castlemaine, her Majesty actually brought about a reconciliation between her husband and her maid of honour! It was exactly what La Belle Stuart desired; under cover of this reconciliation she had time to prepare her plans without exciting suspicion.

One "foul night" the beautiful prude stole from her room at Whitehall and joined the Duke of Richmond, who, the day after that surprise visit of the King's had fled the Court without waiting to be banished. The assignation on this occasion was at the Bear Tavern by London Bridge, where the Duke had a chaplain and a coach ready. And here, having at last been properly made a duchess by the chaplain, her Grace and her husband, who one suspects from his habits must have kept up his courage artificially for this occasion, "stole away into Kent" in the coach.

Charles's anger, when he discovered the flight of the prude, may be imagined. Its consequences were far-reaching. On coming from the cage from which his beautiful bird had flown, the King chanced to meet a certain Lord Cornbury in the door. The sight of this man, who was the son of Clarendon, at such a time and place confirmed the suspicions aroused in him by Lady Castlemaine of the Chancellor's complicity in a plot to help La Belle Stuart marry the Duke of Richmond. And it is, perhaps, no exaggeration to say that at that moment Charles's opposition to the many enemies in Court, Parliament, and the country of the ablest of his Ministers, to whom also he not a little owed his throne, was finally broken down. On the morrow of this "marriage affair" of La Belle Stuart's the great Clarendon fell.

As for the happy couple, they were banished the Court, whereupon her Grace saw fit to return his Majesty the trifling presents she had allowed herself to accept from him, and to justify her conduct by what, from the notoriety given it, was practically a public confession of innocence preserved against great odds. And this subtle and calculating woman has been called by Hamilton, and those who have taken his mockery literally, a brainless, childish simpleton, with just sense enough to capture a Duke of Richmond! No doubt in a day when Gwynns, Castlemaines, and Portsmouths were fleecing the nation and making and unmaking Ministers, a woman who had only had a few jewels and a fixed salary of £700 a year for her services to the Queen, and took no interest in politics, must seem both virtuous and a fool. The "explanation," however, of her line of action at Whitehall produced a favourable effect. The public readily acquitted her of all the base imputations that had been cast upon her.

At Whitehall no one benefited by the absence of the beautiful and "wronged" Duchess of Richmond but Lady Castlemaine. She, indeed, was now established more firmly than ever in the Council and the Treasury, but La Belle Stuart was missed. When new beauties appeared at Court people compared them with the faultless loveliness of her who was banished for her virtues to the country. They remembered the charming grace with which she had danced and walked and rode; the elegance of her mode of dressing; the polished refinement of her manners. Poor Queen Catherine, who had to endure the insolence of Lady Castlemaine, sighed for the maid of honour who had always shown her respect, and "was never known to speak ill of any one." And even the King, who had never been able to love a woman as he had loved La Belle Stuart, longed to see her once more. So in the following year she was forgiven and came back triumphantly, as lady of the bedchamber to the Queen, with splendid apartments at Somerset House, where Catherine was living.

The Duke and Duchess of Richmond were now people of the highest consequence; and if scandal, as it did, chose to busy itself with her Grace, she, no doubt, endured it philosophically. At least, from personal experience, she was able to draw comparisons between the quality and quantity of the mud flung at a duchess and that with which a destitute maid of honour is bespattered. What effect marriage produced on the prudery of this beautiful creature we cannot learn. Slander had it that the King once, when drunk, boasted to the Duke of Richmond that the Duchess was no longer indifferent to him. A similar imputation was cast upon his Grace's appointment as Ambassador to Denmark. As his wife did not go with him, people said he was sent there to get him out of the way. And we require something more than the word of Mr. Pepys's "Mr. Pierce," before we accept as proved the statement and all that it implies, that Charles "did on a sudden take a pair of oars or a sculler, and all alone, or but one with him, go to Somerset House (from Whitehall), and there, the garden door not being open, himself clamber over the wall to make a visit to her (the Duchess), which is a horrid shame."

What, however, can be vouched for as true is that some time after her Grace returned to Court the King appeared as devoted as ever. His attention was especially solicitous during a severe illness when she was attacked by the small-pox. Notwithstanding the danger he ran of catching the disease, he visited her once, at least, in her sickroom, nor did his admiration for her appear to wane on her recovery, when her looks were so altered that Pepys was shocked to see her, and Ruvigny wrote to Louis XIV. that "her matchless beauty was impaired beyond recognition, one of her brilliant eyes being nearly quenched for ever."

The Duchess, however, bore the loss of her beauty with indifference, and consoled herself, if one may judge from tastes of which she had apparently given no previous evidence, with the cultivation of the artistic sense. Nat Lee, the tragic poet, whose "Rival Queens" long held the stage, owed much of his success to her encouragement. In dedicating his "Theodosius" to her he enthusiastically acknowledged her love of dramatic art as well as her kindness to himself. "Your extraordinary love," he wrote, "for heroic poetry is not the least argument to show the greatness of your mind. Your Grace shall never see a play of mine that shall give offence to Modesty and Virtue. My Genius was your favourite when the Poet was unknown, and I openly received your smiles before I had the honour to pay your Grace the most submissive gratitude for so illustrious and advantageous a protection. You brought Her Royal Highness just at the exigent time, whose single presence on the poet's day (benefit performance of 'Theodosius') is a subsistence for him all the year after." Her letters to her husband that have been preserved, it may be added, are evidence of her sound common sense. Of painting, too, she had a keen appreciation. After her death "her fine collection of original drawings of da Vinci, Raphael, and others, together with miniatures and engravings, was sold at auction." Such instances of artistic taste and kindness of heart go far to disprove Mrs. Jameson's statement as to the "frivolity of her mind and shallowness of her character."

With the coming of Louise de Kéroual all the scandal about the Duchess of Richmond and her royal lover ceased. The new and fresher beauty completely supplanted her in the King's affections. But La Belle Stuart had the consolation, if she required it, of proving that prudery fares better in the day of adversity than the courtezan. The ducal rank for which she had intrigued so questionably in her youth gave her a great prestige, which she enjoyed till her death. She continued, in spite of Louise de Kéroual, to be lady of the bedchamber--a post equivalent to that of Mistress of the Robes of the present day--to Catherine of Braganza during the rest of the reign; while on his accession James II. appointed her in the same capacity to his Queen. It was in fulfilling the duties of this office that she witnessed the birth of that Prince of Wales who was afterwards to be known as the "Old Pretender."

On the coming of William of Orange her services were dispensed with, but she passed the remainder of her life without suffering the misfortunes of exile and confiscation that fell upon so many Jacobites. As she had never taken the least interest in politics the troubles of the party to which she belonged by birth did not apparently concern her. The years rolled by serenely. While Jacobites were plotting she lived quietly among her pictures and books and a crowd of cats. At the coronation of Anne she emerged from her retirement for the occasion. It was her last public appearance. Shortly after she died, "devout in her way," and was buried, as she had requested, in her peeress's robes in the vault of the Dukes of Richmond at Westminster Abbey.

Her will revived public interest in the forgotten beauty of the past generation, and afforded many a gibe at her expense. Instead of dying comparatively poor, as was expected, it was found that she had accumulated a considerable fortune, saved out of the wreck of her husband's, whom she had survived thirty years. The bulk of it she left to her favourite nephew, Lord Blantyre, to purchase an estate to be called "Lennox's love to Blantyre." She had always been particularly proud of the fact that she was not only Duchess of Richmond, but of Lennox as well. This seat is still known as "Lennox-love."

But this reminder of the cunning prudery with which La Belle Stuart had hooked a double duchy out of the quagmire of Whitehall afforded the wits less amusement than the legacies she left her cats. Pope set the town a-laughing with his line, "Die, and endow a college--or a cat!" But there were some, perhaps, whose laughter turned to tears when a certain Lord Hailes, who had known her, declared "that the annuities she left to support her cats was a delicate way of providing for some poor and proud Jacobite gentlewomen, who had the care of them, without making them feel that they owed their livelihood to mere liberality."

It may, perhaps, be of interest to add that the beauty for which La Belle Stuart was so celebrated ran in her family. Her sister, Sophia, who was also a favourite at Court, and after the Revolution of 1688 a loyal adherent of the Stuarts, excited the admiration, among others, of Mr. Pepys, who pronounced her "very handsome." The daughters of the handsome Sophia, who married not so well as her sister Frances, were distinguished by the friendship of the famous Hamilton. The eldest, Ann, was particularly lovely. As the wife of the Maréchal Duc de Berwick, the right noble son of James II. and the sister of the Great Marlborough, she was long known at the French Court as "La Belle Nanette."

"LA BELLE HAMILTON," COMTESSE DE GRAMONT

A GOOD WOMAN OF THE RESTORATION

The masterpiece of Sir Peter Lely, which forms the frontispiece to this book, scarcely needs the charming testimony of Anthony Hamilton to assure us that the fair subject of this _historiette_ was a good woman. The portrait breathes goodness and refinement. The Court of Charles II. had no ornament so flawless. La Belle Hamilton was as chaste as Lady Castlemaine was polluted, as pure as La Belle Stuart was designing. If the "Mémoires de Gramont" has kept the recollection of the Restoration more vivid than that of perhaps any other period of English history, its heroine, more than all the characters who enliven its inimitable pages, has unquestionably aided the author in his wonderful effort to refine vice of its grossness. Her perfume seems to sweeten the noxious air of her times and to linger subtly in the memory of the unclean palace in which it was spilt.

If it be granted that rules may be proved by their exceptions, one wishing to defend the truth of the cynical aphorism that virtue, like happy nations, has no history, could choose no more convincing argument than to cite La Belle Hamilton. She seems, one is tempted to say, to have been born for the express purpose of proving that purity could exist undefiled in the vicious atmosphere of Whitehall. Her story cannot be compressed into the space of a footnote. It is too closely interwoven with that of her brilliant brother, his fascinating book, and her extraordinary husband.